Why wouldnt he?
Why wouldnt he?
bloaddopsdfg wrote:
Off the Grid wrote:If Martin Lel (5th in Olympic Marathon) could have run 8:21 the next weekend, I would have been very surprised. Doing it after 30k of racing 2 weeks before that is beyond belief.....and should be seriously questioned. But thats all we can do.
You saying Martin Lel is clean??
Even a doped athlete needs to recover.
A super-doped athlete is another matter.
I'm saying that TODAY, extraordinary performances such as Virens 10-5-M-2m over <3 weeks would be considered in the same light as the Chinese performances of the early 90s.
Lasse Viren claims he drank lots of reindeer milk. That was his secret.
Off the Grid wrote:
We'll never know
we do know. he was doing something that is no longer legal. as are ALL of the VERY TOP athletes today.
they do not start doing drugs the day before they are caught. Marion Jones was not clean even though she passed tests and said she was.
get over it.
Viren put in base work of about 200 miles per week for up to 8 weeks in a row. His typical non-base week involved about 150 miles composed of 18 runs over 19 hours. On four of the days, he ran 3x/day with 2x/day on the remaining three days. He used a heart rate monitor on most runs and watched his reactions to training carefully.
He was accused of blood doping but denied it. Blood doping was legal when Viren ran and was only banned in 1985, long after Viren had departed the international scene.
If Viren was blood doping, it was legal at the time and its likely that most other elites were also doping so the playing field was probably fairly level. If he was not blood doping, as he claims, then his performances speak for themselves.
How much doping affects times is anyones guess. However, the tracks which Viren ran on are considered to be about 2 seconds/lap slower than today's tracks which makes his performances even more remarkable.
you are the cutest wrote:
Off the Grid wrote:We'll never know
we do know. he was doing something that is no longer legal. as are ALL of the VERY TOP athletes today.
they do not start doing drugs the day before they are caught. Marion Jones was not clean even though she passed tests and said she was.
get over it.
No - We don't know. We have no evidence, nothing. Thats the way the world works - you can only make *definitive* statements based on facts, not assumptions predicated on the actions of other athletes.
Caveman wrote:
However, the tracks which Viren ran on are considered to be about 2 seconds/lap slower than today's tracks which makes his performances even more remarkable.
You have go to be joking!
agree
absolute nonsense
emiel ran 13'13.0wr in '73
in his dreams woud he be a 12'48 guy transported from '73 to '09
iaaf have had a speed limit ( energy return ) on tracks for decades
not true wrote:
Caveman wrote:However, the tracks which Viren ran on are considered to be about 2 seconds/lap slower than today's tracks which makes his performances even more remarkable.
You have go to be joking!
Thats what Bob Schul says in his book "In the Long Run"
Caveman wrote:
not true wrote:You have go to be joking!
Thats what Bob Schul says in his book "In the Long Run"
Yes, But Schul ran on cinder tracks; Viren ran on synthetic surfaces.
Caveman wrote:
Thats what Bob Schul says in his book "In the Long Run"
Keep in mind that tracks got a lot faster between 1964 (Schul's big year) and 1972 (Viren's first big year). Even in Schul's time, though, a handicap of two seconds a lap would probably be only for a pretty chewed-up dirt track, not a well-tended track in a big championship.
Regarding Viren's training, I've seen a wide variety of reports about his mileage, but all of those reports show that he was, by international standards, very lightly trained before 1971. In support of their blood-doping theories, some people have suggested that Viren mysteriously went from a borderline international-class runner in 1971 to the best in the world at the 1972 Olympics. I don't see anything mysterious about it. He was a young guy who had done impressively well on a very crude and sporadic training program, he started doing some more systematic training around late 1970, he started running some international-caliber times in 1971, and he emerged from his first real solid training block during late 1971 and early 1972 as the best distance runner in the world, dominating the entire summer track season of 1972 and going into the Olympics as the strong favorite in the 5,000 and 10,000. That progress from 1970 to 1972 and that dominance for the entire 1972 season do not indicate a sudden performance boost as a result of blood-doping in Munich, and blood-doping in the early '70s was a sufficiently crude and uncertain method of trying to enhance performance that it would have seemed like a very dumb thing to play around with if you were already the overwhelming favorite.
