Viren cheating?

CHEIKHA wrote:

Yes Viren was blood doping. But since blood doping was legal then it technically was not cheating. Pekka Vassala likely blood doped as well.

Viren was in poor form for four years (1972 to 1976), then suddenly in 1976 he won two gold medals. That is the definition of an abnormal progression.

He was hurt in '74, wrecked his ankle stepping into a hole when moose hunting which accounts for his results that year. He did not give a crap about odd numbered years when there were no championship meets and trained through everything.

I hope he was clean as what he did was incredible

There's a cheating culture in Finland. Many of their best xc skiers are/were dopers as well - there was a big scandal in the 90s (after the entire team was caught red handed by the international federation). There is no emphasis on fair play there. Finland also sided with Germany in WWII - go figure.

Suomiperkele wrote:

But I heard from a doctor who used to work with Finnish athletes, that Viren's natural red cell values were already so exceptional that he hardly would have benefited from any extra blood, instead it would have been a health risk.

Ahhh, the old "too talented for cheating to help" line. Nicely played.

You've done you homework… almost.

No excuses for that xc skier issue. Guilty as charged. A big part of the (not the whole) team really used a forbidden plasma expander to speed up recovery. And it was 2001.

What comes to the latter argument WWII: quite a cheap shot and I'm obliged to give a short history lesson. Finland had nothing to do with that war until the Soviet Union attacked us. Yes, the 200 million people superpower attacked a neighbouring country of 4 million people. Our chances were to a) surrender or b) fight – and accept help or another country with a shared enemy. We came out from that war independent, unlike e.g. the Baltic countries. We had nothing to do with the nazi ideology, just the ideology to survive. For example my grandfather gave his life so that we have a free country and we don't speak Russian as our mother tongue. I suggest you are a little more careful with these kind of suggestions, since they are deeply offensive. What comes to sport discussion that's another thing and a good fight is refreshing and exactly the reason I chose to post to this forum the first time.

stay away from Finland wrote:

There's a cheating culture in Finland. Many of their best xc skiers are/were dopers as well - there was a big scandal in the 90s (after the entire team was caught red handed by the international federation). There is no emphasis on fair play there.

Finland also sided with Germany in WWII - go figure.

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Woah whoah.

The XC skiing doping scandals post-dated the Viren era by 20 years. Marti Vanio did get caught for doping but again, that was in 1984.

As for WWII, Russia attacked Finland in 1939 because Finland would not cede Hanko and other important harbors and outposts along the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Finland. Finland had been a free country since WWI and the Soviets did not respect their sovereignty and the West (US, Britain et al.) turned away because they did not want to PO the Ruskies because they figured they'd need them as allies against the Germans.

The Finnish government remained independent during WWII, the were not Nazi, nor did the persecute Jews or other ethnic groups.

They fought off the Russians for several years, but did cede some territory by the end of the war. Soviet casualties outnumbered Finns something like 6:1.

After the war Finland was the first nation to pay off its war debts.

You sir have more homework to do as well. The $hit hit the fan so to speak in 2001 and 2003, but it was revealed in court that there was doping on the team throughout the 90s - and probably 80s as well (i.e. EPO, growth hormone, basically everything under the sun). Drug use was promoted by the coaches and administrators at the highest levels of the sport (i.e. systematic).Several Finnish distance runners from as far back as the early 80s have also admitted under oath that they doped.It's part of the sporting culture there, admit it.I'll give Finland some credit for taking the issue to the courts and trying to clean things up.

yep,, wrote:

Cleansport wrote:

John Walker obviously thinks Viren was blood doping, judging by the podcast! I always had suspicions but never heard anyone calling it like that!

Any proof that Walker wasn´t cheating?

No proof, then.

yep,, wrote:

yep,, wrote:

Any proof that Walker wasn´t cheating?

No proof, then.

How would you prove someone wasn't cheating?

From the 70's on it would not surprise me if any World Record holder, current or former, doped.

He has denied it. Yes, we get it.

But let's look at the context. A little more damning than rumors (so still not any real weight) are his inconsistant responses to questions of blood doping. After Montreal, he denied knowing anything about it, despite having given more detailed and catagorical denials in '72 and '73. And, this "don't know anything" comment when we know the Finnish team was systematically blood doping.

Mikko Ala-Leppilampi admitted to his own doping as part of the team. His event? He was a hurdler. Other Finnish athletes have admitted to doping under Jouko Elevaara in the '80s. Blood doping was the system.

It had been studies by the military in the '40s, studied in exercise in the 60's, and as rjm points out, really got going in the literature in '72. Eddy Merckx was offered a transfusion which he supposedly denied, and was still able to beat the hour record in 1972. It must have been around athlete's circles before then, for it to be considered an option.

But some people don't like t be told what color the sky is. You say "blue" and they ask for evidence, your hard evidence. I can't convince those people. So just like Bolt is clean while Carter, Blake and Powell are dopers, or Isenbyeva is clean while her lesser teammates are dopers, or Michael Johnson is clean while his lesser teammates are dopers, sure Viren was clean. It was all those teammates he was better than who were dopers.

