Seriously, is cycling dirtier than T&F?

oh contraire wrote:

Do you really think US shot putters are clean? You have to admit the soviets were dirty in the 80's, back when they dominated the event. Well, there are about a half dozen Americans today that have surpassed ALL those marks. So clean Americans are beating dirty Soviets? Please!

The Soviets didn't dominate the shot put the way East Germany did. Smirnov, the Russian/Soviet record holder, is only 13th on the all-time list. But, to answer your question, based on what I know, I have no reason to doubt Cantwell's legitimacy or, for that matter, that of any of the medal contending male shot putters in the US right now.

Athletes on drugs can be beaten, both in competition and in marks, by clean athletes. A well known example on this forum should be Suzy Favor and Regina Jacobs. Despite perceptions, Favor beat Jacobs on several occasions, and Favor's lifetime best in the 1500m is more than two and a half seconds faster than Jacobs'.

what about this? wrote:

Mark my words, white men and women will rewrite what is possible by those of non-African origins this summer.

That's not exactly original. People have been predicting Teg, Ritz and Webb to do that for half a decade now. A lot of people have been saying Rupp was going to crack 13 and 27 this year for over 2 years now. We also know that, like the 4 minute mile when the barrier breaks it can open a damn.

The american collegiate record for 5K is just over 13:10 and has been for 30 years, and you really think it's a big deal for american pros to crack 13 now, 30 years later? Guys who are out of college with training advantages that a college athlete in the 70's or 80s could only dream of?

If americans in the late 80's and early 90's were running high volume in high school and college like they were in the 70's and now then you'd have a stronger point. But when you had guys running 40-50 miles a week in high school and then 50-80 a week at a lot of top collegiate programs you aren't exactly building endurance machines. The level of performance dropped and so did the expecations and realities. Around the late 90's is when things started to pick up. High schoolers started scaring 4 minutes again and then we had the burst of dyestat and this board, training secrets were shared and knowledge and expectations increased.

The kids who started busting their buts in high school around y2k were in college during the last decade and raising the bar which kept trancsending down and raising expectations. Also along with that plyometrics and core work became a common concept.

If anything I've said seems contradictory to a build up of U.S. distance running just let me know, but I'm kind of doubting it.

On the flipside, E. African performances did start to plummet outside of a few since y2K. The doesn't really make sense.

Here is an interesting article:

It took a bust on one of the former winners of the honolulu marathon outside of that race in order for them to bring testing back to the marathon.

Cantwell is small beans, definitely not a household name.

ciego no más wrote:

what about this? wrote:

Drug testing in professional athletics is a joke.

That hasn't been my experience. I've found both USADA and UKAD testers to be thorough. Christian Cantwell famously had to give a sample the day his son was born.

'Athletes on drugs can be beaten, both in competition and in marks, by clean athletes'

True but I seem to remember a lot of shot putters getting busted, were some of these not from US?

Yes, people like Barnes and Oldfield decades ago, and Kevin Toth more recently.