For all of you who definitely think Usain Bolt is on drugs, this is for you (amazing video)

Still ignoring my points. I call troll.

You seem to be on some sort of mission. Here's what you are missing.

Bolt's superiority is his speed endurance, which he gained from running the 200 and 400 in his teens. He isn't 'faster' in real terms, he just pulls away from the opposition as they slow down due to their inferior speed endurance.

Who else among the 100/200 guys ran the 200/400 as youngsters?

That's the difference and the reason for his superiority. When he moved down to the 100 it took everyone by surprise.

Why are these points alwyays overlooked by all of you internet conspiracy theorists?

You aren't being thorough at all, you are cherry picking your points of reference.

I overlooked them because you still fail how he is able to achieve that speed endurance cleanly.

problem wrote:

Still ignoring my points. I call troll.

You seem to be on some sort of mission. Here's what you are missing.

Bolt's superiority is his speed endurance, which he gained from running the 200 and 400 in his teens. He isn't 'faster' in real terms, he just pulls away from the opposition as they slow down due to their inferior speed endurance.

Who else among the 100/200 guys ran the 200/400 as youngsters?

That's the difference and the reason for his superiority. When he moved down to the 100 it took everyone by surprise.

Why are these points alwyays overlooked by all of you internet conspiracy theorists?

You aren't being thorough at all, you are cherry picking your points of reference.

If you cannot explain how he is able to cleanly develop better speed endurance than the 30 other sprinters who couldn't match him with the help of PEDs, then I will conclude that Bolt also uses drugs.

You are too fond of your own opinion. Read what I wrote and go away and think about it.

Get back to me in 10 years times when you have figured it out.

When I extract all of the points of substance, from all of the forums and all of the ESPN articles, I see a description of a doctor who practices homeopathy, acupuncture, Actovegin, conventional medicine and orthopedics. Convention mixed with non-convention, but nothing illegal.This is not "extreme", but just the starting point obtained from public knowledge. To get from public knowledge to your opinion, you've had to inject a lot of bad faith.We've seen on the one hand, words like unconventional, controversial, not peer-reviewed. This could lead somewhere if further investigations revealed something tangible.We've also seen that he works openly with WADA, regarding his substances and methods, and to date, they have not declared anything to be a violation of the rules. So long as he doesn't inject Actovegin in the US or Canada, so far, there is no reason of any substance to think he is helping any athlete violate WADA anti-doping rules.So the spectrum between the two extremes is wide open, and where you stand depends on your presumption of "innocent until proven guilty" or "guilty until proven innocent".The only sense you should think of me "trolling" is "trolling for data". If I say you've got nothing, I'm expecting you to respond with "something" of more substance, if you can.What about Paula? There are data points -- that's something of substance. Without wanting to trigger 100 more pages here, these could be reasons for suspicion. But "suspicion" is just the beginning. Then there is investigation, and with any luck, conclusions with certainty.

Clerk,

You explicitly asked me for comments. Wouldn't that make you the troll -- fishing for my response?

Now I see, when you asked if I had any comments, you wanted much more than that -- you wanted a discussion -- something that would lend legitimacy to your analysis. I think you are wasting your time, by treating such a heavy argument so lightly, unless you solve the many gaps I've identified.

Going back to your myth-busting thread, you start out with a declaration of the game you want to play:

"And if these explanations are debunked, the only possible explanation for his performances is doping."

From the first step, this is wrong, as a matter of basic principle. Any remaining discussion will fail until you salvage this. You need:

- to show that all of these myths, plus doping, are "exhaustive" causes of performance. If not, you need to prepare an exhaustive list.

- to actually "bust" all the myths.

- (pay attention because this is more nuanced than a "Jon Orange" or "JR" denial about drug effectiveness) to attempt to quantify and explain how doping qualifies as a possible explanation for the observed magnitude and progression of performances, producing one extreme outlier among all dopers.

The unique build myth:

Build is not just height and weight. A proper discussion would talk about body type, composition, proportion, and distribution. It would need to analyze limb-lengths and mass distribution and muscle strength and strength endurance and range of motion and muscle/fat distribution. A full performance analysis would add other elements like evolution of training, technique, racing strategy, not to mention non-physical aspects like self-confidence, and intimidation, and external environments such as the level of ability of the competitors.

You don't present any data for other 100m or 200m runners, but 400m runners and decathletes. And you look only at one year.

