Is 9.69/19.30 believable?

PEDS wrote:

If you can't believe Usain Bolt isn't clean, then why would you believe anyone is clean?

You're on the right track.

REPOSTING IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

He's undoubtedly on drugs! AFTER THIS OLYMPICS, IT IS OBVIOUS THAT DRUG USE IS RUNNING RAMPANT IN THE CARIBBEAN JUST AS CONTE POINTED OUT. THERE IS ZERO OFF-SEASON TESTING IN JAMAICA, AND ZERO ANTI-DOPING FEDERATION IN JAMAICA. THIS IS SICKENING, BLATANT CHEATING AND WE WILL NOT BE HEARING THE LAST OF IT. MJ WAS DIRTY, BOLTS IMPROVEMENT OVER ONE YEAR IN THE 200M IS ILLOGICAL. LETS DO THE MATH:

BOLT'S 2007 200M PR: 19.75

2008 PR: 19.30

19.75-19.30 = .45

(.45/19.75) X 100 = 2.28% IMPROVEMENT IN ONE YEARS TIME

NOW LETS ASSUME THAT MY 1500M PR IN 2007 WAS 3:30.00 AND I IMPROVED BY THE SAME MARGIN OVER ONE YEAR.

3MINS:30SEC = 210 SECS X.0228 = 4.79 SECS IMPROVEMENT

3:30.00 - 4.79 = 3:25.21!!!

IF SOMEBODY WENT FROM 3:30 ONE YEAR TO WORLD RECORD 3:25 IN ONE YEAR IN THE 1500M, EVERYBODY AND THEIR BROTHER WOULD BE SCREAMING CHEATER CHEATER PUMPKIN EATER!!!

MY CONCLUSION?

BOLT IS THE DIRTIEST OF ALL TIME.

The only people that use drugs on Letsrun are American sprinters, and Rupp. Other countries (Kenya, Ethiopia, Jamaica, etc...) are pure of heart and stricktly compete for the love of the sport... they would never consider using a PED.

They are simple people that do not want for frame and fortuen- just the chance to compete and reprsent their country.

The track was short.

I'm not questioning whether Armstrong or Phelps were doping. I just don't believe that he's this far ahead of everyone else. All the "genetic freak" talk and "he's taller" than everyone else seems to be about as circumstantial as any claim that he's doing PEDs. If there was some sort of genetic advantage I'd like to see it.

Some other guy posted an article from a science magazine where they say he has a quicker reaction time in his muscular units, which I find questionable because he's taller. If anything it would take more time. Farther distance to send signals.

I don't know. I don't have a hard time watching athletes run fast times, or even non-American athletes run fast. However, I do have a hard time watching someone dominate an event by 10-20% over the rest of the field running times that eclipse marks that have only been recorded by drug cheats.

Exactly, these punks don't know a thing about track and natural progression. If they can find me a 20.5 guy at 15years, a 20.1 at 16 and a 19 pointer at 17, we can talk about all the dope in the world! He is a GIANT amongst men on the track, he is living up to his potential! Yeah, it was drugs that blessed him with 6'5" height at 15 and turnovers to match the process!

Bolt did it and he is clean, now what?

Hey buddy, got a bowel obstruction or something? Let me put your fear of naivety at rest. I am fully aware that track and field is loaded with people cheating. However, usually, cheaters wouldn't be able to take some steroids and decimate a field of potential drug users.

Might point is that it looked so normal, so natural, so easy that if it is drugs, its drugs which no one else on the planet has used before. I some how doubt that this kid from Jamaica is also a brilliant bio-chemist.

You mentioned Marion Jones, who for the record I thought was a cheat from the beginning, but there were very few races where she destroyed people so easily. He is so far and above anyone out that it would suggest pure natural talent. So deal with it. Than again I might be proven wrong, but, until you have proof you can't blame someone for seeing what everyone just saw and not automatically conclude it is some vast drug program.

