Regarding Viren and blood doping

I just don't believe in guilt by association. Give me something more.

I'm a Scottish lush and proud of it.

By the way it's not illegal to drive drunk here but I do it anyway.

Bottoms to my Eyebrows wrote:

I'm a Scottish lush and proud of it.

By the way it's not illegal to drive drunk here but I do it anyway.

Yeah Yeah, and there's technically no law of trespass in Scotland either, but just try sneaking on someones land when they don't want you and see what happens (I speak from experience here!)

Here is another post I found

Blood doping used to be legal in the Olympics. I remember listening to ABC commentator for track and field explain Finish 10k distance runner Lasse Viren training technique. He would train until he was in peak form. then drain out a couple of pints of blood. Freeze the blood. then inject it right before the race.

The ABC commentator was matter of fact about the blood boosting. He didn't talk about it being anything but a new training technique. This was 1972

It was sauna that made Viren great!

I rarely jump into these discussions, but what the heck. As a runner from that time period (70s/80s), the memories of Viren and his running accomplishments are still fresh. First, Viren was a flat out phenomenal runner--simply the best then and one of the best of all time. You may be able to Google up some great comments from Brendan Foster that he made subsequent to the 76 Games. The reporter was trying to tie Viren’s success to supposed blood doping. Brendan said basically, “he won because he’s the best runner on the planet, no other reason”—paraphrasing a little.

I also wanted to throw out something that will antagonize some people, but will also rekindle memories/discussions in others from that time period. Many of us (Oregon/Washington area) discussed the legality/ethics of “blood-doping” and felt there was a definite distinction between this “blood-doping” vs steroids or some another artificial booster. The thought process (in our simple understanding at the time) was you run the 150-175 miles a week at altitude and then they take “your” blood” out and then later reinject “your” hard worked blood back into you at sea level prior to a race. Many of my running colleagues at the time believed this was ethically fine . . . of course none of us could afford to do something like that, or buy Al Salazar’s crazy altitude simulating breathing pack (another story)

not sure if anyone else mentioned this already, but I read this in Moore's "Best Efforts" last night:

p.148: "'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 Peltokallio. "That is close to an optimum level. Any less and you carry less oxygen. But any more...and the blood becomes too thick.

...

The reason why people connect Finns with blood doping is that there was a Finnish sportsman some years ago...who had a hemloglobin level of 11. He tried it and improved dramatically.' Peltokallio declines to mention this man's name, but other sources say he probably was Jouko Kuha, who came from obscurity to break the world steeplechase record in 1968."

WHO CARES...?

He may or may not have Blood Doped, who cares, it was not against any rules at the time of his reign as best distance runner of all-time (not including The King, Henry Rono).

next

"Shorter said he was 100% positive Viren doped. Could have been bitter but I would think he has better knowledge than most on the subject."

I've never read that Shorter said this, but I have read where he said the quite the opposite - that he was sure that Viren did NOT blood dope.

1973 - he ran his tail of in 1971 and 1972. Putting in very heavy mileage. '73 was a rest year to get ready for '74 where he wanted to do well in the European championships.

1974 - he developed an injury which made it almost impossible to run hard workouts. He missed a lot of time, and could not run very high mileage. He continued to run because he really wanted to run in the European championships.

1975 - he had surgery in early 1975. '75 became preparation for 1976.

1976 - he past the injury and back to very high mileage.

In terms of his in-between down years being "proof" of doping, after winning the Olympic gold in 1960 Abebe Bikila did not run in an international competition between fall 1961 and April 1964 when he ran Boston and finished a mediocre 5th against a less than stellar field. later in 64 at the Tokyo Olympics he crushed the field. Some athlete are exceptional and focus on the Olympics.

Mr Canova,

Thank you for your response and for clearing that up. That makes me happy to hear that.

That's also amazing that his count was at 12.8. I know this gets a little off subject but Belindo had a knack for running well in the heat. The latest Olympic Champion Wanjuri also had a low blood count and obviously runs well in the heat also. Is there a connection between the two in regards to their body's ability to hold more fluid lowering the red blood cell ratio? I apologize for leading this off topic, but it's worth mentioning.

blort wrote;

1974 - he developed an injury which made it almost impossible to run hard workouts. He missed a lot of time, and could not run very high mileage. He continued to run because he really wanted to run in the European championships.

Actually Viren ran in -74 his highest km total of his career, 8300km because the injury didn´t bother him so much when the pace wasn´t too fast, it was a way to compensate the lack of real hard intensities in his preparement to European championships.

Viren, if he did transfuse, and other blood transfusers of the '70's might not have gotten the advantage that many of you think. This is because it has fairly recently been realized that NO disappears from stored blood quickly, and NO is essential to RBC's capacity to deliver O2 to tissues. Also, it might have been very dangerous for these transfusers:

The Problem with Transfusions. By: Park, Alice, Time, 0040781X, 10/22/2007, Vol. 170, Issue 1

"In studies reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they sampled pints of donated blood from banks and healthy volunteers, subjected them to 26 different analyses and found dramatic deficiencies in levels of nitric oxide (NO). A workhorse component of normal blood, NO is responsible for helping red blood cells ferry oxygen to tissues and for propping open tiny vessels. A shortage of the gas could lead to precisely the kinds of heart problems the team was investigating.

Within hours of leaving the body, the research showed, a unit of blood loses up to 70% of its NO; by the time the blood reaches its "use by" expiration date 42 days later, the gas is almost nonexistent. "The reality is, we are giving patients blood that cannot deliver oxygen properly," says Stamler.

So.......................MAYBE THIS VIREN TALK IS MUCH ADO ABOUT (almost.....I know there are probably still some advantages to transfusions) NOTHING ???

And I am still shocked that almost everyone on this thread seems to think that breathing in synthetic Nitrogen rich air in a tent is completely natural, while a blood transfusion is apparently outer-space freakishly unnatural. And from the research I posted, it is possible that Altitude tent dwellers like Radcliffe, Rupp, Goucher, etc could be getting as big or bigger a boost from what they are doing as someone like Viren might have gotten from what he was doing.

ANYONE???

I dont know about nitric oxide but I think that people would have noticed if blood loading didnt work.

I love how every one on this thread who starts out by saying that Viren didnt dope then goes on to defend blood doping.

again I will repeat, it was not cheating at the time Viren may have used such methods. after 1984 this procedure became illegal, please move on.

ethical cheater wrote:

I love how every one on this thread who starts out by saying that Viren didnt dope then goes on to defend blood doping.

ethical cheater wrote:

I dont know about nitric oxide but I think that people would have noticed if blood loading didnt work.

Yes, I see your point, and of course there are certainly other mechanisms involved that would still make it possibly advantageous even with the loss of NO. However, look at what Renato says about certain Italian runners who performed WORSE after blood transfusions. It clearly is not a sure-fire way to improve with all runners. And as far as "people noticing if blood loading didn't work," let's face it, humans are nothing if stubborn. If they believe something works, A) there might be a placebo effect, and B) they will keep doing it even if the evidence is right in their face that it ain't working. There are countless examples of this in athletics (training concepts, nutrition strategies, etc that people use even when they are not improving or have no evidence that their method is working. They believe in it, so they keep doing it)

Blood doping didn't work. The athletes who tried it usually became weak and sick. Why all the fuss now?