Major drug bust from Jamaican trials in 100 meters

Let me add to this whole discussion an issue that has bothered me for quite some time.

Jamaica's Olympic team doctor, Herb Elliott, is also in charge of overseeing drug testing in Jamaica.

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/track_field/news?slug=jo-jamaicans082308

A quote from the article "Jamaica’s Olympic team doctor, who’s prepared to fend off accusations that banned drugs fueled the country’s sprinting success at these Olympic Games, said the record-breaking run stems in part from the history of slavery.

"Herb Elliott, who oversees drug testing in Jamaica and serves as the Olympic team’s head doctor, said African slaves who ended up in Jamaica were among the strongest and most determined – qualities, he says, that have helped the likes of Usain Bolt, the 22-year-old Jamaican track star."

His involvement has led many for years to suspect him for sabotaging certain Jamaicans like Mullings who trained outside Jamaica while covering up others who trained at home.

Regardless how can WADA and USADA allow ANY individual to serve in such ethically conflicting roles? This should be banned immediately by all sports organizations and credentials denied to those who refuse.

Agreed, that conflict of interest is bad for the sport, the Athletics Association's credibility and would undoubtedly leave a cloud over the athletes competing for that nation.

USADA... can you give a breakdown of the demographics of the positive tests?

By country/gender/distance?

Thanks.

I don't believe that those positives are coming from the US. Not because I believe that US athletes are clean, but beacuse I believe USADA doesn't want to sh*t in their own house.

They won't be from the USATF but athletes competing in Europe are likely get caught out.

Well, than all US fans can cool off....since the most prominent US sprinter didn't dare to cross the pond this year...

:p

I don't see what all the fuss is about masking agents, to my mind they lend some character, some amusement. If you've got a personality go out there and express it!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/oct/06/commonwealth-games-2010-delhi-october-6

I don't find your analysis very compelling. For a lot of these you're just taking some minor point and drawing a definitive conclusion from it - i.e. 9.7 is too fast therefore Bolt and Gay and Powell are cheats.

He sort of has a point about the history. The administrators of these plantations and so on went through a phase where they assessed people in a rough and ready fashion and sent the strong ones to one place (eg Jamaica), the smart ones somewhere else (eg Barbados). Now you can't really tell in those circumstances who is smart but you probably can tell who is strong. Someone said Jamaicans and other Caribbean people of West African descent are the same as African-Americans, but really they are not. It's not about race, or being West African, it's about small populations with small differences.

On the more relevant and up-to-date point, I agree, Herb Elliot has a conflict of interests with those 2 roles.

Freelove--

You have made this point before, on another thread, and I responded with a whole host of evidence-based reasoning, from broad statistical suggestions to characteristics of individual athletes, right down to the physical evidence of positive samples.

I'm not just SAYING that 9.7 is "too fast", I'm trying to PROVE that it is too fast for all but the very few, on all but a very few occasions, IF EVER.

You may not find the analysis compelling, fair enough--but consider this twist on your own reasoning: what if you had said "9.7 is too fast therefore Johnson and Montgomery and Gatlin are cheats"?

That alone is just as compelling as your suggestion to the contrary, and that excludes all the other information I have tried to present.

I'll be the first to admit that it's not a rock-solid case, but it does have its good points.

So, a few weeks ago some Brazilian swimmers, a relay quartet, tested positive for the same substance, furosemide (Lasix).

Their Federation cautioned them but they were cleared to compete, Fina queried it, it ended up at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. One swimmer got a ban because it was his second positive test. Otherwise the guys are in the clear. Contaminated caffeine supplements.

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The conclusion of the urine test was that the athletes’ urine was not diluted at all. This is different than saying that there was a “low level of concentration of furosemide.” Saying that the urine was not dilluted means that regardless of the level of furosemide, it had absolutely no masking affect on the urine tests, so if the athletes were using it to cover up any illegal substances, those substances would have shown up on the test as well.

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http://theswimmerscircle.com/blog/featured/cas-releases-full-report-in-cielo-doping-decision/

Kabayo--

I liked your post! I agree that Powell could be the best clean guy ever, the jury is still out for me based on his performance history.

Surin was a "legit could-have sub-9.80" guy, not a 9.7x guy. His 9.84 would have been 9.7x with better wind, but wasn't.

Same with Bailey, his 9.84 would have been 9.7x if he had either a start or a great tailwind, and just possibly 9.6x high if he'd had both, but wasn't.

