Cheptegei and Gidey-Doping or not doping?

Armstronglivs wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

Your money is safe, because there are other things limiting performance.

Steroids and other male hormones can make women stronger than what is the natural range for women, without exceeding any human physicalogical or thermal limit. Such a women might beat Caster Semenya, but not David Rudisha.

Other drugs can accelerate the time it takes to get up to a certain fitness level, without exceeding their natural capacity. This shortcut in the time it takes to build up fitness is also an advantage, over other athletes who invest more time.

Your argument here is beside the point. The issue is not whether there are limits that doping can't exceed, or alternatively that the sky is the limit. It is that doping can enable a higher level of performance when allied with training than would be achievable by that athlete through training alone, even if the level achieved still depends in the natural ability of that athlete. A better natural athlete who dopes will still outperform a lesser athlete who dopes. That is what "performance enhancement" means: anyone who chooses to dope has the possibility of getting better as a result. Anyone.

We see that with Ben Johnson, who ran ran 9.79 doped; clean he was unable to beat 10-flat. Ramzi ran his fastest times when doped. Athletes who have been busted, who have subsequently tried to compete clean, have been unable to get near their doped level of performance.

So doping is therefore more than a short-cut to form that might otherwise be achieved naturally through training, or as a means for women to compete at the same level as an inferior "male"; it enables the athlete that uses it to produce a better - far better - level of performance than they would be able to achieve any other way. Their "limit" has been lifted to a higher level. At the top level, that is the difference between winning, placing and losing, or setting a record or merely recording a good time.

casual obsever wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

I implied nothing about non-dopers because the topic was dopers and doping. For completeness, non-dopers can also have weak minds and bodies, and non-dopers do not benefit from doping.

You actually started out with this:

rekrunner wrote:

It takes a weak mind from an athlete who doesn't believe in himself/herself to believe that doping would help achieve distance world records, and a weak body to justify the need for doping in the first place.

It is unlikely that an athlete of weak mind and weak body could set the world record from a strong world record like Bekele's and Dibaba's.

Implying that Bekele and Dibaba both a) were non-dopers and b) neither had weak mind nor weak body.

a) may be your faith; b) well, the fact that you clarified that a body that gets improved via training was weak before, nullifies your point of the dopers' weak body prior to doping.

Weak mind? Well Bekele seems to have issues there too, judging by his lack of consistent training and history of DNS/DNF, not to mention that you use "weak" instead of "unethical".

So initially your strange postulations and definitions, that caused you to rekrunner us for over five pages, were used to make an unproven statement that you now claim you didn't make ("I implied nothing about non-dopers "). A classic rekrunner.

sillysemantics.com wrote:

You have to get over this "steroids can make women stronger" thing. The fastest 100m women are naturally fast. It's genetic, 11 meters per second is what they can run, deal with it. It still takes them 10 years of training to convert that into a world class time.

Do you really doubt Marion Jones' natural ability?

Show me one femal record which is unbeatable? There isn't one. Look at the time differences between men and women from 100 upwards, they are all around 10% apart.

sillysemantics.com wrote:

Why not do that naturally, and then avoid the cortisone crash? Actually losing weight quickly is what reduced Jan Ulrich's ability. He was never the same athlete after he won the Tour in 1997.

So what is the optimal body fat for improving heat dissipation? It's probably not super low and doesn't require any special diet or medictation. Most runners think their body fat% is much lower than it really is anyway.

casual obsever wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

I implied nothing about Bekele and Dibaba

LOL, what? Why would it be "unlikely" that a doper would break Bekele's record if Bekele himself might have been a doper?

rekrunner wrote:These strong records could be the result of a strong body and a weak mind.

Really? Wouldn't then someone of the many athletes with a strong body and strong mind have broken those records years ago, if a strong mind is important?

rekrunner wrote:

I didn't mean "unethical" -- I meant lack of self-confidence.

Yes. Without evidence of course. "unethical" is what you can conclude from the decision to dope; such a person might very well have the perfect (or even too much) self-confidence.

rekrunner wrote:

Bekele … That takes a strong mind.

Are you sure you are not implying that Bekele is a non-doper?

Didn't you also argue, over five pages, that dopers have a weak mind?

casual obsever wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

I implied nothing about Bekele and Dibaba

LOL, what? Why would it be "unlikely" that a doper would break Bekele's record if Bekele himself might have been a doper?

rekrunner wrote:These strong records could be the result of a strong body and a weak mind.

Really? Wouldn't then someone of the many athletes with a strong body and strong mind have broken those records years ago, if a strong mind is important?

rekrunner wrote:

I didn't mean "unethical" -- I meant lack of self-confidence.

Yes. Without evidence of course. "unethical" is what you can conclude from the decision to dope; such a person might very well have the perfect (or even too much) self-confidence.

rekrunner wrote:

Bekele … That takes a strong mind.

Are you sure you are not implying that Bekele is a non-doper?

Didn't you also argue, over five pages, that dopers have a weak mind?