Am I the only one that still gives credit to dopers achievements?

So the other day my strava said I ran a 1:30 marathon. That's right. I may have cheated in some capacity, but that's what strava said so it's official.

So long haters. OP has my back.

Even if doping hurts clean athletes it doesn't make the best of the best of athleticism any less than the best they are. Once you get to that level it really doesn't matter if you're doping because it's a statistical guarantee that numerous numerous competitors underneath you are doping as well (unless you somehow believe that PEDs can actually be purged from a sport entirely). That's the thing, in any given event their are people who may be clean, and probably some people who aren't. The one who takes the gold has to beat all of them, regardless of their status. So yes, I don't like that PEDs are a reality per se, but I still respect the athletes achievements in their own right.

This x100. Even in this thread, someone posted that they had been personally affected by a doper (Asbel “Not Really” Kiprop). Doping apologists like “I don’t mind it” don’t care about clean athletes. They just want to be entertained by a pharmaceutical freak show.

1) What they do is still amazing and very hard work.

2) It's not fair to those that don't cheat. :c

3) They're way too lenient on the issue of evading random tests.

4) Git guud pussies.

5) Watch the records not move if they lift the bans.?

MyLittlePony Size12 Men's Velcro Straps wrote:

1) What they do is still amazing and very hard work.

Not really. Take for example, Cathal Lombard. He was just a 30:35 10000 guy who drugged his way down to 27:33. Without the drugs, he wouldn’t even make the NCAA finals.

For a kick off I imagine Alysia Montano isn’t as clean as she claims but I’ll play along for the sake of argument.

But you have to know as an athlete, if you turn up at an Olympic Games 100% clean, you are woefully under prepared in a world class field littered with dopers.

Assuming the authorities are going to be on top of doping, when they have been proven to be incompetent over the full history of our sport is both naive and foolish.

She should be thanking her stars she even got a bronze model as a “clean athlete” because my guess would be that she would be going home after the heats if it is indeed true she hasn’t doped.

Athletes need to get real.

Although, I suspect she knows all this and everything she says is now “for show”.

Whatley wrote:

I couldn't care less about all that drug BS, and wish the powers that be would just said .......the hell with it. So tired of all this talk of drugs, it totally sucks.

What's really funny is this...."all those sprinters are using, they are all dirty".....ok, so what's the problem? Sounds pretty fair to me.

Where is that....I don't drink, don't smoke pot, would never cheat at anything ever.......at? Are there people like that?

Crooked cops, corrupt judges, now look at politics and big business.

Let this athletes do what they want, lets see that 9.45 100m, that 30 foot long jump.

I don't really buy the "fairness" argument; by your logic we might as well allow roller skates. If everyone can wear them then it's still "fair," right?

I don't really care how fast a drug-fueled science experiment can run. I want to see how fast a natural person can run. Obviously the concept of "natural" is a little amorphous, but EPO and steroids are clearly beyond that.

LoneStarXC wrote:

Cathal Lombard ... was just a 30:35 10000 guy who drugged his way down to 27:33. Without the drugs, he wouldn’t even make the NCAA finals.

If that were true, which it isn't, then everyone should take drugs.

I personally don't take any drugs and never have because I don't believe in them.

However, if someone does take drugs and they can still run, then good for them. At least the drugs didn't kill them yet. Regarding their performances, yes they are fine, and count the same to me as for anyone else.

99 percent of people in the USA take drugs. So you're being a hypocrite.

This would only be relevant IF Alysia Montaño is clean. That no one here knows.

Same or inverse story with Kiprop: we don't know whether he was clean in 2009.

Huh? Montaño didn't get bronze - she ended up with 4th. Recall Savinova won the race but was banned and her medal annulled as a result of ABP hematological anomalies and her statements made in the ARD-Recordings. That moves Semenya up to the gold. Poistogova initially finished 3rd and had also made statements in the ARD-Recordings about her doping scheme in the lead-up to London.

The IAAF recommended a lifetime ban for her (as well as for Savinova) and annulment of her bronze. However, CAS banned her for 2 yrs and annulled her 2014 EIC silver but let her keep the Olympic bronze which was later upgraded to the vacant silver. That moved 4th place Jelimo to the bronze and Montaño up to 4th.

So, no question Montaño was screwed with this injustice by CAS in rewarding a convicted doper with an Olympic medal!

I know a guy who went to a low T clinic. He is a gym rat, but was really struggling in his mid 40s. He took testosterone and blew up as big as gorilla after about 6 months. He built up so much muscle so fast that he blew out both knees lifting and had to get a double knee replacement.

