Anyone listening to Colin Cowherd right now slamming Bolt for likely being doped and being linked to BALCO?

Just out of curiosity, would you take a job that pays you, say, $300k annually, but holds most of that salary in a trust you can't access for 15 years? $50K isn't much to live on these days if you want to provide for a family, build a home, buy a couple cars, raise kids, etc. People complain about the money & think athletes should be willing to take less than the market is willing to pay them, but very few people non-athletes would make those sorts of sacrifices. How many law school graduates want to spend their careers working for non-profits? How many teachers want to work in private schools where they don't have union rights (and, on average, make less than unionized educators working for the local county school system)?

You or I are free to work where we want, doing what we want, & making as much as we cam. Bolt (or any other big name athlete) should be forbidden from doing the same? Fairly sure not many of them are going to agree to that. I certainly wouldn't.

I listen to the guy who wrote the article everyday on 670 the score, in Chicago. Bernstein is an angry sports guy who just complains about anything and everything.

Athletics at the London Olympics 2012 was full of drug cheats. It was definitely a turn-off.

And it's been a known problem for so many years.

It's really too hard to listen to anything ESPN.

rojo,

You're right that the *suspicion* of doping can kill a sport, and I agree track has to be tougher on dopers. But I think you are a little naive to think that Cowherd or any other major voice in sports would take track more seriously if it were only clean. He's just looking for something to pick on. If it's not doping, its the uninformed commentary, the lack of any attempt to engage the viewer (diving has a "splash-o-meter" for crying out loud, what does track have - a boring clock), the constant interruption of distance race coverage, the lack of interesting personalities, you get the idea.

ho hum--

I agree that the problem is not just with the individual athletes, but practically speaking, money should be the target, because EVERYBODY is affected by it--meet promoters and directors, coaches, trainers, agents, athletes, and sponsors. EVERYBODY.

You are entirely correct, IMHO, that track rewards a very few very well, and that one can't make a "good living" being anything other than the best.

My response, respectfully, is "so what?" So although the rule would apply to everyone, it would only affect those with over $50k annual earnings, and wouldn't affect anyone just scraping by.

It would have a lot of effects, as you can well imagine--fancy private coaches, trainers, doctors, etc. would have to reach some other financial arrangement with the athletes, financial agents might have to front athletes for a while, pursuant to agreements with those athletes, and on down the chain. Unless either the top athletes found some way to get somebody else to front them, or many of their service providers agreed to work for very little or no compensation, or to defer compensation until such time as the trust was released, those elites would have to train like everybody else.

The biggest issue then, as it is now, would be the disparity between the supportive power of national federations.

Of course people would try to find ways to get around things--non-monetary compensation, intermediary entities, fraudulent reporting, etc., so in one sense this proposal might do nothing more than simply open up another battlefield, but I do think it should be explored, because it was only a first, admittedly cumbersome, stab.

I think that progress in the direction of that stab is what is needed.

IBAH McClane wrote:

wtf man i posted this yesterday

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=4752977http://www.muscleweek.com/is-usain-bolt-on-steroids

You and muscleweek.com are posting total crap. There has never been any link to Bolt and Hernandez - none - that I'm aware of. It all came about from some guy referring to sprinters generically as Bolt.

81runner wrote:

Cowherd said that doping is killing the popularity of Track.

Doping has done a lot to the popularity of Baseball, Football and many other sports.

I will agree that doping hasn't really hurt the major sports popularity and that it's my belief that they are even more of a joke than track in terms of drugs. I've always thought the NFL has to be the dirtiest - with so many big guys and only a 4 game ban.

I still think a lawyer should start lawsuits against players and teams for fraud. I'm surprised some teams don't sue players for fraud as well. I mean AROD got hundreds of million by cheating.

But doping in a team sport isn't as much of harm as it is in track. The whole point of track is to push yourself and be the best athlete - all alone. The whole spot is a single person's performance only.

In the team sports, a single player is just one of 9 in baseball or one of 22 in football. Their absolute performance is just one of many and their performance also has to come within in a team context.