Your decathlete analysis shows that these all around athletes must focus on other training than the 100m to achieve overall success. What if they focused on one event? For example, why wouldn't we see a change in decathletes comparable to Dafne Schippers? If they focused on just the 100m/200m they would improve over their decathlete performances.

The talent myth:

Myth: "- He was a talent from a young age"

Clerk: "No. He was bred. He was farm-raised."

Me: Both can be true. His talent was discovered at the young age of 14-15, in his third and fourth year of high school, then cultivated by Jamaican sprint-guru coach Glen Mills.

The progression myth:

At first glance at the graph, to me his progression from 2001-2008 looks rather continuous, with 2004-2008 flattening due to a focus on producing a peak around 2008-2009, where his training was timed towards these longer term goals of the Olympics and World Championship during his ripe age of 22-23.

At the start of his professional career, he was held back from competing in the 100m. This delay looks unusual amongst sprinters, something unique to Bolt. Perhaps this is a key, or a clue. This let him build up a higher level of sprint endurance first, before putting speed on top if it. Another coach/athlete would focus on 100m speed and potentially shorten his potential, or even his career.

The hard-work myth:

You don't address this, but dismiss it, citing diet, partying, and season-breaks being the opposite of a 100% committed athlete. Perhaps these releases of stress, and the "active recovery" of dancing till dawn, actually helps recovery versus athletes who in reality were trying too hard.

Doping as a potential cause:

My mental model of doping effectiveness, for the mens 100m/200m, is something that gives a marginal improvement, the small margins being the difference between medalling and not. Generally speaking, a whole field doping does not produce one extreme outlier. There must be bigger, more relevant factors.

Only in women's strength events, when women take male hormones, do we see larger magnitudes of improvements linked to doping.

A proper analysis should include the expected "doping" gain over 100m and 200m, for men, and comparing that to Bolt's performances versus the remaining field of dopers. If we talk about marginal gains of 0.1 or 0.2 seconds, it seems to me we have to search for other, more significant, non-doping explanations. If we find more significant non-doping explanations, then what is the relative value of the smaller marginal gains from doping?

Role of a non-conventional sports doctor:

One often touted benefit of doping is quicker recovery that permits a higher training load.

If homeopathic remedies, acupuncture, injections of natural and non-banned substances, coupled with strategic exercises, provides similar shortened recovery, or can avoid season terminating injuries, this provides a similar increased training without doping.

The bell-curve:

Does the bell curve look like an umbrella, or a bell with flanged edges? In bell curve distribution, in these increasingly rare cases at the edge, when all of the factors align, the difference can be quite significant compared to the rest of the population. Large outliers don't statistically break the bell curve, but in fact are predicted.

Angel Heredia/Victor Conte angle:

These guys had success doping athletes. That's where their expertise lies. They don't seem to me qualified on commenting on the causes of success of clean athletes. If they make comments about athletes they don't know, or that it is not possible to succeed clean, these look 1) out of their domain of expertise, and 2) self-serving.

Probability of catching dopers:

Anti-doping is increasingly in the spotlight. With target testing and repeated tests over a career, and delayed re-testing, it is difficult for me to believe that Bolt is still escaping testing with 100% success, while all the others around him have "slipped up". I also don't buy into this "some athletes are protected" conspiracy -- despite close world-wide scrutiny, Gatlin also managed to escape detection during his comeback, and no one seems interested in protecting him.

rekrunner wrote:

- Doping is popular in men's sprinting. As with all doping, it's hard to separate belief, and placebo from the physical benefits.

I'm glad that we are all in agreement that cheating is popular in men's sprinting, whether the drug-traking actually improves performances or not.

Though it's not a line of enquiry I am especially interested in, I would like to ask you, Rekrunner, why, if anabolic steroids provide only psychological and not physiological benefits to sprinters, are these PEDs on WADA's list of prohibited substances? The common position in medicine and physiology is that anabolic steroids are performance-enhancing. It seems to me that you are challenging this. Can you point to evidence to support your assertion?

If this is what you believe, but you can't provide documented evidence of this, fair enough - I'm not going to call you out on that, since, who knows, you just might be right. But let me just remind you that in almost every post you chastise very many of us with making assertions that cannot be backed up with good, hard facts.

Anyway, back to the main business, let me just reiterate it: cheating is popular in 100m. We all agree.