I don't think people really appreciate how much of an advantage you can get doping. I think that a lot of T&F dopers force themselves to hold back in races because they know that they could probably drop a WR whenever they want. Just watch some of the famous doper races and look at how hard the dopers are breathing at the end.

You probably are not the only person pointing this out.

But Lance didn't do anything. He was stripped of all of his awards for the right reasons.

CutSomeSlack4764588 wrote:

For example, as far as I’m concerned Lance Armstrong still rode his bike across the finish line first on multiple occasions in the most brutal bike race in the world. That is an achievement even doped to the gills.

But we will never know where he would have ranked if all were clean, or if all were doped. We only know that he was the best doper, and even so, that may be because he was the best responder, not because he was the best athlete among the dopers.

dunes runner wrote:

LoneStarXC wrote:

Cathal Lombard ... was just a 30:35 10000 guy who drugged his way down to 27:33. Without the drugs, he wouldn’t even make the NCAA finals.

If that were true, which it isn't, then everyone should take drugs.

I personally don't take any drugs and never have because I don't believe in them.

However, if someone does take drugs and they can still run, then good for them. At least the drugs didn't kill them yet. Regarding their performances, yes they are fine, and count the same to me as for anyone else.

99 percent of people in the USA take drugs. So you're being a hypocrite.

Why do you say this isn’t true? Here’s Lombard’s IAAF profile:

Here’s his confession to using EPO:

Here’s a link to TFRRS which shows that over 250 men in the NCAA, NAIA, and NJCAA ran faster than 30:35

A 30:35 wouldn’t even rank a guy in the top 200 in D1.

BTW, when I’m talking about drugs here, I’m talking about PEDs. Not stuff like antibiotics or antidepressants.

Precious Roy wrote:

I know a guy who went to a low T clinic. He is a gym rat, but was really struggling in his mid 40s. He took testosterone and blew up as big as gorilla after about 6 months. He built up so much muscle so fast that he blew out both knees lifting and had to get a double knee replacement.

I don't think people really appreciate how much of an advantage you can get doping.

How exactly are blown out knees an advantage?

Are you saying because he gained 50 pounds that he'd start winning races?

With blown out knees?

You sound like you're living in a dream world.

Big Booty Boi wrote:

Even if doping hurts clean athletes it doesn't make the best of the best of athleticism any less than the best they are. Once you get to that level it really doesn't matter if you're doping because it's a statistical guarantee that numerous numerous competitors underneath you are doping as well (unless you somehow believe that PEDs can actually be purged from a sport entirely). That's the thing, in any given event their are people who may be clean, and probably some people who aren't. The one who takes the gold has to beat all of them, regardless of their status. So yes, I don't like that PEDs are a reality per se, but I still respect the athletes achievements in their own right.

But you don't know what those achievements in their own right are if they're partly produced by doping so how can you respect them? (I know, you personally can, this is the general "you.") Looking to baseball, I can recognize that Barry Bonds was a good hitter. But I can't respect the home run numbers he put up "in their own right" because I don't know what those numbers would be if he hadn't cheated.

I agree with you. Mostly because I feel confident that the guys behind Lance Armstrong and El G were doping as well. It's hard to be objective when it's fair to say most were cheating. Now, I just want to see fast times or competitive races and don't discriminate guys like Ben True and Mahkloufi - both are probably cheating in some way.

That Floyd Landis comeback day was one of the most exciting tour de france stages I've ever seen, even know he was doped. ...

Anyone here who is anti-cheat, but watches the NFL is completely full of sh*t because those guys are on so much HGH and beyond it's comical.

Lombard improved because he started taking training seriously and trained hard to run faster.

Plus all of that improvement came BEFORE he took any EPO, which therefore had nothing to do with it.

All medical drugs have the same basic premise, i.e. that they perform some miracle that they don't,

and that they don't harm the body, which they do.

Anything that destroys the immune system, like antibiotics, can be extremely dangerous.

You should surely be aware that antidepressants have had a huge negative effect on society in the USA.

Lol. The old “I’m faster now because I trained harder argument”. Reminds me of a certain Israeli runner we’ve gotten into some pretty heated discussions about.

BTW, antibiotics don’t “destroy the immune system”. They kill bacteria. Hence the name, “antibiotics”.

Let’s look at amoxicillin, for example, used to treat ear infections, strep throat, and pneumonia, among other things. It works by destroying the cell wall of bacteria.

It’s a pretty lame argument to compare life-saving medications to people juicing themselves in order to perform better. Even EPO has a legitimate place in medicine. But it has no place in athletics.