Lasse Viren interview

HRE wrote:I didn't get to know him but did talk for a while with a good friend and sometimes training partner of his who told me that Viren did not blood dope but loved the stories that he did because he thought it made his competitors think he had an advantage over them. So he did nothing to discourage them until his career was over.

then viren was a moron

blood-doping in anyone's language in any era is cheating, regardless if nobody testing for it so not illegal at time

haematology/physiology back even in '70s knew it was huge doping advantage but iaaf/ioc had no money &/or no techniques &/or no interest in testing for transfusions when testing for steroids was dirt cheap & easy but usually useless as no diuretics tested back then

if viren didn't discourage these rumours of blood-doping immediately, then he was an idiot & therefore always regarded as a cheat & thus wrecking his reputation forever after

his reputation outsida small small nordics seems like sh!t, so his lack of denial at the time killed off his rep

man is an idiot

you get accused of doping, albeit not illegal at time just because of lack of science/$/interest & you don't deny it immediately ???

utter fool

I'm sure if Viren could do it over again he'd give up any psychological advantage that helped him get four gold medals in exchange for you not calling him a moron. The schtick is getting old, man.

The LR retard, calls other people morons.

HRE wrote:From what I've seen on Twitter, comments are quite short, maybe 2-3 sentences so my comment seemed too long for Twitter. And as I don't have a Twitter account it wouldn't be possible for me to put anything there myself. It did not occur to me that anyone would want to republish anything I said on their own account..

don't sweat it

you've never posted anything worth re-tweeting

Not so ---- wrote:

easy tempo wrote:

Viren was doing a tempo in the Montreal 10k

I have a photo of him, face under considerable strain in the latter part of the race.

He commented later that it was a difficult race under trying conditions.

That was because he had blisters but sometimes a tempo will make you do a strained face.

Don't get this. It was not illegal at that time. It was a found and proven up and coming science. His country's doctors and researchers wrote and put out their actual findings at the time! Why would he not blood dope? Of course they would, as would coaches today in the same time setting. Oh and I really like the claim he ran such low mileage. COME ON you guys are all distance runners! How often have you heard that claim. This is all a joke, he would not have even continued running if he was of todays world. The elites today would have sent him home to compete against the high schoolers of the world. To many suspicious claims and non claims, all in one, I think.

First, there exists practically zero confessions or any other evidence that any "blood doping" occurred any other time than before big competitions in Finland. The transfusions of Finnish athletes were administered in hospitals as there was no university department of physiology where the operations were administered (unlike in Italy).

1) This increased the a risk of getting caught literally red-handed. At least some cross-country skiers were physically seen taking transfusions and on the case of Kaarlo Maaninka (1980), there was some inside information leak (possibly same thing).

2) Transfusing has always health hazards assosiated even when everything is done properly. The cost-benefit - analysis limits the instances when it is used. Why to target to run well in June if the risk is getting a hepatitis and possible screwing your possibilities in Olympics later in the year?

3) If blood doping was as easy as buying candies, then there is no reason why Viren wouldn't have blood doped during the years between olympics. Apparently he didn't.

In 1970s there were some studies that indicated that blood doping helped performance, but there was no consensus that it truly worked. From academic point of view, the flaw in the Swedish studies (1972, 1976) where positive effect was noticed, was that there was no control group, so there could've been other explanatory factors than that the underlying theory was sound. There were some sophisticated studies with control groups in 1976-1978 that didn't find any value of the method.

If Finns did research the subject, they did it mostly in secret (I have my own reasons to believe that this could've happened), as to this date, there has been only one Finnish study published on the issue (1977). The authors conclude that they "did not find any statistically significant improvement in the physical performance attributable to autotransfusions" and that "the training effect is much greater than the effect of blood transfusions even in well-trained men".

To close the debate on the "confessions", here is a dry and monotonic summary of the confessions and some other official knowledge.

1) Mikko Ala-Leppilampi. In 1981, admitted blood doping in 1972, 1973 and 1975.

2) Kaarlo Maaninka. In 1981, admitted blood doping in 1980.

3) A doping researcher researching the prevalence of doping revealed that based on dialogues with athletes, sports doctors and coaches, "some transfusions" occurred in the Finnish team in 1976, 1980 and 1984 Summer Olympics.

4) Skier 1. In 1985, admitted blood doping earlier the same year. Official inquiry found out that he blood doped also a year before.

5) An official inquiry concluded in 1985 that a handful of blood bags had vanished in a hospital in 1974, 1975 and 1978 for the use of cross-country skiers. The goal of the inquiry wasn't to reveal any names but a few names circulated widely in media likely based on inside leaks of information.

6) Skier 2. In 2001, admitted blood doping "five-six" times during his career (1970-1985).

Viren is absolutely right when he talks about the decline of Finnish distance running. But it is not just Finland's problem. European men in general seem to have forgotten how to run fast over 5K & 10K. (with a very small number of notable exceptions). Last year's Euro Champs 5K & 10K were PATHETIC compared to great races in the same championships from 1969 through to 1986.

Here in the UK there is very little depth at either distance. Take away Farah (and Vernon on a good day) and there is little else. This cannot be explained away by saying that in the old days everyone doped and today nobody dopes!

ventolin^3 wrote:

his reputation outsida small small nordics seems like sh!t, so his lack of denial at the time killed off his rep

I am not American and I am not from any of the Nordic countries. In the country I'm from and in at least two others where I have lived, Viren has a very good reputation.

His lack of denial means nothing. Look at all the denial Lance Armstrong did...

Soon everybody´s favorite Aspeberger case vento will start calling you "moron", "peabrain" etc.

