Yes, or sprinter. Of course. But this is a distance doping thread.
And of course I meant WWF, not WWE, lol
I have been trying to understand this phenomenon of hero-worship. The best I can come up with is that some people need to believe in a God, some sort of state of grace which they might achieve for themselves if they do everything right.
And this is why they continue to believe that people can do these otherworldly performances without drugs--because if they had to use drugs, then they wouldn't really be the same as "us", and we could never achieve their position no matter how many other things we did "right".
They are treated as Gods who walk the earth, as models, and models are something that I think that some people intrinsically require, to help guide their actions.
To bust them is to kill God, and is a form of blasphemy.
Athletes are chosen as Gods because they do the same things we can all do, only better. They don't shoot lightning from their fingers, make the earth tremble, or assume different forms--they jump, run, throw, swim, etc. If they did those other things, we could never attain their state of grace, and so they would not be used as a model.
In a funny way, if any of that is true, then it would make some sense to cover up all doping, and preserve their images as pure, so that people would emulate what they believe they know of them and their presumed behaviors--eating right, sleeping well, training hard, dedicating to an ideal, competing honorably, telling the truth to both themselves and others, etc.
Obviously all of this has been thought of and articulated by others, and maybe supported, maybe dismissed.