Athletics, when doping is the default

Aaleby wrote:

You do know that the reason why is the impact training hard in the cold has to the lung? Thats why so many active athlets has it compared to the general population. One of the reasons why Norway decided to bring that many doses was logistic, to be sure to have enough in different bases in Pyeongchang.

The knowledge of astma medicine is that a doping test will be positive if an athlete takes a dose big enough to gain an advance and that the advance is minor any way.

Its a winter sport.

It involves snow and cold.

Every ski athlete exists in the same weather pattern, but apparently aren't sick enough to beat your people

The utter sillyness when you are either too stubborn, too stupid or too lazy to have an active mind and think by your own instead of being completely stucked where you simple put each and every individual in the same pot and makes the same general assumption over and over again.

You sir are sad and pathetic.

Aaleby wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

"An athlete like Jakob/Ben/Marion/Asbel/Lance should be praised as a living proof that it is possible to combine an extreme talent with hard work and become a legend without taking the shortcut named doping."

There. Fixed.

The utter sillyness when you are either too stubborn, too stupid or too lazy to have an active mind and think by your own instead of being completely stucked where you simple put each and every individual in the same pot and makes the same general assumption over and over again.

You sir are sad and pathetic.

The usual response when you suggest to the religious that their God may not exist.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Aaleby wrote:

The utter sillyness when you are either too stubborn, too stupid or too lazy to have an active mind and think by your own instead of being completely stucked where you simple put each and every individual in the same pot and makes the same general assumption over and over again.

You sir are sad and pathetic.

The usual response when you suggest to the religious that their God may not exist.

The total lack of argument is what makes your stand pitiful. Like there is a red line between Marion, Lance and Jakob. Ive just told you how Jakob have been performing on an insane high level all the way back to when he was 10 years old. There is nothing suspicious with his performance beside being a great athlete and you just put him in a single bag among scums like Marion and Lance, without a single argument backing it up. Once again; pathetic.

Aaleby wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

The usual response when you suggest to the religious that their God may not exist.

The total lack of argument is what makes your stand pitiful. Like there is a red line between Marion, Lance and Jakob. Ive just told you how Jakob have been performing on an insane high level all the way back to when he was 10 years old. There is nothing suspicious with his performance beside being a great athlete and you just put him in a single bag among scums like Marion and Lance, without a single argument backing it up. Once again; pathetic.

I get it; you really want to believe someone can walk on water.

Google "Marit Bjoergen arms" and click on Images to see one of those clean athletes.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Aaleby wrote:

The total lack of argument is what makes your stand pitiful. Like there is a red line between Marion, Lance and Jakob. Ive just told you how Jakob have been performing on an insane high level all the way back to when he was 10 years old. There is nothing suspicious with his performance beside being a great athlete and you just put him in a single bag among scums like Marion and Lance, without a single argument backing it up. Once again; pathetic.

I get it; you really want to believe someone can walk on water.

Im not religious. But I do believe in using my brain instead of making sloppy assumptions. The difference between you and me.

If you can you provide me any performance data on the magnitude of various causes, doping or non-doping, of elite male marathon performances, hopefully distinguishing sea-level athletes from altitude born and raised athletes, I'd be happy to consider them and incorporate them into my guesswork and reshape my beliefs.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Of course doping won't appear on your list. You are willing to believe anything but that. But more guesswork posing as scientific analysis.

With all due respect, I was asked what my "analytical mind" says. When I look at your "totality of circumstances", these might be sufficient reasons for you to be suspicious. But there is no performance data in this "totality of circumstances" for me to analyze. Some of your criteria is subjective, and circular -- e.g. a "suspicious jump" causes you to be "suspicious".

Let's look at all the factors wrote:

C'mon rekrunner....you're insulting your own intelligence. It's more than just a "virtue of being fast." You look at the totality of the circumstances with each individual case. For example, the age of the athlete, any suspicious jumps in time in such a short period, setting or running close to a WR, the nation the athlete is from, etc. In Bekele's case, he's 37 yrs old, runs within 2 seconds of a WR and is from a nation that is currently on the IAAF's "most likely to dope" watch list. IMO, these factors make the performance suspicious (if and when the IAAF removes Ethiopia from the most likely to dope list, I'll be much less suspicious of their spectacular performances).

Aaleby wrote:

HRE wrote:

At the same time, I find it really hard to believe that someone can compete with very talented, hard training, doped runners without having that same "advantage." That was Lance Arnstrong's "justification" for the doping he did. So I do what I think most of us do; I have people that I like for various reasons and hope, maybe even believe, that they're legitimate but am fully prepared to find that they aren't.

A great post. Fully agree 100%. One thing tho; Cycling cant be compared with anything else. The strain of completing Tour de France is insane. To think a clean cyclist would be able to outrun a field full with filthy cheaters day out, day in would be a new form for naivety. In Athletics you dont get the same strain over a long period of time. That difference is huge doping wise.

Yeah, I know there are differences among sports. But the idea that I need to dope if I want to be competitive because that's what so many others do is pretty much universal. I know a guy who walked away from a professional baseball career because he knew chemicals were going to be needed to go further than he had.

