Jamaica's newest phenom Christopher Taylor rocked the "Champs" In Jamaica with 200/400 records

It wasn't rhetorical at all, it was stupid. Those aren't the same thing.

And no, I didn't insult you. At all. I said " reductively attributing such things to 'PED's is ...unsubstantiated nonsense."and (2) "...all you want to do is stamp your feet and blabber PED, PED."

If you're really so upset over those remarks that you whine about "insults" then you might not be a happy camper on LRC.

FWIW, you accused me of 'name calling' much earlier in the thread, and I did nothing of the sort. Your persistence with that is what brought me to finally say 'f*ck it, I may as well roll with it if you're going to insist'.

I'm sure you will though.

So you've outlined how many Jamaican sprinters the testing has caught. Why do you then suppose it hasn't caught Bolt, clearly the dominant sprinter. If you theory is that these athletes are all on drugs, and the tests ARE catching them, surely Bolt would've been banned by now.

And why do you think these guys like Powell and Blake have been caught with such negligible drugs that would barely assist performance anyway, not the kind of PEDs or volume of PEDs that turn mediocre athletes into the fastest athletes in the world.

I disagree with you on the "sudden sprint surge and dominance". I have explained how such things can occur though.

btw - You don't get to define and determine the construct of the conversation, regardless how rigidly you seem to think you might.

When Ben Johnson got busted in 1988 the thought was drug testing works.

In BALCO 2003 we again thought the testers had it figured out.

It's 2016.

The drug testers are still very ineffective at finding even a reasonable percent of PED users.

I have no faith that there is a chance of making it a clean sport.

I don't know who is using and who isn't.

So I don't make accusations and I don't promote any athletes to be clean.

I just follow the results and try to make projections based on what I see.

They all work hard and compete to win.

Again, lots of words - and bluster and attitude - but no answers. Just more avoidance and deflection.

:-) This your defense? A passive question about Bolt not having been publicly implicated yet for PED use? This is the very best "statement" you could muster to explain the nearly unprecedented surge - as if you're completely unaware of the cat-and-mouse game designer drug makers and testing bodies play to advance technologies to evade and to detect, respectively? Why are you wasting my and any readers time with that? Do your homework and read up on how easy it is to to make "simple molecular variations of existing ones...[allowing them to]... slip past the WADA controls because the machines used to screen urine samples aren’t programmed to recognize them."

I pulled that directly from an article discussing suspicion about Bolt because of his outlier status.

When you write like this - you surrender the right to characterize someone else's work as "nonsense".

I could easily ask you why Ben Johnson passed 8 drug tests in 17 months before finally being detected - eventually twice - to ultimately receive a lifetime ban?

But unlike your passive tactics - I do my homework, then come straight on - with the facts. We're now on page five of this discussion and you're still dancing around the core premise.

It's not a theory - those named were caught and sanctioned. Period. When you write like this - you surrender the right to characterize someone else's work as "nonsense".

No one in this thread even hinted that all PED users were being caught - until now, when you did. It would be completely naive to believe all PED users are getting caught - and particularly, caught after the first use. It's so much more sophisticated an issue than that. No one who understands this is at all surprised when athletes go long periods before detection. But almost to a man, the strong suspicion - on performance anomalies - precedes the detection.

Yet again a passive question - instead of asserting a statement of defense that can be vetted for veracity and validity. You're arguing a defense as if you're in criminal court and you have little or nothing to offer, and are throwing whatever out there as if all you need to do is raise a reasonable doubt. (We're long past the reasonable doubt stage - that passed when kinesiologist, physiologists - even an astrophysicist - were spurred to check their assumptions of human limits based on Bolt's historical outlier status - even beyond the dirtiest sprinter ever seen.)

All that's necessary to answer that simple question is an understanding of masking agent usage, out-of-season lack of testing, and the historically lax Jamaican anti-doping program. As you surely must understand, there's a reason that each and everyone of those compounds is on the WADA list - whether an actual PED, or for the purpose of masking its use.

With this last question there's a clear pattern you're now demonstrating as you attempt to discuss this PED issue. You don't seem to respect the authority of anti-doping bodies, their bans or their lists, And you don't seem to understand their testing process. You should at least make an honest attempt to do so.

This has become a fool's errand (look it up). I am 100 percent certain I could show a class of 1st graders a diagram of a cluster of Olympic gold medals - where they are now, and where any barely were - and they could understand the dynamic that occurred.

You've explained nothing. We're five pages in and I'm still awaiting a clear, declarative and verifiable statement of the explanation for the sudden Jamaican sprint surge and dominance, beginning in 2004, that far exceeds even the results of sprinters that it's been established were dirty on PEDs.

