Still believe that Flo Jo's 10.49 isn't legit?

There are no people of regular athleticism at the top of pro sports, nor did I state that there were. I'm not sure you have any understanding of what I wrote. Canseco's statement which you quoted corroborates what I wrote.

Anyway, the focus of this thread is the wind in the 10.49 race. It had quite an impact. You're wrong on this one, Armstrong, as usual. Fortunately, you know that men, women and intersex athletes should not be competing together in a free-for-all, so you're not altogether hopeless.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Every claim about the wind factor in that race is speculation. There is no measure that confirms what is claimed - only guesswork. That isn't saying it wasn't a factor but no one can say with any degree of certainty what it was.

OK, but then you follow this up directly with this

Armstronglivs wrote:

You have no understanding of doping in professional sport. Those who dope are amongst the most talented. They are not people of "regular athleticism" and those without talent who dope still won't beat the most talented. Jose Canseco said it best in his autobiography "Juiced": "an athlete of average talent who dopes becomes good, an athlete who is good becomes outstanding, and an exceptional athlete becomes invincible." The clear inference is that the best clean athletes cannot beat the best doped athletes - because they have the same basic talent.

Come on, YOU ARE SPECULATING. What measure do you have that shows Flo Jo doped? That any of these athletes are doping? You're using common sense, connecting dots and formulating a likelihood. Most of us realize that a significant amount of these performances are probably tainted because of doping. Bolt, who I really really like, and someone I actively rooted for, was essentially the only athlete amongst the runners he competed against who didn't have a failed test. If he didn't doe, it makes his accomplishments even more ridiculous, but come on man. We all kinda know what goes on.

It's the same for Flo Jos race. The only official measure we have is of the wind gauge down on the track that read 0.0. It's why the record was ratified. But to say no measure confirms what is claimed is disingenuous especially when there is no measure that confirms she was a doper,

Karma Police wrote:

Down with the IDMC wrote:

Flo Jo had no out of competition testing and had an obvious wind gauge error, so when you put those factors in the equation. Thompson's time is more impressive all things being equal.

Yep I’m with this comment. No way it was a 0 wind. And she retired as soon as OOC testing came in. Even if the Jamaicans get help, it’s nowhere near the same level.

I was at the meet, it was definitely-definitely windy. Although, I can't say for sure how much the wind helped because is was surling comiong and going and not necessarily at FloJo's back. I doubt she got the assist of 4-5.0 wind as some have suggested but it was almost surly over 2.0. Most of the races that day had been wind aided so the expectation was the race was wind aided. However there was an official guage and it said 0.0 and that's what go by

So what wind reading are you relying upon to make your claim? Fortunately, race officials don't rely on putting their finger in the air now - or watching a video.

I misinterpreted what you said about the effects of doping. Skimmed it too quickly. If we agree about Jose Canseco my thinking can't be that "narrow" - unless yours is, too.

Most of what is discussed on these threads amounts to speculation of one kind or another. But there is enough evidence out there to support suspicions of doping - especially with regard to Flojo. My point about the wind is not that it couldn't have been a factor but that it may not have been anywhere near as significant as some are claiming, because there simply is nothing to go on except video of a flag waving in the breeze. If it was a gale I would suspect the wind gauge would have been determined to have malfunctioned. It wasn't. So my view is that we don't really know how much her performance was affected by the wind.

TrackCoach wrote:

Karma Police wrote:

Yep I’m with this comment. No way it was a 0 wind. And she retired as soon as OOC testing came in. Even if the Jamaicans get help, it’s nowhere near the same level.

I was at the meet, it was definitely-definitely windy. Although, I can't say for sure how much the wind helped because is was surling comiong and going and not necessarily at FloJo's back. I doubt she got the assist of 4-5.0 wind as some have suggested but it was almost surly over 2.0. Most of the races that day had been wind aided so the expectation was the race was wind aided. However there was an official guage and it said 0.0 and that's what go by

There is ample evidence of wind. the triple jump anemometer was recording high wind. you can see the wind ruffling hair and lifting clothes. you can see the flags.

in those two heats many athletes set pb or career bests.

It is virtually impossible for an anemometer to read preciesly 0.0. The wind never eddied, it never backed.

It is obvious the anemometer was wrong and the record should be cancelled.

and of course the testosterone. the list of drug evidence is even greater.

pupil3142 wrote:

It is virtually impossible for an anemometer to read preciesly 0.0. The wind never eddied, it never backed.

