Frank Shorter in the NYTimes basically convicts all of Kenya for doping

Replace money with drugs in those sentences and see if you feel the same. The argument you're making is the argument that Lance, essentially made: Everyone was doing it.

And the fact that accepting money evened out inequities due to geography or the fortune of birth, is just the same as saying drugs even out inequities due to , well, geography, and the fortune of birth (genetics....). To say that some of the rules were arbitrary concerning money is exactly the same as saying some of the rules concerning doping are arbitrary - and they are. I mention only TUE's but there's plenty of other substantiaing evidence to my point as anyone who follows the sport knows.

I said above that Shorter must speak out on this. We all must. And, I'll even concede that breaking some rules is worse than breaking others. But, he does so as someone who also broke the rules enforce at the time, not as someone from an era of purity and as a paragon of virtue. That's the point I and a few others are making here.

Mundus Vult wrote:

cash cheats out! wrote:

Shorter was an amateur cheat. Lifetime banishment was the punishment when he was taking money illegally.

I was about to post the same basic thing.

The Shorter fan-boys will all come on here an tell you how that is "hardly the same thing." But, it isn't. Frank--and his fans--rationalization of his own cheating rests upon the identical fallacies that drug cheats use to justify their cheating.

And, to be clear, I am all for performance enhancing drug use. Legalize it all.

You guys are as dumb as horse shit. You also seem to have absolutely no historical understanding of the situation. Do you really think that taking money and pushing for professionalism was hurting the sport and is comparable to doping. Really, I have read a lot of really, really stupid things on this site, but you have manage to rise to the top [which I suppose we would really think of as the bottom.].

'All this noise is window dressing the IAAF, IOC, WMM and what ever other alphabet soup organization does not give a rip about about PEDs, '

You are right about the IAAF if you look at the bio's of dopers their is no mention of bans at all and they rarely cover it in the news

I'm not going to replace money with drugs in those sentences because the situations simply are not the same. The sport was a de facto pro sport by the 70s. Everyone knew it and no one had been suspended for taking money for about two decades. You could see athletes taking money. They acknowledged it openly with each other. How did I know Aki-Bua thought he wasn't getting paid enough? He told me. We didn't even know each other. we just happened to be changing in the same row of lockers. Can you imagine an athlete today chatting in a locker room with a stranger and saying, "I'm running slower than usual because my HGH shipment hasn't come through?"

But none of this matters. What people think of Shorter and athletes in the amateur era who took money has nothing to do with the business of whether or not Kenyan drug testing is in adequate and whether it would be good to implement Shorter's idea.

You know from reading this thread, and, most probably, from your own recollection that Shorter testified that he was doing it, then, before Montreal, backpedaled. Why, if there was no real threat of sanction would he do that? Why was Cascade Runoff in '81 such a newsworthy and radical event?

So, while running luminaries may have confided to you in a lockerroom about their breaking of the rules, they sure in the heck weren't doing it in public.

And, if you do a search here, I think the thread still exists in which I - and a few others, including Malmo - talk about drug use, especially at AW. I was a relative running nobody, but, I knew many of the running somebodies in Eugene in the late 80s and early 90s. Several of them had just the same sort of candid conversations with me about drug use as Aki-Bua did with you about money.

I'm going to try to spend the rest of the day grading, as I should, but I feel strongly that this is a conversation really worth having, a debate worth joining. It's disingenuous, just as it was with the old shamateurism, to pretend that the boundaries between purity and guilt when it comes to drug use are well-defined. Why are some drugs on the banned list but not others? Why is there such a thing as a TUE? If a record was set 10years ago by a runner using a substance not banned then but banned now, especially because testers didn't know it existed, should it still be a record? Where do vitamins end and cheating begin? What should we do about people who used oxygen tents?

If the people who really care about this sport could come to something close to consensus, or, at least, clarity about these sorts of questions (there are many many more) than we might have a better shot at saving the sport from the scourge of cheaters. George Polya says that in order to solve a problem, you must first understand it. I don't think we do. That goes for social problems like cheating even more so than for mathematical problems that Polya was talking about. Then we can define what's cutting the course and what's shaving the tangents.

realistically wrote:

Mundus Vult wrote:

the world wants to believe in Mark McGuire and Lance Armstrong and Carl Lewis.

