HRE wrote:
Again, I have no idea how that would work.
*HE* would have retweeted it.
https://support.twitter.com/articles/77606-faqs-about-retweets-rtHe fvcking agrees with you, idiot.
Stop it now.
HRE wrote:
Again, I have no idea how that would work.
*HE* would have retweeted it.
https://support.twitter.com/articles/77606-faqs-about-retweets-rtHe fvcking agrees with you, idiot.
Stop it now.
Dunkenfeld wrote:
His coach told in his memoirs that Viren ran just a week before the 1972 olympics an interval run to increase his sprint capabilities. He ran 50 meters slow followed by 50 meters very fast repetitiously for 5000 metres. The endtime was 13:13, which was even faster than the world record. I have in my possession an unpublished official document from late 1970s were this is occasion is mentioned (by Viren's coach), so apparently there is some truth in it.
.
Need more info on this. I heard this too, but its always the same source - the coach. Need independent verification for me to believe it.
Check one of Kenny Moore's articles from Sports Illustrated back in the day. He mentioned this 50-50 workout and it was more like 13:27 (or maybe even 13:37), not 13:13.
it's not about you wrote:
HRE wrote:Again, I have no idea how that would work.
*HE* would have retweeted it.
https://support.twitter.com/articles/77606-faqs-about-retweets-rtHe fvcking agrees with you, idiot.
Stop it now.
It is a bit annoying when old timers are proud of their ignorance of the modern world.
Being aware of what's going on never hurt anyone. It's like they forget that when they were young they were living in a modern world with their own clade of old timers bitching about technology or resisting it.
Stop asking what he means? I'm glad he agrees with me but it seemed like he wanted me to do something. He's welcome to whatever he wants. I still don't know what it is and don't really care. But it's nice to be agreed with.
U.N.O. wrote:
HRE wrote:There have been countless threads here over the years where the subject of Viren and blood doping has come up and anytime I comment on the topic I always say that there is no evidence that he did.
Having said that, I will say that you'd have to be an "moron" with an "idiotic belief" (note the quotation marks and their significance) to think that because an athlete and his or her coach denies using some form of doping it means the athlete didn't, or that s/he did.
In Viren's case, he actually is somewhat responsible for the persistence of the rumors, whether they're true or not. I spent a month in 1975 racing in Finland. Viren was in all but one of the races I ran. I didn't get to know him but did talk for a while with a good friend and sometimes training partner of his who told me that Viren did not blood dope but loved the stories that he did because he thought it made his competitors think he had an advantage over them. So he did nothing to discourage them until his career was over.
Harry, I would retweet this, if possible.
Anyway, you certainly can retweet this as far as I'm concerned even if I don't understand what it is.
Les wrote:
Everybody knew about the Finnish system, so Viren never denied to use. He told that "never he did something wrong" for the laws and the mentality of that period."
-- Renato Canova (from Letsrun, "Regarding Viren and Blood Doping"{
Yes, there was RUMOURS everywhere, like HRE said: "I didn't get to know him but did talk for a while with a good friend and sometimes training partner of his who told me that Viren did not blood dope but loved the stories that he did because he thought it made his competitors think he had an advantage over them. So he did nothing to discourage them until his career was over."
From Lasse´s interview few years ago, Lasse was asked about this "Finnish system":
"Was back then used other than the hard training, such as doping?
"I do not have firsthand experience of it. If someone had something, then someone did it alone. We hadn´t systematic system, as nowadays many ascending sports countries might have," says Viren."
HRE, retweeting is possible in Twitter, a popular virtual community where you can retweet=publish someone else´s thoughts to your followers, if you want. Hard to explain more clearly, with my english.
jjjjjjj wrote:
He is also right that contemporary Finns don't have the stomach for the sport, the hard work, the active childhood base, or the belief that they can compete with African distance runners. Is it true, Aragon, that Finnish children don't even xc ski much in the winters anymore? Sounds like classic first world syndrome.
Skiing isn't very popular among the younger people especially in cities, but in the rural areas it seems to be somewhat popular. There are apparently several reasons the lack of motivation of Finnish athletes even to try train for the top level. I discussed with this issue with one Viren-biographer and he speculated that it was unmotivating to seriously exercise to compete at the top level of world, because even the top of the Europe was almost unreachable.
I have spelucated that some technological changes (other than TV, IPAD and cars) associated with working could've contributed to the fall of endurance sports. I'll give an example: A large number of the best skiers (Eero Mäntyranta, Aki Karvonen) have been border guards. Because the physical ski-patrolling has been automatised to radars and because borders are more open, they are less in number, especially on the western border.
J.R. wrote:
"Viren's book written by his coach and translated to English, of which I apparently have one of very few copies."
I assume you are referring to the 1976 Viren-biography of which was translated into English a few years later as "Lasse Viren, Olympic Champion", where there are a few chapters by Mr. Haikkola, who was Viren's coach. I've been referring to his 400+ page memoirs (published in 2003) which is mostly about his collaboration with Viren, a book that hasn't been translated to English, as far as I know.
