Viren cheating?

I COULD believe the story that Junxia was clean and ran as fast as she did because she ran 180 mile weeks. I also could believe the story that she ran as fast as she did because she doped and ran 180 mile weeks.

My point is that people decide they know things based on their likes and dislikes and not because there's clear evidence. If Junxia had been an American, especially a personable one, I suspect we'd treat her like we do Joan Samuelson and be in awe of how hard she trained.

Similarly, I think if Viren had been American or at least from an English speaking country we wouldn't have so many of these discussions. Even if blood doping was more common among the Finns than in other countries I cannot believe that at least by 1976, in the wake of all the questions raised about Viren and blood doping after 1972, non-Finns who wanted to beat him in Montreal would not have tried it but that question is hardly ever raised.

I got to know Jack by phone and mail. Like your dad, I was a big admirer. I knew I was going to New Zealand while corresponding with Jack and we'd made plans to meet but sadly he had his accident before that could happen. I did do a run on one of his venues and yes, it had quite a hill on it. Hope your dad does OK.

You are right that true or not, the story of Jouko Kuha "blood doping" in 1968 is a part of the folklore. The story goes that he had an anemia and was treated with blood infusion and broke the world record, but (afterwards?) got hepatitis and couldn't make it to the summer olympics.

Here is none other than Frank Shorter referring to the story:

There are various sources where this story apparently originated from. One very well-respected journalist claimed that he heard about the episode already in 1968 from one of Kuha's Finnish competitors, who speficically told that he shouldn't publish the information. Another version goes that a doctor revealed the information to a group of sports doctor in an informal discussion that took place after a seminar in 1970. I know only that Kuha denied the episode when he was specifically asked about the matter in 1971.

I think that the episode was mentioned once or twice in the English-speaking already before Montreal, but most folks read from the claim from Kenny Moore, who mentioned the episode his article "An Enigma Wrapped in Glory" (SI, June 27, 1977) about Viren:

When a Finnish magazine republished the story, the name of Kuha was omitted completely from the manuscript for one reason or another. A later republishing of the article in a book had to omit also the reference of Peltokallio not experimenting with blood doping when it was revealed that he indeed had administered a transfusion for the steeplechaser Mikko Ala-Leppilampi in 1972.

Although SI has changed its availability policies on old issues, the article is available through Wayback Machine:

It is now difficult to conclude what is true or not, but famous coach Kari Sinkkonen (Vasala, Päivärinta etc.) vouched for the story in an interview in 1993. Curiously the episode is strikingly similar to experience that future double European champion Juha Väätäinen had in 1969, when he was treated for anemia before the 1969 European Championships in Athens. His very low hemoglobin (~12 g/dl) was diagnosed only shortly before the games and he received iron injections but as a result suffered from a lymphnode inflammation and couldn't make it to the track.

Clerk,

here some more-or-less organised responds to some of your loose ends. hope you'll find them interesting.

Dr. Sakari Orava is a famous and internationally respected Finnish sports doctor and surgeon, who - unlike some other doctors - isn't considered a pioneer of doping, but that doesn't mean that he had in 1970s no involvement with methods now considered ethically questionable. He is well known in having collaborated on steroids with several Finnish athletes in 1973-1974 before steroids were banned and I've heard the university hospital were he worked been mentioned as a blood doping "research house" in an old newspaper, a fact confirmed privately by two journalists. Of the 1970s doctors, his reputation is perhaps least tainted, as a significant number of doctors were involved with doping research and practices with many having even very noble reasons to do so.

Here is a list of accredited team doctors of the summer olympics. There is no name of Dr. Orava, so it should be emphasized that he was an official accredited team doctor of the Olympic team only from 1988 onwards.

1968: Kaarlo Hartiala / Helmer Kvist / Ilkka Vuori

1972: Helmer Kvist / Pekka Peltokallio

1976: Helmer Kvist / Markku Järvinen

1980: Helmer Kvist / Markku Järvinen / Pekka Peltokallio

1984: Pekka Peltokallio / Ilkka Tulikoura / Kauko Huikuri

As you can see below, there are several doping-related links to Mr. Elevaara, but I think that it is mostly just a coincidence as he was involved with the training of perhaps a few thousand athletes. Interestingly he himself has admitted taking steroids for a brief time in early 1970s. Here some interesting details on some of his protegés:

- Kaarlo Maaninka. Case well known.