HRE wrote:

Aaleby wrote:

A great post. Fully agree 100%. One thing tho; Cycling cant be compared with anything else. The strain of completing Tour de France is insane. To think a clean cyclist would be able to outrun a field full with filthy cheaters day out, day in would be a new form for naivety. In Athletics you dont get the same strain over a long period of time. That difference is huge doping wise.

Yeah, I know there are differences among sports. But the idea that I need to dope if I want to be competitive because that's what so many others do is pretty much universal. I know a guy who walked away from a professional baseball career because he knew chemicals were going to be needed to go further than he had.

True, to some extent. In cycling the human body wouldnt be able to cope in the Lance-era without doping. That aint a factor in athletics and someone like Jakob, who simple has been the best in his age group since he was 11 and was able to compete among adults since he was 15, has never met real adversity and by that never been forced in a position where he had to choose between remain mediocre or try doping in an attempt to achieve glory.

Personally I would guess staying clean would be the preferred option for most, but that it requires a really huge talent to give the person the self-reliance necessary to believe in the possibility to achieve great things without cheating.

For most it will feel like utopia, which will force the choice between giving up, accept to stay mediocre or to try to cheat its way to the top. In that perspectiv it makes perfectly sence that far too many of the top athletes has chosen the road of cheating.

Then again, to succeed as an athlete from Kenya you need to become a champ. In Norway you will be seen as succesfull by achieving a place in the final. A huge difference and something that could make doping more a must in countries like Kenya compared to Norway.

HRE wrote:

What makes you think everyone is a "huge" fan of the sport? It's still possible to be interested in a sport without being a huge fan. For my part I have no interest in times run or records set anymore. It's impossible to evaluate how they compare with those of earlier eras. But I still can get interested in who makes national teams, who wins and places in competitions. There are athletes who I like, like seeing do well and who I hope are clean. And there are "lower" levels of the sport that are still very interesting.

Ok. You tried to be sophisticated but the rock bottom is that you somehow still want to believe the X or Y is honest. So, you are delusional and you enjoy it. That's ok but stop rationalizing that. Psychology 101.

Aaleby wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

I get it; you really want to believe someone can walk on water.

Im not religious. But I do believe in using my brain instead of making sloppy assumptions. The difference between you and me.

Dude, you are so wrong. People told you so already. Go to bed.

I got well beyond Psychology 101. Actually, I used to teach Psychology 101. Your response here might require taking some higher level courses. Do you really believe it's "delusional" to think that there are honest people in the sport? I can be as cynical about the doping thing as anyone and it has taken a lot of enjoyment out of the sport for me. But to get to a level where I cannot believe that anyone doing well is honest would be hard to do and in my opinion, unjustified and unfair. I would counter that if you really think all national or world class runners are doped you are the one who's delusional. And while you'll presume that I enjoy being delusional I will not do the same for you.

Again, I can believe that there are athletes who can be clean and successful. Evidently that makes me delusional if you believe the guy who posted below you. I have no reason to think the Ingebrigstens are not in that group and your point about what's required to be successful in Norway compared to Kenya is good. It can apply to other countries as well.

rekrunner wrote:

If you can you provide me any performance data on the magnitude of various causes, doping or non-doping, of elite male marathon performances, hopefully distinguishing sea-level athletes from altitude born and raised athletes, I'd be happy to consider them and incorporate them into my guesswork and reshape my beliefs.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Of course doping won't appear on your list. You are willing to believe anything but that. But more guesswork posing as scientific analysis.

Of course you won't find that data, because dopers don't typically agree to become research subjects into how their doping affects marathon performance, and doping manufacturers and suppliers aren't conducting publicly available research into how their products translate into performance gains in the marathon. So your guesswork can remain intact. And it can all only be educated guesswork at best. But I daresay you would think someone in a laboratory analysing a test tube somewhere is better placed to tell you what the weather is than you simply walking outside and taking a look for yourself.

HRE wrote:

Again, I can believe that there are athletes who can be clean and successful. Evidently that makes me delusional if you believe the guy who posted below you. I have no reason to think the Ingebrigstens are not in that group and your point about what's required to be successful in Norway compared to Kenya is good. It can apply to other countries as well.

The glass half-full view of the world. I understand your desire to take a positive view, that clean athletes can still succeed, but it isn't one shared by many top athletes, who prefer instead to opt for doping to improve their chances of success. When so many choose do this it becomes very difficult to confidently distinguish the clean from the doped performance next to it. As in other areas of life, when you don't know who or what you can trust it may be better to keep a close hold of your wallet.

I would not disagree with anything you're saying here. But I still am not going to accuse every world class athlete of being a cheater simply because they're running faster than i think possible.

HRE wrote:

I would not disagree with anything you're saying here. But I still am not going to accuse every world class athlete of being a cheater simply because they're running faster than i think possible.

There is another option to accepting a performance is clean or making an accusation of doping, and that is to take the view that it could be either but that we cannot know for sure which it is.

With the likely incidence of doping I wouldn't trust any particular performance to be clean - even if it might be, which I accept is possible if increasingly rare. However there are some performances that I would bet are not clean, because, given the circumstances, there are too many factors that raise flags for me. Unfortunately, that is a fair few top performances now. I don't see how outstanding clean performances can beat the best doped performances - which must obviously fall on the performance spectrum of any given event.