In fact, I would know. It’s the same with any industry or group of people: you spend enough time with anyone and you get a sense if they’re an amoral, stone faced liar or not.
It’s not impossible that every one of the many, many athletes I’ve gotten to know well is just that. But then it’s also not impossible that your work mate is stealing from you or getting his end away with your lady when you’re not watching. But how likely is that? How probable is it that every person you know well, and have known for years, lies to your face and to everyone else every bloody day? You’re painting a picture of a world where, at some point in a young athlete’s career, they get told “the secret” — that everyone’s a fraud — and that you must join in and become a liar as well if you’re going to continue on in this game. And somehow, every single athlete agrees to it and not a single athlete declines and speaks out about this deception. It’s just completely out of reality.
You seem to be making two assumptions that are sending you far astray on this: the ease of evading doping controls and the propensity of a person to be dishonest.
Firstly, for athletes at the top, the testing and recorded profiles are such that, in the long run, irregularities are likely to be detected. That doesn’t make it impossible, as there are a number athletes whom I am convinced are frauds but remain successful and uncaught. But it isn’t simple.
Secondly, most athletes don’t want to be frauds. Put aside the sense of shame if caught for a moment, would you want to lie, over and over again, to your peers, friends, family and the public about yourself? To be sure, this isn’t everyone. A common saying many of the frauds subscribe to is, “if you don’t test positive, you did not cheat.” Which is absurd but I know athletes that have said that. And you won’t be surprised: they were convicted of doping. But that’s a minority, certainly in the Western world.
Two facts show that you don't know what the athletes around you are doing. Firstly, only 1% of tests are positive; secondly, confidential athlete surveys show that at least 1 in 3 championship athletes and may even more than 1 in 2 admit to doping. But they aren't going to tell you. Informed estimates put actual doping as far higher than the numbers caught.
Incredibly ambitious people will do whatever they can to succeed. For many athletes, and especially professionals, their sport is their life. The understanding they will have that other athletes are doping changes the ethics of it for the professional athlete. It is no longer "cheating" but doing what you have to.
Lastly, from a long-time observer of sports the degrees of improvement I have seen over the years cannot be explained by talent and training alone. Former champions lacked neither. Now journeymen far exceed past accomplishments. That's doping. No racehorse today has gotten near Secretariat's 1973 achievements. In human terms, 1973 has been utterly relegated to the past - in every sense. Horses haven't evolved in half a century and neither have we.
How many should you expect to return an adverse finding? This is less about any one test and more the cumulative amount of data points that the anti doping authorities will have on suspicious athletes.
The survey in question found 29% of the more than 1800 athletes at the 2011 World Championships admitted to breaking anti doping regulations at least once in the prior 12 months. Based on my experience, not considering the former Soviet states, the ratio of athletes following the regulations versus those trying to evade them is roughly 80/20. Take the 2011 survey and excise Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey and India from those figures (you can count those at essentially 100 pct doping) and you end up with 21 pct admitting violations, which is consistent with what most of us in the industry understand.
Your second paragraph makes a number of assumptions and broad generalisations. You state, “The understanding they will have that other athletes are doping changes the ethics of it for the professional athlete. It is no longer "cheating" but doing what you have to.” That’s all bunk, of course. There’s no industry, business or profession known to man that is without its rule breakers. But it’s entirely out of order to assume that all success is derived from corruption. Perhaps you’ve just had some unusually poor experiences to sadly believe that every successful person is a liar and a fraud.
I cannot highlight this enough: you’re sorely incorrect to assume that everyone simply checks their morals at the gate when they become an athlete. I say that not out of assumption but from experience. I have been very fortunate to know many champions in our sport in both a professional and personal capacity and most have been good and honest persons.
Finally, it is beyond absurd that you’re using one horse as the metric for all human athletic performance. There is so much wrong with your comparison, beginning with the fact that doping in thoroughbred racing is a major issue and you seem to not consider that Secretariat may have been an incredible responder to drugs 50 years ago that modern day testing may now make impossible to use in similar amounts, if at all.
Evolution has not changed in any significant way in our population in 50 years time. But millions more humans have trained in the sport since that time and that’s more potential talent that has entered our sport, and from different parts of the world. Talent can come from anywhere but it’s not evenly distributed.
Our knowledge and tools for training have improved at the same time. There were no sprinters who were having there starts and drive phases measured by computers down to the thousandths of a second when Secretariat was making his mark. Footwear has advanced tremendously, albeit to an absurd degree in the longer races in recent years. Knowledge on nutrition has improved, as has methods in recovery and injury prevention. Care to guess how many athletes had dedicated nutritionists, personal chefs, physio therapists and strength coaches fifty years ago?
