Rojo and Usain Bolt

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We are adamant on LetsRun about revealing possible conflicts of interest and especially when there is a commercial interest involved. That is why we were so critical of Flotrack putting up videos and not noting the shoe companies were paying for them to be made.

As for Rojo's argument, he never said like you write that "he most certainly is not doping for x, y, z reasons."

In essence Rojo said he thinks there is better than a 50% chance Bolt is clean. Nothing certain at all. See this: "Back when I ran a lot, my friends and I liked to play a game. We always threw out the hypothetical of someone coming up to you and saying, “You die if you are wrong, is person x clean or dirty?”

If given a life or death choice with Bolt, I’d say “clean.”"

If Bolt tested positive tomorrow would Rojo be shocked. No.

wejo wrote:

If Bolt tested positive tomorrow would Rojo be shocked. No.

Either way he still wrote a remarkably poorly argued "article." Tell your brother to stick to running and leave analysis regarding baseball, basketball, tennis, and golf to people with the knowledge to speak about those sports in context.

WEJO, Why don't you have a poll on the front page asking people if they think Bolt is clean?

I am sure you are saying you think Bolt is clean to be politically correct. The poll being anonymous would show what people really think. I bet it would be a crazy landslide.

Perhaps my Puma comments are too aggressive and misguided. I had read Zeigler's article and enjoyed it thoroughly, as well as agreed with his contention. Then I read Rojos. It felt contrived and unnecessary.

The fact remains that doping has tainted sprinting for decades now and there is carnage on the track. And as we assess the wreckage we're bound to make associations. Sure we have positives for mild stimulants, diuretics, and full on anabolic steroids, but we also have positives through self admissions. What do we do with the many medal winners who are "known" dopers only because they confessed after the fact? That is where all this trouble lies.

When Chambers finally came clean, he confessed to having doped for at least a year earlier than when he first admitted. His reality was that he had dodged and avoided for a while.

Should we just assume then that Powell has just now dabbled with PEDs for the first time, or that he has merely avoided detection for a very long time? Again...it's entirely as unknown as the hundred plus drug tests passed by Marion Jones.

Bolt's times are superhuman. I'd imagine if Bolt was 6'7 he'd go 9.48, or at least that's what I glean from Rojo's tall freak rant. I imagine then we're bound to see more 6'5 spinsters coming out

One simple comment:

All these high school prodigies didn't go and shoot 10 under par, drop zero sets in their matches or score averages of 20 pts per game than the next superstar in their sport now did they.

Kobe Bryant scored a higher points per game than LeBron and Carmelo took the scoring award. So this make this phenom not so great as you can put it.

Bolt has obliterated current standing records and laughing and dancing his way to the finish line. No one that has been close to his level did it in a clean fashion, so how can a phenom only do this type of damage in Track and not in any other sport?

Lance Armstrong was clean and won 7 Tours de France, but his competitors eventually got caught doping. Oh wait, he did admit to doping. My bad.

I haven't read the article, and I don't need to.

The problem with Bolt is that he BOTH:

1) is likely one of the best-ever 100m sprinters, cleanly, if not THE best ever; and

2) is likely do have doped during his career.

I've laid it out elsewhere on this board:

1) Bolt's goofed and negative-leaned 9.69 in Beijing 2008, his 9.58 in Berlin 2009, and his 9.63 in London 2012 were all likely doped performances; and

2) Bolt's 9.76 (-0.1) in Rome 2012 is possibly the single best-ever clean 100m performance.

Bolt, or whoever has been advising him, has been smart.

During the season, he doesn't need to use, because while training, he is essentially as good as anybody else even if those other athletes are doped, except for on occasion somebody like Powell or Blake who might clip him by a trivial amount of time. He can and does win races, and even if he loses, he only loses by a trivial amount, and only to one of the other top 4.

No problem, mon.

The problem comes when those other guys get into shape for a championship, IMO by doping. By "those other guys" I'm talking Gay and Blake. Bolt doesn't have to worry about Powell, because he's in his head, and knows that he will self-destruct in any case. He also doesn't have to worry about Gatlin, because Gatlin's best, even when doped, is still very slightly worse than Bolt's likely clean best.

