Italian runners coming from nowhere at EUs, Worlds, and Olympics

I'm perfectly willing to call balls and strikes on our own American athletes that I think are dopers (basically, anyone sponsored by Nike). I will not support Christian Coleman (whereabouts suspension, suspiciously got slower afterward), Gabbi Thomas (should have been suspended for whereabouts), Matt Centrowitz or Galen Rupp (strong connections to Salazar), Evan Jager (likely doping by biological passport), Karissa Schweizer or Elise Cranny or Courtney Frerichs (strong connections to Shelby Houlihan), and Ajee Wilson (got out of suspension with the good 'ole tainted meat excuse).

For the Italians, I'm not going to talk crap about Gianmarco Tamberi. I think he's really talented and I appreciate his excellence. Nor do I have any problems with Filippo Tortu, Mattia Furlani, or Larisaa Iapichino. They are all super young and certainly very talented. That said, Jacobs (biggest asterisk of a gold medal in the 100 ever, and I'm including Ben Johnson), Simonelli (suddenly running Grant Holloway times, GTFO), Fabbri (1.24 meter improvement just this year!), Dosso (massive improvement out of nowhere), and Battocletti (massive improvement and father was a doper) are athletes I'm going to call out.

Jacobs winning with times around 10 suggests he might be the cleanest 100m champ in fifty years.

Infrastructure matters a lot. Why is Spain suddenly good in jumping? Answer: Ivan Pedroso lives in Guadalajara.

I don't know, man. He's been under 10.0 only 6 times ever and under 9.9 only twice, which just so happened to be the Olympic semifinal and then final, in which he ran a 9.80. Either he impeccably timed the most spectacularly fantastic peak ever, or he was doped to the gills for the Olympics (but may not actually be doping anymore).

One of the most obvious explanation is that 95% of the Italian top athletes have a salary from different military groups. We have Fiamme Oro (Civil Police), Carabinieri (Military Police), Aeronautica (Air Force), Fiamme Gialle (Custom Officers), Fiamme Azzurre (Prisons), Esercito (Army), all groups that give a salary to the recruited athletes of different sports, same level of who really works in the various corps.

In a period where the possibility to have a job becomes a problem in the most part of the European Countries, athletes having a salary for a job in some sport discipline can dedicate all their time to training at max level of commitment, if have great motivation.

But also the different organization (comparing with the past) of the technical development and assistance plays an important role in this explosion. Some year ago (6-7 years) FIDAL decided to name Stefano Baldini as Technical Director of all the Teams (Under 23 - Under 20 - Under 18) while Elio Locatelli was the responsible of the ELITE athletes only.

Some athlete was already in the ELITE group (Tamberi, some of the walkers, Jacob as long jumper, Donato triple jumper now coach, and some few others of high level), but this organization that for young athletes involved their coaches too looked at the "decentralization" instead at the "centralization" we had before.

When I was the Technical Scientific Director in Italy, in 2002, I already made the project of the decentralization for growing coaches technically supported by the National Responsibles of the various sectors, but the Federal Counsil didn't approve the project for administrative reasons, and this was the main reason because I resigned from my role.

Fifteen years later finally the Federation started the project, increasing the budget of the Technical Sector, that in 2000 was no more than 25% of the total Federal budget, and now is around 57% of the total.

These are the reasons, not doping or something strange : more money, more motivation for personal coaches, creation of small groups of top athletes in the same discipline around good coaches, and possibility for every athlete to chose the best coach for them, also abroad (Jacobs with Rana Reider, the pole vaulter Roberta Bruni with the cuban coach of the Olympic Champion Silva, Di Lazzaro in Spain, and many others), while some Italian Coach instead was chosen by foreigner athletes (the British group with Marco Airale in Padova including Neita, Azu, Prescott is an example, Sandro Damilano coach of Chinese walkers another example, for finishing with the strange my situation with a group of Marathon runners including the German Record Holder Amanal Petros, the Swiss Record Holder Tadesse Abraham, the best british Emile Cairess, Zerei Mezngi from Norway, and the best athletes from Uzbekistan, Shokhrukh Davlyatov, plus of course Kenyans and Ethiopians).

The reality is that, in the athletics of today, 95-98% of the activity is individual and personal, and the Federations using the old system of centralization (practically ordering to the athletes what they had to do, so the athletes as "service" for the Federation) don't have anymore power with the strong domestic athletes. The role of a Federation, looking at the eviolution of the Society, must be to be the "service" for the athlete, not the opposite, with the main task to discuss, but to support, the plans of every athlete and their coach.

Your country would never medal in a track event ever if it wasn't for PEDs, the US would be even more dominate if they didn't exist. We actually have competitive programs and coaches that develop athletes at all levels.

These migrant athletes are still cheating... Like what...

No it's not unique, other countries also have state sponsored doping programs...

You say there is stable and lasting progress, but is there a single current Italian junior (U18) athlete that anybody has every heard of?

Just had to look up Duane Ross, to see what he's doing now......$450k sprint coaching job at Tennessee!

What kind of university would hire a doper as their coach?

