Who?!? and How!? Dreams Become Reality: Trevor Hofbauer goes from 2:16 to 2:09:25 to win Canadian Champs

Ben Johnson is not a real Canadian.

His NB contract expired earlier this year. He ran the trials unsponsored.

CCES just handed down a 4 year ban for EPO on a guy with a 2:33 marathon PB from the sub elite pool at the Ottawa Marathon so they are testing pretty regularly.

Usually this magnitude of athletic improvement is down to easily-available banned performance enhancement drugs - can't say for sure though. Dollars to donuts it's drugs.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Ghost1 wrote:

Here we go.

As soon as someone runs fast there are more naysayers than supporters. Sad.

Highly unlikely he is doped. Most Canadians are honorable and averse to cheating.

This guy could have played DII college hoops in the US.

Ghost in China

Um - not heard of Ben Johnson?

Dude, that was 30 years ago, and Ben is EXACTLY why Cdns are averse to drugs.

It was in the papers forever, and a source of embarrassment for the country, no Cdn wants to be caught again.

Are there Cdns cheating? No doubt, but the number of positives are pretty small compared the huge amount in Russia, China and the weightlifting countries.

Trevor had a bunch of injury issues in 2018, otherwise we might have seen this earlier. Calgary is at a bit of altitude (3500-3700), so that may have given him a slight boost in Toronto. I know some of the guys that have run with him, he basically just didn't run that much in younger days, absolutely hated track running. A friend who ran with him commented about 3-4? yrs ago that when Trevor started ramping up the mileage his improvement was remarkable and described him with words like "beast" etc.

A very well liked easy going guy, doesn't have the Type A control-freak personality of a cheater like Lance Armstrong. Of course this proves nothing.

If up to 40% of top elites are doping, according to some estimates, how many of them do you think are Lance Armstrong-type personalities? I'm betting most would appear to be decent upstanding citizens - or at least "regular guys". They just want to win - like anyone else.

Ben is why wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

Um - not heard of Ben Johnson?

Dude, that was 30 years ago, and Ben is EXACTLY why Cdns are averse to drugs.

It was in the papers forever, and a source of embarrassment for the country, no Cdn wants to be caught again.

Are there Cdns cheating? No doubt, but the number of positives are pretty small compared the huge amount in Russia, China and the weightlifting countries.

So Canadians don't want to cheat in case they get caught, like Ben, but not because they think it's wrong? That's very principled of them.

gettouathere wrote:

Ben Johnson is not a real Canadian.

That's strange. He was stripped of his gold medal, not his Canadian citizenship.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Ben is why wrote:

Dude, that was 30 years ago, and Ben is EXACTLY why Cdns are averse to drugs.

It was in the papers forever, and a source of embarrassment for the country, no Cdn wants to be caught again.

Are there Cdns cheating? No doubt, but the number of positives are pretty small compared the huge amount in Russia, China and the weightlifting countries.

So Canadians don't want to cheat in case they get caught, like Ben, but not because they think it's wrong? That's very principled of them.

I could respond to your sad misguided assumption that truly exposes what an unpleasant person that you are,

but i'll just finish on a happy note by saying i'm absolutely overjoyed that i don't have to associate with you in person.

You've made my day!

Canadian Bacon wrote:

But DeBues-Stafford is clearly the best Canadian runner M or F

Except Mo has 1 more WC medal than does she. So, maybe not.....

So overjoyed..... wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

So Canadians don't want to cheat in case they get caught, like Ben, but not because they think it's wrong? That's very principled of them.

I could respond to your sad misguided assumption that truly exposes what an unpleasant person that you are,

but i'll just finish on a happy note by saying i'm absolutely overjoyed that i don't have to associate with you in person.

You've made my day!

Associating with you is not what I had in mind. So you don't disagree with the poster above who said Canadians don't dope because of the "embarrassment" after Johnson was caught? The principled argument against doping.

Lost his NB and bought himself a pair of Vaporfly's. Boom! There's your improvement

Everyone takes something wrote:

Usually this magnitude of athletic improvement is down to easily-available banned performance enhancement drugs - can't say for sure though. Dollars to donuts it's drugs.

Bill Rodgers went 2:28, 2:19, 2:09. Clayton went from 2:19 to 2:09. There was nothing like EPO then or anything similar. People do make legitimate breakthroughs.

HRE wrote:

Everyone takes something wrote:

Usually this magnitude of athletic improvement is down to easily-available banned performance enhancement drugs - can't say for sure though. Dollars to donuts it's drugs.

Bill Rodgers went 2:28, 2:19, 2:09. Clayton went from 2:19 to 2:09. There was nothing like EPO then or anything similar. People do make legitimate breakthroughs.

Meanwhile, there's another current thread on a Canadian sub-elite just busted for EPO. Clayton and Rodgers were 40-50 years ago. Runners today have found other easier ways to achieve breakthroughs.

Right and there was no drug testing? Here or at the other numerous races he's done during the year?

So here is my take on this. Guy starts off 2019 running 46:42 for 15K in Jacksonville then punches out a 1:07:31 Half in NYC the following week. Takes a few off weeks from racing and nails a 29:30 10K in Vancouver before heading to Hamburg and barely breaks 2:17 (2:16:48). August 18th he rolls a 1:06:29 Half in Edmonton for 6th place then in his final tune-up before Toronto goes 29:58 fours weeks out. Turns around and lays down a 2:09:51 a :17sec per mile improvement from his Hamburg run a mere 6 months prior. In Toronto he gave out more high fives then the Raptors did in there NBA victory parade enroute to a monter PB of almost 7 full minutes. Forgive me for being a little wdafook ish on this but wdafook???? Here is another interesting fact if clean, if he ever does decide to venture to the dark side he's a 2:05 guy. (5% performance increase) which if you run the numbers is exactly what he just did to go from 2:16:48 to 2:09:51. Either way you slice it AWESOME RUN but a very very interesting one to say the least!

naturalizer wrote:

Right and there was no drug testing? Here or at the other numerous races he's done during the year?

He was a guest on the Citius Mag podcast today, good listen. He talks about being tested after Toronto (and it taking 5 hours for some people because the weather was perfect and people weren't dehydrated).

Just because runners today have easier ways to make breakthroughs that weren't available 40-50 years ago doesn't mean all of them take them.