There's a reason you perceive it that way - that I'm "determining the construct of the conversation": thus far you've done more talking about the conversation than you have about anything substantial within it. You can't control a conversation with ad hominems, cutesy dismissive phrases, deflection and passive questions that assert nothing.

Here's a concept for you - he who brings the facts, defines the conversation.

It will always be that way, because reasonable people don't want to hear or follow anything else.

I'll continue to bring the facts.

Since U.S. sprinters have been linked w/ PEDs at least a couple times in this thread by you and your cohorts - something I've not once defended (quite the opposite, in fact), perhaps we should next look at per capita PED sanctions for picture of what that tells us about PED culture in either country.

Star wrote:

The drug testers are still very ineffective at finding even a reasonable percent of PED users.

I have no faith that there is a chance of making it a clean sport.

I don't know who is using and who isn't.

So I don't make accusations and I don't promote any athletes to be clean.

I just follow the results and try to make projections based on what I see.

They all work hard and compete to win.

Indeed. They work their butts off. PEDs don't magically transform. As you know, they only allow those who want to go harder at whatever it is they do, to indeed go harder in their training. Funny thing about that is that other athletes can first become suspicious of another because he just doesn't get tired where you'd expect him to.

Anyway, on your drug testers comment, for those who want to see a clean sport, it's just scary to understand what they're up against, with what the drug designers are able to do. In some odd way I admire their technical brilliance to be able to marry knowledge and technique to immediately produce usable biotech products with the efficacy they have.

And the more money that flows into the sport of T&F, the more of it that will flow to the drug designers, because the athletes want to capture a bigger and longer running stream of those dollars.

I love the "they're not on drugs, they just work harder" argument. It's as if working hard and doping are mutually exclusive. Obviously being doped to the gills allows an athlete to sustain greater training and benefits over an extended period. Once the drugs have left the system, the benefts continue to tally for a good long while.

Athletes dope, it's what they do. They have their rationalizations and their justifications, but a lot of them do it and will continue to do it. Frankly, it's too easy not to. With the right chemist, it's too easy. For already talented athletes (top 5 in the world in their event), it's almost a given.

When you have a team surrounding you, and all of them stand to gain financially from your success, you're gonna dope. A lot of people want to take this argument to a moral space. It's not a moral issue for these people, it's pragmatic. Do you want to compete with the best? Then you're gonna have to dope. You might not have to dope to the gills, but at the very least you'll have to take a little T to aid recovery, use some dubious supplements and technologies, and occasionally recruit the aid of characters who can and do supply heavier doping products. This is the game, this is how it's played. It's fundamentally the same in all sports.

So what do we do about it? I say, enjoy the game. Sports are about entertainment. I miss the days of heavier doping. Watching El G run a 54 last lap to run a 3:26 flat was mind boggling. Watching Komen run 7:20, and seeing clips of his 7:58 - incredible! Watching Ali Saidi-Sief run a 7:25.02 with a 1:55 last 800m and 56 last lap to lead 4 under 7:30 in Monaco in the greatest 3000m of all time - incredible!

Sports are about incredible achievements. Literally, incredible. And frankly, I don't have to 'believe' the performances. I just want them to be exciting.

i don't perceive it. It's precisely what you've said. Repeatedly.

"... And you can't keep returning to the discussion ..."

"...make "a clear, declarative and verifiable statement to explain the sudden Jamaican sprint surge and dominance that far exceeds the results of sprinters that it's been established were dirty on PEDs."..."

" .... Instead discuss the pending premise ..."

etc, etc

just to be clear .. you don't get to define and determine the construct of the conversation.

As for 'ad hominem' .. you started off calling me a troll (when you replied to yourself) before I said ANYTHING remotely close to insulting anyone.

If you don't like the conversation .. then quit. But don't tell me how or what I need to supply to the conversation, or what the nature or premise of the conversation needs to be.

oh look, you're doing it again.

No .. you'll continue to bring 'the facts you want to bring'. You ignore any others and make broad assumptions to make it appear like all things support your claim.

You like 'facts'? How many top Jamaican sprinters have NOT been busted for PEDs?

And you're doing exactly that again here. A per capita statistic would be silly. Nobody is drug testing me or my neighbor. Elite competitive athletes are tested for PEDs. And athletes running 10.4 are quite reasonably less likely to use PEDs than athletes running 9.9-10.0, and more likely to be busted. So we could expect to see a higher proportion of athletes at that level with violations than we might from lower levels. Why don't we see Jamaican swimmers busted for PEDs? Quite likely, the same reason so few New Zealand sprinters are busted for PEDs.