Blake and Gay are dangerous to Bolt, because doped, they are both faster than Bolt is clean. In 2008, Bolt thought that he was going to have Gay to worry about, and because Powell was still a concept, he probably worried about him, too. He realized by 65m that he needn't have worried about Powell, the only guy left who could present a problem, and started goofing to the finish. He would have gone 9.6 on that day had he run through the line.

In 2009, Bolt did have to worry about Gay, and he knew it. He used again, because he knew that if he did he could lay down a 9.6, which would still handily beat anything that Gay had shown he could put up while doped--and he also knew that Gay would now be better than what he could do, cleanly.

I don't know what happened in 2011. Judging by what he did in the 200m, Bolt could quite possibly have won the 100m over Blake, but I don't know if he was ready for Blake to have advanced to threat position so quickly. Blake's time in the Daegu final adjusts to only 9.83, a time that Bolt could still beat cleanly, but the danger was that Blake was progressing, after Daegu improving to two windless 9.82's, 3 days apart, in September. I don't know if Bolt used or not in 2011.

In 2012, Bolt really had to worry about Blake, given his two windless 9.82's at the end of 2011, and his 9.75 in Kingston. That 9.75 was a 9.80 basic, and Blake was improving, to a the point that he was likely very near what Bolt could do cleanly. That was way too risky, so Bolt used, and he was back to 9.6, outside the performance envelope of even a heavily-doped Blake.

The other smart thing is that I don't think that he dopes as massively as others. I think there's a pretty good argument to be made that he can, and has, gone around 9.75 cleanly. Doping down to 9.6 is only about .15, a far cry from the relatively quick ~.50 improvement seen in many sprinters. Plain fitness can get him down to 9.75, and even a single relatively modest cycle could drop him by .15, which is all he needs to be unbeatable by any of his competitors, either now or on the horizon.

So, they have been sly and judicious in their use of doping, using it just to ensure championships--if he didn't win them, some other doper would, so what the heck.

They have also been tight-lipped about it, making sure to get whatever treatment he is getting from a licensed doctor, who is bound to preserve the doctor-patient confidentiality on behalf of his patient.

Very smart. Bolt is the most dangerous kind of doper, because he is the most difficult to detect.

Very neat. Bolt is also the most desirable kind of doper, because he is the most difficult to detect.

Childhood phenom? Yes.

Quite possibly the clean fastest-ever and therefore an "outlier"? Yes.

Doped at 9.69, 9.58, and 9.63? Yes.

Smartly selective? Yes.

Desirable? Yes.

It seems like a tidy story, with little supporting evidence, but there is substantial evidence, all written already on this board. He IS track and field, even in the USA--well before Gay's positive, when I first stated on here that Bolt WAS track and field, I asked a bunch of average joe's and joanne's these 2 questions, in this order:

1) who is Tyson Gay?

2) who is Usain Bolt?

Out of dozens and dozens of people, only one knew without prompting who Gay was, and that person was a national-class swimmer athlete. EVERYBODY, including 9-year-old kids, and excluding an octagenerian, knew who Bolt was.

Anecdotal, yes, but it was in the USA, and it was good enough for me.

Bolt IS the public face of track and field, even in the USA. He is BOTH quite possibly the clean fastest-ever, and the most successful championship doper.

Sprintgeezer, how do you come up with such facts? What makes you say that Bolt is running clean some of the time? Scientific journals have said that it's impossible for a clean athlete to beat a doped athlete at the top level of the sport. So Usain Bolt is the only person in the world to beat this rule? I don't think so!

Sprintgeezer, maybe im just a moron when it comes to this stuff, but you proclaimed bolts 9.76 in Rome to maybe be the best 'clean' performance of all time. You also went on to talk about how much he needed to use in 2012. Are the PEDs that you suspect him of using completely rid of their ergogenic effects within that time frame? Enough so that the Rome 9.76 could be considered 'clean' if he was heavily doped in London?

Jave wrote:

A couple of things about bolt. He really did not come out of nowhere. A teenage phenom kind of like tiger woods. He ran 19.9 as a 17/18 year old and crazy fast as 15/16 year old. If you watch some of his teenage runs, look how ragged his technique is. He is all over the place and still runs very fast. Very poor technique. People forget that he has a serious back condition that before the 08 Olympics caused him a million hamstring issues and missed training time. He matured physically, worked on the back issue, technique improved and then combined with his awesome leverage you have some really fast times.