- Arto Koivisto, a cross-country skier whose career spanned from 1970 until 1985. As a born-again christian, he admitted in 2001 having used blood doping "5-6" times during his career. Interestingly he was busted for ephedrine in 1981 after which he threatened to write an exposé of the inner circles of the Finnish sports. Interestingly a well-known winter olympic team doctor advised to give him no sanction at all and the skier received in the end only one month ban.

- It was later revealed that blood doping was offered to one of his protegés, a national level marathoner Esa Tikkanen (record 2:11:13), an episode mentioned only once briefly in passing.

- Elevaara was also the coach of Martti Vainio for a brief period (around 1981-1983, ie. before LA). When latter was busted for steroids in 1984, Elevaara told the press that Vainio had accepted "in principle" the use of transfusions but not steroids, a claim that Vainio subsequently denied.

Elevaara claimed that it was unnamed doctors of the Finnish Amateur Athletic Association, who noticed the low hemoglobin values of Maaninka and recommended transfusion. What Mikko Ala-Leppilampi told about his own experiences with blood doping in an interview (1981) seems to corroborate this version:

While there is gossip about "on site"- transfusions in the olympic villages, as far as I know, practically all the blood doping operations were performed in regular hospitals. The operation of Maaninka was performed in a community hospital whereas Ala-Leppilampi told later that his operation was performed in a private hospital. It has been claimed that in mid-1970s there was discussion in the sports medicine circles about centralizing transfusions into the central military hospital, but the idea was dropped for one reason or another.

This is almost completely off topic aside from it having to do with Finland but you may be my best source to get an answer. In July of 1944 Viljo Heino set the 10,000 WR at a meet in Helsinki. How did that happen? It seems like there'd have been bigger concerns in Helsinki in 1944. How was Heino even not off fighting Soviets somewhere?

The meet was in August and peace talks had been going on for long. Sports were important for the army for morale, fitness and national pride. In the Winter War Heino was shot in the leg, but obviously made a full recovery. I'm not sure if he was still actively in service in August, but before that he was near the front line and had to carry a pistol while training because no one was allowed to go unarmed so near to the enemy.

So there was no fighting between Finland and the USSR in 1944?

Same with western Ukraine. It was either join the Nazis or the Soviets (communists). Many in the west joined the Nazis to fight the invading Russians; who in 1932-33 committed genocide in Ukraine known as the Holodomor.

Sure there was but the peace treaty was already being drafted in August. And it's not like everything comes to a halt when there's a war. Many sporting events were held despite the war. And soldiers were used the same way in the USA to boost morale. Granted the war was a bit further away from home but still.

Yeah. It just seems amazing that they'd have the resources to have much in the line of athletics going on or that Heino could have gotten much in the line of training. I know there were major issues with near starvation, the Soviets had bombed Helsinki. It just seems to me that it might be the most unlikely world record ever set.

Big ups Aragon, that was very informative.

You acknowledged your sources, but do you have a link or title/year/author for some of them? That story about the pre-1972 dinner is incredible from the modern perspective, that the conversation of doping was so candid.

That idea is a big thing I want the forum to understand: the ubiquity of doping. Everyone imagines dark alleys and trench coats, and imagines their heroes as not being part of that world. But doping is just an athlete and a coach or doctor. It's easy to get into, easy to facilitate, and easy to continue. Which is why I start to look at why "clean" athletes are an exception to that rule.

Your information obviously does not connect Viren to any doping, but it does paint the picture of the culture and context of doping. People speak as if he, or Ryun in '68, or Coe in 80', or ________ in '__, took a moral stand, but what did he/they take a "stand" against? It was casual, if wasn't nefarious. It wasn't illegal, and just another innovation. (Like asking if you want to do an ice bath, or sleep in an altitude tent. Some will, some won't... until the results start to speak for themselves. Still, some won't, not everyone wants to do everything to be better, just like some pro's go out drinking or eat some unhealthy meals...)

Anyways... thanks for the good post Aragon.

Seconded.

HRE wrote:

I got to know Jack by phone and mail. Like your dad, I was a big admirer. I knew I was going to New Zealand while corresponding with Jack and we'd made plans to meet but sadly he had his accident before that could happen. I did do a run on one of his venues and yes, it had quite a hill on it. Hope your dad does OK.

Yeah, a bit bleak.

