Why so much Lance Armstrong hate but turn a blind eye at Bekele, Geb, etc ?

I hate geb more than lance geb is is a fake

There were books written about Lance and the doping culture in cycling several years ago, before it was in the mainstream media.

If there is a book out there that says the same thing is going on in distance running, there would be just as much hate.

My God you and GenericID are so childish. Your arguments are incredibly dumb as well. What TLW is pretty much nail on the head. Oh but you say if he runs 12:40.01 he is clean but, but if he runs 12:39.9 he's dirty? Seriously? It's like watching a couple of 4 year olds try to argue with an adult. It's pretty obvious that those guys doped. When you are head and shoulders above your peers in an era where everyone dopes and yet you are still crushing the competition seems pretty plausible that you are doped to the gills.

For instance if you know that Lance Armstrong was doped out of his mind yet there is John Smith absolutely blowing him away and setting records left and right wouldn't it be fair to assume that he is probably not too clean either.....

ya

they dominated for 20 years and somehow beat all the other EA's and everybody else that were taking epo

and did it clean

i mean really??

you think jos hermens wouldn't give them a little helping hand with all that $$$ at stake

think again ,it never happened

Yeah, it's ridiculous, but I'm not the one who drew a line in the sand and said, "this fast, no faster."

Like Henry Rono?

Henry Rono crushed the times run by the Eastern Europeans, after they had already been systematically using drugs for decades. Thus?

just sayin wrote:

ya

they dominated for 20 years and somehow beat all the other EA's and everybody else that were taking epo

and did it clean

i mean really??

you think jos hermens wouldn't give them a little helping hand with all that $$$ at stake

think again ,it never happened

Check your time table.

There were two sub-12:40 men before 2004, and Jos didn't have them both.

so

komens no different probably

You folks are a little bit ridiculous.

So Komen and Geb crushed everyone in the dirtiest era of distance running (excluding the earlier 90's and Chinese women, I presume)? Everyone was doping, and your proof that Komen and Geb doped is how fast they ran. Yet with all these other people doping, no one else actually ran sub 12:40. Or sub 12:45? Paul Tergat (a world record holder in the 10 and marathon) was the only other sub 12:50 runner in the world, and he ONLY managed that chasing Komen and Geb. Yet he had to be doping, too, right?

That makes no sense at all. if all these other athletes doped like some here so love to claim, how on earth were Geb and Komen consistently so far above everyone? Tergat must've been doping, right, yet he couldn't run with Komen and Geb; both strolled away from him over 5000m. Hissou never broke 12:50, yet he must've been doping, right? Apparently Komen and Geb's drugs were 10 seconds faster than everyone else, right? Yet now, with tighter controls and testing, guys like Koech and Gebrhiwet, both not yet 20, have run sub 12:50, in an era of generally much slower times (meaning fewer opportunities to run fast-paced races -> faster times).

All those dopers of the 90's had countless opportunities to sit on Komen/Geb's heels and be rabbited to sub 12:50 PBs, yet none of them managed to do so?

Komen's last really top times were in 1997, with a couple of strong runs in 98 (but nothing exceptional, his 5000m were on par with what Mottram would run). EPO testing didn't even START until 2000, no? So wtf is up with that? Suddenly his EPO ran out?

Geb and Tergat both ran well into the 2000's, and continued to break world records, testing and all.

As to the OP - where are the countless athletes, teammates, trainers, etc, who are standing up offering testimony that Komen, Geb and Bekele were doping? We KNOW the TDF was super dirty simply (but not only) because of the # of top athletes who've since admitted/been busted, etc .. the elite track athletes of the 90's have NOTHING like that in their realm. There's so little "hate" towards these guys because there's no sound reason to be upset with them; just a constant stupid ranting by middle-school internet trolls on places like LRC.

Komen ran hard fast times because he had to - watch his 1996 & 1997 races in Zurich with Geb to see why. Today, more than before I think, it's all about the kick - ask Galen.

TLW wrote:

Geb competed in the EPO era of endurance sports and ran times that only 1 other person in that era and 1 person since seriously approached (5k).

I think it's safe to assume Geb and Komen were on EPO. It doesn't make them bad people, it's just a reality of that era, especially before the EPO test.

Lance Armstrong was accused because it was systematic doping of a team for his benefit and he is 1000 times more well known and wealthy than Geb or Bekele.

So Geb and Bekele both have a net worth of $130,000 ... who would have known?