Oops. Brain fart.

Carl testing positive for tiny amounts of pseudoephedrine and related alkaloids--too small to trigger a positive result under today's doping rules--contained in an herbal supplement he and other members of the SMTC were taking in 1988 & having the case summarily dismissed as inadvertent use does not equate to Carl using anabolic steroids, HGH, EPO, etc. etc.

The smear campaign against Carl by Ben Johnson that attempts to equate their respective "drug usages" is a reflection of Ben's complete lack of character and continuing refusal to take responsibility for his actions.

There were never rumors or more accurately "chatter" about the possibility of Carl on PEDS in the circles close to him back in the day.

There was chatter about other aspects of his life, that, frankly, no one should have cared about.

I cared.

Enquiring minds want to know.

Nothing wrong with that.

bingo.

I also cared.

Again, there were rules in place that allowed athletes to be banned if they took money and you couldn't thumb your nose at the system. The reason the '81 Cascade Run Off was news was that it did thumb its nose at the system and took the money that people had gotten under the table and without acknowledgement and put it on the table. The athletes involved were openly admitting they were professionals. That made it news. What does any of that have to do with the possibility that drug testing in Kenya is inadequate and may be allowing athletes there to get away with things they wouldn't get away with in other countries?

I think there were - just a debate about their actual 'performance' enhancement and the 'policing' agency/individuals were pretty confused about how to handle certain cases. But water under the bridge imho

Mundus Vult wrote:

cash cheats out! wrote:

Shorter was an amateur cheat. Lifetime banishment was the punishment when he was taking money illegally.

I was about to post the same basic thing.

The Shorter fan-boys will all come on here an tell you how that is "hardly the same thing." But, it isn't. Frank--and his fans--rationalization of his own cheating rests upon the identical fallacies that drug cheats use to justify their cheating.

And, to be clear, I am all for performance enhancing drug use. Legalize it all.

Just because you favor it doesn't carry any weight. If it were a democratic choice, you would lose. You are just one voice and opinion, it doesn't mean that people of a different opinion are idiots.

You have made your stance clear, now that is the end. Just because you are in favor of drugs and you are very definitive about it, doesn't mean it is the best way or the way that will be adopted.

minong wrote:

Shorter:

“Of course, doctors would be good coaches and agents, right?” he asked, sarcastically. “My statement to my friends then was: ‘Kenyans on drugs, it’s all over. Nobody has a chance.’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/sports/holes-in-kenyas-doping-system-cast-a-shadow-on-all-its-runners.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region

You don't understand why, when doctors got involved, that it was over? Why would a doctor suddenly start COACHING and AGENTING for no-name distance runners?

Because they knew what it could do for these runners and how much money these doped runners could make.

Certainly there were doped runners in the 60s, 70s and 80s, but at the dawn of the 90s when EPO started to be used the biggest gains were made. Anybody who was in the sport back then understands this inherently. If you don't, nobody can help you.

nameeman wrote:

My God are Galen Rupp and Mo Farrah the only runners capable of world medals by hard work alone?

Galen Rupp Number on Fan wrote:

I honestly agree with you. RUpp is one of the FEW clean guys out there- even if the TUE stuff is in a gray-area.

The limit for (clean) human performance is probably fairly close to 3:30/12:55/26:40;59:00. I'm quite suspicious of any times that exceed those by to much.

I was being sarcastic you numbnuts ( and I hope you were too).

Let me ask you: Does it makes sense that the guy who is close to reaching these levels of human potential is a guy who is suffering from not one but a handful of super-rare diseases that negatively effect how good of a distance runner you can be? Does it makes sense that this same guy has run a whopping 30 SECONDS faster than any white guy has ever run before the TUE era? And as far as the other fellow. Does it makes sense that the best runner in the world right now, even when it is being proven that all the guys behind him are probably doping, is a guy that was a mid-packer up until he hooked with the aforementioned runner's coach? Does it makes sense that this guy surpassed your 1500 meter human limit when he ran 3:28 WEEKS BEFORE he wins a 5000/10000 meter double at the WC? Once again beating the best dopers in the world?

Boy this just proves that Salazar apologists are in greater denial than any Armstong fanboy has ever been.

