Ben Johnson vs Usain Bolt

Watch Balco's Victor Conte 3hr interview on youtube, " Joe Rogan podcast #277". Strong evidence from the guy with ultimate inside-track: Usain Bolt, & every other Jamaican runner, is juiced to the gills, with multiple substances, well beyond the stuff available to Johnson back in the day.

Reading through this thread I realize I miss the geez. Sprints for me aren't interesting without his posts. He really seemed to care. I doubt this podcast will bring the geez out of retirement.

meh now that he's gone i don't even look at any sprint results. does anybody care about sprints anymore? after gay and powell, i don't care at all

Mark Lazur wrote:

Watch Balco's Victor Conte 3hr interview on youtube, " Joe Rogan podcast #277". Strong evidence from the guy with ultimate inside-track: Usain Bolt, & every other Jamaican runner, is juiced to the gills, with multiple substances, well beyond the stuff available to Johnson back in the day.

That might be a leap of faith. There's a reason why there's a scandal about many NCAA schools with big football programs refusing to test their athletes for steroids: If the old-fashioned steroids weren't better, they wouldn't still be using them. And if you poke around bodybuilding sites, you can see people still cycling steroids and using SARMS between cycles. So it seems the new stuff is not better.

What HGH, IGF-1, SARMS, thyroid meds, and such have given you until about 1 year ago is the ability to dope and not get caught, whereas if you're stupid enough to do something innocuous like Jack3D, you get banned.

Of course, if you live in Jamaica where they don't even test out of competition.....

Sure, but there is always the possibility of synergistic effects.

i.e. roids & sarms = more than the sum of just roids + sarms

Drugs work for sprinting, and nobody really knows where the pharmaceutical frontier is. Roids work, but other things, or a combo of other things, or a combo of other things and roids, may work better yet.

It's kind of surprising, given the unlimited drug use possible in Jamaica, that the record isn't lower than it is, and that there weren't like 25 guys running 9.7's Goes to show how fast 9.7's actually are

The First SARM was demonstrated in 2003

Asafa Powell ran 9.77WR in June 2005, the first 100m WR by an athlete Jamaican and training in Jamaica (Ben Johnson and Donovan Bailey ran for Canada and trained with Dr. Dan Pfaff in the USA)

One of the bottles seized from Powell by Italian police in the drug bust last year reportedly had the letters "S4" (that is the name of a SARM) written on it.

Correction: Donovan Bailey (not Ben Johnson obviously) trained with Dan Pfaff, and nobody has suggested that either was involved with PEDs.

19.83 and 9.86 is not the unmodified Bolt lol. Coming from someone who trained with his training partners and knew Bolt first hand before he was famous. CLEAN Bolt ran 45.6,19.9 and 10.3. Actually when he ran 10.3 we used to laugh at him because it came as a surprise. He needed more strength and due to his height if he got massive power to put down he would drop times immensely but he needed pharma to get that insane power/quickness at his height to run with the shorter sprinters. He took the 10.3 to 10.0 on roids then the 10.0 to 9.69 on roids out of nowhere that's how good he responded. That's how much the pharma made a difference to his body it changed him into a different person. He needed drugs to get to 10.0 he is not a short sprinter he is a 200/400 guy. Its amazing what they have done and that's why he is the best. If you notice Yohan uses the same concept with pharma for immense strength to improve that is how he dropped to 9.69 then blew himself up. His body is not made for a 9.69 he is a 10.++ sprinter he may not ever be the same again. A lot of the the Caribbean sprinters do this pharma system and sprint training its almost similar to Sprint Capitol back in the day. Drag racing everyday partnered with extreme pharma. Theres an 11.3 guy NATURALLY that has gone 10.03 on this program. Im talking a guy with zero talent. Drugs change the body the thing is it doesn't last forever and will fry your system/body hence why a lot of these sprinters will decline fast young or retire at 30. If you take a break from the drugs like Gatlin did you can preserve yourself a few more years hence why hes dropping prs at 32 but he will decline soon fast he has one or two years left.

So who was it who went from 11.3 to 10.03? I don't think that even a doped guy with no talent could run 10.03 he maybe had pretty good potential but was lazy at 11.3

Blake "may" not ever be the same again? Will he or won't he? btw I believe the 10.3 for a clean Bolt.

NO YOU CANNOT GEEZER.

I am so sorry to tell you that. You know more about sprinting than most of the distance guys on this board, but you simply state above average knowledge of sprinting using terms not generally used in distance running to make yourself appear to be the next Charlie Francis. Speaking of which, he states that Ben Johnson's start has had many attempts at replicating by

other world class sprinters, and they all suffered miserably. Ben was the MOST POWERFUL SPRINTER OF HIS TIME, and he was the only one able to exploit it using his tremendous back muscles, which provided all of his force out of the blocks. I repeat you CANNOT do Ben Johnson's start. Sorry, a 50+ master sprinter like you simply can not provide anywhere near the force required to duplicate that start. I agree that Ben Johnson, if it was possible to get any more powerful than he was, could make the start better than the likes of the classic start, but again the point I'm trying to make is that YOU SPECIFICALLY CANNOT REPLICATE BEN'S START.

