Michael Johnson returns his gold medal. Do you agree with his action?

if 3 of the 4 return their medals and mj doesn't... what do you think is going to happen? dissent and revelation from mj's team members that he was on it too. proactively giving your medal back keeps you out of the spot light and makes you appear honest.

it's like the drug user volunteering for a test when they know they are clean or the politician announcing that they've had an affair in the past before the opponents camp learns about it and saying they are very very sorry for their lapse in judgment

dude, seriously. you really think mj was clean? give me a break. just like lance...suuuure...he's THAT much better than the rest of the guys who are on drugs. makes me sick.

wichita east before gangs wrote:

dude, seriously. you really think mj was clean? give me a break. just like lance...suuuure...he's THAT much better than the rest of the guys who are on drugs. makes me sick.

Believe whatever you want, how do you even watch track meets thinking every single person dopes? Must suck ass.

I can't say if he cheated or not, but:

-what other 10.0 100m sprinters trained as 400m runners? During that era?

-who from the Clyde Hart group has ever tested positive? No one.

-can you agree to this given his statements: he is either a fantastic, hypocritical and pathological liar --or-- he's legit.

haha, YO wrote:

Believe whatever you want, how do you even watch track meets thinking every single person dopes? Must suck ass.

not really, it's fun watching some clean guys race.

The real thing is, proof...who has it, what's it mean, what does lack of it mean?

Myself, I use the court of public opinion. I've seen too many people slip past drug tests, and then because someone sends in a dirty syringe it gets blown up.

MJ, Bolt, Armstrong...I believe there are great competitors, but I don't believe that in such a highly competitive sports atmosphere that we have nowadays that ONE person is THAT much better than the rest. I can see someone winning frequently, and being moderately better. That would be due to a change in training. But I don't believe one human can become THAT much faster when so many people are competing. I understand the group as a whole getting faster, and as a result the best of the group getting faster. I just don't see one person flying past the rest by such large margins.

moot

IOC will get it anyway rather now than later

the problem is, how do you know that the second place team was completely clean? Or third, etc...

The problem is not that he would get heat not turning in this medal if others had, the problem with Michael Johnson is since the day he retired he has acted totally different than every day that he was a professional runner. The guy is a total punk, would never sign an autograph for a kid, ever. Not me I could have cared less but the guy acted like he was too good to even speak to anyone after a race, etc. I have been around the guy alot after races and the guy never ceased to treat everyone around him like crap. Now he is constantly acting like he is all about the sport, all about this and that. The guy was very simple his entire career. He was all about himself, couldn't care less about anyone else. Now he is Jeremy Wariner's agent and every year since he turned pro he is turning into more and more of a punk as well.

LPRunner wrote:

Sometimes the proof lies with behaviour or physical growth. Last I learned, Marion Jones never failed a drug test either, so your argument is irrelevant.

but despite her non-failed drug tests she had numerous allegations against her. Johnson has neither failed or had allegations placed against him which is a HUGE factor and with all the athletes being busted don't you think the best move for Johnson if he was guilty would be to lay low? Instead it seems he's in the media more than before. So if anything, your argument is irrelevant.

wichita east before gangs wrote:

dude, seriously. you really think mj was clean? give me a break. just like lance...suuuure...he's THAT much better than the rest of the guys who are on drugs. makes me sick.

Why do you follow this sport? Seriously, what possible interest can it hold for you? Are you just into seeing drug cheats get caught?

Not one of you clowns knows the first thing about Michael Johnson, how clean or dirty he was or what motivates him. He might actually be self centered. He might not be at all. None of you knows the first thing about it.

What a f***ing cancer you people are.

Better man than me. I think it shows tremendous character.

Does it really make someone a "cancer" to suggest that someone who broke the 200m world record by almost *half a second* was probably on drugs....knowing that many other sprinters were on drugs? Just like FloJo...

I don't dispute that it's unfortunate, but it's just dull-mindedness to pretend that because he didn't test positive that MJ was clean. Too much money at stake. If he was East German, you probably wouldn't be making that argument.

The sad state of track and field (how does the 10k record drop by a minute just about the time that EPO becomes available?) is that we watch in denial...and then *really* celebrate the phenoms who we *hope* are clean (like Bolt, Webb).

Your reasoning is illogical.

1) Do you believe that Bob Beamon was a drugs cheat? Or Jonathan Edwards? What they did (particularly Beamon) was have a freak performance. That can happen in a power event, where everything lines up just right and BAM! FloJo, on the other hand, had a 3.3mpw wind behind her so why even use 10.49 for comparison. Forget drugs, it's not a valid time on the wind alone.

2) Unlike Jones or Pettigrew, no one from Clyde Hart's group has ever tested positive. There is just as much circumstancial evidence against Johnson as there is against Ryan Hall.

3) You can't think of ANY other factors which would contribute to CORRECTION of the distance marks? Maybe the fact that Kenya suffered from successive Olympic boycotts, Ethiopia sat out for three of four Games in four Olympiads, Ethiopia suffered from widespread famine and a brutal dictatorship until the early 90s and that it wasn't until then that more money, more professional coaching and more opportunities to escape poverty arrived to East Africa had more to do with it.

You also had refinement in the events. A guy like Geb could run 3:30 for 1500m but wasn't isn't in being a miler and focused on the 10000m, whereas his Western rivals would always aim for the shortest distance possible.

The fact that they're running just as fast and in greater numbers than before the availability of EPO testing speaks to that.