But more importantly, the maximizing of a single person's performance isn't the goal - the goal is to win as a team.

In track, the athlete's performance is the whole sport. Period.

Nietzsche--

So we completely professionalize track to legitimate the drug use?

Although it might be "killing" the sport at a certain level, the preservation of the "amateur" quality is the best thing about it, and is something that I hold above all else.

t&f should be totally democratic. Yes, I know that is entirely a value statement. So what if it "dies" as a professional sport? Maybe people would do what I did--get a life instead, do some degrees, enter a profession, make a contribution to society in another way--while continuing to participate as an amateur.

If I trained full-time, with all the benefits had by those who do, maybe I would run mid-10's instead of mid-11's. So what? Same thing goes for mid-10's to 10-flat. Those improved times do nothing to benefit society more than the slower times.

There is nothing intrinsically worthwhile about t&f being "professional". Such professionalism might produce technically better results than amateurism, but the specific level of performance has no intrinsic value whatsoever. Somebody long jumped 8.90m? So what? There is nothing intrinsically different about a 8.90 jump from a 2.90 jump, other than 6.00m, which difference also has no intrinsic value.

The question, in my mind, is not how to return the sport to complete amateurism, because the genie is out of the bottle, and that ship sailed a long time ago with regards to the IAAF and the IOC...the question is, if I may be so bold as to unilaterally declare the limits of the debate, how to return the amateur quality to it, while preserving its inevitable professional monetary quality.

Rojo what do you think of the record holders/stars in the major sports that are dopers? Barry Bonds, Roger Clemons etc

I wish the major sports would take a stand like Track and Field. Erase their records, ban them for 2 years instead of 4 games and lifetime bans for repeat offenders.

Just as I threw out my TV years ago, NO, I don't watch the Super Bore, the NBA Chumps, March Sadness, the Hurled Series, or any of that crap.

"You can't claim to love track and field and not be overwhelmed with wonder at what happened in these games."

Yes, I can, and I do. It's not about wonder, about some sort of fantasy or incomprehensibility, it is about participation, about the opportunity to compete, which I know all about.

Unfortunately, I think the presumption these days is that when someone wins by a large margin or recognizes huge PRs, they are doping. This presumption lingers whether or not the athlete tests clean. It has gotten to the point where at least reputation wise we are nearly on equal footing with cycling and the presumption at least, that everyone is doing it. I don't think this is factually the case, but this sport has enough problems with popularity to begin with. So I tend to agree with your position on vigilant policing and harsher penalties e.g. Gatlin and Blake should've been banned for life.

The only time drugs become an issue is when drug cheats have a negative effect on the entertainment quality of the event.

Hence the grumblings about the 1500.

LOL, I also loved that guy's high bar routine!

In fact, picking up on what ho hum said, for me the most enjoyable thing about this Olympics was not the quantitative sports, but the qualitative ones!

I enjoyed most the gymnastics, synchro swimming, diving, and the rhythmic gymnastics. Also the waterpolo, BTW!

Seriously. Yes, even synchro--there is something undeniable about watching underwater shots of women with great bodies contort themselves while breathing hard in high-cut swimsuits. It's athletic, it's damn hard, it's hot in a weird way. Once you overcome the initial feelings of perversity, it's downright enjoyable, and you start to get into it, learning what makes for a good and a not-so-good routine. There is more interest there than there is in the simple quantitative sports.

And how could anybody complain about rhythmic gymnastics.

Face it, t&f is simple. Running is you, me from here, to there. Throwing is this thing, from here, to there. Jumping is me, from here to there. Weightlifting is this thing, from here, to there. All those things are readily understandable, readily comprehensible. There can be drama, but I wouldn't know it this Olympics, as I got a TV for 2 weeks and endured NBC before I switched to watching on the web. NBC took even the drama out of t&f, which is all it still held for me.

Masters marathoner--

That is exactly my point. Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't, but so what? Your premise is that it is viewed as a "job", which is exactly where I think the flaw resides.

Participation in t&f should be much, much more than just a "job", it should have a moral dimension to it. If providing for a family, building a home, buying cars, raising kids, etc. are your major goals, then don't pursue t&f, or put those things off until age 35. You make the decision freely. Nobody wanting to do those types of things takes a job at White Castle, either.