I agree with this, and this is why Bolt being clean is believable.

None of us know for sure though.

Karma Police wrote:

I agree with this, and this is why Bolt being clean is believable.

None of us know for sure though.

Lance lost weight from cancer - this made him #1!

Sorry of this was posted earlier.

Marion Jones was a child prodegy.

Tim Montgomery was a junior star.

They resorted to drugs to run world leading times even though they had supreme talent and early development.

So that angle doesn't convinced to think Bolt is likely clean.

The 80% sketchy rate on fast 100m runners makes me assume Bolt is sketchy.

Tyson Gay was the one guy people were most sure was clean.

People here expressed sadness last year when Gatlin beat him out for Bronze. They wanted to hail him as the top clean sprinter in London, even though he was 4th.

We have heard all of the support for Lance Armstrong over the years.

To say you think Bolt is clean when asked is one thing.

To go out of your way to state this opinion and even try to reason it out appears very naive and just a bunch of wishful thinking.

I wish the same but wouldn't count on it.

No one can ever be proven clean so there can never be vindication for this opinion.

* wrote:

No one can ever be proven clean so there can never be vindication for this opinion.

While obviously we should be skeptical of every outlying performance in T&F these days, I have to disagree with this. If we assume that every outstanding athlete is doped unless they can be 'proven' clean, we might as well just give the whole f*cking sport up. If theres one thing that we can learn from looking back on baseball during its doping-heavy, record obliterating seasons, it is this: We might not catch every single doper while they're using, and records might be broken, but in the end everything will be revealed. McGuire, Sosa, Bonds, Armstrong, Jones... most of these people had smashed records, won championships, Olympic Golds, MVPS, etc. and had retired before we were able to prove they were dirty. If Bolt is using, it will be found out eventually, but for now we need to at least give him the respect of not assuming he is doped before he has any positive tests.

When you take the best athlete in a given sport and dope them, they become a demigod. This is what happened to Bonds in baseball. He was a 3 time MVP clean. He started roiding up and he takes thing to a level the league had never seen before - 73 HRs at age 36, OBA > 50%....

Bolt is the exact same concept. He's the most talented sprinter out there and through the help of his doping, he has taken things to a ridiculous level.

categorically wrote:

That's the story. Gay and Powell made Bolt look guilty and that's enough. It's way harder to prove innocence than prove guilt.

This. Not sure why...

James Harden wrote:

If theres one thing that we can learn from looking back on baseball during its doping-heavy, record obliterating seasons, it is this: We might not catch every single doper while they're using, and records might be broken, but in the end everything will be revealed. McGuire, Sosa, Bonds, Armstrong, Jones... most of these people had smashed records, won championships, Olympic Golds, MVPS, etc. and had retired before we were able to prove they were dirty.

^This is the problem. These phenomenal athletes, their performances, and the obvious social clout they carry while they compete are immeasurable. Boys and girls dream bigger because of them and adults revel about the feats stamped within their lifetime. But the performances aren't really obliterated when the PEDS truth comes out...to the point where anyone could argue that the lie at the time was worth it.

This is where Rojo needs to come back to in his reflection of Zeigler's article, because when we look at the numbers...and the context...it seems Usain Bolt was "born" in the exact time in history, so as to have some competitors within .27 of his WR.

Facts: there are 83 100m performances of 9.85 or faster.

Usain Bolt owns 18.

Tyson Gay owns 16.

Yohan Blake owns 9.

Asafa Powell owns 23.

Justin Gatlin owns 4 (and you'd think, well his number is low because he was banned for 4 years. And you'd be right, kind of, until you consider the fact that 3 have come in 2012).

That makes 70/83 of the best performances ever from 5 guys currently competing in 2013 with an age dispersion of 26, 30, 23, 30, and 31, respectively.

So the other 13 are: Nesta Carter (2), Maurice Greene (4), Steve Mullings (1), and six other one-offers.

