Craig Virgin's Terrible Decisions

hardset nipples wrote:

Well where do you think that WR progression came from? With dense enough depth near the top you start seeing performances bunch up and then one by one they start shooting up beyond the rest.

Oh and newsflash, the East African "influx of talent" started in the 1960s, not the 1980s or 1990s.

Are you really trying to pretend that talent and PED use is mutually exclusive?

The quantity and quality of E. African runners didn't start to appear around until the late 80's. You can't blame everything on PED use. Makes you guys all sound like a bunch of whiners and losers."Oh we can't win because the other counties along with their federations are doping their athletes.IT'S NOT FAIR. WAHAAAAAA!!!" Does the thought of East Africans running clean really effect you guys that much? I'm not 100% sure if all of the EA's are clean either but if they were than it wouldn't bother me that much if not at all. However, if they weren't clean than I would stop watching the sport and stop bitching because there's nothing you can do about it.

Go crawl back under your rock Lance a lot.

give up wrote:

Go crawl back under your rock Lance a lot.

Try again. Whatever helps you guys ease your ego's than accuse them by all means. But without facts or evidence to support your slanderous claims, than you're all nothing but self hating has beens and no good whiners with too much time on your hands.

Tell that to John Ngugi and the string of Kenyan team WXC titles. I said that's when it started, in the '60s. There was plenty of talent coming forward from East Africa in the '70s and '80s, it didn't just spring out of nowhere in the '90s. They were making money on the roads and on the track throughout the '80s. And save the couldas, wouldas, and shouldas for a dumber discussion.

hey asshole wrote:

E_Smith wrote:

In Virgin's interview he implicitly accuses Geb and Tergat of being drug cheats, crediting the WR progression at 5K/10K in the 90s to EPO (that was a direct statement or close to it). This seems to be an irresponsible and self-serving attack on the two of the greatest legends in track.

He did not 'implicitly' accuse Geb and Tergat of anything. You're the one who's doing that. He merely pointed out that the great drop off of times coincidentally came at the exact moment (1988) that EPO came onto the market. He also pointed out that that trend reversed in the last few years, coincidentally, when EPO testing became better.

Wipe the foam off of your mouth.

What about the marathon? Today´s times are much faster than in the 1990s. Perhaps many more runners are choosing the maraton instead of track these days when there is a lot more money to be made on the roads than on the track (save for a few superstars like Kenny B).

Americans can´t accept that they, coming from the greatest and most developed country in the world, gets their asses kicked by a bunch of primitive Africans, so surely they must use drugs.

Executive summary: Virgin was right and he even stated it diplomatically. Source for my opinion- As a former memeber of national teams, I have personal experience with PED - of many memebers of our national teams and myself included.

I am not an American, so beofe judging my grammar, ethics or my life choices, please consider my different language origin and vastly different culture. I have been raised during cold war years behind iron curtain and ethical was considered anything that gave you advantage over system that was screwing you on a daily basis. If you wanted to see the West, you had to be polititian or a great athlete. To become great, you had to participate in the state sponsored, closely monitored and ENFORCED system of doping. Right up to 1989 you had ZERO chance of ever getting visa permission and special passport for travelling if you had not signed a document that basically gave free pass to doctors in the "Directoriate of Peak conditioning for sports" to prescribe you anything. You had to take it, no questions asked. Most of us knew what we were taking and we could definitely see the effects of drugs. We were laboratory mice and some of us even voluntarily bought some additional steroids from our Russian "friends". Those who did, were usually cought at minor or major competitions. Those who didn't, were almost never cought. I was just starting, when the events of 1989 freed us, but in not all areas.

Those same guys that were running the currupt system and forcing us to use PED remained, only the most prominent persons were made to retire (at great pension and benefits). So the system changed, but the practices remained. We had quickly learned how it went abroad in the West, and it was the same. The participation was voluntary, but taking of PED was just as widespread, as behind the curtain.

At that time I had believed that all top 20 in every discipline of athletics (T&F) were taking. Was it true? I don't know, but from those guys I knew personally that made it to top 20, as I had lived with them for many years and went from one training camp to another, none was clean for their entire career. None. That includes women and other sports as well, since our training camps were concentrated for obvious reasons. It wasn't even a secret among us, no hush-hush talk, closed door doctor visits... No, it was openly debated, planned and executed.