If you read the article he only hit that high volume for 3 weeks. Also I think people underestimate how simple life is at a Kenyan training camp. These guys can go for weeks without getting in a car. Runs stop and start from camp, warmups to the track. They LITERALLY do nothing besides run and rest.
He’s young and he can recover quickly, he may not have a long career either. Most of the time these Kenyans bang bang bang the drum and flame out. The Ethiopians have longer careers, train more long term approach
It's interesting to consider that if Kiptum and Kipchoge are assumed equal from a talent perspective, how the training volume will make an impact. I think it gives Kiptum a higher peak (which we're seeing) but a quicker burnout: Hot take - he will never break 2.
Typical Training Week of many/most World Elite Marathoners (note it looks similar to what Rodgers and Shorter and Seko and DeCastella did in the 1970's/early 80's) in the last 12 weeks before a marathon.
Mon - main: 18-20k easy run
Mon - secondary: 10-12k easy run
Tue - main: Quality workout involving threshold work (repeats or tempos)
Tue - secondary: 10-12k easy run
Wed - main: 18-20k easy run
Wed - secondary: 10-12k easy run
Thu - main: 18-20k easy run
Thu - secondary: 10-12k easy run
Fri - main: Quality workout involving repeats at anywhere between 3k and 8k race pace or hill repeats
Fri - secondary: 10-12k easy run
Sat - main: 18-20k easy run
Sat - secondary: 10-12k easy run
Sun - main: Long run (usually involving sections at marathon race rhythm) - 32-40k Total
Sun - secondary: rest
Weekly Total: ~215-230k ( ~ 135-145 miles)
The difference between the times now and the times then mainly equipment (shoes and recovery aids) and a little bit of better sequencing of specific workouts as we learn more physiologically.
Two facts show that you don't know what the athletes around you are doing. Firstly, only 1% of tests are positive; secondly, confidential athlete surveys show that at least 1 in 3 championship athletes and may even more than 1 in 2 admit to doping. But they aren't going to tell you. Informed estimates put actual doping as far higher than the numbers caught.
Incredibly ambitious people will do whatever they can to succeed. For many athletes, and especially professionals, their sport is their life. The understanding they will have that other athletes are doping changes the ethics of it for the professional athlete. It is no longer "cheating" but doing what you have to.
Lastly, from a long-time observer of sports the degrees of improvement I have seen over the years cannot be explained by talent and training alone. Former champions lacked neither. Now journeymen far exceed past accomplishments. That's doping. No racehorse today has gotten near Secretariat's 1973 achievements. In human terms, 1973 has been utterly relegated to the past - in every sense. Horses haven't evolved in half a century and neither have we.
How many should you expect to return an adverse finding? This is less about any one test and more the cumulative amount of data points that the anti doping authorities will have on suspicious athletes.
The survey in question found 29% of the more than 1800 athletes at the 2011 World Championships admitted to breaking anti doping regulations at least once in the prior 12 months. Based on my experience, not considering the former Soviet states, the ratio of athletes following the regulations versus those trying to evade them is roughly 80/20. Take the 2011 survey and excise Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey and India from those figures (you can count those at essentially 100 pct doping) and you end up with 21 pct admitting violations, which is consistent with what most of us in the industry understand.
Your second paragraph makes a number of assumptions and broad generalisations. You state, “The understanding they will have that other athletes are doping changes the ethics of it for the professional athlete. It is no longer "cheating" but doing what you have to.” That’s all bunk, of course. There’s no industry, business or profession known to man that is without its rule breakers. But it’s entirely out of order to assume that all success is derived from corruption. Perhaps you’ve just had some unusually poor experiences to sadly believe that every successful person is a liar and a fraud.
I cannot highlight this enough: you’re sorely incorrect to assume that everyone simply checks their morals at the gate when they become an athlete. I say that not out of assumption but from experience. I have been very fortunate to know many champions in our sport in both a professional and personal capacity and most have been good and honest persons.
Finally, it is beyond absurd that you’re using one horse as the metric for all human athletic performance. There is so much wrong with your comparison, beginning with the fact that doping in thoroughbred racing is a major issue and you seem to not consider that Secretariat may have been an incredible responder to drugs 50 years ago that modern day testing may now make impossible to use in similar amounts, if at all.
Evolution has not changed in any significant way in our population in 50 years time. But millions more humans have trained in the sport since that time and that’s more potential talent that has entered our sport, and from different parts of the world. Talent can come from anywhere but it’s not evenly distributed.