Regards,

Frank.

Hi Frank!

Yes, I can. You are absolutely correct about everything else.

Let's get this straight: a perfect replication, of course not. I can't make it to 10m quite as quickly as he could.

However, I can do the form, and I can do it well. I don't have his power, therefore I have to be more upright, or I get buried on the second and third steps. Being more upright means that I am not in a favorable drive position for my style of acceleration--which is different from Ben's, because I don't have that kind of power. That's why I don't use that start.

But doing it, I am anybody's equal to 10m, still. It takes practice to get the lowest possible angle out of it, without getting buried. Guys at the track always make me do it because they think it's funny to see. They are all somewhat envious, but have never really taken the time to think about it, or to practice it. It's not magic, not something only Ben could do--however, he's the only one who could do it as well as he did.

It's interesting that you talk about back strength. Although that's only 1 component to things, it's a big one. I have insane lower back strength, and always have, much greater proportionally than my leg strength, etc.

One day I will make a video of the various starts I can do, for purposes of comparison. Heck, maybe tomorrow--I have to drive my wife to the airport early, and then maybe I'll get some z's, and then go to the track.

Sprintgeezer wrote:

9.79 had the biggest "wow" effect of anything in track, ever, IMHO.

Also there will not be any proof in any direction, but I highly doubt this.

The biggest "wow" effect as you called it was Johnson's 9,83 in Rome 1987. Sub 10 times were super rare then and the WR was 9,93 set at altitude. Johnson improved that by a full tenth. Also the tension was even higher in '87 than in '88. It was also the first time the full athletics world really saw Johnson's mind-boggling start. Before the race it was absolutely even who should be regarded favourite. Lewis - the ultimate super star - came back in his best shape ever after two not so good (for him) seasons. And Johnson the best in the years before and even better in '87. And Lewis has run unparraleled in the heats. But nobody was prepared for a 9,87. The reaction in the press around the world confirme my point - I don't think any single race in history has produced similar headlines (maybe Bannister?). It was regarded as the Bob Beamon performance in running.

I probably would also rank Michael Johnson's 19,32 from Atlanta ahead of the 9,79.

..nobody was prepared for a 9,83...

19.32 wasn't even close.

No big personal rival, the non-existent rival wasn't somebody arrogant and hate-able, no USA vs the ROW, no suspense due to injury and previous loss, no other-worldly physique, no suspense due to events in the heats, like BJ qualifying on time after finishing 3rd, and the 200 was not, and never has been, the premiere event of the OG.

Everybody knew MJ would win, the only question would be what the time was. Nobody knew that Johnson would win, or that he would set a WR--nobody even knew that he would finish the race uninjured. Nobody knew that he would celebrate near the line.

9.79 was infinitely bigger than 19.32

The 9.83 was essentially only big in the track world. Sorry, but it is trumped by events leading up to Seoul, and by the fact that Seoul was the OG. 9.83 helped to galvanize the ROW in favor of Johnson and against Lewis and the USA, it is true--but that only contributed to the greater magnitude of the Seoul race. Rome had no such giant precursor outside the track world.

I have not talked at all which race is "greater". I just have talked about the "wow" effect as you have called it.

For myself I would say (again: the "wow" effect) Atlanta > Rome > Seoul

For the general public it's very close. Maybe Rome at top. The 9,83 just made the headlines all over the world. It was just thought to be impossible what Johnson has done in Rome. A year later - also it wasn't clear in which form Johnson is at all - something like that wasn't thought to be impossible anymore.

I also would disagree that everybody knew Michael Johnson will win. Fredericks was regarded a serious threat.

What's ROW?

With each stride ben johnson takes, he generates 3500 watts of electricity.. enough to light up a city block. watch from 1:40 of this video---->

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pJj-EA_RgI4

More great video of Ben's races showing his great muscularity. The guy can bench over 400lbs...More than double his body weight.. what can Usain Bolt do. I don't think he can do squat.

Ben Johnson was loaded on roids and ran a PR of 9.79. Usain Bolt without roids has run faster than that several times in the rain. Johnson's steroid time, even if it wasn't erased, would not even put him in the top 10 times of all-time.

Remember Bolt's '08 gold? When he was so far ahead of the field that he virtually did a touchdown dance the last 20M and still shattered the WR? Had Johnson been in that race tunning his 9.79, Bolt still would have done the touchdown dance.

Either way, Bolt has that insane stride. He's made the 100 about the last 50 meters, and in his 2009 record he split faster than the 60m world record anyways. Johnson would win a 40 yard dash sure, but not a 100m.[/quote]

Bolt ran the fastest ever split to 30m during his WR