My assertion is that it's hard to separate the effects. I probably should have left that out, as it is not a central point, and probably just confusing. I think there are physical benefits of steroids, as well as faith and placebo effects. (Although even that is complex, if the physical effects, e.g. building too much muscle mass, are counter-productive).What I was thinking is how to compare the overall doping benefit for a "hypothetical" clean athlete already possessing mental confidence in his ability and training, to the "doping" athlete who is insecure. The insecure athlete will get both a physical and mental boost, while the confident athlete would only get a physical boost.Another thing I think is that the number of athletes that dope probably over-estimates the "real" benefit. Many athletes will take everything they believe will help, regardless of proven benefit. Without debating exact numbers, for example, if 8 out of the top 10 doped, it probably only really helped 2 or 3 make a difference.No proof of these thoughts, but just some insight into my thinking, based on the fact that athletes often dope without waiting for evidence of proven scientific benefits for them.

The trouble with these threads is some of the opinions-- rekrunner springs to mind-- are identical for every case.

It's easy just to say there have been no positive tests and leave the jury out on every runner that lands under suspicion, but stacks of evidence mounts up to suggest that a positive test is both unlikely and unusual.

So it's strange. How could you end up with the same opinion for every athlete? Some have dodgy coaches, dodgy doctors, busted teammates, erratic national doping controls, suspicious times, mystery injuries... if more of these indicators add in together, then an athlete is clearly suspicious.

So I say, for all, treat each case individually, and stop automating your replies to your default position for every athlete. It's intellectually honest to do so.

Except surely that statistical explanation would imply the opposite to what you are trying to impress on us; if anything, we should expect bigger gaps in talent/performance at the very extremes of the curve.

As far as I'm concerned, it says nothing as to whether any given athlete is on drugs, but given a big enough set of people it's plausible that Usain Bolts/Asbel Kiprops/Jan Zeleznys emerge that are far better than their peers.

rekrunner wrote:

No proof of these thoughts, but just some insight into my thinking, based on the fact that athletes often dope without waiting for evidence of proven scientific benefits for them.

That\'s fine, but keep in mind that the rest of us formulate thoughts without proof. It\'s human nature. We like to take facts and behaviours and interpret them.

My rule of thumb is that if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

I don\'t know whether Usain Bolt has ever taken PED\'s. However, I can formulate an opinion based on certain aspects of his behaviour and statistics. That will be my opinion, based on how I interpret the circumstantial evidence.

As Janshr says, more indicators = more suspicion. It\'s the basics of profiling.

Sprinting is so dirty that I just think it\'s a complete joke. When was the last time that an Olympic 100m final didn\'t have a doper competing for a medal?

I think it would be very hard for athletics if Bolt produced a positive test. It would bring the sport crashing down. So I don\'t think it will ever happen. At worst, he would be given a \'silent ban\', assuming they are real.

If all you are doing is raising a suspicion, or offering an opinion, that's one thing. But people seem to be doing much more than that.They've concluded Healing Hans is a doping doctor, and therefore all of his patients must be doping. I'm only every saying "Hey not so fast -- why would you say something like that?"I don't think I actually offered a direct opinion on Bolt here, but only questioned:- is homeopathy and acupuncture dodgy? Is Actovegin dodgy? What is WADA's opinion?and since Clerk explicitly asked me for my comments (I was prepared to let it go unchallenged, like I did the first time):- has Clerk debunked any Bolt myth?- is Clerk's proposed "process of elimination" method validly applied?Everyone has the right to form opinions and raise their own personal suspicions, but this is a very low bar. Opinions and suspicions are not my goal.I'm always interested in the following steps -- real data to help reinforce or contradict suspicions.It's interesting you reference intellectual honesty. (At great risk of exposing myself to ridicule for my sources): From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For me, the problem with all of these threads is that they depend too much on expressed "personal beliefs" and not enough "relevant facts and information". When facts are presented, they are not "presented in an unbiased manner" and they are "twisted to give misleading impressions or to support one view over another". They are over-interpreted or extrapolated beyond what the facts really show.

An excerpt from an article with some more old 'allegations' about 'Healing Hans":

Which would be entirely true, were it not for the fact that Techale was very much part of Ethiopia’s running elite, who, together with Bekele and Haile Gebrselassie, spend half the year training at altitude in modest surroundings in their home country, but for the rest of the time are globetrotting professionals based in Holland near the offices of agent Jos Hermens, and receive all the physiological and medical back-up they need.

