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Lenny Leonard wrote:
Did she cheat? Yes
Was she great? Yes
Both can be true.
Every great runner has cheated in someone’s eyes to succeed: PEDs, shoes, altitude tents, professionalism, caffeine, compression socks, therapeutic massages, zinc supplements
No compression socks or shoes aren't the same as PED's. She flat out cheated!! Broke the rules!! She was a drug cheat!! The END!!
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Ray wrote:
Just going from memory here, a study came out about a month before Mary tested positive that suggested that although normal T/ET levels are 1:1, there are factors that may affect that driving it as high as 6:1 in extremely rare cases. Those factors? Birth control, red wine, and sex in addition to an abnormally high testosterone level. Mary tested at 11:1!! Her defense was "coincidentally" that her level was normally high, she is on birth control, drank a high volume of red wine the night before the test and had sex. I can't remember the name of the sprinter who used the same defense, except he didn't take the pill and he bragged that he had "a lot of sex" just before the test. Could it have been Butch? In any case, the rules now allow a 3:1 which you have to believe many athletes are abusing, but 11:1???
1:1 is normal for males at peak testosterone production. 2:1 would be rare cases but would exist with a small % of males. 3:1 would be extremely rare; something like 1 in a billion. With women it's even worse since females produce about 1/10th the testosterone that males do.
Like casual obsever states they'll let you get away with a 3:1 ratio though they'll flag the ABP and conduct target testing hoping that it's steroid use raising the levels. Anything over 3:1 and it's the CIR test which is the only test currently that can detect synthetic testosterone use. It's expensive so WADA reserves it only for the 4:1+ T/E ratio cases. I imagine if they use it routinely as part of the regular post-race drug screens you'd have a whole different ball game.
And athletes will make up all kinds of crazy excuses for a high T/E ratio. Lol
https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/9506/mike-rowbottom-lashawn-merritt-is-stretching-something-probably-the-truth-
Gentleman Savage wrote:
casual obsever wrote:
Not exactly. It was the extremely high T : E ratio in excess of 11 : 1 that did her in, not the T amount. Normal would be 1 : 1. Today they let you get away with 3 : 1 (but likely mark your ABP as suspicious and watch you more closely).
Anything higher, and they check the CIR to prove it's synthetic. As with Gatlin's testo (and Houlihan's nandro).
"clean until the end"? Fat chance. Remember she was a Cold War hero, meant to compete with the Soviet Union's drug cheats. Remember that was the time when USATF would cover up your positives (if they could) so you could beat the Soviets. Even after she was caught, USATF tried to let her skate.
All who wore the Athletics West singlet are suspect. We've heard too much from former team members to turn a blind eye and presume otherwise. Save Joanie who never trained in Eugene. I'd generally exempt Craig Virgin, as well.
I'd include squeaky clean Doug Padilla in that group too. Never trained in Eugene either. Possibly Henry Marsh as well although he did train in Eugene while going to Law School.
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Mary Slaney Decker gets 1,000,000 times the publicity as a L.A. child phenom than rest of us ever could. Today the population of registered foreign press newspaper and web correspondents far exceeds other world destination cities. Mary can never shake them off.