Viren addressed your first point after his career was over pointing out, as you do, that blood doping was perfectly legal at the time so why would he not admit to it? Of course that doesn't prove that he didn't do it. He may simply not want to admit that he did for reasons other than illegality.

But you ask why he would not have blood doped given its legality at the time. There were and are good reasons not to. The initial articles explaining the process described some negative physical consequences from blood doping. I don't recall what they are but they were serious enough to offer some discouragement. In Viren's case he would have known Jouko Kuha who set the steeplechase world record in 1968 after blood doping but who had some physical problems afterwards and was never the same runner as in the brief span of time after he blood doped. Again, this is not going to convince someone that Viren didn't, nothing will, but when you ask why not there are answers.

As to the mileage thing, why would Viren be honest about his mileage from 1968-76 and then be dishonest? My experiences and observation have convinced me that once you've done the mileage to get to maximum fitness you can stay pretty close to that level of fitness on much less mileage. I can think of several examples but the one I'll mention is Ron Hill who dropped his miles from an average of 90 or so with highs of 120-130 during the peak of his career to an average of 60-70 with highs of 90 or so by the mid 70s. He still managed to run marathons well below 2:20

Viren in 1980 was still a very good runner but like Hill from 1974 onward, not quite what he'd been. That would be consistent with lowered volume and generally being past your peak.

An advisor or coach of Viren's in the '70s claimed that his hemoglobin was high enough that blood doping wouldn't benefit him and might even have negative effects, making his blood too sludgy to transport oxygen effectively. Sounds like bad science but that was one of the statements out of Finland at the time.

In Montreal in 1976 when asked by the press if he had some "secret" to his success, a thinly-veiled hint in the direction of blood doping, he replied that Yes, he did--he drank reindeer milk.

This is an interesting conversation. Setting aside the discussion about blood doping for a moment, the population size of Finland might bear mentioning. Estimated at 5.4 million, Finland's population is about the size of Berlin; only a bit larger than Boston; one sixteenth the population of Ethiopia. Aside from all the other issues, 5.4 million is a tiny base from which to develop track athletes, particularly against internal competition with other traditional endurance sports, such as xc skiing. I have no doubt the Finns could reclaim their a bit of their old form if sufficient effort was made, but that is not going to happen over night.

Ignorant coach wrote:

TrackCoach wrote:

but it is freakish to see a man win an Olympic 10000 is what looked like a training run and win the 5000 by leading the entire race.

Neither of which he ever did.

Ok, perhaps a 'a very hard training run' and perhaps he didn't lead for about 2 laps of the 5000.

Aragon,

Marty Vanio also blood doped in 1984 Olympics. He tested positive for a steroid which had been reintroduced to his blood stream before LA.

TrackCoach wrote:

Ok, perhaps a 'a very hard training run' and perhaps he didn't lead for about 2 laps of the 5000.

Lasse has told that he really struggled to stay with Lopes, who increased the pace steadily. You can see it on his face, Lopes just hasn´t a kick at all, his kick was the steadily increasing pace.

In the 5k Viren took the lead and everyone thought that now he´s going to run fast, but he just made the pack behind him going wide and other runners were fighting their positions, running in lanes 2-4 or so, even in the last two laps when Viren really pushed the pace (took the lead 1100m before the finish) while running the minimal distance they was bouncing all over the track.

Here´s a link of the race including comments by Viren, Quax and Dickson:

coachkritter wrote:

Aragon,

Marty Vanio also blood doped in 1984 Olympics. He tested positive for a steroid which had been reintroduced to his blood stream before LA.

I am aware that this was one of the theories that emerged almost instantly after Vainio was tested positive as one of the explanations. The theory goes that Vainio stored his blood after steroid injection in March-April 1984 (4-5 months before LA84). After Vainio tested positive in a Finnish surprise control test after the Rotterdam marathon (13th April, 1984), Finnish officials warned Vainio that he had steroids in his system. Vainio took no more injections, but didn't realize that he would get steroids back into his system when he was reinfused with the tainted blood just before the LA84.

Although Finnish anti-doping authorities discussed the possibility and dismissed it as unlikely, it became internationally "the truth" with credible people such as Sandro Donati, Werner Franke and Robert Voy vouching for the theory (Voy even claiming later that unspecified "Finns" told him that the theory was sound).

I didn't include it in my summary, because for these technical/physiological reasons I find this option very unlikely:

1) There is practically no evidence of Finns reinfusing their own stored blood.

2) The theory goes that Vainio removed his blood several months before the olympics, thus for storage reasons, the blood HAD to be frozen. When this is done, the plasma component of blood (where bulk of the steroids are) is thrown away, so in the storaged blood there are only small traces of steroids left in the frozen erythrocytes.

3) When blood is reinfused, the steroids go directly into the bloodstream, not into the muscle. While liver filters the steroids, no additional steroids are released to the bloodstream, a phenomenom that is actually the rationale behind so-called "micro dosing". When you add to this the fact that the contaminated blood is highly diluted, it is very unlikely that this could cause a positive test for a longer period than a few hours or a day (Vainio gave voluntarily control samples that showed steroid traces even weeks after the olympics).

Because negative is impossible to prove, I can not claim that he didn't blood dope, but based on reasons I've written above, this "tainted blood positive"-theory is not valid.

HRE wrote:

I'm sure if Viren could do it over again he'd give up any psychological advantage that helped him get four gold medals in exchange for you not calling him a moron. The schtick is getting old, man.

Nonsense.

Viren had no responsibility to quell insecurities of others, nor the idiot thoughts of morons.

To the contrary, taking advantage of them was greatly to his credit.

You might want to check the batteries in your sarcasm detector.