48+9 wrote:
"I seem to recall Viren developed what later would be diagnosed as a hernia during his training for Moscow. The down time lead to a crash training program so his sub 28 at Moscow really isn't a smoking gun sign."
He had had his share of injuries after Montreal and his annual mileages were really low: (1977:4199, 1978:4285, 1979:5145, 1980:4389). My opinion was that based on his pre-Moscow performance, he ran perhaps too well considering his performances that year (which are quite few in number). consider these 1980 performances before the olympics: 5k (13:40-13:47), 10k (28:10.95) and 3k (7:57). In this light, the 27:50 - time in Moscow was a somewhat peak in performance. You're right that not perhaps too suspicious.
A few words on the Italian knowledge that Finns blood doped:
It would be hard to understand why future anti-doping crusader Sandro Donati visited Finland and even wrote in 1975 with Pasquale Bellottia whole book "Il Nuovo Mezzofondo: le tecniche finlandesi di allenamento" (Finnish Middle Distance: the Finnish techniques of Training) on the Finnish training methods if Italians and all the world truly believed that the success was mostly attributed to blood doping.
Donati apparently didn't believe on the blood doping claims, and he has told that his opinion began to change after Italians couldn't replicate the Finnish success while using same training methods (apprently Venanzio Ortis had some other methods). His opinion about Finns changed completely in 1981 when first Finnish blood doping confessions occurred and he met almost at the same time exercise physiologist Francesco Conconi, who told about his blood doping experiments with Italians that had begun a few years earlier. Conconi even claimed that he had taken his method from Finns, but that he had made a few improvements to it.
I am already somewhat familiar on what Renato Canova has told about the subject, and he is an interesting person whose opinion shouldn't be dismissed.
Nevertheless there seems to be some pro-Italian and anti-Finnish tendency in his logic. Canova says with no evidence that "all the Finnish athletes used the blood transfusions" while Italian people were more honest as in his own country there were "somebody that refused (as Panetta, Mei, Bordin)". His claim that "[w]hen this procedure was put outlaw, everybody ended to do it" is not true, at least when it comes to cross-country skiers. There is a confession from XC-skier Silvano Barco, who has told that the Conconi-circles blood doped him for 1988 Winter Olympics and his estimate was that 90 % of Italian skiers participated in the program. Would've runners have been more honest? Maybe? I am not the right person to answer that, but Donati does have a high opinion on some runners, such as Stefano Mei, who apparently refused consistently to participate in the program.
In conclusion on the blood doping-issue, I should point out that I have made no claims to one way or another about the existence of the systematic Finnish blood doping - program. There does exist good pro- and con- evidence and arguments for this, material, which is too numerous to discuss here in detail. It is more fruitful Instead to focus in debunking some of the false claims (both pro and con) that have been circulated.
Very interesting subject, especially when there are so many open questions.
U.N.O. wrote:
HRE, retweeting is possible in Twitter, a popular virtual community where you can retweet=publish someone else´s thoughts to your followers, if you want. Hard to explain more clearly, with my english.
HRE has repeatedly stated his proud ignorance of getting this simple concept..
U.N.O. wrote:
HRE, retweeting is possible in Twitter, a popular virtual community where you can retweet=publish someone else´s thoughts to your followers, if you want. Hard to explain more clearly, with my english.
From what I've seen on Twitter, comments are quite short, maybe 2-3 sentences so my comment seemed too long for Twitter. And as I don't have a Twitter account it wouldn't be possible for me to put anything there myself. It did not occur to me that anyone would want to republish anything I said on their own account and in English we often say "I would do something" at times when we're really suggesting that someone else do something, e.g., "I would buy a Subaru" could mean either that you would buy one yourself or that you're suggesting to another person that they buy one I took your comment as a suggestion to me that I retweet it.
I should emphasize/correct two things in my latest post on this thread, things that I realised only after publishing it.
1) When referring to the training of Viren in 1977-1980, the unit is kilometer, not mile. Corresponding mile-values for his exercises are 1977:2610, 1978:2663, 1979:3198, 1980:2728.
2) In referring to Italian blood dopers, I have used term "honest only as a legal positivistic term for meaning someone who obeys the rules. On the individual level, the decision to dope or not dope is far more complex and goes beyond being "honest" and one day being "dishonest". This is particularly true in the world of Italian cross-country skiers in 1980s, where it is said that skiers not participating in the blood doping program were excluded from the national team (this is said to have been the fate of future olympic champion Manuela di Centa for the latter half of the decade).
Wolf Spritzer wrote:
Check one of Kenny Moore's articles from Sports Illustrated back in the day. He mentioned this 50-50 workout and it was more like 13:27 (or maybe even 13:37), not 13:13.
This should not be so difficult to grasp.
The 50/50s were on grass.
The intervals were slow.
The time was not for 5000m and was not important.
This was simply a workout, nothing else, and nothing complicated.
Aragon wrote:
As a Finn, who has done some research on the issue of blood doping, Viren and Finns, I'd like to make two notions about Viren (whom I admire a lot):
1) Viren was truly a natural talent...