Likewise after 10 years of his career without a drug test will you rescind your "dumbass" statement, not likely, you will probably be writing a book how the atomic bomb was never made or the moon landing was a conspiracy of the Cadbury Company to sell more chocolate.

How could we miss it with all the caps?

I would say that as usual, the truth is probably in between the 2 screaming camps (i.e. he's doped to the gills how can anyone not think so vs. he's pure as driven snow, how can anyone accuse him).

The facts are:

1) Everyone in athletics is under some suspicion of doping based on the fact that so many have cheated in the past, and the fact that the financial stakes are so high.

2) Passing tests does not equal being clean.

So, with those facts you can either say screw it, everyone is dirty, no way can a clean athlete beat all the cheaters, etc etc.,

or...

you can enjoy great performances, but keep in mind that there is a very real chance that cheating is involved.

Since I like track (hopefully most here do), I take the second approach. I get more suspicious when people improve at odd ages (like flojo), or associate with other cheaters. I take heart when people volunteer for programs like project believe, where they bank blood for tests that do not exist at present time.

I think the smartest thing Bolt (or any medalist, presuming they're clean) could do would be to volunteer for this and submit to having the samples stored. You hear plenty of people offering to be tested now, but far fewer offering to save blood for future testing.

On the down side of this, is that anyone working in a scientific field knows that there is almost never a perfect test. There are false positives, whether they come from poor storage (faulty freezer, faulty seal on a storage tube, poor material used for storage tubes), faulty reagents, human error, poorly calibrated instrument, or any number of other factors. So there is a risk in volunteering for this sort of thing. But given the level of suspicion out there (as seen on this board), its a risk I think a clean champ should seriously consider.

But for now, kudos to Bolt, can't wait to watch it, and while I know there is a chance he's dirty, I'll give him the beneft of the doubt for now, since the alternative means basically not watching track for me.

Bolt's performance and the emergence of Jamaican domination of the sprint events so completely in these Games is truly astounding. Sadly (as a track fan), it unfortunately reminds me of the DDR's (East Germany's) preeminence in Swimming, Rowing, and T&F at Montreal in '76. I got s-o-o-o tired of that National Anthem.

I guess I don't see this as such a suprising emergence. I follow distances more so than sprints, but at least 1/2 of their medalists have prior championship medals, and the women were certainly helped in the 100 by the whole "was it a false start/wasn't it" by the US woman. Jamaica has a pretty strong sprinting history- sure, perhaps drug fueled, or perhaps not. But so far for this olympics they've got:

w 100- 1st-2nd-3rd (aided by the flase start issue)

m 100- 1st

w 200- pending, looking at at least 1 or 2 more of some sort

m 200- 1st

m 110h- last 2 qualifiers, unlikely to get a medal

w 100h- nothing

w 400- 2nd

m 400- long shot for 3rd

relays- clearly have a good shot.

I'd say that's a good performance, but certainly not out of the question knowing their roster coming in. Domination? I don't think so. If the women sweep the 200 I might start to change my mind, but of the 8 indicidual sprint events chances are they will have 3 with no medals, and three with one (granted, Bolt's are big).

Perhaps "domination" is a little strong ... but versus the "rest of the world" I don't think so. Jamaica has a population of about 3 million. And I know all about Jamaica's history of sprinting, and the Jamaican "emigres" who have done very well in the past. I do not question the raw talent. That is not the point.

Back in the 70s, DDR "believers" used to remind us non-believers about how the East German training science was so advanced, how the finest athletes were selected at a young age, given strong financial and life-style incentives, and the best coaching and facilities etc. etc. All true. And the East Germans won world championships and major meets before Montreal too, so it wasn't totally out of the blue ... but their "preeminence" exploded at Montreal, just like Jamaica's in Beijing. But along with all the other "legal" training and structural pluses of their system, was a national, supervised, co-ordinated, and yes, scientific, doping program.

By the way, at the time, East Germany had a population of 17 million.