I believe it is actually unfair to give Bolt any clean credit. Otherwise, he is not just a freak but the chosen one by God, bringing about his birth at the exact time in history when two other guys competing could also destroy record times by running 9.69, despite being 5'10 and 5'11.

All of athletics needs a purge like cycling did with Lance. They need confessionals, wreckage, and truth. From there we can decide whether anything is salvageable.

So true wrote:

categorically wrote:

That's the story. Gay and Powell made Bolt look guilty and that's enough. It's way harder to prove innocence than prove guilt.

This. Not sure why...

I still can't agree with this idea. Track and Field should not be a sport in which you are assumed to be doped unless you 'prove' to be clean, no matter how ridiculously fast you are running. Like I have said in a previous post, if you are doping you will be caught. Not many ever get away with it long term. Until then, we need not to assume one is guilty based on what his top competitors are doing.

The whole 'must be dirty because (s)he's the best" thing applies to Paula just as much as Bolt. And at the moment you see a lot of the same kind of thing levelled at Chris Froome.

James--

A repost of a post I made in 2012 regarding the presumption of innocence, in response to the poster "oops":

"oops--

Nice to see that somebody else knows the landscape.

And to "not to be negative", do you know what hearsay actually is? Witnesses testifying as to their own observations is not hearsay. Also, hearsay is admissible for some purposes even in criminal prosecutions.

I hope you guys are starting to understand the nature of argumentation, evidence, proof, burden, presumption, and other such concepts.

I will say once again that the fact that an athlete never gives a sample that returns a positive test is NOT dispositive on the issue of whether or not he or she violated the anti-doping code.

Before you declare "that stinks!", make sure you know all about the exact process involved. You will find that, as an investigation is a human exercise involving judgment, it doesn't suck at all.

Good thing t&f is an individual sport and not a team affair, like cycling. The groups of insiders are much smaller, and might just include a coach and an individual athlete or two, which is a much easier group to manage than the organization that is a pro cycling team, especially when a rider like Armstrong participates in several such teams over the years, the number of people involved swells dramatically. Federations can assist through both willful blindness, and through considered negligence that brings criticism on the organization and thereby insulates the athletes.

Just like it is not possible to repeatedly run 9.5, 9.6, and 9.7 basic times in the 100m without juicing, it is not possible to win 7 TdF's without juicing, whether or not positive results are returned.

And as far as a presumption of innocence is concerned, it still exists. Even though athletes are tested, they are not required to prove that they are clean as a condition of participation--they are allowed to participate until such time as they are sanctioned according to the rules, that is, until it has been proved that they were dirty. The fact that they are allowed to participate without having to prove that they are clean is evidence that they are presumed "innocent".

And the returning of a negative result should NOT be construed as "evidence of cleanliness", it is simply NOT "evidence of doping". The fact that there are random tests is a wrinkle in all of this, because you can be suspended for not giving a sample, that is, not returning a result. That is construed as a different ground for sanction, and not the same ground as the returning of a positive test.

On the surface, this looks like an athlete IS actually required to provide "evidence of cleanliness" when asked by the doping authorities to provide a sample, at random times. But it must be remembered that an athlete is a member of an organization AT ALL TIMES, not just during the period of a meet, and therefore that activities like training are considered to be activities that are within the contemplated range of activities that the governing body has authority to govern, and that training is therefore construed as participation in t&f just as much as is competition.

So ultimately, the "presumption of innocence" is still effectively preserved, as athletes are allowed to continue to train and engage in t&f-related activities other than competing, without having to first prove that they are clean."

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=4774418&page=8

Jamba Laya wrote:

Sprintgeezer, how do you come up with such facts? What makes you say that Bolt is running clean some of the time? Scientific journals have said that it's impossible for a clean athlete to beat a doped athlete at the top level of the sport. So Usain Bolt is the only person in the world to beat this rule? I don't think so!

What I said was that Bolt cannot in fact beat "doped athletes at the top level of the sport"--Blake and Gay. Powell is not in one sense at the top level of the sport, because being at the top level includes a mental component that Powell is lacking--but, there is no way that a clean Bolt could beat a doped Powell.

Also, a clean Bolt would get beaten by a host of other athletes, were they to dope.

I do believe that he could cleanly beat athletes who are doped but who are NOT at the top level of the sport, guys like Clarke.