ukathleticscoach wrote:
'The tragedy in this whole affair is that Eddie did not need to dope. As everyone knows, with his 'white African build' - his physique was ideally suited to the sport.'
I agree with you. Like I said I ran against him - he could have run 2-08 in his prime. Doesn't make him any better though, but if you can train at altitude and believe in yourself, you should not need EPO
I don't agree with either of you. Eddy ran something like 100 marathons, and his best was 2:11:50. He was basically a journeyman marathoner who picked up a lot of spare change running lower-tier races against minimal competition. In the bigger races against real competition, he could be counted on to be in the pack in the early going, and never with the leaders in the end. The best performance of his career, by far, was his EPO-enhanced 2:12 at Twin Cities when he was 42 years old. I've never seen anything in his history to indicate that he could have come close to 2:08 on a record-quality course without doping. I don't give any additional credence to the opinion of anyone who happened to participate in one or more races that Eddy participated in, which is what I understand you to mean by saying that you ran "against" him.
And "train[ing] at altitude and believ[ing] in yourself" is no substitute for regular injections of synthetic EPO.