And I never suggested that athletes should be willing to take less than the market will pay them--quite the opposite, in fact. I just think the payment should be held in trust, for the benefit of all the athletes, and the sport as a whole. What about the issue of ill-gotten gains, of unjust enrichment?

How many law-school graduates want to work for non-profits? Actually, many. We all, within limits, choose what we will do, and how we will do it. t&f can have different limits, that people will either choose to accept, or not. You make it sound like there are no lawyers working for non-profits, and no teachers in private schools.

For instance, what if I arbitrarily raised the figure to, say, $100k?

"Unfortunately, I think the presumption these days is that when someone wins by a large margin or recognizes huge PRs, they are doping."

As a matter of historic fact in the modern era, such a presumption is richly deserved in the 100m, and is at least as appropriate as any presumption to the contrary.

Unfortunate? Certainly.

rojo wrote:...it angers me to actually have to hear a specific falsehood in this....

Get irony much?

sports scientist wrote:

Agreed that the sport is tainted, at least to the real fans. The ones tuning in because it is the Olympics will be indifferent in much the same way as they are to baseball, the NFL, and other American sports where doping exists but no one seems to care.

That aside, I was wondering if Jamaica's success is more due to a lack of US success. . .because perhaps the doping among US athletes has been reigned in to a large extent, therefore reversing their previous dominance.

Rampant accusations and suspicions of doping, are having more of a negative effect on T&F, than doping itself. That said, track & field is at it's highest level of popularity, ever!

I posted this in another thread yesterday:

Lets keep it real. The worst thing to happen to T&F has already happened and it happened right here in the USA. The best the USA has to offer is Gatlin, the same sprinter who was instrumental in that demise. Just based on that, people in the USA are some of the biggest hypocrites when accusing Bolt of doping.

I guess it's hard pill to swallow when you realize that you can line up your best dopers, juice them up to their eyeballs and they'd still be smoked by a natural monster of a talent from another country. Almost single handedly, he took T&F, dusted it off and put it on the highest level it's ever been. Instead of being grateful for that, people like you pretend to love the sport while speaking with a forked tongue. You'd rather make the ridiculous accusation of worldwide anti-doping agencies covering for him than just say the guy is clean.

Read more:

Whaaat--

Is t&f better because of Bolt? I don't want you to reduce t&f to top-level management compensation.

Do you participate? How has your experience changed as a result of Bolt?

In my personal experience, t&f is not at all better as a result of Bolt.

Sprintgeezer wrote:

Whaaat--

Is t&f better because of Bolt? I don't want you to reduce t&f to top-level management compensation.

Do you participate? How has your experience changed as a result of Bolt?

In my personal experience, t&f is not at all better as a result of Bolt.

You do not recognize the sport of track and field. Just the recreation. Some of us are sports fans. I have no interest in the "participatory" nature of track. Those that do kill the SPORT. You have proved without a doubt from your countless erroneous and ill thought posts that you have no clue as to the SPORT of track and field. Some of us do. And just to clear things up. Hundreds of kids will go out for track who wouldn't have otherwise because of what Bolt did this year.

agip wrote:

Rowbury was right, in her interview on flotrack, that convicted druggies should not be allowed in WC or OG meets. Let them compete in the diamond league, but not in championship meets.

That, or make the ban 4 years so they miss the next OG.

They've tried this and the courts overuled it ie Merritt. And I'm not saying they shouldn't have overruled it for Merritt (he was an odd case) but the point is the law seems to be on the side of dopers for some reason.

Personally I love the Brits. They are the most anti-doping country in the World. I fully supported the BOA's lifetime bans from the Games (even though I like Chambers). Was it fair that their athletes get harsher penalties than other athletes in the World? Hell no, but it has to start somewhere, someone has to step up and set a precedent. The Brits are so anti-doping it's great. The BBC annoucers openly criticized the women's 1500 results talking about Asli Çakir Alptekin's doping past. NBC would fire you if you said that.