Looking at Jamaican born athletes like Christie and Johnson to make your point is somewhat bizarre. You're suggesting this affinity for PEDs is genetic?

Let's consider your rambling nonsensical excuse for the demise of dominance of the top US sprinters .. in a nutshell ... the national high school records are tumbling, but the pros aren't winning like they used to, ergo, everyone else must be on drugs.

How about national college performances? How about national pro performances? How many top US guys are running sub 9.9, times that elite pros ran nearly 20 years ago? Given the overall increases in youth athletics, I'd expect the number of pros running sub 9.9 to be astronomical.

Looking at high school performances from Jamaica, it's not at all unreasonable to expect them to do well at the professional level. How long have Jamaica had really top class coaching and facilities available to so many of their athletes? Your response to Star's post on that matter was very weak. A better question though, would be, given the performance of the Jamaican youth, why did they struggle for so long to rise to the very top as professionals. Your answers seem to say, simply, because they didn't use drugs back then.

Look at the athletes from Jamaica, and their heritage. What is the heritage of virtually ALL major sprinters in the world? Why would a country of such strong athletic pedigree (if I can use that term) NOT be a powerhouse in the short runs? In no small part because of all the reasons I and others have pointed out, reasons that you pretend should not be part of the discussion.

If Jamaicans were/are doping like you seem to want to imply, my thoughts are they'd be running a LOT faster. Sure, Bolt is a freak. And some of them are dopers. But if you remove some of the blatant dopers (Mullings), you have

Bolt: 9.58

Blake, 9.69

Powell 9.72

Carter 9.78

Bledman 9.86

Frater 9.88

and then a small handful of 9.9x runners ... 8, total, and that includes Ray Stewart. If you remove him, only seven more of them under 10.

The US on the other hand has something nearly fifty runners under 10.

What I see in Jamaica is a very small handful of super top sprinters ... and a only a handful of guys under 10 (14, total, including dopers). I can't imagine with a systemic apparently controlled doping setup they'd not have more guys break 10.

The outliers are huge .. Bolt, Powell and Powell and Carter. After that, it drops off a lot more than a "bunch of dopers" would, imo. The rest of the guys aren't (comparatively) that outstanding. Bailey-Cole, for example, wouldn't even be in the top FIFTEEN guys in the US. Bledman isn't even as fast as a US collegian.

Your suggestion that US sprinters aren't dominating because other athletes around the world on drugs is simply not supportable.

Jamaicans have done incredibly well since 2000 but a large part of that (in the men's) is simply three athletes. Bolt, Blake and Powell. If you remove those guys from the championship events, Jamaica has two medallists, a silver and a bronze. In the 200m, it's simply Usain Bolt. Outside of him, Jamaica has won a lone world championship silver medal since 2003. That doesn't sound like a systemic drug problem to me. In the 400m, they've won a single bronze medal since 2003 (nothing SINCE 2003) an event they ironically have a stronger medal history in. The US have twelve 400m WC medals since 2003, and SIX OG medals . Who's doping again?

Jamaica have a great record in the 4x400m. 3rd in 91, 2nd in 95, 2nd in 97, 99, 2001, 2003, 3rd in 2005, 2011 and 2nd in 2013. They medalled in the 88, 96 and 2000 OG.

In 2008, with all their drugs, they came last. Didn't make the final in 2012.

Where are all the world beating doped up Jamaican 400m runners?

In 2012, the US didn't win a single medal in the 400m, the first time since 1920 (excluding Moscow 1980) they didn't medal. They didn't even have anyone in the final. Isn't that odd? And where was rampantly drugged up Jamaica? Not in the race either. Five athletes from the Caribbean, but not a single Jamaican. What drugs are boosting their top 100m sprinters and doing nothing if not an adverse effect on the longer distance sprinters? What coaches are doping the hell outta their 100m runners, giving a few sniffs to their 200m runners, and telling their 400m guys to run it on bananas and mineral water?

Why aren't Jamaicans producing top 400m athletes? 800m? If the reason for their prowess over 100-200m is as simple as you seem to want to it be (PEDs), how come they haven't made similar improvements in ANY OTHER EVENT ON THE TRACK?

We agree Americans have access to better and cheaper drugs. They also have easier access to technologies and metrics that will help them avoid +ve results. And yet they've largely not been running world dominating times like they once did.

Look at the OG From 92 - 2000 US sprinters won two medals, and one of those a bronze. That put them on a tally on par with Namibia. How come these doping US sprinters fared so (relatively) badly?

