Coevett wrote:
Armstronglivs wrote:
No, there weren't. Their "records"still stand after 30 or more years.
You claimed before that nobody doped in the amateur era because of a different ethos. Do you think Herb Elliott, Roger Bannister, Peter Snell 'didn't want to win'?
The former Soviet Bloc had the most advanced doping program in the history of sport, particularly the GDR, in an era when testing wasn't so good. Despite that, Soviet Bloc runners were very selective as to when and where they ran. The likes of Kirov and Straub never ran in the Bislett Dream Mile, for example. I presume planting potatoes or something back home in Dresden.
And of course it's been confirmed beyond doubt that the GDR had a ruthless doping program that wrecked the lives of tens of thousands of young people.
I do agree that there was a different ethos in the amateur era, although I would hesitate to say "nobody doped". However, the doping technology was then very limited.
I see that, over time, doping has developed from a relative rarity in the amateur era - and the method itself was "amateur" - to becoming increasingly pervasive as sport has become more "professional" in every way. Doping has been an aid - a "dark" aid, nonetheless - to the very development of professionalism. It has also been accelerated by politics, and state-sponsored doping - as we saw with the former Eastern Bloc, China and Russia today.
The modern-day professional is different in every way from his amateur precursor. Their sport is everything to the professional; it isn't simply part of an athlete's life, as it once was in an earlier era. Winning is the only goal-line now and amateur values of "sportsmanship" while paid lip-service are no longer relevant to getting over the line. For the professional, if your competitors dope, you have to dope. Those who don't, have to accept losing to those who do.