Suomi,
I apologize for the statements coming from some American dopes. Lasse Viren is the greatest distance runner of my generation. Do you recall Reino Paukkonen I ran against him at the Western Hemisphere Marathon in 1973?
Igy
Suomi,
I apologize for the statements coming from some American dopes. Lasse Viren is the greatest distance runner of my generation. Do you recall Reino Paukkonen I ran against him at the Western Hemisphere Marathon in 1973?
Igy
cleansport wrote:
I hope he was clean as what he did was incredible
O the idyllic fantasy!
Real Men see the Real World. Wake up.
Red Blood Cells wrote:
HRE wrote:I was in several races with Viren in 1975. I never got to know him but did have a conversation with a guy who was his close friend and sometime training partner. He told me that Viren did not blood dope but absolutely LOVED the rumors that he did because he believed it made his competitors believe he had an advantage that they didn't. There was no way he was going to deny those rumors while he was still racing.
Yes, there were Finns who blood doped and some who dope doped. That doesn't mean Viren did or didn't. He's denied it in later years saying, logically, why would he deny it if he did as it was not illegal then. We'll likely never know.
If this is true it is pretty damn smart.
"Why would he deny it if he did as it was not illegal then?"
He likes to mindfvck people as the first paragraph shows. He would enjoy the debate and mystery. Confirming it would kill all that mindfvckery he enjoys.
He was a blood doper. The Lance argument works here. He dominated known dopers.
CHEIKHA wrote:
Yes Viren was blood doping. But since blood doping was legal then it technically was not cheating. Pekka Vassala likely blood doped as well.
Viren was in poor form for four years (1972 to 1976), then suddenly in 1976 he won two gold medals. That is the definition of an abnormal progression.
It's called "peaking."
You're welcome.
I'll add that when I was there in 1975 I kept seeing then middle aged men missing arms or legs. I'd never seen so many amputees and asked my host what was going on. He told me they were all war veterans.
As you point out, Finland's choices were to ally with Germany or be overwhelmed by the USSR so the choice was logical. When the US declared war on the Axis nations it excluded Finland but history is not a lot of people's strong suit and Finnish history does not get a lot of attention.
Hey brain-fade, Carl Lewis began attacking Christie before he had fully decided on the position. Lewis is a liar and he has been telling porkies for 30+ years, his whole life is a lie. The truth is in this world (you probably have never travelled outside of the USA) the left helps out the left and the right helps out its own mandarins, but don't get your info from MSNBC or the Guardian. Heck, Christie is a total buffoon, a total neo-con police state blob of s#*t.
The topic here is Viren cheating, and I alluded to the fact that the finns blindly worship this guy as a hero, above criticism, making up excuses for the truth. But when I was in the US, Carl Lewis out there spewing his own political garbage, and NOBODY was calling him out. I would go so far as to say that Usain Bolt is cleaner then Carl Lewis and that is saying something.
undisputed wrote:
I was a kid then and I remember talk around that time that blood doping was what athletes did. Was it illegal then?
I was a bike racer in the early 70's in SE Michigan, and we were aware that some professional cyclists were doing that in Europe. It was called "blood-packing" though.
Forgot to add that I remember it being highly controverslal but not illegal, at first, at least in the sport of bike racing.
Alexi Grewal of the USA won the Gold Medal in LA. Within a year or two he admitted that he blood doped. It was not illegal in cycling in the 1984 Olympics.
Lydiard didn't think he was doping, and i that was close to when he was coaching in Finland.
Don't underestimate the importance of a society that cares and values something, and then combine that with great coaching. That is what NZ had in the 60s and 70s, Finland in the 70s, and the UK in the 70s and 80s.
The Fin's had a bunch of suspicious results back in the 70's. They had a miler named Kaatanian (sp?) who came out of nowhere to beat John Walker and ran something like 3:53 or 3:52. This guy hadn't even broken 4 before that race. Talk about an unnatural progression.
slowcoach wrote:
Lydiard didn't think he was doping, and i that was close to when he was coaching in Finland.
Don't underestimate the importance of a society that cares and values something, and then combine that with great coaching. That is what NZ had in the 60s and 70s, Finland in the 70s, and the UK in the 70s and 80s.
