Testing Distance Runners..... Bekele

I found the Chambers letter, and the revelations about the UCI out of competition testing last year after the Rasmussen affair, to be a real eye opener.

UK Sport have been boasting about the fact that each athlete selected for the olympics will be subjected to random testing AT LEAST ONCE. Is this a joke? With the amount of money thrown at sport in this country they could test them all every week. There arent that many going to the olympics after all.

If you take the drugs three weeks on and three weeks off and can expect over the next three months to be tested once then the chances of getting through by either taking the test when you know you are clean, or missing them knowing you wont miss enough to get banned, are very high. Basically if that is the extent of the out of competition testing then you can cheat with impunity. EPO is well documented to be better taken before competition than in it.

The frequently quoted idea that the cheats will inevitably be one step ahead of the testers is a joke - the governing bodies arent even trying to catch them.

Chambers was taking things that they could test for, but the testing was so poor that they didnt catch him. Likewise the Puerto riders - they werent doing anything fancy but the testing was a joke. It seems to be improving now with the CSC / Highroad / Slipstream models but it had to reach rock bottom before it made more financial sense to lose clean than to to win doped.

Athletics is nowhere near that point becuase it doesnt have the team structure which allows the testing or the direct pressure from sponsors.

I have realised that I need to wake up and realise that there is no serious attempt to stop it - the authorities and press just pay lip service to testing, take the opportunity to condemn whoever gets caught (at least some of whom are victims of the lack of testing) when someone is caught and perpetuate the myth that it is a few bad apples.

There is plenty of evidence now that doping is endemic. There are clear ways of stopping it (blood profiling, ten times more testing etc). And the only way it will happen is if enough people stop watching (a process which is further advanced in cycling than athletics (and better not to start on football / rugby / tennis where the testing really is a joke)) and the complacent idiots who report on and govern these sports will take it seriously.

Paul Kimmage is the only one who has it right - he's been saying for years that cycling is not worth watching and he is right. But is must be true for athletics as well.

If EPO improves performance by 5% (I have no idea what the real figure is and I guess there isnt much science on it) then is is pretty hard to believe that that there hasnt been a single runner in the last 15 years who has been within 5% of the WR and not been tempted. And if you are tempted, and know even a little bit, you will know you can take it with impunity.

It's painful because I have spent 20 years as an avid fan of both these sports but I have been watching a pantomime. We know for a fact that the Tour was a farce in 96, probably 97, definitely 98, definitely 2005 (whole top ten bar LA implicated in Puerto I think, definitely 06, def 07 (yellow jersey chucked out, winner at worst implicated in puerto at best spent plenty of time on wheel of rasmussen). I wasted weeks of my life caring about what happened in those races. Why is Wejo talking about anything else? Why is the Conte letter not top story? Like it or not Wejo it is people like you that have the power to do something. I know you are anti drugs but you need to make it a hobby horse.

Ok lets start with 87 Roche not sure on this one but beat some guys that were found guilty over the next few years. 88 Delgado tested positive for a drug that the UCI had not added yet but had it been the Olympics he would have been kicked out. 89-90 I'll come back to. 91-95 Indurain was the first tour winner that started using EPO, all the Spanish Dr's of the time knew it but they also knew that it was not a testable drug. This is why the whole peleton stared using. This guy was pack fill 2 years before then he rolls off 5 in a row before a better doped athlete in Riis beats him in '96. Riis has came out and said he won using. '97 Ulrich was the wonder kid with heeps of talent but was on a very dirty team of Telekom and won the tour on the same stuff the rest of his team was on. '98 Pantani Need I say more. 99-05 Lance not enought time in the day on this bloke. '06 Landis what ever. '07 Contador the jury is still out, his DS is a sketchy dude so was his DS of old. Now back to Greg. When I was riding there were alot of guys on the team that rode for the ADR team that he won with in 89 that said his trainer Auto Jacome had offered them some "aids". Now back then that was taken as dope. This was the same trainer he had in '86 and I guess I can only speculate on that year. But it seems funny to me that you almost lose your life getting shot then in 1.5 short years you are winning the tour again and now you have a "rare" mitochondria issue where you have very little energy. I think that during the '91 tour Greg realized that these guys were on somthing better than he was and it was time to get out. As he says in a couple of books in one year the tempo on the climbs went from 12 kph to 15 kph and guys he use to beat with one leg were creaming him. I can just let you know from guys I rode with and being in the peleton there were very few clean guys. It was open conversation with some DS and team owners. And the UCI didn't care because they knew that there were no easy test for the stuff we were on.

here is a question not often answered. If you are an average joe Kenyan like you say and can't even afford shoes yet (many can't), how the heck are youy supposed to afford drugs? they don't grow on trees you know...

