Running Conspiracy theories - Share the wildest story you've heard here

The obvious one I can't see in this thread is Flo Jo being 'forced' to retire at the end of 1988. It was long rumoured that she'd also had a dubious test result in Seoul, and after Johnson's bust, the IAAF couldn't allow such another high profile case. The US federation were able to negotiate a retirement, go away quietly at the end of the season, rather than a ban.

To add some credence to this, there is someone who now works for World Athletics, and was a former Coach, who confirmed this to me, and told me who was in the very room when the decision was agreed. (That I cannot tell on here I'm afraid, as it could potentially implicate them..)

That same person also told me of:

1. Issues with Michael Johnson's urine sample from his first 200m WR, his 19.66 from Atlanta 1996.

2. That the then IAAF were target testing a number of UK athletes in 07/08, including Nicola Sanders.

They also helped me confirm some investigative work I had done on Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad. He had changed his training location without updating the French Federation & 'disappeared'. He was supposed to at a particular training camp but was actually somewhere else, a location notorious as a drug-smuggling route into France.

Some GDR/GER ones..

1. Katrin Krabbe also trained through her ban & intended to return to competition like Grit Breuer...but then fell pregnant, and hence retired. Their coach continued to dope his athletes, not only Breuer on her return, but also 2000 Olympic 800m Champion Nils Schumann, 400m Hurdler Ulrike Urbansky and others. (He was was eventually charged & banned for trying to administer drugs to minors in 2006)

2. Sigrun Wodars nee Grau was supposed to be in the GER 4x4 team in 1992, but the selectors did not tell her until the day of the final...and she had been out shopping in high-heels, and hurt her ankle (!) so Linda Kisabaka ran instead.

3. Heike Drechsler ran a 35.0 over 300m in 1986, but like the fabled 78.14 DT for Martina Hellman, it was unsanctioned & not official.

US 200M runner Pam Marshall cheated a dope test by putting vinegar in her sample.

US 100m runner Dianne Williams used to have to shave her facial hair as a result of steroid abuse.

Alice Brown was also doped up to the gills. I also heard Ashford like a line of coke.

I think we all know that Merlene Ottey escaped a doping ban in 1999 on a technicality.

Marita Koch supposedly ran a 200m time trial of either 21.3h or 21.54 official (depending on who you ask) a week before her 400m world record.

Also - a runner for UTRGV who was on the XC roster from 2002-2005 used EPO, and was kicked off the team because of it. Supposedly he had either gotten the EPO from a pharmacy he worked at or from across the border.

Not saying his name because i've heard threats of legal action mentioned whenever someone brings this up, but it's pretty easy to find who i'm talking about.

You clearly aren't reading/comprehending so this is getting a fraction troubling. From the start I have said I am not sure what I believe. My original post was referencing that more than one source (not me) has over the course of multiple years said something funky happened with an element of the timing that night which a) isn't unusual but b) would at the same time would be terrible coincidence given what happened in this race. When you look at the race/broadcast there are a number of atypical things that would validate that as plausible - not absolute or a fact - this never has that been said. Grow up.

Since you are so good at timing off a screen, go and time the final 200m (which is actually a really easy segment to do) and tell me what time you get. Also, as others have mentioned - if YOU are timing 3.26.0 off the video then the actual ET/FAT is almost certainly 1-2 tenths slower - do some research bud.

Florence Joyner was told (by US and IOC officials not to be named here) to take her gold medals and go home and her drug tests would be buried. She never raced again after Seoul. Captains voting meeting with all the USA T & F athletes, if I wasn't watching her speaking I'd have been sure it was a man talking. Plus the layers of pancake makeup on her face...

If there was anyone who would have made boat loads of money post-Seoul it was her. How else to explain why she dropped out of view completely? I was there. Saw her, heard her. No getting around it. She was clearly on something...

It's more like 1/10ths of a second that's debatable. And it's totally believable. If you think you can time an older race through TV coverage footage to be within a tenth of a second of an FAT time, I've got a bridge to sell you. There's a lot of confounding variables. When does the gun actually go off? How far was the microphone from the gun? Angles make it hard to accurately get splits. Angles also make it hard to see when they actually cross the line for the finish, can you really tell when their torso crosses? All of these things can definitely add up to a few tenths.

I've sat in the stands of a million meets, timing races for fun with a stopwatch and comparing to official results. If I get really lucky, I'm within a tenth. Most of the time I'm a few tenths faster than the actual result. And that's with me close to the starter and the start line.

Well I've always thought Khalid Skah did collude with his teammate Boutayeb in the '92 Olympic 10,000 final, and that claim it was Boutayeb acting on his own was a load of bunk.

But if we're talking big conspiracies, it's that Nike has been supporting doping of its athletes, and working to circumvent drug testing going back to Athletics West.

flo jo conspiracy theory she was clean

she was mid 22x 200 in her prime years

a few years after prime,. she went to 21 low. 200

combine that with the beard, adams apple, voice, and camouflage makeup

and the advice on protocol from Ben - Charlie Francis

and the coverup on testing

and having a steroid coach

just a bit sus.

No contest. Biggest running conspiracy in history was the effing scare tactic myth that you needed to protect yourself and others from Covid-19 by wearing a mask while running. The idiots who ran masked would never admit it today.

bostonmagazine.com

Here's Some Advice on Wearing a Face Mask While Running

Tessa Yannone

Being caught without a mask could now cost you up to $300.

Open link

I've been part of a relay that was hand timed, and we found out after the fact that the timers had agreed to stop the watch in time to have our team break the existing record. They were shocked when we smashed it anyway, but this does happen.

Read up on this too on some ol' threads. Didn't some dude die and it got covered up cause of dopin' connections? AW closed down right after. I'm about a decade from bein' born at that point so someone's prolly got a better perspective than me but somethin' fun to dig through the boards for. Hopin' the mods ain't scrubbed it and that my comments don't get wiped too!

The Chinese track was short for sure. The world record race for W 1500m has a video of the entire field of 5 foot nothing Chinese women waddling through 300m in 42-44. Someone then posted a bunch of videos of super elite men’s fields getting getting after it and going through 300m at the same pace.

The number one selling product Chinese tourists buy in Australia is baby formula because Chinese people don’t trust Chinese companies to use safe ingredients in baby formula. That should tell you about the unethical nature of Chinese enterprise. They will even stoop so low as to use tainted ingredients in baby formula. Making a short track is nothing to them.

Honestly seeing this video doesn't do much to dissuade my suspicion. A whole lot of odd 2 second cuts and weird angles that almost look like they were compiled from multiple races. The footage from the crowd straight up looks like it was filmed in a studio, it stays focused on a small group of people the entire time and the background doesn't match the other clips.

Even if the video is real, there is no way to verify from it that this isn't actually a 380m track track with just the naked eye.

Heres the video. Now watch any mens 1500m that goes through 300m at the same pace to see what is really should look like.

One of my favorite conspiracies is that the wind readings at that same WC were also inaccurate due to poor calibration. Hidden evidence is that the jumping event on a parallel runway during the semifinals of the women's 100m Hurdles reported conflicting wind readings at the time of that race. UofO was quick to coverup the discrepancy and a WR was certified on falsified data.

Heard from athletes at the time that MTC had a dodgy doctor available and that Cathy Freeman perhaps visited them.