If Arthur had one blind spot in the sport I'd say it was drugs and cheating. He told me that he thought the East Germans and Chinese women who blew away all the women's distance records were clean. He'd never have tolerated an athlete who cheated but again, IF Viren had blood doped it would not have been cheating and I don't know what Arthur's take on it would have been. But he really didn't question the performances of athletes who he knew were well trained.
Lydiard's weakness was he overlooked the negatives to anything related to his principles, he hated speed/reps during base building. Anyone who did the Frank Horwill type multi-speed approach were the enemy.
There was a bit of an ego rivalry in NZ between the Lydiard camp and the Walker/Jelley/Dixon/1970s camp. Funnily enough Snell loved Walker, he would invite him to Texas for testing regularly. Like all countries they have a "who is our greatest athlete moment" for a particular sport and many years ago in nz it was Snell vs Walker. I bet in Ethiopia it's Geb vs Bekele, in the US Jordan vs Le Bron, in Argentina it's Maradona vs Messi. So Lydiard never gave Walker the respect he deserved.
Clerk wrote:
He has denied it. Yes, we get it.
But let's look at the context. A little more damning than rumors (so still not any real weight) are his inconsistant responses to questions of blood doping. After Montreal, he denied knowing anything about it, despite having given more detailed and catagorical denials in '72 and '73. And, this "don't know anything" comment when we know the Finnish team was systematically blood doping.
Mikko Ala-Leppilampi admitted to his own doping as part of the team. His event? He was a hurdler. Other Finnish athletes have admitted to doping under Jouko Elevaara in the '80s. Blood doping was the system.
It had been studies by the military in the '40s, studied in exercise in the 60's, and as rjm points out, really got going in the literature in '72. Eddy Merckx was offered a transfusion which he supposedly denied, and was still able to beat the hour record in 1972. It must have been around athlete's circles before then, for it to be considered an option.
But some people don't like t be told what color the sky is. You say "blue" and they ask for evidence, your hard evidence. I can't convince those people. So just like Bolt is clean while Carter, Blake and Powell are dopers, or Isenbyeva is clean while her lesser teammates are dopers, or Michael Johnson is clean while his lesser teammates are dopers, sure Viren was clean. It was all those teammates he was better than who were dopers.
Hey Clerk! (Welcome back from your vacation.)
Here is some stuff that is suggestive. There is of course no objective proof of Lasse Viren doing autologous blood transfusions.
Viren did deny it while he was still competing. There were no mind games.
The Finns exploded right around 1972. Why would it just be Lydiard training? Everyone knew about Lydiard training by then. It is more likely that they were probably the first to do large scale autologous blood transfusions…before the rest of the world caught up…and then the advantage was gone.
In 1972, Pekka Vasala wins the Olympic 1500m over Kip Keino? Viren wins the 5k and 10k (in world record time after falling down). Olavi Suomelainen wins the Boston marathon.
In 1974, Pekka Paivarinta wins the World Cross Country.
In 1976, Viren wins the 5k and 10k again. Cierpinski from East Germany wins the marathon.
In 1980, Kaarlo Maaninka wins the silver in the 10k and bronze in the 5k. He has admitted he did blood transfusions. Italy with Dr. Conconi starts blood transfusions in multiple Italian sports. Cierpinski wins again.
In 1984, Alberto Cova of Italy wins 10k Olympic gold (Renato Canova has admitted on this board that Cova did transfusions). Marti Vainio of Finland wins the silver but tests positive for the anabolic steroid metenolone, which was possibly in his old stored blood which was transfused before the race. He probably forgot he was on metenolone when the blood was withdrawn for storage. Whoops.
One third of the 1984 US Olympic Cycling team, which won 9 medals, were doing blood transfusions.
In 1985, autologous blood transfusions were banned by the IOC…but there was no test for detection.
The runners from Finland stopped winning lots of Olympic medals after the rest of the world caught up. The advantage was gone.
The EPO era then started around 1987 in cycling and around 1988 to 1989 in running.