Question: If you are an average Joe Kenyan 28.30 10k runner who's maxed out your natural ability coming 50th at Kenya nationals do you take drugs so you can run 27 and make a crap load of money, or do you quit running and live in poverty?

Athletics Kenya!

Your argument that Indurain must have doped because he was pack fill for 2 years and then wins is weak. How many cyclists have won the Tour in his first year? Not saying Big Mig was not doped, just that that point is weak.

Roche and Lemond and all the others spend a few years learning how to ride the tour and developing.

No my point was most of the time a potential TDF winner will not finish that far back even in his first race. Greg Lemond was 3rd I mean Lance was even in the top 40 and was not the "reconstructed" Lance. Now yes, Miguel was helping out Delgado so he would lose some time after sitting on the front but that much of a change was not just maturing and learning the race. Plus he came from a team who's assistan DS was no other than Saiz, and if you know anything about cycling he is probably the worst for having doped riders.

Good luck trying to convince a bunch of guys with their head in the sand that people actually use drugs. You're wasting your time.

To answer your questions directly....WADA is an independent agency. They can catch 'old' guys, washed up athletes, and few others. Federations are responsible for punishment; NOT WADA. WADA does the testing, NGBs do the court/legal stuff. In US Pro sports (football, baseball, etc) no one does the testing, no one does the punishment. Anyone getting caught in those sports is purely an idiot (or has really angered the NFL, etc).

All road races are independent businesses. There is no series that tests on a regular basis. So, if Boston wants USATF sanctioning, they have to allow USATF to test but USATF makes this decision.

So, in general, serious athletes know when they are getting tested. It's not rocket science to 'guess' when this is going to happen. In the off season, if you don't want to get tested, you go to another country to 'train.' Then USATF never finds you for an out of competition test.

I guess I'm just tired of runners not realizing that their sport has a serious problem too with drugs and that the saying "he/she never tested positive" is being really ignorant. Coming from where I didn and what I did to race I can tell you first hand that drugs work... period. And guess what I never tested positive. Now back then the test were not as reliable but I knew no one that tested positve. I have read all these responces saying that it is biomechanics and better training and it's their way out of poverty when I believe some of that to be true but people need to look at some of the facts. I havent even brought up the WR holder in the mile, this guy got out because he knew he would test positive with the new test that were being used. Also I think people need to break down the pace for some of the events in question. The WR for 10,000m is 4:13 a mile for 6.2 miles, come on. I would bet that 95% of the Lets Run groupies have never and will never run that for 1 mile.

Of course drugs work..

http://scienceofsport.blogspot.com/2007/11/effect-of-epo-on-performance-who.html

there have been, and always will be doping (cheating) in cycling and in all sports

Roger Rivière was the one who said he was too drugged to pull on his brake levers, and that was in 1960! Now, it's gotten better, much better, since then, but still..

If you look at the link I posted you'll see, as explained by two PhDs, that EPO use improved time to exhaustion by 54% within 4 weeks.

Ok I'll bite Sir Lanced-alot,

How do you define your "COLD HARD FACTS of stagnation of non-African times?" Now armed with these "facts" how did you only come to the conclusion that drugs have not had as big an impact on the all-time list? How were you not able to factor in other conclusions listed by me and others on this thread; socio economic factors, competing interests, changes in coaching philosophies, availability of drugs, individual programs versus State sponsored, changes in diet, physiology, increases in childhood vaccinations, cesarean rates in developed nations, amount of time spent barefoot, Aerobics, the Penguin, baggy shorts, Deano, we could go on and on and anyone of these theories could effectively compete with your haranguing. Do you know why? Because you are not in the possession of COLD HARD FACTS. You are in possession of a round peg and a square hole.