How did I learn about proper administration of EPO and its further derivates - ironically from an American, second tier runner, who would barely qulified for OT. At first I was scared to shit, because doctor knew about this new stuff squat, but we figured it out and I and many of his "patients" passed hundrets of tests, even after it was announced that they know the test for EPO. Ridiculous. They would have to catch you with your needle sticking out from your vein (or from your stomach, if you are so scared to poke your veins as many and subcutaneous administration is just as effective), otherwise just few hours after administration, it is almost undetectable, and virtually so few days later. The effects of EPO (or its derivates) cycle lasts for 4-6 months and the peak is between 1-4 months after stopping, if you take iron supplements and folic acid.

If you don't believe how widespread is EPO (and AS as well) among enurance athletes, just visit some of the BB forums were lots of runners, cyclists and kiers are throwing (good BTW) advices about proper use.

My above post was not an exuces for my moral failures during my competitive career, but only the slight eye opener for those of you that are naive and believe in clean elite sport. My experience, participation at more than dozen global events and knowledge of practices (past and current) gives me no other option than to believe that there is no clean sport. There are only very few very talented and moral individuals who go through terrrible temptations every day and some of those never fail. I believe that none of those individuals will ever win a global title.

First of all, your subject matter implies that Craig Virgin made some terrible decisions. He did not. The decision never presented itself to him because he ran 4-8 years earlier than when the new-found drugs were available.

His comments were accurate and presented in the most tactful way possible. I don't know why you feel the need to beat the guy up over something that he said, especially since he was closer than the situation that you.

Thank you for sharing your story.

So are you telling me that Ritz and Rupp are on drugs too, that the drop from 13:16 to 12:56 was unnatural? What about Teg? Goucher getting "back" to 13:10 and finishing sixth at the WXC? Kara's remarkable improvement on the track? Are all these guys and gals hiding behind the new "iron" curtain?

I don't know these guys and gal personally and had not trained with them, neither observed them. I don't know whether they are taking. I am just expressing opinion based on my experience from my era (basically ending few years ago for me), and from obvious reasons, I am sceptical. Very sceptical of all improvements in mature athletes. I am not accusing anybody, I just know what I had seen personally: Full trunks of plasma expanders, thousands of thousands vials of all known and unknown chemicals, syringes, home use hematocrit testers, etc. The most famous guys usually have providers and white horses who order stuff on their names, do the money transfers, etc. There is almost zero chance of being caught, if you are careful enough and smart enough.

And then there are untouchables. There always have been and will be...

A few more thoughts...randomly.

I'm quite certain Frank Shorter has stated publicly that he was faced with the decision to "cheat" or not to cheat through drug use/doping. I think it is clear that cheating was indeed happening before Virgin (BC). The question is how widespread was it??

To Mr. Anonymous. Many people on this board DO accuse the Salazar/Oregon clan of cheating, be it unnecessary thyroid hormone or what-have-you. If Webb comes back and runs another AR then that talk will certainly re-emerge.

Bad Area made a point before I could - financial incentive. In the days of "amateurism" athletes from all countries didn't have the same incentive to run/train year round like they do now. You could argue effectively that as amateurism was shed and money paid up front at road races of all sizes, more people from all countries raced more often and trained harder. This would lead to improving performances and the influx of cheating. Without a doubt, when money is on the line, cheating is close behind. Take away the money and the world best times would slow way down again. It seems testing has helped slow the ebb, but the problem isn't gone.

And anyone who doesn't think the unnatural spike in the WR progression isn't drug-related truly is ignorant. Too many records happening too often with too much depth. If it looks too good to be true, then it is!

Whitesnake wrote:

And anyone who doesn't think the unnatural spike in the WR progression isn't drug-related truly is ignorant. Too many records happening too often with too much depth. If it looks too good to be true, then it is!

Please explain, statistically, why this must be the case.