It is ridiculous to equate accepting money for your profession to illegally enhancing your performance through drugs, blood doping, or other means.

Shorter at the time was no different from the other top amateurs in the west, who were not state supported, unlike the doper Cierpinski--both paid to compete and given drugs. Shorter is right. If you take Kenyans with a superior athletic heritage, at the very least, in running and give them no doping controls inside their country, plus Italian agent/doctors, then you get a ridiculous procession of no names running as fast or faster than Haile Gebrselassie.

I am not getting your point. You seem to be working hard to make this discussion about Rupp. Are you seriously saying that, before last week, this board threw less accusations at Rupp than Rita Jeptoo and her colleagues? In this thread, people are mainly looking at the current HM and marathoners. There may be some who are doubting some past 5000 /10000 times. I don't think all sub 3:30s are suspect. Farrah's 3:28 was surprising but he was chasing Kiprop and preparing to have a fast 1000 close to the 5000 and 10000.Also, to your other 'arguments': 1) compare Farrah's improvement to E Mutai who has been marathoning a long time and just now ran a 2:03. It's quite an improvement but I can find other athletes who improved late in their careers'. For example, Meb also pr'd and won two WMm's late in his career. Is he doping? 2) Rupp's 10000 pr is 15, not 30, seconds faster than Solinsky's. CS accomplished that on his first attempt at 10009 while beating Rupp ( perhaps you think Solinsky is on drugs, please advise). Rupp's 5000 pr is slower than a few white guys and his HM pr is slower than that of Hall and Ritz. I don't know much about any TUE he had or has and I doubt you 'know' anything either. News flash: there can be discussions that are not focused on Rupp!

To add to your point, many amateur rules are a poor attempt at creating the ideal of sportsmanship in athletics. In a perfect world, athletes would not be competing for money and we would get what we all want which is authentic competition. The problem is that athletic spectacles generate money and if the money is not going to the athletes then who is it going to? This is the NCAA's problem today. All of the basketball players in March Madness come out behind under the current setup. The athletes need to be getting a cut of the revenue generated by their participation in the event. Shorter broke the rules, but he broke rules that were disenfranchising. Jim Crow laws of the south were a more extreme example of disenfranchising law. People calling Shorter a hypocrite are forgetting that some laws really should not be followed.

Considering the current landscape of compensating athletes and the rampant, unmanageable cheating that comes along with that shows the entirety of the spectrum. Money in athletics is the balance beam that authentic competition rests on. The situation itself suggests a number of ways to deal with the issue. Shorter proposes his schematic of having the athletic spectacle use some of the revenue to test the athletes they invite to the competition. There are more effective and creative ways to find the balance.

Amateur rules were imposed by the olympics and nearly destroyed professional track. It took 28 years for performances to recover to the professional levels of the 1880's.

Why did the olympics impose that amateurism thing, I think two reasons. First, it was cheaper - they couldn't have a big international competition and pay everyone or hand out a bunch of prize money. Even today, IAAF prize money is diddly squat. All they could afford to pay was officials, organizers etc. who were not expected to be amateur.

Second reason is they wanted a lot of countries to participate. If the real athletes were allowed, most countries would have nobody to compete with them and wouldn't bother attending. Their newspapers would ignore it and it would fail its goal of being the party everyone goes to.

What the reason for sure was not was the ancient greeks, whose athletes were well paid. That didn't fit in with the european organizers' romantic notions about the olympics so they replaced it with romantic baloney about the virtues of poverty.

That a strictly amateur competition became the de facto world championship was a tragedy for the sport, and it has never been the same since. Sports dominated by the IOC are stunted and impoverished, and those that aren't flourish. Track is a quadrennial sideshow compared to true professional sports like cycling.

This thread has made me think of the issue more deeply. I thank all of the posters here--bravo for keeping it on-point and relatively decent in tone and language. Link, John Stuart Mill, et. al. have made excellent points.

I do not believe this has been asked, but I may have missed a post or two. In any case, I ask: would, say, Mitt Romney's son (I believe he has boys only) have a competive advantage? Being the son of a very rich man, Romney's son would not have to work, could train as much and as diligently as his coach (who would be the best available) would direct, and this same young man would have access to the best supplements, facilities, and resources available.