Now here's where I'm coming from so read slowly because you have a very hard time ascertaining the point of my posts. I know, you accuse me of the same thing and that we are starting to go down the PeeWee path of 'I know you are but what am I' but I haven't missed your point. Despite your nasty bedside manner I do believe that I understand what you're trying to say and I will agree that you could be right! You could have shut your eyes, swung for the fences and managed to connect in spite of yourself. I’m sure you’d be the first to tell everyone I told you so the same way you probably stood up and said that you were wrong about Marion (I’m just guessing here but you get my point- don’t you?).

You are defending the Africans against doping suspicions. You chose to accomplish this by comparing them with non-Africans. This is where we disagree. I think that you are taking a more simpleton view of the World and confuse your mutually exclusive data. I don’t know whether the Africans dope but I can say that I’m much more suspicious today than I was last year or the year before or the year before, hence my position; the burden of proof is on the athletes themselves.

The non-African runners of previous generations are not the runners of today. Now why is that? Could the reason be that they contracted Sir Lance-alot's Disease (your “cold hard fact” of a non-African physiological plateau)?

Or is it because non-Africans moved on to other endeavors or any of the aforementioned theories? We both agree that we don’t know the answer. Personally my argument would be that they moved on until just recently (BK excluded of course) when Nike and others made it worth their while. This explains the resurgence in American distance running. I would be shocked to see a single American record survive the next 2 years and the gap in times to Africans start to decline. Who knows, maybe even the Finns will resurrect their program.

Now what does all this have to do with the likelihood, or in your case, the unlikelihood of any or all of these COLD HARD FACTS being drug assisted? Nothing. It has nothing to do with whether these fine athletes dope. You cannot justifiably jump to that conclusion based purely on your cockamamie theories and willingness to blow really, really hard…

Was Gatlin old or washed up?

As an ex-pro myself I wonder if you have been riding in other teams than Collstrop during 93-99. Very few English speaking riders in that team during those years and none of them lasting more than two years.

http://www.cyclingwebsite.net/ploegen.php

You sound genuine, am just curious as I was in the peloton early 90s.

Yes, after the Collstrop years I rode for IPSO-Euroclean then Flanders-Prefetex. I never said that I was US. What teams did you ride for.

Oh God, here we go. They catch Gatlin at KU Relays or was it Drake? Anyway, one catch and its "Hooray, the system works! We caught him. Now we can all breath a sigh of relief." It doesn't work, he just let down his guard or, like Conte said, it’s more a test of intelligence rather than a test for performance enhancers.For every Gatlin there could be 5 Marions' (160 plus negatives and she and Chambers were doing some serious drugs). We won't know the actual ratio until more rats start coming out of the woodwork. I just have this overwhelming sense of dread that T&F in the 90's & 00's is going to make Baseball's steroids era look like child's play.

the real mobile9 wrote:

Was Gatlin old or washed up?

I like that game. ;)

I found one Belgian guy that rode for these teams albeit not from 1993-99. Hmmmm...

I was one year with Gerolsteiner but was just not good enough. Even drugs would not have helped my case. :)

Jefe,

You can make whatever claims you like about beating USADA/WADA chemically, but wouldn't you agree that the era of protection is over? The fact that Gatlin tested positive at the goddamn Kansas Relays says as much. I know that USATF has swept things like this under the rug before, but those days are gone, wouldn't you agree?

As far as what comes out in the next few weeks, I doubt if it'll extend much beyond Graham's (and now it's looking like Smith's) stable. I'm sure that Crawford, the Barber girls, LaTasha Collander, etc, are all done. But those are a group of bad apples that are soon to be excised from our sport. There's a new generation of stars that have no links to the old ones and while track is facing up to it's short comings of the last decade, the more lucrative sports (the ones with unions) continue to ignore it.

So.. you're Harry Lodge, Tim Lenaers, or Steven De Neef..

in that order, from greatest likelihood to least..

So, I'll go ahead and call you Harry Lodge.

Harry Lodge was my first guess too. Pro Cyclists are very cynical. Obviously there is a doping problem in running too, but that doesn't mean that everyone who competes at the highest level is doping.

Paula Radcliffe is the obvious example of a runner who has nothing to hide but has still reached the highest level. For a second rate ex pro cyclist, this is too much for his brain to compute.

as much as I admire Radcliff and as much as I hope that she is clean: where do you know? just because she is very outspoken about drugs? many druggies have been so before they got busted.