My inability to eat all the free McDonald's food I rightfully earned in 1984 with the Eastern Bloc staying away...
My inability to eat all the free McDonald's food I rightfully earned in 1984 with the Eastern Bloc staying away...
I agree on that one. Some athletes just got robbed of their moment of glory, the joy of listening to their national anthem, financial benefits, etc. all because of doping frauds. The joy of being the champ, the attention you get, will never be the same, even if you are re-instated as the rightfull champion (or medallist).
Another point, not directly doping related, is the Gail Devers win over Marlene Ottey in the 1996 Olympics. The photofinish-reader got it wrong.
These are all good answers but clearly the greatest injustice was that so-called 'world championship" held in Austin recently.
George Atlas wrote:
Efraimson Zimbalist Jr. wrote:I apologize if this was posted earlier, but I didn't feel like reading all seven pages of posts.
My feelings is the various politically-motivated Olympic boycotts are the biggest injustices. Some countries, such as Kenya, were robbed of two consecutive Olympic appearances. Henry Rono, for one, would have been a medal possibility in 1976 AND 1980. Of course, the world missed seeing a John Walker/Filbert Bayi matchup in 1976. Many others, too numerous to mention.
I have to agree with those boycotts being the biggest injustice. Rono was denied two Olympics around his peak. Bill Rodgers was still a medal threat as one of the world's best marathoners in 1979. Craig Virgin was the World Cross Champ and was a 10,000 medal contender. After 1981 due to his kidney issues he was never going to be back to the level he was on the world scene in 1979 and 1980. Not to mention Harvey Glance in the 100.
Also Don Paige was a strong threat for at least a bronze in the 800. James Robinson too with the way that race played out, 54 first 400.
The 1980 US boycott was bullshit. But it was the cold war years and Carter certainly couldn't consider engaging the Soviets. In hindsight that boycott politically was irrelevant,
Ummmm, you realize the biggest player in the 1980 Moscow 10,000 was Mohammed Kedir. Neither Rono or Virgin would have medalled.
Watch the actual race.
The one runner who would have benefitted from Rono & Virgin being in the field would have been Viren.
You know I am right on this one.
messi wrote:
Ummmm, you realize the biggest player in the 1980 Moscow 10,000 was Mohammed Kedir. Neither Rono or Virgin would have medalled.
Watch the actual race.
The one runner who would have benefitted from Rono & Virgin being in the field would have been Viren.
You know I am right on this one.
See
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3456489&page=2for a discussion of this.
messi wrote:
George Atlas wrote:I have to agree with those boycotts being the biggest injustice. Rono was denied two Olympics around his peak. Bill Rodgers was still a medal threat as one of the world's best marathoners in 1979. Craig Virgin was the World Cross Champ and was a 10,000 medal contender. After 1981 due to his kidney issues he was never going to be back to the level he was on the world scene in 1979 and 1980. Not to mention Harvey Glance in the 100.
Also Don Paige was a strong threat for at least a bronze in the 800. James Robinson too with the way that race played out, 54 first 400.
The 1980 US boycott was bullshit. But it was the cold war years and Carter certainly couldn't consider engaging the Soviets. In hindsight that boycott politically was irrelevant,
Ummmm, you realize the biggest player in the 1980 Moscow 10,000 was Mohammed Kedir. Neither Rono or Virgin would have medalled.
Watch the actual race.
The one runner who would have benefitted from Rono & Virgin being in the field would have been Viren.
You know I am right on this one.
I will watch that race again. If it was warm, which I imagine it was in Moscow, perhaps even a focused Rono and Virgin wouldn't have been able to force a 13:40 first 5k and drop Kedir. But you can at least speculate they could have dropped some of the other runners by the last mile. Including Yifter and Viren. 27:30 race instead of 27:50.
George Atlas wrote:
messi wrote:Ummmm, you realize the biggest player in the 1980 Moscow 10,000 was Mohammed Kedir. Neither Rono or Virgin would have medalled.
Watch the actual race.
The one runner who would have benefitted from Rono & Virgin being in the field would have been Viren.
You know I am right on this one.
I will watch that race again. If it was warm, which I imagine it was in Moscow, perhaps even a focused Rono and Virgin wouldn't have been able to force a 13:40 first 5k and drop Kedir. But you can at least speculate they could have dropped some of the other runners by the last mile. Including Yifter and Viren. 27:30 race instead of 27:50.