Our knowledge and tools for training have improved at the same time. There were no sprinters who were having there starts and drive phases measured by computers down to the thousandths of a second when Secretariat was making his mark. Footwear has advanced tremendously, albeit to an absurd degree in the longer races in recent years. Knowledge on nutrition has improved, as has methods in recovery and injury prevention. Care to guess how many athletes had dedicated nutritionists, personal chefs, physio therapists and strength coaches fifty years ago?
You make a lot of points there - possibly too many to address in one response.
The first thing, which is known to be true by those in antidoping, is that the numbers doping will considerably exceed the numbers caught, because doping continues to be more sophisticated than antidoping. That means athletes will dope but you - we - won't know it (although we may sometimes suspect it).
In many sports - like weightlifting, body-building and cycling - we have seen that doping has become effectively the norm at the top. That means those competitors will have a different set of values from amateurs in previous generations when doping was largely unknown. WADA has put T and F in the same category as the sports above for risk of doping. I add that I do not say all athletes will be doping but the likelihood is that those at the top level will be.
I gave Secretariat as an example of how horse-racing has not evolved in decades, despite breeding and scientific training. (No one in the sport suggests Secretariat was doped - and he was tested immediately after each race in an era when doping couldn't be masked). The continuous rate of improvement in human running cannot be explained by physiological evolution/breeding and even superior training, which is based on the same methods developed decades ago. These improvements go far beyond what I consider is natural. I simply do not believe that an athlete today can run two miles consecutively at the same speed highly-trained athletes in the 60's ran one mile. The prevalence of doping in all sports now tells me how it is done.
I'm genuinely interested in your opinion on the matter.
I am of the view that there isn't a clean world record today in any running event. It is probably decades since there was. Doping has turned professional sport into an arms race.
If you read the article he only hit that high volume for 3 weeks. Also I think people underestimate how simple life is at a Kenyan training camp. These guys can go for weeks without getting in a car. Runs stop and start from camp, warmups to the track. They LITERALLY do nothing besides run and rest.
He’s young and he can recover quickly, he may not have a long career either. Most of the time these Kenyans bang bang bang the drum and flame out. The Ethiopians have longer careers, train more long term approach
Running Times had an article about "Camp Kenya" early in this century. The writer went there to train with them. He said the most active anyone got when they weren't running was to roll over as they lay in the sun between runs.
The diet was simple and plentiful- some meat, vegetables and that maze stuff they eat.
If you read the article he only hit that high volume for 3 weeks. Also I think people underestimate how simple life is at a Kenyan training camp. These guys can go for weeks without getting in a car. Runs stop and start from camp, warmups to the track. They LITERALLY do nothing besides run and rest.
He’s young and he can recover quickly, he may not have a long career either. Most of the time these Kenyans bang bang bang the drum and flame out. The Ethiopians have longer careers, train more long term approach
Running Times had an article about "Camp Kenya" early in this century. The writer went there to train with them. He said the most active anyone got when they weren't running was to roll over as they lay in the sun between runs.
The diet was simple and plentiful- some meat, vegetables and that maze stuff they eat.
How many should you expect to return an adverse finding? This is less about any one test and more the cumulative amount of data points that the anti doping authorities will have on suspicious athletes.
The survey in question found 29% of the more than 1800 athletes at the 2011 World Championships admitted to breaking anti doping regulations at least once in the prior 12 months. Based on my experience, not considering the former Soviet states, the ratio of athletes following the regulations versus those trying to evade them is roughly 80/20. Take the 2011 survey and excise Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey and India from those figures (you can count those at essentially 100 pct doping) and you end up with 21 pct admitting violations, which is consistent with what most of us in the industry understand.
Your second paragraph makes a number of assumptions and broad generalisations. You state, “The understanding they will have that other athletes are doping changes the ethics of it for the professional athlete. It is no longer "cheating" but doing what you have to.” That’s all bunk, of course. There’s no industry, business or profession known to man that is without its rule breakers. But it’s entirely out of order to assume that all success is derived from corruption. Perhaps you’ve just had some unusually poor experiences to sadly believe that every successful person is a liar and a fraud.
I cannot highlight this enough: you’re sorely incorrect to assume that everyone simply checks their morals at the gate when they become an athlete. I say that not out of assumption but from experience. I have been very fortunate to know many champions in our sport in both a professional and personal capacity and most have been good and honest persons.
Finally, it is beyond absurd that you’re using one horse as the metric for all human athletic performance. There is so much wrong with your comparison, beginning with the fact that doping in thoroughbred racing is a major issue and you seem to not consider that Secretariat may have been an incredible responder to drugs 50 years ago that modern day testing may now make impossible to use in similar amounts, if at all.