The fact that the anemometer showed 0.0 (not even 0.1) was a sufficient reason to not count that time as legal. But you know at that time of Berlin fall wall, IAAF was fully controlled by American and their allier and they wanted a living example to destroy East European domination in the sprint for women.

Passant wrote:

pupil3142 wrote:

It is virtually impossible for an anemometer to read preciesly 0.0. The wind never eddied, it never backed.

The fact that the anemometer showed 0.0 (not even 0.1) was a sufficient reason to not count that time as legal. But you know at that time of Berlin fall wall, IAAF was fully controlled by American and their allier and they wanted a living example to destroy East European domination in the sprint for women.

Evelyn Ashford did that before Flojo.

If Flojo's 10.49 was wind-assisted as well as doped that tells me how "clean" Thompson-Hera's 10.54 is.

Thank you for correcting yourself vis-a-vis my previous posts and the Canseco bit.

As far as the wind reading, you're right that w/out a proper wind reading, we can't know exactly how much Flo Jo's 10.49 was aided by the wind. It's simply impossible to know. As others have pointed out, the circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that it was significantly wind-aided. (I won't restate all the arguments here; the thread is full of them.) Just how significant that aid was, we will never know.

Same goes for the drugs: There is a very strong possibility that Elaine is doping, but we don't know this to be the case. You have only circumstantial evidence to corroborate your hunch on this. Like the windy 10.49, you can't say to what degree Elaine's performance may be chemically enhanced. We do know that there is an even stronger likelihood that Flo Jo was on PEDs w/ zero OOC testing. In all likelihood, she was chemically enhanced to a greater, more unchecked degree than Elaine. This isn't a fact, but it seems likelier than not.

Given both these speculations (on wind and PEDs), I believe that Elaine's 10.54 is the more legit record. (Of course, Elaine has some other unnatural advantages, like better shoes, better track, better institutional supports.)

We have no idea what the "clean" record might be. In my personal view, each era's athletes have too many technological and environmental advantages over their predecessors to fairly compare their times. Where world records persist for decades, it's obvious that that's due to massive talent outliers (think Jesse Owens) or massive PED use (Flo Jo) or both. It is the logical consequence of the total advancements of societies that records will drop every few years. Even subtracting PEDs from the equation, I think that the other advancements eventually can catch up to decades-old doped records-- maybe not in just a few years, but in a few decades.

Armstronglivs wrote:

If Flojo's 10.49 was wind-assisted as well as doped that tells me how "clean" Thompson-Hera's 10.54 is.

Yes, probably, but who knows. We literally don't know, as you yourself have admitted in this thread. I much prefer Evelyn Ashford to Flo Jo for obvious reasons, but do I really think she was a better sprinter than Wyomia Tyus or Wilma Rudloph? No. Do I think Elaine T-H is better than any of them? Probably not, just like I don't think that Faulkner was a better writer than Dostoevsky even though he claimed that with modern writing techniques he would have written The Brother Karamozov in under 300 pages. But I do think that ET-H is in the full-dressed company of the greatest sprinters ever.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Most of what is discussed on these threads amounts to speculation of one kind or another. But there is enough evidence out there to support suspicions of doping - especially with regard to Flojo. My point about the wind is not that it couldn't have been a factor but that it may not have been anywhere near as significant as some are claiming, because there simply is nothing to go on except video of a flag waving in the breeze. If it was a gale I would suspect the wind gauge would have been determined to have malfunctioned. It wasn't. So my view is that we don't really know how much her performance was affected by the wind.

Simply nothing to go on but the video of a flag waiving in the breeze?

Why do you keep ignoring the evidence of:

The third heat had a wind reading of 5.0 m/s?

The second heat also had a fantastic coincidence of a 0.0 reading and lifetime PRs.

Willie Banks crushes the triple jump WR that day with a +5.2 m/s wind.

Charles Simpkins had a TJ also with +5.2 wind.

Robert Cannon had a TJ with +4.3 wind.

Al Joyner had a TJ with +5.2 wind.

Ray Kimble had a TJ with +4.8 wind.

Everything that day was hyper wind-aided except for the two races where the wind was exactly 0.0.

This is much, much more evidence than a simple flag waiving, which, by the way, was pretty good visual evidence.

How in the world do you think there was more concrete evidence of doping other than a physical look and very fast times than there was of this race being wind-aided?

She took drug tests. The same drug test Ben Johnson failed in Seoul. She passed.

The wind gauge either malfunctioned during those two races, or the wind was coincidentally perfectly still while these women had the races of their lives.

Remember Flojo's second best time ever was 0.12 seconds slower on the same track the next day with +1.3 wind reading.