I am not sure why people get a pass when they say they may have cheated if giving the option to do so. Is that because most people would cheat if they didn't think they would get caught. I would hope not, bu from these posts it seems like everyone is okay with cheating. One of the previously respected baseball players said essentially the same thing, that he would most likely have cheated if the steroid era had come sooner. Either you have morals and wouldn't cheat and break the law or you don't. I have lost even more respect for Craig Virgin based on his comments that he might have chosen to cheat.

I also find it funny that he has to accuse people of cheating when they ran faster than he did. How incredibly conceited is that to think that nobody could run better than him without cheating. I have no idea who was cheating in what era, but many greats have cheated and many haven't. And cheating did happen even in the 70's with Lasse Viren. Since blood doping was around back then and Craig admits he may have done EPO if it had been around, I can only assume he was blood doping since everyone must have been doing it and he would have needed to do it to stay competitive. Get over yourself Craig Virgin.

Here is a story of Craig Virgin that made me lose respect for him even before hearing his latest comments. It was in the early 1980's when he was at his peak. For some reason, he ran in a small indoor track meet with only college runners. He was in the 2 mile and let the college kids do all of the leading, then with a lap or two to go, he takes off and wins going away in about an 8:50 2 mile, slower than his high school times. He proceeded to take 3 victory laps, waving to the crowd and giving high fives to everyone. He did not shake the hands or congratulate the kids that he let do all the work. Most people were of the same opinion as me, which was, "what is he doing in this meet, why is he letting college kids do all the work and why did he act like he just won the olympics or something". Truly an embarrassing display and he lost a lot of fans that day. The next fall I was at a cross country meet at Illinois and he was at the meet, but he wasn't running. Out of the blue he came up to me and several of my teammates and asked if we wanted his autograph. When we said no, he walked away with a look of shock that we wouldn't want his autograph. I have been very lucky to have met many of the great runners, such as Billy Mills, Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, Rob DeCastella, etc. I was honored to meet each one of them; Craig, not so much.

E_Smith wrote:

Please explain, statistically, why this must be the case.

I'd like to see the evidence, too.

It seems to me that the original poster, E_Smith, has made some perfectly reasonable points, and a bunch of slow-footed white guys are accusing him of naivete without much evidentiary support.

As far as I know, Barrios's 27:08 in 1989 remains the fastest 10,000 by a non-African. It seems perfectly reasonable to me to believe that a group of genetically superior African runners, in cultural and geographical settings that encourage superior distance running, and without the aid of EPO and other banned substances, are simply kicking the tails of non-African slugs, including guys like the poster from behind the Iron Curtain, regardless of whether those non-African slugs have used EPO and other banned substances.

Precisely what I was getting at...if everyone is guilty until proven innocent with the drugs, and we are going to condone drug use with a wink and a nod, with statements like 'I would have had to consider doping had I been in that situation', then we are in effect promoting drug use and making the problem worse. The solution is better testing, punishment of the guilty, and then promoting clean competition--not presuming all WRs dirty, the sport hopelessly lost, and everyone who thinks otherwise naive idiots for not admitting you MUST use drugs to compete.

hardset nipples wrote:

Well where do you think that WR progression came from? With dense enough depth near the top you start seeing performances bunch up and then one by one they start shooting up beyond the rest.

What? this makes no sense. so according to you its the bunching up of performances that causes world records? When El G was setting records I didn't see a bunching up at the top, I saw two athletes (Ngeny and El G) kicking everyone else's asses. Pretty much the same thing with Geb/Tergat.

Here's your statistical proof...Rojo wrote this in 2000. He cites statistics.

http://www.letsrun.com/rojospeaksmay23.html

I have no problem being slow. Craig Virgin has no problem losing - be it to African, Brits, or whoever.

Here's my question for all the people who think the records are all clean and legit - and I think this is a fair question...do you think ANYBODY in the world of athletics (track and field) is cheating or is everyone 100% clean? Are all the drug tests that came out positive just a bunch of lies? I doubt anyone is naive enough to believe all of athletics is clean, so where does the line get drawn? Why do you assume that all African runners are clean? I can't believe they are all fast just due to depth of numbers and genetics. Do you think their is no corruption in those countries? In their governing (or lack of) bodies? Especially the athletes coming over here for the road racing circuit but never make olympic teams???