One expert who she is known to have used, is one of the most famous sports medicine experts in the world, Dr Hans-Wilhelm Mueller-Wohlfahrt, a Munich-based specialist. Reports from Ethiopia this week suggested that she had consulted him as recently as last September for knee and calf injuries, including treatment to a troublesome achille’s tendon problem.

Dr Mueller-Wohlfahrt has a worldwide reputation in sport, not only for a client list that has included Boris Becker, Jose-Maria Olazabal and Linford Christie, but also because of his somewhat extraordinary homeopathic remedies.

When Scotland defender Dominic Matteo’s knees began to creak too much, a flying visit to Mueller-Wohlfahrt’s Munich clinic saw him injected with juices from a turkey’s head. Others have reported how they have been given injections of enzymes and amino acid drawn from the foetuses of calves.

But many of Dr Mueller-Wohlfahrt’s treatments are shrouded in mystery. When Juergen Klinsmann was unable to play in the early stages of Euro 96, Dr Mueller-Wohlfahrt administered more than 20 injections to the player’s knee. Ultimately, Klinsmann lifted the trophy, but on being asked about the treatment he admitted: "I had no idea what was in any of the injections."

Mueller-Wohlfahrt has a long association with the German national team and Bayern Munich, going back more than 30 years, although allegations that he had the entire 1974 World Cup squad on anabolic steroids - two years before the drug was banned in sport - has prompted some to question his unorthodox methods.

Not Darren Gough, the England cricketer who claims he would not be able to play in this week’s tsunami charity match in Melbourne were it not for the doctor. "I’ve had four operations," he said. "Mueller-Wohlfahrt said if I’d come to him from the start, I wouldn’t have needed any of them.

"He looks after Ronaldo, Zidane, Michael Owen and Michael Jordan - all the big names. I know some people thought it might not be legal, but look at all the people he treats. Would they see him if they were going to fail drug tests? I’ve taken three drug tests and I’m fine. The guy knows exactly what he’s doing."

Yet Mueller-Wohlfahrt’s celebrity client list includes as many flops as it has miracle cures. For instance, days before her Olympic Marathon nightmare, Paula Radcliffe sought treatment from Mueller-Wohlfahrt for a secret groin injury, to no avail.

"To outsiders, my methods are unorthodox," Mueller-Wohlfahrt said in a rare interview seven years ago, "but I stand by my results." (Source: Scotsman.com; Jan 9, 2005)

http://www.ethiomedia.com/newpress/kenenisa_alem_techale_story.html

Interesting.

Uh oh. Look at these parts from the article:

Her death has been ascribed in some reports to a heart attack, although despite the sudden circumstances of her demise, no postmortem was conducted before her burial on Wednesday - as autopsies remain uncommon, even among the Addis Ababa elite.

Thus, no-one will ever know the real cause of death of an otherwise apparently fit and healthy young woman.

The absence of a postmortem has helped fuel speculation over Techale’s death. "People have started to speculate. There are always conspiracy theories in Ethiopia," Aregawi said. "We have very Shakespearean minds.

But then later down the page Jos Hermens says:

"That is the tragedy. A young life has been lost. It is difficult to say if it was heart failure or something to do with the brain. The Ethiopian doctors who performed the autopsy could find nothing. You ask yourself if you could do more in terms of testing, but Alem had a check-up in Holland last year. Sometimes you cannot forecast these things."

Why is Jos Hermens saying that an autopsy was done and could find nothing when the previous excerpt says that no autopsy was done at all.

So which is it Jos Hermens? Was there an autopsy done or not?

I think I see a serious problem with this statement by Jos Hermens.

The two statements cannot both be correct.

One of the statements is NOT TRUE.

Which statement do you think is NOT TRUE casual obsever?

The more I find out about Jos Hermens and 'Healing Hans' the more suspicious I become. How about you?

This is an interesting little list you have here. I wonder what Dr. Leonid Shvetsov of Russia (and Albuquerque, N.M.) was up to there. Leonid had his 'down' course record broken this week at Comrades but he is still the Comrades 'up' record holder (as in 'shoot up'):

Leonid is back in Russia now and 'coaching' some Russian runners.

Good times.

Not true at all. Johnson started around the age of 20 or 21. He competed clean as a junior. As for Bolt I have my doubts with the visits to the German doctor at 16. Like other posters have said if the doctor had a medical breakthrough that was legitimate he would patent it and become a billionaire (or a near one).