Like you, I raced not one, but many roidheads back in the day, right up to WR-holders in various sprint disciplines. I know what you mean by that projection of invincibility--you look down the line, you KNOW who's going to win, and why. The Terminator. All you can do is try your best.

Even though I raced a bunch of greats, not all roidheads are great (of course). My all-time favorite was this wiry little Chinese guy who used to hang around, and had a huge inferiority complex. One summer he did 2 cycles of roids, and after having run an early-season mid-11.x came back at the end of the season to run a 10.x high, and definitely had packed on some muscle.

The thing was, he still got his ass kicked, and even I beat him handily.

He enjoyed the muscle though, so much so that he disappeared and did a bunch more cycles.

He showed up at some physio thing the next year, and I had no idea it was the same person. His voice had completely changed, his head got fatter, his face looked completely different, like a Chinese Schwarzenegger, and he had gone from, no kidding, a scrawny 145/150 to a massive 230!!!!!!!

Of course some of that could have been natural filling-out, but he put on basically 80 lbs over the course of a year and a summer. He was HUGE!

Back to the invincibility thing--it's quite a thing to experience even second-hand. I've felt like that in other situations, like writing exams that I knew I would get perfect on. I can only imagine what it must be like to feel like that on the 100m start line, lined up against the BEST of the BEST in the whole world.

Masking agents can be diuretics or they can be something completely else.

Case in point, Test/Epitest ratios that were/(are?) still used as a marker for the usage of anabolics.

Shooting up with Epi masks the changes in your natural T/E ratio due to doping. Similarly one could ingest a substance that reversible or irreversibly binds to a reagent used in the chemical analysis, thus messing with the actual results of the tests.

Diuretics are but one minor aspect of the whole masking agent thing.

informant--

More positives would be very interesting indeed, but I can't help but think that these aren't B-sample-confirmed tests, and that anything can happen at the hearing.

In any case, it's now just about exactly 2 weeks from the start of WC's, and men's and women's 100 prelims, heats, semi's, and finals go the first 3 days, IIRC.

The timing of all this is suspect, too. Just close enough to WC's to likely not permit resolution in time to compete if cleared. Somebody pissed somebody off somewhere along the line, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a few heads roll as a result, in the coaching ranks and in the agent ranks and in a national federation or two, and in the NCAA also.

To me it's not necessarily a good thing yet, it's still business as usual until something really significant happens. I don't know exactly what that would be, but we will know it when we see it.

Mullings is Nike, right?

Will we see an Adidas or Puma athlete go down next in response, and then a cascade of retaliation?

My guess is "no", otherwise the whole house of cards will come tumbling down with only one guy left standing--a FRENCHMAN.

And trust me, NOBODY wants that!

(Just in case anybody missed it this is all b.s., I can't wait for more news to be released)

The case of the swimmers from Brazil suggests that it could go 1 of 2 ways. Either Mullings was masking or it was a technical infringement but not a performance-enhancing one, in which case maybe a 3 month ban. He's out of the Games anyway.

' The “short half-life” of furosemide that has often been cited further enhances this idea. If furosemide breaks down that quickly, but still had trace elements in the urine, then that means it had to have been taken fairly shortly before the test. But if it was taken shortly before the test, but still did not dilute the urine, there was clearly no attempt at a coverup. '

It all depends on the details, which will take time to emerge.

Think Mullings was unaffiliated for the time being at least officially

Holmes: "It all depends on the details, which will take time to emerge."

^^THIS^^

I have new found respect for sprint geezer from this thread. I remember reading some things he said on an unrelated thread about how fast distance runners can run the 100 and thinking he is clueless, but he knows his stuff on this subject.

How do we know Bolt used drugs? Because he ran 9.58, that is how. Remember when people said it was because he was tall? That is laughable.

Humans physiology just hasnt changed much since the 80's and now 9.90 is slow. Guys back them took drugs and lifted weights and trained like sprinters....there really haven't been any major breakthroughs in training to warrant such improvement. People who don't understand this are the same people who don't believe lance took drugs.

Unaffiliated?

Oh well in that case the big 3 could have decided that he would be the fall guy to take the warning shot.

He's an easy target--he doesn't make anybody any money, he is from a team that is already very deep, his character is already questionable, he is sufficiently high-profile to get noticed, but not so high as to upset anybody or make any difference in the medals.

Perfect.