As I've suggested before, the case for a blood-doping link in 1976 is somewhat stronger, though still speculative. Viren had a good build-up in the winter of 1975-1976, set a world record for a road 25K a few months before the Games, and sharpened well on the track leading up to the Games. I would be more suspicious of blood-doping leading into the 10,000-meter finals in the 1980 Moscow Olympics after he barely got through the heats, but I'm not prepared to indulge in the defamatory talk that so many others have based on so little evidence. Viren was an extraordinary talent with a preternaturally smooth running form and a disposition that was very well-suited to what he was trying to accomplish. I loved his statement that (I'm doing this from memory, so the quotation isn't likely to be exact) "The question is not how I am able to do this. The question is why others are not." Others may criticize his focus on the Olympics, but I think it was a reasonable choice, especially in those days. Viren had no need to please everybody. Besides, he set world records at distances from two miles to 25K outside the Olympics, and won a lot of track races in times that were excellent for those days. People could learn a lot from Viren's life and career if they weren't so cynical.
Caveman wrote:
not true wrote:You have go to be joking!
Thats what Bob Schul says in his book "In the Long Run"
You think Bob Schul believes that Peter Snell would have run 1:40 on today's tracks?
I think Bob was in over his head on this one.
Avocados Number wrote:
That progress from 1970 to 1972 and that dominance for the entire 1972 season do not indicate a sudden performance boost as a result of blood-doping in Munich, and blood-doping in the early '70s was a sufficiently crude and uncertain method of trying to enhance performance that it would have seemed like a very dumb thing to play around with if you were already the overwhelming favorite
nothing "crude" about transfusions back in the '70s
tranfusions had been around for decades before & the method used then & today is unchanged
only thing that has ever improved is more antibody group detection from ABO, rhesus, MNS, kell, etc & better screening for viral illnesses
none of this however is applicable in autologous blood transfusions as in viren's case
nothing crude about transfusions in the '70s
When I worked in Bogota, I passed Lasse Viren a couple of times in my car when he was training running up the hills from 2650 to 3500 m above sea level.
I used to donate blood, but was once refused because my hemmoglobuline was 21.4 mg/l (150%) which is common for people living at sealevel who move to high altitudes. After going down to sealevel I ran an 800 m race, which I could never do when I was active (I used to compete in sports an once ran the 400 m at 18 - 51 secs - do not remember the time, but it was well below 2 min and I pulled in front at the finish.
I do not think Lasse Viren took any performance enhancing drugs - he just got a very high hemmoglobuline count from training at altitude, possibly higher than what is now permitted in sports - but most certainly legal at the time.
Lasse Viren probably just did not cheat - he was simply the best.
Yup. It is what it is.
oldoldrunner wrote:
August 4th 1976 Philadelphia Pa. 2-Mile 1. Dick Quacks(NZ) \
Way to go. My Dick Quacks!!
bloaddopsdfg wrote:
I thought that Viren eventually did deny it without ambiguity.
Yes, he denied it to Kenny Moore. But that doesn't mean that he didn't lie.
I think all those Finns know they cheated, you haven't seen any of them around in the sport since being ambassadors etc.
(Although I am sure some ambassadors, i.e. Juantorena and Bubka probably used steroids.)
why oh why oh why? wrote:
To that question, Viren stated that his secret was 'reindeer milk'.
The Fins swore by reindeer milk, including the great Paavo Nurmi.
not true wrote:
Caveman wrote:However, the tracks which Viren ran on are considered to be about 2 seconds/lap slower than today's tracks which makes his performances even more remarkable.
You have go to be joking!
Yeah, pretty lame.