UK athletics head complains that rowing, swimming & sailing win because of 'technologiy doping' - what about Mo Farah?

The things Mo uses are completely different from the things in water sports. For Mo to be in the same category, he would have to be using something directly performance enhancing. Something like a jet pack or those bouncy Spira running shoes.

Are you really this dumb?

I say this rhetorically because my mind is made up, but I'm hoping it will cause you to actually stop for a second and consider how those sports participate with EQUIPMENT and how the technological advantage refers to THAT.

Good god, come on.

de Vos didn’t mention swimming who were the biggest (British) flops at the Olympic pool.

An awful lot of money from the lottery fund did go into our rowing, sailing and indoor cycling teams where those using the best technology available do have an advantage.

It helps that they are also very minority sports and few countries are willing to spend anywhere near the sums we were in our quest for gold medals.

It was quite laughable, watching our television at that time, one would have thought that sports like rowing and cycling around in tiny circles were the most popular sports in the world, when in reality, nobody in Britain takes the slightest notice of them other than during the Olympics.

Watching the sailing was like watching paint dry.

Cycling is very popular here now.

Not sure how you haven't noticed that really. (Doesn't it fit in with your agenda?)

Is he going take away Geb's treadmill then?

de Vos gets a right slating here

http://www.eightlane.co.uk/index.php?p=/discussion/415/uka039s-ceo039s-blunders-in-his-talk-to-oxford-university

do you mean to tell me you think the UK athletes are doped like Farah ? how can the UK get away with an entire team doped up ? sooner or later some disgruntled person on the UK team would out the cheating.

Your post is not so ridiculous. It is likely that the UK is no different from most host nations of the OG in that their athletes were given, if needed, a little extra margin to more or less dope as they wished. However, this does not mean that the team entire team was doping; I suspect that most were not.

De Vos does have a point about the technology advantages for certain minority technology-dependent sports. He, perhaps inadvertently, raised the issue that this in itself is against the Olympic Spirit, where you are trying to measure the endeavor of athletes rather than machines. This issue can nevertheless be very easily resolved at the next OG. As with the horses in the modern pentathlon, there should be just a standard pool of bicycles, rowing boats, and sailing boats for all of the participants. The athletes are then randomly allocated the equipment from this pool before the start of their event and then return it back to the pool at the end of each qualifying round. In this scenario, everyone is competing with the same technology and the best athletes rather than the best boats or bicycles will be the winners.

rojo, it is not often, but I agree with your here.

It's funny, because just the other day, I was directly thinking about Hermens' comment about "science, not sport won," and thought that he did have a bit of a point.

Now before everyone gets all riled up, yes, I realize that that there are certainly gray areas (it is not black and white) on what could be considered a technological or scientific "unfair" advantage, and what isn't....or....put another way, what might be considered less about the spirit of sports and more about a science experiment.

Altitude tents are of course exhibit A, both because they are extremely expensive (limiting availability and use for many athletes), and because they seem not too far off from PED use. Sleeping in a tent that pumps in a synthetic air that you breathe ( that is NOT the same as air at altitude) in order to raise red blood cells is as far from "natural" as one can get. Now yes, one can then ask: is using an air conditioner to recover after a hot run and get a good night sleep unfair? Is using a treadmill unfair or unnatural? Yes, I certainly acknowledge these points, and understand that this is not a black and white issue.

But to Hermens' (and possibly rojo's and UK athletics chief's) point(s) about science vs sport: one does need to ask: at what point are such technologies unfair or not sporting? What if an invention is created where you are on a treadmill, and the machine moves your legs for you at a superhuman speed and this creates adaptations that result in superior performance?? And what if this treadmill costs 5 million $'s? Is that natural? Is that your own efforts? Is it fair if only the richest athletes on earth can afford such a machine? Or what if we find out that taking a trip to the moon to train results in superhuman performance, and only a handful of athletes can do this?

Okay, again, relax, I am well aware that the preceding examples were extreme and not very realistic. But is what we currently have really that far off ? Zero gravity treadmills? Huffing synthetic air that is supposed to mimic altitude while living at sea level? Flash cooling your legs to temperatures not achievable via natural conditions?