Evolution has not changed in any significant way in our population in 50 years time. But millions more humans have trained in the sport since that time and that’s more potential talent that has entered our sport, and from different parts of the world. Talent can come from anywhere but it’s not evenly distributed.
Our knowledge and tools for training have improved at the same time. There were no sprinters who were having there starts and drive phases measured by computers down to the thousandths of a second when Secretariat was making his mark. Footwear has advanced tremendously, albeit to an absurd degree in the longer races in recent years. Knowledge on nutrition has improved, as has methods in recovery and injury prevention. Care to guess how many athletes had dedicated nutritionists, personal chefs, physio therapists and strength coaches fifty years ago?
You make a lot of points there - possibly too many to address in one response.
The first thing, which is known to be true by those in antidoping, is that the numbers doping will considerably exceed the numbers caught, because doping continues to be more sophisticated than antidoping. That means athletes will dope but you - we - won't know it (although we may sometimes suspect it).
In many sports - like weightlifting, body-building and cycling - we have seen that doping has become effectively the norm at the top. That means those competitors will have a different set of values from amateurs in previous generations when doping was largely unknown. WADA has put T and F in the same category as the sports above for risk of doping. I add that I do not say all athletes will be doping but the likelihood is that those at the top level will be.
I gave Secretariat as an example of how horse-racing has not evolved in decades, despite breeding and scientific training. (No one in the sport suggests Secretariat was doped - and he was tested immediately after each race in an era when doping couldn't be masked). The continuous rate of improvement in human running cannot be explained by physiological evolution/breeding and even superior training, which is based on the same methods developed decades ago. These improvements go far beyond what I consider is natural. I simply do not believe that an athlete today can run two miles consecutively at the same speed highly-trained athletes in the 60's ran one mile. The prevalence of doping in all sports now tells me how it is done.
You write that, “doping continues to be more sophisticated than antidoping” — on what do you base that assessment? What measures have been taken to allow athletes to take drugs at the same levels as they could forty years ago? I’ve written this before: Valarie Adams is the greatest of all time in the women’s shot put and her PB is only the 183rd best mark in history. The women’s throws, long jump and sprints all time lists are all dominated by marks from decades ago. This does no favours for your position that the doping is always ahead of the the anti doping measures.
You write, “we have seen that doping has become effectively the norm at the top. That means those competitors will have a different set of values from amateurs in previous generations when doping was largely unknown.” I ask again, on what do you base this broad generalisation? Because I am happy to report to you from the top of the sport, that it is in fact not standard. Most of the athletes who advocate for clean sport are not lying through their teeth. The anti doping controls are good at the top level and most athletes are not looking to cross the line or even allow themselves to come too close to it. I’ve seen adverse findings that detected banned substances in the amount of a few parts per billion. The anti doping agencies have the isotope test that works out the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-13 in the testosterone in your sample to verify whether it’s of artificial origin or not. The ABP keeps track of everyone at the top and, perhaps most important of all, you’re guilty until proven innocent in this system.
You write that Secretariat was tested post race. As were Marita Koch and Kratochvílová. And they all passed their one off tests. You also write, “The continuous rate of improvement in human running cannot be explained by physiological evolution/breeding and even superior training, which is based on the same methods developed decades ago.” On what, if anything, do you base this?
Firstly, is it continuous? The world records in the women’s shot put, discus, 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m and high jump may as well be written in granite. The men’s long jump has improved all of 5cm in 55 years.
Secondly, why do you accept that Ron Clarke was able to legitimately run 10000m nearly a minute faster than Vladimir Kuts (who was on drugs) had less than a decade prior, and ninety seconds faster than Zatopek had run, and yet you are in disbelief that the world record could legitimately move one minute more thirty years on, and just twenty seconds further in an additional twenty five years? Ron Clarke wasn’t even a full time athlete for many of his prime years, spending ages 19 to 23 focusing on his accountancy education and career, as well as playing in the VFL. And yet your mind cannot fathom that someone with more talent and who is more focused in his prime years could run much faster.
I’m unsure how this could be difficult to understand, but the 1960s were not the pinnacle of human athleticism. Being able to focus 100% as an athlete instead of having to work at the factory or even at an office to make a wage is a massive advantage. I’ve already mentioned the improvements in nutrition, recovery and yes, footwear. It’s unknowable what the stars from sixty years ago would have run with these improvements, but likely much closer to what we’re seeing now.
However, without any personal or professional experience with today’s top athletes, you continue to close your mind to the possibility that humans are capable of running much faster than the top athletes of sixty years ago. Your heroes from the 1960s and 70s who have stayed in the sport would tell you how wrong you are, if you were to ask them.
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