Willie Banks exceeded his own world record by over 9 inches.

Solid evidence for wind.

Circumstantial evidence for drugs.

I don't think you meant to say "solid" evidence for wind. (Sorry - couldn't resist that.)

I think the arguments are effectively "circumstantial", as you put it, for both the wind that day (or how much of it) and for doping. Circumstances enough to draw some conclusions in both instances.

I think there is a consensus that Flojo was a doper. If Thompson-Hera is now effectively running faster - which is what the wind argument is about - then I believe doping is as rampant and uncontrolled as it ever was. Antidoping has lost the race against the dopers. That is why I don't celebrate these absurd feats.

William Faulkner is 2nd Rate wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

If Flojo's 10.49 was wind-assisted as well as doped that tells me how "clean" Thompson-Hera's 10.54 is.

Yes, probably, but who knows. We literally don't know, as you yourself have admitted in this thread. I much prefer Evelyn Ashford to Flo Jo for obvious reasons, but do I really think she was a better sprinter than Wyomia Tyus or Wilma Rudloph? No. Do I think Elaine T-H is better than any of them? Probably not, just like I don't think that Faulkner was a better writer than Dostoevsky even though he claimed that with modern writing techniques he would have written The Brother Karamozov in under 300 pages. But I do think that ET-H is in the full-dressed company of the greatest sprinters ever.

Whoa - Dostoevsky v Faulkner in a sports thread! That is a very unusual contest! However, we can judge those august writers for what they wrote; there isn't the spectre of illicit assistance for either of them - as there is for certain sprinters.

I think Ashford was possibly the last clean American female sprinter I have seen - although I couldn't know. (Maybe Felix, too.) Ashford was very much in the Wilma Rudolph and Wyomia Tyus mold.

But to paraphrase Victor Conte, who said "the difference between 10-flat and 9.7 in the men's 100 is drugs", I incline to the view that the difference between 11-flat and 10.7 in the women's 100 is also drugs. 10.54 is ridiculous. But then, most professional sport is now. We have simply gotten used to it.

What I never understand, highlighted in this thread, is why and how reasonable and intelligent track fans can not simply deduce the following on this topic:

1) Florence Griffith-Joyner was almost certainly using performance enhancing drugs. The era, the visual (transformation into very muscular/ripped look at the time of her ascendance) and the career timeline (was a 10.96 - 11.00 runner for the majority of her career until transforming into a 10.6X runner at the age of 28) - all point to a very high probability of drug use. Oh and she tragically died at the age of 38. I mean, does anyone legitimately think she wasn't using drugs?

2) It is beyond reasonable to say that her 10.49 was run with a tailwind in excess of +4.0 meters per second. Every fact/related piece of evidence possible is contained in this thread. Visual evidence of wind on the runners (numbers and hair blowing around). Commentators making comments about it before the race happens. The performances of other athletes relative to their abilities at the meet and in their careers. Performances of athletes competing at the same time with associated wind readings.

Why, quite simply, can we not just f-ing well agree that both doping and wind was at play? Doping took Florence Griffith-Joyner from being an 10.96 runner to a 10.6X runner. Wind took that 10.6X and turned it for that moment into 10.49. It's so simple, it's so logical, it is what it is. My god, I don't even understand the agenda or narrative for arguing against this.

I agree with all of this.

Interesting thought

Remember when MLBers were chasing the HR record? That was fun.

Bonds, McGuire, Sosa?

Maybe we just need to admit it and level the playing fields. Quit testing, it's unevenly administered anyway, right?

We could see a sub 40 400, a sub 140 half, a sub 19 200 and the men could also drop their times as well.

I just cannot believe that Armstronglivs thinks that the evidence of Flojo doping is greater than the evidence that her best race was wind-aided.

I'd much rather accept there was proof of neither and move on.

But if this were a criminal case, she'd be guilty of wind and maybe have a hung jury on drugs.

If there is no wind gauge or it is deemed faulty, then a record cannot be ratified.

If they pass the drug test, you have to ratify the record.

Now, it seems to be pretty easy to pass drug tests.

It's very random for a wind gauge to temporarily malfunction. Since it worked for the other heats, they had to accept the results and ratify the record.

I watched the race live. The next day in school, we assumed the record would not be ratified. That wind reading was a joke.

I think all of the top 10-20 100m times were juiced, I don't believe any were actually wind-aided besides Flojo's.

the right drug cocktails can turn an 11.3 clean woman into 10.7.the gains are greater with women than with men.