As written above, Viren managed to became the 5000m Finnish national champion in 1969 at a relatively young age of 20, when he ran less than 2000 miles annually. Even future olympic team doctor Pekka Peltokallio told in an interview for the leading sports magazine in 1969 that Viren would become a world class runner. His coach was really surprised how little he actually ran to achieve these results.
2) ...And based on this fact, Viren didn't need blood doping to run the times he did...
Maybe, maybe not.
It should be emphasized that Viren really ran to win, not to break world records, so we never really know what his limits were in terms of actual endurance. If there is one thing we do know, it is that he was faster than most of the world record breakers.
There are a three instances that could give us a clue about his true limits, which could've been a more far away then what people saw.
His coach told in his memoirs that Viren ran just a week before the 1972 olympics an interval run to increase his sprint capabilities. He ran 50 meters slow followed by 50 meters very fast repetitiously for 5000 metres. The endtime was 13:13, which was even faster than the world record. I have in my possession an unpublished official document from late 1970s were this is occasion is mentioned (by Viren's coach), so apparently there is some truth in it.
The 10000 meter final of the same year is also interesting, when he fell, won and broke the world record. In his memoirs he described the event as extremely easy telling that he was surprised that ”the moment of truth never came” and that he didn't feel any pain associated with lactic acid accumulating.
A word or two should be said about the Montreal marathon. There he finished fifth only less than a day after the very hard 5000 meter final with pretty good time of 2:13. In addition to this, he competed against some sixty runners, of whom every one had concentrated their efforts to that particular event and of whom only a handful had competed at all in that olympiad (no other in the 5k final a just day before). It was also Viren's first marathon, although he had ran a test run of 40 kilometers with the time of roughly 2:40.
I'll conclude with a visual notion. Everyone can see what the "winner" Viren of 1972 and 1976 Viren looks like: cool, calm, emotionless, calculating and almost buddha-like with deadpan face nowhere near his limits. Compare this man with the 1980 Viren of Moscow Olympics, who has this suffering expression in his face and who can not push himself any further.
Since Aragon is a such a rare name, I am going to assume this is Chuck Aragon. Hopefully life has treated you well since you hung up your spikes. My running career crossed paths with yours, in fact, I ran on a 4x8 against ND, although, I think we ran a different legs. Like yourself, my career started when Marty, Frank and Kenny and those guys was ending. Not pointing out anyone of those guys in particular, but in being around them on a couple of occasions, they seemed pretty convinced that in the 70s era the Finns were doping. Pre actually went on the record that he thought the Finns were doping. Albeit, blood doping wasn't banned at that time, but it was definitely considered unethical and unsportsmanlike. Blood doping gave you an advantage perhaps equal synthetic EPO and athletes considered it doping even if it wasn't banned.
A few Finnish athletes were caught or admitted to doping and there is evidence that Finnish doctors/scientist had been experimenting with blood doping for decades. I think initially, the blood doping experiments were geared towards winter sports and crossed over into running during the 70s. The Finns were good back in the 30s, 40s and early 50s, they pretty much disappeared and reemerged in 70s and disappeared again when blood doping was banned. The Finns had a true national team, that was sponsored by the gov't, I doubt some athletes were doping, but the best athlete wasn't. Also, I think in the early 70s, the Finns were secretive about their training, rarely racing outside of Finland except for championships and were evasive in their answers when questioned about blood doping.
Viren was obviously very talented and none of this means he was doping, but it is freakish to see a man win an Olympic 10000 is what looked like a training run and win the 5000 by leading the entire race.
TrackCoach wrote:
but it is freakish to see a man win an Olympic 10000 is what looked like a training run and win the 5000 by leading the entire race.
Neither of which he ever did.
Ignorant coach wrote:
TrackCoach wrote:but it is freakish to see a man win an Olympic 10000 is what looked like a training run and win the 5000 by leading the entire race.
Neither of which he ever did.
Viren was doing a tempo in the Montreal 10k
easy tempo wrote:
Viren was doing a tempo in the Montreal 10k
I have a photo of him, face under considerable strain in the latter part of the race.
He commented later that it was a difficult race under trying conditions.
Source? Link? Evidence? I don't believe this to be the case but I would be very interested to learn more.
Les wrote:
Other Finnish runners have admitted blood doping and also implicated Viren. It was not illegal at the time but he will never admit it because it would ruin his Olympic legacy. Imagine Mo Farah winning the Olympics easily one year but not being to win Euros the next.
This was widely discussed a lot in the late '70s as a mark of how impressive he was, and the time was always mid 13:30s. Nobody back then claimed he had run sub-13:30 in the famous 50/50s 5000m.
Bloglaw wrote:
Viren's log showed otherwise. The time was closer to 13:36.
TrackCoach, Aragon the poster here claims to be a Finn, so NOT Chuck Aragon.
If any of you is interested in more about Chuck here's a link to a story on his three daughters, with some background about dad. Two of the girls run at Notre Dame and the third has another year of high school. Impressive family.
messi wrote:
TrackCoach, Aragon the poster here claims to be a Finn, so NOT Chuck Aragon.