On the subject of sprinting dopers, i'm from the UK and i'm ashamed of UKA for selecting CJ Ujah for the 100m. They've sold their souls.

Don't worry - you can still bank on right-wing Kilty's changeovers ensuring no-one actually gets a medal.

On 10 October 2022, Ujah was banned for 22 months, backdating to 6 August 2021 and ending on 5 June 2023. Despite the ban, Ujah was cleared of intentionally taking prohibited drugs by the AIU and the World Anti-Doping Agency.

The AIU itself is corrupted by agents from UK. (*)

So the corruption and shame is everywhere.

(*) Now they try to strangle Katir by all means.

My friend, you probably cannot see at what level american society is hill. In Italy there are no medicine adv on the television, drug consumption is lower than the Us, people drink less alcohol and is less affected by mental health problems. Life expectancy is higher. This is a clear plus for Italy.

Second, the US have 200 mln inhabitants and Italy has 60. Infact, USA normally win far more than Italy. Whether from an economic/financial point of view USA is far bigger than Italy, there is not such a wider difference in term of population. You probably feel the USA bigger than they really are.

Third, usually americans have a superiority bias, infact they are prone ti believe the other countries are "less advanced". This is true economically or financially speaking, but it is absolutely false in term of culture or knowledge. For instance, Ivy league universities are full of Italian professors who previously studied in Italian universities: how do you explain that?

In conclusion, in Italy people is healtier on average and LESS PRONE TO USE DRUGS. Second, Italy has quite a wide population and this explains some success statistically. Third, in Italy there is excellence in several fields (phisiology and training tecniques is one of them).

There is no migrant, these are almost all second generation young people, born and raised in Italy. Those who were not born in Italy got there that he was still in diapers, so unless the mother in Africa they put doping in breast milk.
As mentioned above, the totality of which he obtained medals or pbs are all representatives of the law, (Policemen to be understood) so for them to dope would not be so simple... given the collective gatherings even in locations that are military property.
In Italy even doping is a crime, if in the UK you are caught in the fragrant while you receive the stuff from a dealer, the police arrest the dealer, but you are free and they also leave you the stuff, in Italy the police arrest the dealer, they confiscate your stuff, and you’re charged.
These top athletes subject to surprise anti-doping controls throughout the year by WADA, which already excludes substances that are mentioned in this topic such as anabolic steroids, insulin, and EPO. In addition, GH and IGF-1 are now also indirectly detected by abnormal blood parameters.
It can be new doping, in this case it should be state doping. This would include an expense, an investment that for Italy would not be lucrative in any case, given the proceeds that FIDAL receives from victories, in Italy athletics is a poor sport, it would be much more lucrative for a state R&D apparatus for new doping for rich sports like football.
Being police forces and assuming state doping, do you know what that would mean? That entire hierarchic military chains would be involved, from the athletes corporals, up to colonels and generals… this is at least improbable.
The state doping had justifications during the cold war because there was a political enemy, and despite the state expenses the victories served to send a political message, today there is no equally political enemy of Italy, even Russia is not there, there is no Russian athlete.

Finally, today the president of the federation is Stefano Mei, the manager of the fund and middle distance is Federico Leporati, one of the coaches (Marta Zenoni) is Sandro Donati. This triad in Italy has dedicated their entire lives to the fight against doping. Stefano Mei as an athlete has always refused doping, when in the 80s there was state doping. In the '80s, some practices like autohemotransfusion were allowed, but he also refused this.
Federico Leporati was his coach, who passed these values to him. Sandro Donati has been a WADA member, author of books, publications and conferences on the fight against doping all over the world.
If there is state doping these people would hardly not be aware of it, and I do not think that after years and years of fighting doping right now they have made compromises.

This is NOT true. The country of Italy has had virtually NO success in the sport until 2021. Somehow a country that has failed to develop athletes for 100+ years has figured it out in 4 years. A time period where there was significantly less testing.

Your country is horrible at track and no amount of money, or "decentralized" training groups will make it a world class program in 4 years. The US has thousands of development programs and coaches that have been helping runners improve for 40+ years.

Your country being healthier and having less drug addiction does not matter. The only way to get good at track (without a state sponsored doping program) is to have a large resource pool and a sophisticated network to develop it. Italy has none of these things. It's not a surprise your alt right authoritarian government is cheating to try and win medals.

They also had corrupt doctors that fled cycling and distance drug scandals to reinvent themselves in Kenya too.

Just for reference, Italy won 2 Olympic golds in the Marathon in 1988 and 2004, while last victory for USA is from 1972.

Italy do have an history in athletics.

Is this a parody account where you portray the stereotypical retarded American or what?

Very interesting point!
Can you please share more about the sports system in France?
Do elite athletes receive a payment/salary from the French Athletics Federation or only from their Clubs or sponsors?
Is the job of an athletics coach well paid?
Have you seen the training of elite athletes and coaches in the high performance center in Paris called INSEP?

But you have no style, vecchio!

Grovdal's progression is just as extreme and she did it while being 10 years older but of course she is just applying the Norwegian approach .

The coach, Marco Airale, was assistant to Rana Reider in the US. When Reider was banned, Airale moved back home to Italy.