If US sprinters are doping, and all athletes are doping, you're suggesting that Jamaica is somehow able to shift the paradigm of results with better doping?

Look at some (approx) numbers then

Between 2000 and now, Australia has had 2 sprinters with drug violations. GB has had 3, Canada 3, Jamaica 11, the US 31 (it would be a LOT higher if went back another 5 years) and Nigeria 13.

Jamaica has less of a "drug problem" with sprinters than Nigeria. Given the way testing works, it's safe to the difference here is substantial, when we consider the actual performance of the sprinters. Winners get tested more. Compared to the number of top sprinters Australia and/or Canada actually has, I'd expect Jamaica to have a lot more violations.

Numbers and names and 'facts' aren't as rigidly deterministic as you seem to want them to be. Nor are such things as this subject so easily reduced to a single cause like you seem to want it to be. I've pointed to, as others have, examples of similar stories outside track, and outside Jamaica, and you simply ignore that. Not because it's not a valid part of the discussion, but because it doesn't fit your narrative. No more, no less.

The reality is that there are myriad different reasons for shifts in performances, some of them easily qualifiable, some not so much. Culture is an enormous influencer on sport achievement. Why are the Kiwis the world's greatest Rugby Union team? A country of four million people persistently beat countries with a population of 10 times that, countries who play rugby as a major sport. Clearly the Kiwis aren't simply world dominating athletes, they don't do so well at many other sports. The Aussie basketball team suddenly became a competitor at the world level a number of years ago, and it was not, in all likelihood, because they started doping.

There are lots of examples of this kind of thing, and all play a reasonable role in the process. Poverty, social structures, role models, etc, all affect such things. Look at how strong Aussie swimming was for a number of years simply because we got lucky to have a couple of real world class stars (Kieran Perkins, Ian Thorpe, etc) come along. Suddenly we had a relay team of swimmers who ALL swam at a level the Aussies never had before (we'd often been 'good', but we were suddenly the greatest 4x100m relay team in the world, something we'd never been). And within a relatively few short years, that changed completely. A few retirees, etc, and the decline was profound.

You could look at the Aussies in the 400m n the track. When we had Darren Clark running, for some reason we also happened to have our strongest ever field of 400m runners, barely missing a medal in 84. Dopers?

Your complete dismissal of that is what leads to my comments about your blabbering about PEDs, etc, etc.

With apologies - and with due respect - I can't waste any more time with you. I tried to do a point-by-point on that incredible screed - but it's a complete disaster. Bizarre interpretations of very direct statements; fabricated straw man statements I didn't make; obvious lapses of following what's been written earlier in the thread; a multitude more of passive questions; and the entire upper one-third of it discussing the discussion, instead of intelligently being a part of it - just to begin naming the problems of that piece.It's been apparent from the moment you entered the discussion you've been in over your head. You stepped in, equipped with little more than an abundance of bravado, and the unyielding commitment that you would never allow Jamaica's sprint reputation to be tarnished - no matter what facts were presented to you. This is intellectual dishonesty. The only place you were prepared to go - is the place you already are. Factual arguments are of no use to you. You can neither honestly receive them - nor make them on your own.That incredible wall of words has to qualify as your best effort to-date - yet it's the same deflective tactics that you're forced to default to because you have no reasonable explanations to offer. It's a breathless, emotive rant of basically, deflective reasoning that effectively says: "well, why couldn't Jamaicans suddenly be that freakishly good if this or that group did "X"?" It's just a lot more of: "look at this group here, and look at that group there - their results validate our results."There are no fewer than 22 deflecting questions you ask - 22 questions!Count 'em. All of them.

wtfunny wrote:You like 'facts'? How many top Jamaican sprinters have NOT been busted for PEDs?

SMH. You're not making any assertive point.

Questions aren't facts, and facts don't come in the form of questions. Facts are presented as clear statements having a sound foundation. It's clear you default to questions because you don't possess the confidence of any facts to support the position you've locked into from the outset.

It's clear your approach - as I just said in the previous post - is to raise reasonable doubt - which falls far short of the standard of actually presenting a reasonable case to support the sudden rise in Jamaican sprint dominance in 2004. In short, you talk endlessly in an attempt to just muddy the waters. Which explains your penchant to talk more about the conversation, than to actually make clear assertive statements within it.

Worst of this disjointed screed is that you actually manufactured statements and positions to argue against - that I never made. At best it's sloppy - at worst it's dishonest. This is where you completely lose me. I refuse to waste my time correcting the record. A reasonable, intellectually honest and capable person would never have done what you just did. Either way - you show yourself to be unfit for the task you're attempting to take on. Perhaps one of your cohorts is better suited for the job.