Just pay attention and use your brain. Because of x associates themselves with y, I hope that they're not cheating, but I wouldn't be shocked if they were, despite the person they portray themselves as. But there are others on whom I'd bet my life on being the real deal. And a lot of those guys are among the best in the world.

haha, YO wrote:

Believe whatever you want, how do you even watch track meets thinking every single person dopes? Must suck ass.

No, it doesn't. I'm pretty sure that the high school and collegiate athletes I'm watching are by and large clean and ethical competitors. Yes, the pro levels of the sport (and every other sport) disgust me, but I don't bother watching those tainted performances. I just wonder how people can still be fool enough to think that there is such a thing as an unaided WR anymore. How many times did WADA go knocking on Bolt's door over the winter and spring to test him? Did Jamaican authorities make any attempts to test him while he was away from competition? Must suck ass to be that idiotic.

Thanks, Spock.I think that your response is well-reasoned and worth response.1) I don't know anything about J. Edwards training. I know nothing about Bob Beamon's jump, though I like to believe that it represents the greatest breakthrough in T&F history. As far as FloJo, you are deep in denial. The wind machine alone does not explain how a skinny (very talented) woman suddenly runs 0.3 seconds faster than the world record in 100m (and at least 0.6 seconds than she had ever run). I can't deny that you believe that she did, I can only wonder how any reasonable person could believe that it was legal.2) You state that there is as much evidence against MJ as Ryan Hall. Ok. Not sure how that explains that my argument was illogical.3) You make fair points. And I truly would like to drink the kool-aid, but you are either purposefully naive or intentionally misleading to pretend that in the last 50 years that *all* athletes, not just those from africa, have not had access to impactful performance enhancing drugs.In summary, "real," I share your passion for athletics. But to pretend that all talk about drugs is "cancer" is just naive. The fact the you seem to defend FloJo is just remarkable. Her marks are a stain on athletics.

First off, we have several clean world class athletes in this sport. And the clean athletes know who the cheaters are. If you were involved in this sport you knew that anyone associated with Trevor Graham could be dirty. I know several athletes that left because they didn't want to be associates with what was going on there. One of the problems in the track and probable in all sports is clean athlete are reluctant to expose or pass on information about dirty athlete because ultimately every dirty athlete exposed hurts the sport and consequently hurts even that clean athlete. Let’s look at the sentiment on this board for example. As more and more athletes are exposed no one says well we have one less drug user in the sport. It’s always; see there is more proof they all are using drugs. Athletes like Felix and Gay are having blood samples stored so they can be tested at a later date but still they get accused of doping by you all who have no proof other that they run fast. Imagine how frustrating that is if you’re a world class athlete and clean.

Whoa, all I said was that 10.49 is not a reasonable result by which to make a comparison. Of course she was a terrible cheat. No doubt why she's no longer with us. But for your analytical purposes, I think her fastest wind legal time is 10.61. Still faster than juiced Marion ran at altitude, and significantly faster than Arron's likely legit 10.73. That's what I was sayng. Of course FloJo was dirty. Goes w/o saying.

The point about Hall and Johnson: both Americans, former NCAA champs, both very good, both come from coaches/training groups with no positive tests. The only differences I'd say that you could point to would be: 1) that Johnson was almost unbeatable (which I would say is easier in a sprint than in a half marathon) and 2) for much of his career, he was not subject to an EPO test, and he retired well before any HGH test became available (which are both important points). But the interesting thing for me in all that is Wariner. He's pretty much just as good as Johnson over 400m, and comes from the same group and is in fact subject to all those additional tests that MJ never was. That says something to me. And, the fact that Gatlin was busted, the King of track and field and Nike's boy is especially important in that no one, no matter how big, is safe (anymore), the fact that he was busted in America by USADA and that he was Nike's guy (given that Nike owns a lot of the guys in USATF) all meant a lot. Nike would love to take Wariner down (which why they signed 19-yr old Merritt in the middle of the indoor season after he broke 45 indoors) and if Gatlin didn't get a pass, neither is Wariner.

See where I'm coming from?

As far as access, sure, there has been access to drugs (I would say easier access in the western world than in east Africa) but it's not as simple as drugs are available=everyone is using them. A lot of people justifiably look at Jos Hermens with suspicion (he used drugs in the 70s) but (I think) unfairly extend that suspicion to ALL his athletes. Jos managed Meb, Suzy Favor, Sarah Schwald, Jo Pavey (I think), and do we really think that they're cheats because of their current/former manager? I think he may have played some role in facilitating some of his athletes (the Europeans) but not his Ethiopians. In my experience, the talent is so deep in the country around Addis and the culture so opposed to anything like that, that I don't see it. Plus, there are Ethiopians with zero connections to someone like Hermens (Defar and Dibaba, for ex) who are truly world beaters and thus that should serve as evidence that it is possible to be that good.

There's something special about East Africa. The fact that Ethiopians have the highest genetic diversity between individuals than anyone else on the planet (because that's where man evolved, and it was smaller, less genetically diverse groups that left for Europe, Asia and the Americas who then populated the rest of the world), that there seems to have been an evolutionary change in their blood due to thousands of generations at high altitude, etc.

whatever you smoking you should market

Very good post.

As far as people saying MJ is self-centred, maybe that's what got him his success.

I think the majority of Ethopians, Kenyans are clean due to the astounding depth. If so many are running well, and so many new to the sport, I can't see doping as widespread. I just think there is an incredible natural talent (as with some sprinters).