The dirtiest race in Olympic history?

Since ‘87 any race with E Africans in it is dirty. Filthy in fact.

Didn't they have showers? I'm not understanding why everyone was so dirty.

I just read that story last night. It's well worth a read and that was an amazing race for a different reason than the kind you normally mean when you call a race amazing.

From the article.

“When you’re competing against someone who’s cheated, their bodies don’t behave the way a normal, clean body would when everybody else is fading,” Rowbury says. “They seem to have these other gears. They don’t seem to be impacted by lactic acid in the same way as everybody else, because they aren’t like everybody else. They’ve cheated.” It is striking, watching the final metres of the race, that two athletes appear almost to be accelerating in the final metres, like a pair of e-bikes on a hill overtaking flagging pedal cyclists. (quote)

It brings to mind a recent thread about a certain African distance runner. Actually, quite a few threads these days.

Also from the article. The views of an antidoping expert.

“The most sophisticated and successful doping programme in the world is the one we don’t know about,” she says. “This is the nature of anti-doping. It’s all a shot in the dark, because athletes are incentivised to do it as quietly and discreetly as possible, telling as few people as they can.” The most sophisticated anti-doping mechanisms won’t stop cheats if the people involved don’t want them to, she points out. (quote)

That won't have changed.

1, 2, 4, 7, 8 DQed. I still think the Seoul men's 100m might have been dirtier but they simply didn't test positive on that day.

Not as dirty as Seoul 88 mens' 100m final. This particular video shows something I've never seen and no one talks about: just before the race Carl Lewis went up to Ben Johnson and the two shook hands. They had something in common and both knew it.

In the 1992 Barcelona Olympics 10,000m final a lapped runner started to impede Richard Chelimo, to help his fellow Moroccan win.

The race supervisor literally stepped onto the track and tried to stop him, as you can see at 3:20 minutes into the video:

Despite all the disqualifications Obiri still isn't anywhere near the podium

Seoul 100m men? (Fewer people but a high percentage had allegations at some point).

1976 Men’s Olympic Marathon.

Waldimar Cierpinski was doped to the gills. He had a 2:17:30 PR and was unknown, then won the Olympic Gold, stealing Shorter’s double. He was later discovered to be on record in East Germany state-sponsored drug program.

Why the IOC never DQ’d Cierpinski is beyond me.

Did The Guardian go after Sir Mo Farah too?

Thanks to the article, we now know what Shannon Rowbury believes.

In a race where 2 Turkish, 1 Belarussian, and 2 Russians were subsequently banned, your mind goes to the African distance runner?

Isn't highlighting "the one we don't know about" just another way to talk about belief?

I look to experts to share their knowledge, not talk about the unknown.

Maybe the person accelerating at the end like an e-bike was simply on a pre-Maurten bicarb formulation.

I think you all seem to be forgetting the 1970s and early 80s. Look at the women's 1500m from Moscow 1980, for example, or the 800m that same year. Every single woman in both of those finals was doped. The top 8 in the women's LJ that year were all likely doping, as they were in the SP, JT, DT & pentathlon...

Sadly, I agree with the insinuations made against Chebet. Her final lap & 200m in particular was quite ridiculous.

^this. It's kind of amazing how many top women's sprint and throwing performances still date to the 80's despite all the improvements in track surfaces and shoes and nutrition and training, etc. Testosterone testing really changed the game.

That race had almost no clean athletes, but the idea that you have to doping to be accelerating in the final meters of a race is one of the dumber things I have ever seen here. Have you never heard of a kick?

Since '80 (at least), any race is dirty. Filthy in fact.