I was in several races with Viren in 1975. I never got to know him but did have a conversation with a guy who was his close friend and sometime training partner. He told me that Viren did not blood dope but absolutely LOVED the rumors that he did because he believed it made his competitors believe he had an advantage that they didn't. There was no way he was going to deny those rumors while he was still racing.

Yes, there were Finns who blood doped and some who dope doped. That doesn't mean Viren did or didn't. He's denied it in later years saying, logically, why would he deny it if he did as it was not illegal then. We'll likely never know.

Red Blood Cells wrote:

From the 70's on it would not surprise me if any World Record holder, current or former, doped.

Vireo blood doped in the 70's- took blood out, refrigerated it for a couple weeks and thenre-infused back in the body. That was their equivalent to the EPO of today.

The real reason for his gold medals was due to Reindeer milk, haha!

Shorter in his new GREAT book thought he was too..or suggested it...

The first book Ive read in one sitting since I was a kid.

HRE wrote:

I was in several races with Viren in 1975. I never got to know him but did have a conversation with a guy who was his close friend and sometime training partner. He told me that Viren did not blood dope but absolutely LOVED the rumors that he did because he believed it made his competitors believe he had an advantage that they didn't. There was no way he was going to deny those rumors while he was still racing.

Yes, there were Finns who blood doped and some who dope doped. That doesn't mean Viren did or didn't. He's denied it in later years saying, logically, why would he deny it if he did as it was not illegal then. We'll likely never know.

If this is true it is pretty damn smart.

yep,, wrote:

Cleansport wrote:

John Walker obviously thinks Viren was blood doping, judging by the podcast! I always had suspicions but never heard anyone calling it like that!

Any proof that Walker wasn´t cheating?

Actually, there was proof that John Walker was clean, a little unknown fact that very few people know is that in the late-1970s and early-1980s drug testers (presumably what we now call WADA) considered the samples given from Walker to be the 'cleanest' and 'purist' they had analysed and they used his samples as the basis for comparative analysis to find who was cheating and who wasn't for about 10 years until computer technology superseded this in the 1990s. So, although Walker set his WRs in 1975/1976, he actually ran quicker and more consistently in 1981/1982 but by this time Coe, Ovett and Scott was ahead of him. But it is an eyebrow raiser because in theory they all should have had samples as clean as Walker's at this time. I suspect a few cover ups going on.

Look The wrote:

I believe Carl Lewis was talking about Linford Christie, not Chris Christie

No, it was about Chris Christie the Gov. of New Jersey because he didn't give Carl Lewis some cushy job in New Jersey. Carl Lewis is toxic, the whole world knows he was on something. People today can't get within 40cms of his long jumps.

outsiderunner wrote:

Look The wrote:

I believe Carl Lewis was talking about Linford Christie, not Chris Christie

Yeah, it does not appear likely that Chris has ever broken 20 in the 100.

Imagine watching Chris Christie running the hundred!!!

Caster Semen.....ya wrote:

Look The wrote:

I believe Carl Lewis was talking about Linford Christie, not Chris Christie

No, it was about Chris Christie the Gov. of New Jersey because he didn't give Carl Lewis some cushy job in New Jersey. Carl Lewis is toxic, the whole world knows he was on something. People today can't get within 40cms of his long jumps.

Dear Dipsh*t:

Since you insist on blowing off your mouth about something you obviously know NOTHING about, I feel compelled to correct your stupidity.

Christie and Lewis had collaborated on a program to make Lewis a 'Fitness Ambassador' for NJ. It was to be a *volunteer* position. (*Unpaid*, for geniuses like you who are clearly very shaky on facts.)

When Christie found out that Lewis had decided to run for State Senate, as a Democrat, against one of Christie's Burlington County cronies, Fatso began a campaign of harrassment and intimidation to force Lewis to drop out.

When Lewis refused to do so, Porky called him up himself, and told him, If you *don't* drop out, I'm gonna cancel the Ambassador program.

Lewis demurred again, admirably refusing to be pushed around by the Fat Bag of Slime, and Tubby did, in fact, go ahead and summarily cancel the program, with some made-up bullshit excuse.

He then poured the legal resources of the state into a pitched battle to invalidate Lewis's candidacy, and eventually succeeded, after spending 80,000 bucks of taxpayer money to do it.

Lewis went public about it at the time, but not that much attention was paid, since Fatso Christie was still the rising Darling of the Republican Party back then.

Several years later, in 2014, when the truth about what Christie really is (the single biggest slime-bag criminal in the history of NJ, to be specific) finally came pouring out with the revelation of hundreds of horrible crimes after the Bridge-Gate Sabotage was exposed, Lewis spoke up again, reminding people that many of the stories then coming out fit perfectly with what he had experienced with Fatso several years before.

THAT's what happened.

I have no idea if Lewis used PEDs or not. It has NOTHING to do with his story about Christie, which was confirmed by numerous outside sources, and which fit *perfectly* with the 'character' of Chris Christie, in the view of anyone who has watched him and knows anything about the man.

Consider yourself educated. You're welcome.

Pro Tip: In the future, when you know absolutely NOTHING about the facts of a given case, do yourself a giant favor, and just STFU.