Maybe because he sued over allegations he was doping even though he was and he won...also started a foundation based off his lies and feigned illusory success...

colonel sanders wrote:

TLW wrote:

Lance Armstrong was accused because it was systematic doping of a team for his benefit and he is 1000 times more well known and wealthy than Geb or Bekele.

Maybe in absolute value, but it could be argued that Geb is relatively more wealthy than Armstrong when local GDP and cost of living are considered. Remember, much of Ethiopia lives on $1/day equivalent. Geb has a lot of money, hotels, businesses, etc.

I would think Geb is as famous in Ethiopia as Armstrong is in the United States. Geb is probably as famous in the United States as Armstrong is in Ethiopia as well.

This seemingly looks like a reasonable question, to ask "Why do we believe what we believe?" Let's not forget to turn it on yourself.

If I had to consolidate my response to one word, it would be "reason". I can think of at least a dozen reasons to hate Armstrong. None of them can be applied to Geb and Bekele. When you look at all the facts surrounding Lance Armstrong, and the facts surrounding Geb and Bekele, you will see nearly nothing in common. It strikes me as unusual that someone would even attempt to compare them, let alone others fall for it. Why are you/they turning a blind eye to all the existing facts?

And before we ask why, I would ask "ARE we turning a blind eye to Bekele, Geb, etc.?" In the new light of this thread, I'm looking at them again with both eyes, and still see nothing comparable to Lance and the Tour de France.

Lance is a liar, a cheat, a fraud, and he hurt innocent people whose only fault was to speak their mind and tell the truth. This was confirmed by fellow competitors, former champions, former teammates, former friends, former employees, investigative journalists, and a French lab, despite the precedent that Lance set for suing truth telling individuals for libel for 1000000 Euros.

Geb and Bekele? When you look beyond the questions and accusations of anonymous posters, no one, or nothing, is corroborating anything like that. There are no reasons to suspect that Geb and Bekele are lying, cheating, defrauding, or hurting innocent people.

TLW seems to place a lot of stock on his statistical analysis of 5K times during his sliding window of "the EPO era". Is the statistical analysis compelling? It's hard to know exactly when his EPO era starts and stops. Is it "times untouched for 15 years"? Bekele touched Geb's times in 2004 and 2005 -- 5 years after a test for EPO existed, and 3 years after the IAAF initiated out of competition testing. Bekele's best 10K times are from 2004, 2005, and 2008. Is 2008 still in the "EPO era"? In the Tour de France, we can compare climbs like the Alpe d'Huez, from previous times and current times. We see for a 40 minute climb, the riders were climbing 3 minutes faster or more. Yet we are asked to compare them to 7 seconds for 5K and 13 seconds for 10K. A 3 week 3000K grand cycling tour is simply not comparable to a sub-13 minute 5K or sub-27 minute 10K single event.

EPO is available world-wide. In the Tour de France, we know from investigations like the Festina Scandal, Operation Puerto, and now the USADA investigation, that the whole peloton was benefiting -- not only Lance. Americans, Germans, English, Australians, Kazaks, etc. There was no national or regional boundary. Yet in track, it seems that only the Ethiopians and Kenyans and a couple Moroccans, were smart enough, and rich enough, to design EPO regimes that would fool IAAF and WADA and all of the other nations in the world that compete for the same prize money. Kenya is so rich that they can dope nearly 100x more athletes than America. Who is turning the "blind eye" again?

Is EPO really the elusive wonder drug seem everyone seems to think? We don't really know how much it helped in cycling, since the riders were also taking steroids, HGH, cortisone, testosterone. How can we single out the contribution of EPO, versus the contributions of these other drugs, and ignoring the specific differences of when and how much these drugs were administered? We know Lance was doping during the Tour. Maybe other riders only had resources to dope before, counting on the lasting effects. We also don't know how much EPO can help a runner, compared to "legal" and "natural" techniques like "hi-lo" training (helped Wejo by more than 1 minute over 10K), hypoxic chambers (used by Rupp and Farah), and "genetic/environmental" advantages naturally enjoyed by the East Africans from living for many generations and lifetimes at altitude.

To claim that these times only come from EPO also seems to turn a blind eye to all the other drugs that can help, not to mention legal techniques which can bring much of the same benefits.

1. EPO era refers to the undetectable period of the drug, hence it stopping in 2000 because a test came out for (which I eluded to numerous times). I did not make that term up. Lance used it numerous times in the Oprah interview for example.