Look The wrote:
I believe Carl Lewis was talking about Linford Christie, not Chris Christie
Chris Chringle. Nobody gets around that many chimneys in twenty fours hours flat with no form going in.
Mope Dealer wrote:
Lydiard's weakness was he overlooked the negatives to anything related to his principles, he hated speed/reps during base building. Anyone who did the Frank Horwill type multi-speed approach were the enemy.
There was a bit of an ego rivalry in NZ between the Lydiard camp and the Walker/Jelley/Dixon/1970s camp. Funnily enough Snell loved Walker, he would invite him to Texas for testing regularly. Like all countries they have a "who is our greatest athlete moment" for a particular sport and many years ago in nz it was Snell vs Walker. I bet in Ethiopia it's Geb vs Bekele, in the US Jordan vs Le Bron, in Argentina it's Maradona vs Messi. So Lydiard never gave Walker the respect he deserved.
In an interview with Lydiard back in the eighties, he said that, had Walker been in Moscow, he would have won the 1500.
I looked up the Chris Christie-Carl Lewis story and what you say is completely legitimate:
When Lewis announced he was running for State Senate in a Republican area of NJ, Christie's surrogates successfully used a questionable interpretation of a four year residency requirement to force the NJ-born and raised Lewis ("once Jersey, always Jersey," said Chris Christie in introducing Carl Lewis in 2010), who held two homes in NJ and business and vol. coached to drop out of the race. The volunteer state ambassador program was also canceled.
http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/men-action/201401/carl-lewis-chris-christie-new-jersey-politics
HRE wrote:
slowcoach wrote:Lydiard didn't think he was doping, and i that was close to when he was coaching in Finland.
Don't underestimate the importance of a society that cares and values something, and then combine that with great coaching. That is what NZ had in the 60s and 70s, Finland in the 70s, and the UK in the 70s and 80s.
If Arthur had one blind spot in the sport I'd say it was drugs and cheating. He told me that he thought the East Germans and Chinese women who blew away all the women's distance records were clean. He'd never have tolerated an athlete who cheated but again, IF Viren had blood doped it would not have been cheating and I don't know what Arthur's take on it would have been. But he really didn't question the performances of athletes who he knew were well trained.
Gotta disagree with you on one point, HRE. It's just not right to say that blood packing was "not cheating" just because it hadn't yet been banned. Using a medical procedure no one has thought to ban on an athlete expressly because it will give him an advantage is clearly cheating. If Viren did use this technique, it's likely he denied it because he knew it would reflect poorly on him.
yup strue wrote:
Caster Semen.....ya wrote:You can tell that Viren was a doper because if you watch the last lap of the 1976 5000m final Quax and Dixon had higher leg speed turn-over/fuller gait then Viren yet he was moving away from them.
He was using a specail juice that allowed him to run faster with a lower stride rate and shorter stride length.
+1
letsrun conspiracy theories at their best.
I'm not sure why the Viren-blood doping thing keeps turning up a half century after he won his last medal and probably before most of the people posting on the thread were born.
Anyway, cheating is generally regarded as doing something outside the rules, e.g. the Mike Rossi method of Boston Qualifying and blood doping did not fall into that category so I can't agree that it was cheating then though now it obviously is. I can understand why people didn't like the idea. I have the same reaction to the NOP in that even if they're not doing anything illegal I just hate that high tech approach to a sport I've always loved for its simplicity.
When blood doping came along it was legal and it took quite some time for the powers that be to decide to make it illegal. And we knew of it and its potential before Munich so it isn't like the Finns were benefiting from some clandestine knowledge. I recall wondering if I could find a place that would do it. Why would Finns like Kuha and Leppilampa not worry that admitting to blood doping would reflect poorly on them too?
And in the great LR tradition of making comments that claim inside knowledge that a poster refuses to extend to naming names, I've gotten it from a couple very good sources that if Viren did blood dope he was not alone if not in '72 then by '76 and beyond. That's irrelevant to whether Viren did it or not but I think there's some sort of bias going on here when people ask endlessly about whether Viren blood doped and got some advantage over his competitors, define blood doping as cheating when it literally was not, but never seem to ask whether his competitors did as well.