Moving forward I can only engage you when you make:

(1) a statement that legitimately discredits a fact I gave, or changes the reasonable interpretation of it.

(2) a direct, active statement of fact that speaks directly in support of explaining the Jamaican sprint surge and dominance beginning in 2004

(3) a statement of "fact" about T&F that actually isn't true and needs to be corrected for the record

I've tired of the distraction of talking about the conversation with you, and about the people having it. I've tired of you comparatively invoking other groups - without factually supporting why they've done what you assert, let alone leaving unsupported why Jamaicans have done what they have. I've tired of your bravado - with next to nothing behind it. I've tired of your passive questions (if you believe it - say it directly and support it!). And if I engage you further in any other area than what I've stated I will, I'm sure I'd tire of your lapses in following along in the thread, of fabricating statements I never made, and making bizarre interpretations of very direct statements.

It's a waste of time and effort.

4x4phreek wrote:

With apologies - and with due respect - I can't waste any more time with you.

Great. How about you stop wasting all of our time? If you wanna keep your little Argumentation 101 going, go elsewhere.

That's what I thought you'd say.

The one question I asked that you quoted and refuse to address could've been a nice opportunity for you to look at some facts beyond those you already posted. But because the answer to that question doesn't fit your narrative, you don't discuss it. You want a clear, assertive fact? Answer that question, and you'll have a cold, hard number or set of numbers that you seem to need so badly.

As for making the conversation about me? That's all YOUR doing. You continue to do so in the post above.

What statement of yours did I fabricate? That's not something I did, or do, at all. I can disagree with you, even strongly, and I'm fine with you disagreeing wth me. But I'll argue honestly .... Even if you think my position is ridiculous or unsupportable, I'll not manufacture statements on your, or anyone else's behalf.

As for "the entire one third of it discussing the discussion" .... lol ... your entire POST does nothing BUT that .... Again.

4x4 is a mod. Posts commenting about his trolling this thread get removed very fast.

4x4 is not worth responding to. He is only trying to generate interest on these forums.

He's a mod wrote:

4x4 is a mod. Posts commenting about his trolling this thread get removed very fast.

4x4 is not worth responding to. He is only trying to generate interest on these forums.

1) Not a mod, never have been, never will be. Not affiliated with the site other than as a forum user.

2) I'm not aware of any posts in the thread having been removed. I've been following pretty closely and I don't feel as if I missed any posts.

simian wrote:

Great. How about you stop wasting all of our time? If you wanna keep your little Argumentation 101 going, go elsewhere.

You clicked to the 5th page of a 90+ post discussion. If you read through all of that and only now have decided it was a waste of time, that's on you.

If you clicked through without reading, what are you even doing here, and commenting even?

I'm pursuing a discussion, and will continue to do so - all my choice. Master your own domain - and don't click. Problem solved.

"Do you want to compete with the best? Then you're gonna have to dope."

This is what Said Aouita told athletes under him when he became Australian National Distance Coach in 2002, they refused and he was outed and sacked.

wtfunny wrote:

A per capita statistic would be silly. Nobody is drug testing me or my neighbor. Elite competitive athletes are tested for PEDs.

This is a valid criticism, one I was willing to sustain, expecting that it was an impossible task to acquire a complete and official list of Jamaican and U.S. sprinters that stretched over decades. It's actually not though. So no need to subject the PED use rate to the limiting, and admittedly inexact metric, of a per capita analysis.

Instead, the numbers I've used for the analysis come directly from the IAAF website. The lists is voluminous, but fortunately, it's sortable by gender and event. Those are the categories I used to make the analysis manageable, and particularly germane to the discussion. Given the work involved, I've limited my analysis to men who have run the 100m race in any IAAF event.

From the IAAF website:

- 988 U.S. sprinters have run the 100m. Of those sprinters, 17 have been sanctioned within the anti-doping program.

- 183 Jamaican sprinters have run the 100m. Of those sprinters, 8 have been sanctioned within the anti-doping program.

Comparatively, then, based on having been detected and sanctioned, the doping rate among the U.S. men to have run the 100m is 1.72 percent.

For Jamaican men who have run the 100m, based on having been detected and sanctioned, the doping rate is 4.37 percent.

That's a 2.5X greater doping rate in favor of Jamaican men over their U.S. counterparts.

Quarrel with those facts if you like, but you're quarreling with the IAAF participant and anti-doping lists.

Yawn...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The Champs looks crazy.

Thank you for posting this. I used to enjoy watching many great Jamaican runners when they ran for GMU.