It's amazing how people over look the contributions of their fellow citizens and their impact abroad. A similar story, I was in the UK about 13 or so years ago, and I was doing some 200m reps at the local (Milton Keynes track, the track of Rutherford the current Olympic L. Jump champ) and started talking to one of the coaches. He worked out my accent (nz) and then started talking about Lydiard being his hero, now this could of been about the time Lydiard died. I told him that I had a one-on-one chat with Lydiard for about 30-45 mins about four months earlier. He was astounded, here was a guy who's daughter trains with Paula Radcliffe and knows Steve Ovett personally and also knew Cram as well but he was couldn't believe I had talked with Lydiard for so long. Here I was hoping he could introduce me to Steve Ovett.😉

Nice info, great research.

Could of what ?

Great. Good for you. That sounds fun.

Please post every single word of the conversation with Arthur... especially training information…like what did he think about training 2x per day? Many people have asked about that here.

Thank you.

Wow. It looks like there were a lot of transfusions going on in Finland in the 1970s. Do you have any information on if they were doing very well in other endurance sports such as cross-country skiing or cycling, besides running?

I also think there is a huge leap from "Would you like to try an ice bath or altitude tent?" (No. I already live at 7,000 ft. and they are an annoyance.)…to "Would you like to take out 1.35L of your blood, which will make you weak for a bit, then we will store it, and then we will transfuse it all back into you with tubes, and needles, and bags of blood, and IV equipment... and will Dr. Fuentes be on time this time for the transfusion with the bags in his ice chest…or will he be late again …like Dr. Fuentes usually is?"

To me, this does not seem that natural a thing to be doing and is quite a bit more inconvenient and complicated than…"Would you like to try an ice bath?"

I do not think that autologous blood transfusions and running should ever have anything to do with each other, even it was "legal at the time and not really cheating". Doing blood transfusions is turning athletics into a medical procedure and pharmaceutical experiment with the athletes (especially cyclists) as the human lab rats.

Here is a thread from LRC in the past. I have not read it. It involves a Brit:

Oh boy.

Hey Aragon, great info, of interest is:

"There can be no use in adding red blood cells if one's hemoglobin count is above 15, and Viren's is normally 15.4 to 15.6," says [the olympic team doctor Pekka] Peltokallio. "That is close to an optimum level. Any less and you carry less oxygen. But any more"—the doctor hunches over his desk and it creaks under the load—"any more and the blood becomes too thick. It can't work as well. There is a disease where the blood gets too thick. People who have it can get congestive heart failure. They can't pump it. So it is crazy for most runners to try blood exchanges."

Now is this methodology 15.4 per 100mls of blood, because I think down here we now use ___ per litre (1000mls). Linked to the original post the book, 'Kiwis can Fly' the author Ivan Agnew states, "It is at this point that a lot of thought has been put into John's preparation so that he has a high blood count where the haemoglobin is 16.3 compared with an average man's 14.7. Rod Dixon's is 15.7 and Dick Quax's is 15.4" (p.186). Now over the past decade my counts have been 166, 160, 165, 170, 162. So I am not sure whether what Pekka Peltokallio said was a red hearing or haemoglobin is perhaps irrelevant. But from what I gather the doped-up cross country skiers had score in the 180s. So I think that we can discount this so called, "any more and the blood becomes too thick" nonsense.

Nice link to the SI article, I reckon that they (Viren and his team) were re-infusing the blood when Viren was doing the 20x200m and using the session and the subsequent times to gauge if it (the blood doping) was having the desired effect, most of the elite runners I know aren't this scientific in terms of heart rate-to-interval time, especially 200m intervals, which makes me even more suspicious.

I love Frank Shorter, now this is a truly great American, you folks should be proud of him.

Bags in the fridge. wrote:

test2 wrote:

To call blood doping legal at the time seems like a stretch. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not aware of any rule at the time that permitted it. I don't think that something not being explicitly disallowed makes it fair game.

What? This is so warped. No rule says running a 100 mpw is permitted. No rule says speedwork is permitted?

WTF?!

Reasoning that because blood doping isn't mentioned in the rules therefore it must have been legal is just as suspect logically as your example that because speedwork isn't mentioned it must be illegal. The rules can't and shouldn't be expected to enumerate and pass judgment on all possible behaviors. When a subject isn't treated in the rules we have to resort to common sense and make arguments about norms within the sport and society. In the case of speedwork, while not monetioned in the rules it was nearly ubiquitous at the time and bore no stigma. It clearly wasn't considered cheating at the time. With regards to blood doping i suggested to HRE that there was a stigma or else why, if Viren had doped, didn't he admit it? HRE replied in effect that he personally wasn't aware of much stigma at the time and that other FInish athletes freely admitted to blood doping. Aragon's post then suggested that all of these athletes were in some way or other compelled to admit to using blood doping so that a stigma may well have existed at the time.