Again, I am not saying we've necessarily gone too far in this direction, but it does give one pause on where technology is taking us in sport. Remember, we all decry PED's, which are really just another scientific/technological "improvement" that mimic natural hormones already in existence in the body.

At some point, we will have moved very afar from: who has the most natural talent, who trains the hardest/smartest, and who eats the healthiest. Maybe there is no return to that at this point, but Hermens/rojo/UK chief have a point. At some point we *MIGHT* only have a select few athletes who can afford to be champions, and we might be practicng a form of "training", "recovering", and "eating" that is unrecognizable, and very far from what we have always considered sport.

rojo wrote:

Does he not think Britain's #1 star of the Olympics Mo Farah benefited from every technological advantage in the world (that doesn't mean he didn't win gold)? How can de Vos not see that?

With crytoherapy, alter-gs, altitude tents, etc - Mo has it all at his disposal so much so that Jos Hermens was upset after the Olympic 10,000 and basically said "science, not sport won."

Technological advantages? Isn't all of that stuff just kidology? I certainly think so. Especially this obsession with 'increasing red blood cells' which is just plain pseudoscience. Firstly altitude tents don't actually do that, they just cause a plasma shift, and secondly, when the RBC count is increased by other means, it just thickens the athletes blood and slows down the heart rate.

From the runners I know who live in Portland, Oregon, we can fairly well assume that Nike has Farah and Rupp covered with layers of doctors and lab technicians who mask EPO, HGH, and steroids.

Does the UK do the same in such an impoverished country where they cannot afford dentistry for their own citizens, and have no money to pay public employees to sweep sidewalks and streets to remove litter and dog excrement.

I am sure all the technology helps him, but he is also doping.

Are we seriously going to sit here and pretend that Jos Hermens' athletes are clean?

Dixon Hurbut wrote:

I am sure all the technology helps him, but he is also doping.

He isn't doping.

We can help our wrote:

From the runners I know who live in Portland, Oregon, we can fairly well assume that Nike has Farah and Rupp covered with layers of doctors and lab technicians who mask EPO, HGH, and steroids.

Does the UK do the same in such an impoverished country where they cannot afford dentistry for their own citizens, and have no money to pay public employees to sweep sidewalks and streets to remove litter and dog excrement.

Are you the same guy who always comes on here and talks about European food prices?

We can help our wrote:

From the runners I know who live in Portland, Oregon, we can fairly well assume that Nike has Farah and Rupp covered with layers of doctors and lab technicians who mask EPO, HGH, and steroids.

Does the UK do the same in such an impoverished country where they cannot afford dentistry for their own citizens, and have no money to pay public employees to sweep sidewalks and streets to remove litter and dog excrement.

Britain impoverished?

Bit bizarre that coming from a citizen of a country with a national debt of $16,239,678,863,592.

And has to borrow $1,102,249,654,938 every year just to keep the wolf from the door.

Not Ron Hill wrote:

We can help our wrote:

From the runners I know who live in Portland, Oregon, we can fairly well assume that Nike has Farah and Rupp covered with layers of doctors and lab technicians who mask EPO, HGH, and steroids.

Does the UK do the same in such an impoverished country where they cannot afford dentistry for their own citizens, and have no money to pay public employees to sweep sidewalks and streets to remove litter and dog excrement.

Britain impoverished?

Bit bizarre that coming from a citizen of a country with a national debt of $16,239,678,863,592. And has to borrow $1,102,249,654,938 every year just to keep the wolf from the door.

The first quote probably came from someone living in a trailor. Makes me laugh when the teeth thing comes up from Americans who probably have more trailor trash and red necks with no teeth in their country than the entire population of Britain. The quote probably came from a guy that hasn't been outside his own country.

Not Ron Hill wrote:

Britain impoverished?

Bit bizarre that coming from a citizen of a country with a national debt of $16,239,678,863,592.

And has to borrow $1,102,249,654,938 every year just to keep the wolf from the door.

The metrics of UK and US debt as a percent of GDP, cost of servicing, etc. are actually pretty similar, with some even favoring the US. Just because the US stock is much larger doesn't really mean much since it's a large economy and at least many countries of the world have to use US debt (China and oil exporters, eg).