2. After the test was developed, micro dosing EPO became popular so Bekele's 2004 time can also be suspect as testing didn't understand how micro dosing could be used until later years in that decade.

The rest of your post indicates you do not understand the basics of doping.

"We don't really know how much it (EPO) helped in cycling" - Seriously dude? HGH + test for recovery. EPO gave a bigger engine meaning it helped tremendously. Raise a hematocrit from 40 to 49.90 is like going from a v8 to a v12 engine.

I recommended reading the cyclingnews 'The Clinic' forum for doping education/discussion as professional riders post there and share data and discussion on PED. Go and educate yourself.

Also just because you are totally ignorant on doping.

GW1516 + AICAR could explain recent times after 2007.

Because you are so familiar with cycling I am sure you know that these drugs were a big deal because the authorities found vials of these at the TdF the few past years.

The IAAF put out a warning for GW1516 recently.

The new issue with PED is gene doping and custom PEDs (undetectable) via private labs.

Fear for testers in the future is some new form of Peginesatide taken via oral tablet.

TLW wrote:

2. After the test was developed, micro dosing EPO became popular so Bekele's 2004 time can also be suspect as testing didn't understand how micro dosing could be used until later years in that decade.

And his 2008 26:25 10 000m? Or his wr in 2005? Sammy Wanjiru runs 26:41 as a 19 yr old in 2005. He a doper?

Have you, perchance, looked over the best women's 5000m times? Or 10 000m? It's reasonable to suggest the Chinese women were doping; yet their times have (mostly) been consistently beaten by women in recent times; Howcome no kenyan or Ethiopian women records from the EPO era exist? Your silly theories don't hold anything.

You know what? You guys are right.

Only C level runners dope.

Kenyans don't dope because PEDs don't work on them.

Ethiopians don't dope because they live at altitude and are friendly.

All the guys who set world records in the 90s never used EPO because no one in Africa had the internet so they couldn't order EPO.

Because the EPO test came out no one after the year 2000 could use it and run fast.

Only sprinters dope!

Classic example of a BS'er

TLW wrote:

You know what? You guys are right.

The passive-aggressive tact is inevitable.

Only C level runners dope.

No one in this thread said anything like that.

Kenyans don't dope because PEDs don't work on them.

No one in this thread said anything like that.

[quote[Ethiopians don't dope because they live at altitude and are friendly.[/quote]

No one in this thread said anything like that.

All the guys who set world records in the 90s never used EPO because no one in Africa had the internet so they couldn't order EPO.

No one in this thread said anything like that.

Because the EPO test came out no one after the year 2000 could use it and run fast.

No one in this thread said anything like that.

Only sprinters dope!

And the field events, of course. And cyclists.

All you've done is claim that Komen, Geb and Bekele are dopers because no one has come close to (some of) their performances .. nevermind, of course, the fact that 'no one' is those 3 people. Nevermind, of course, that in the "EPO era" Geb and Komen smoked all the "dopers" - and many performances since the EPO era also smoke all the non-Geb and non-Komen times. All these as yet unnamed dopers you suggest didn't even come close to running a 5000m as quick as Gebremeskel ran last year? A guy who then only came 2nd in the OG?

Where are all the clean athletes pointing fingers at Geb, et al? Asbel Kiprop just clearly pointed at Makhloufi, so we know athletes aren't afraid to point at those they believe to be dirty. Howcome Bob Kennedy never said a single thing about Komen? They trained together. Kiptanui mentored Komen back in the 90's .. now he's talking about doping .. do you really think he'd have let that slide? Or that he'd even dare bring doping up if his own protege had been doping? That doesn't make sense at all.

If everyone was doping in the 90's like you claim, I'd be much more surprised if 2 guys could stand out so clearly from the pack; your argument would make MORE sense if you suggested all the other athletes were clean, and THAT'S the reason Geb and Komen were so dominant.

So I take this new passive-aggressive argument as tacit acknowledgement that you haven't looked over the women's top times?

I am not getting into women's times because I am tired of discussing this as I doubt I will change any your views. I think it's best to agree we view doping and the prevalence of doping differently.

rekrunner wrote:

Is EPO really the elusive wonder drug seem everyone seems to think?

Yes, it is.

I agree with everything you've written, and I think you ask a valid question, but I can tell you that EPO is an amazing drug. I went from having to stop for a rest half way up a flight of stairs to being able to run again, within the space of about a week - I can only imagine what the result must be for someone who is in absolutely top shape to begin with.