Can I sell you a bridge?

Why not keep the samples and test in the future once tests are better?

Well, of course everyone appealed to MJ's being a "freak of nature" with a unique running fashion, too..

Wow, the longer this thread goes on, the faster he gets in high school.

I improved five second in my 1500 meter time. I wonder what my coach was slipping into the water.

lol, who gives a shit if hes on drugs, everyone is on drugs u tards, doesnt mean they dont work hard.

The Bird's Nest held its breath on Saturday as Usain Bolt rewrote the sprinting rule-book and broke his own world record in the 100m final, but only when his samples have been returned marked "negative" from the laboratory to which they were taken under armed guard will anyone exhale with relief.

No one among the 91,000 in the stadium who watched the Jamaican streak into history wants to believe that what they saw was anything other than the product of precocious talent and hard work. But in a Games that has seen fake fans, fake singers and fake fireworks, questions will be asked as to whether the most eye-catching results are also artificially enhanced.

The sprinter was not the only athlete labouring under the weight of scepticism at the weekend. The world's best swimmers - including the double gold medallist Rebecca Adlington, who broke one of 24 world records to fall in the pool - and Britain's cyclists also find themselves facing cynicism. Drugs have corroded confidence to the point that exceptional athletes, the very people the Olympics are intended to celebrate, now face the impossible task of proving a negative to put themselves beyond suspicion.

Bolt is unquestionably blessed with lavish talent and has shown consistent progression in performance since he emerged as a teenage sensation in 2001. His curse is to excel in a discipline that has been so stripped of credibility by his predecessors. His lightning dash comes 20 years after the most notorious doper of all, Ben Johnson, produced an equally devastating performance in Seoul only to be revealed as a cheat within days. Linford Christie, the 1992 champion, tested positive for steroids at the end of his career and Justin Gatlin, the man Bolt deposed as Olympic champion, was subsequently banned. Sydney's sprint-double champion Marion Jones, meanwhile, is watching the Beijing Games from jail as a result of her association with the Balco laboratory.

Before the Games began John Fahey, president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), said that Beijing needed a clean 100m to restore faith in the sport. If Bolt's sample is clean the IOC will know before he resumes his assault on the sprint double today in the first round of the 200m. Negative samples go unannounced and positives take up to 72 hours to be processed, so no news is good news.

Despite the weight of cynicism that attaches itself to sprinters, there are several reasons to have faith in what we saw on Saturday. Experienced doping observers apply four tests to establish suspicion; what the athlete does, what they say, who they associate with and their testing history. On these counts Bolt looks good enough to be true.

He has already been tested at least six times since he arrived in China, and had he failed any of these we would already know. The Jamaican team have been visited 36 times by anti-doping officials in what looks like a targeted operation aimed at sprinting's most progressive nation. Jamaican Olympic Association officials say that 20 of their athletes have been tested multiple times, including Asafa Powell.

Secondly, he has been on a consistent performance curve since 2001 when he won his high school 200m in 22.04sec aged 14 and was adopted into Jamaica's talent development programme. Sudden leaps and late-career advancement are viewed as suspicious, but Bolt has demonstrated only consistent brilliance in his career, albeit in the 200m rather than the shorter distance. Training methods for the two disciplines are broadly the same so the advances are informative.

Neither has Bolt's progress been accompanied by the whiff of impropriety as the IAAF monitors its leading athletes regularly and Bolt has been tested regularly. Finally, his feat received only praise from the athletes he left trailing in his wake. There was no one aiming daggers at him as Carl Lewis did at Johnson in 1988, instead there were only compliments. Everyone who was gripped on Saturday will hope it stays that way,

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Bolt's progression:

20.58 (World Jr. Champion) Fastest ever for age 16

20.13 -- Fastest ever for age 17

19.93 (World Jr. Record) at 18

19.99 -- Fastest ever for age 19

19.88 -- Fastest ever for age 20

19.75 at 21.

POD.