Ok I lied I just watched the race, Yifter with an easy win in 27:42 and a 54 last lap. Rono and Virgin likely both in 1980 would have been at best 4th or 5th. I agree.
oldold runner wrote:
even older than you wrote:They guy who DNFed was not Korean. He was chosen because another guy got sick right before the Olympics. Another guy (who held WR before Son) withdrew from the trial so that he could give blood to his sick brother.
This is where I got my information. Where did you get yours?
http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/summer/1936/ATH/mens-marathon.html
Tamao Shiaku was born in Sakaide City, Kagawa prefecture in 1906.
http://www.peizu.net/hito.htmlUnlike Son and Nan, he does not have a Korean name. It is possible that his parents were from Korea, but highly unlikely since he was born 4 years before Korea became Japanese colony. Moreover, if his parents changed their names to Japanese, why would they choose such an unusual name like "Shiaku"? (I have never heard of this family name except for this guy.) There is also an award named after him that is given at an IAAF Silver Label race
http://www.km-half.com/outline/along with awards named after two other runners from Kagawa. (Kanematsu Yamada and Tomeichi Omura) If his parents were Koreans, why would they establish an award after him, especially he is lesser known than the other two runners?
Biggest injustice: only finding out after the fact I could have tapped SFH for a mere $600.
I speak American wrote:
Wasn't there a guy or two who made the Oly team in 68, I'm thinking 5 or 10k, but then they re-ran the distance events at altitude and they got bumped?
1500 too. I can't remember the guy but he qualified but was made to run again until he lost and they put in an Oregon guy.
dvufuf wrote:
I speak American wrote:Wasn't there a guy or two who made the Oly team in 68, I'm thinking 5 or 10k, but then they re-ran the distance events at altitude and they got bumped?
1500 too. I can't remember the guy but he qualified but was made to run again until he lost and they put in an Oregon guy.
The winner of the Los Angeles trial should have been given an Olympic birth, plus the top two from Tahoe.
What was the point of the Los Angeles trial?
What was the point of the 1980 Olympic trials.....why not just have a 3 day national championship?
That Bruce Jenner was not allowed to compete in the Heptathlon in 1976.
http://www.thestar.com/sports/olympics/2009/09/12/gender_issue_opens_old_wounds.htmlway back when wrote:
Hilda Strike being robbed of Olympic Gold
fisky wrote:
Ben Johnson winning the World Championships in 1987 and the 1988 Olympics was the biggest injustice in US sprinting history.
Most posters on LetsRun weren't around in the 1980s, but that was back when sprinting was big in the USA... Carl Lewis, Calvin Smith, FloJo, Evelyn Ashford, Jackie Joyner-Kersee. School kids who weren't runners knew who these sprinters were.
Carl Lewis spoke out against Johnson, without naming him by name, and caught a huge amount of flack for it. Ironically, Johnson's doping tarnished Lewis's image. He never recovered even after Johnson was outed.
Didn't Lewis fail a drug test (for a stimulant) before either the '84 or '88 trials? Wasn't there a whole "practice run" of doping tests for the entire USTAF program before the '84 games/trials that turned up numerous positives - but instead of sanctions it was used as a warning to make sure there were no positives during the competitions.
You're right that the names of the US stars were well known, but if the cheating of the 90s and the 2000s is any indication of the extent going back into the 80s(not a stretch to make that connection IMO), much of US sprinting history is an injustice to US sprinting history. And Ben aside, Carl Lewis did enough to tarnish his own image with his own arrogance. Holding him out to be a standard of anything resembling class and sportsmanship and ethics is an injustice in itself.
fisky wrote:
Ben Johnson winning the World Championships in 1987 and the 1988 Olympics was the biggest injustice in US sprinting history.
Most posters on LetsRun weren't around in the 1980s, but that was back when sprinting was big in the USA... Carl Lewis, Calvin Smith, FloJo, Evelyn Ashford, Jackie Joyner-Kersee. School kids who weren't runners knew who these sprinters were.
Carl Lewis spoke out against Johnson, without naming him by name, and caught a huge amount of flack for it. Ironically, Johnson's doping tarnished Lewis's image. He never recovered even after Johnson was outed.
Didn't Lewis fail a drug test (for a stimulant) before either the '84 or '88 trials? Wasn't there a whole "practice run" of doping tests for the entire USTAF program before the '84 games/trials that turned up numerous positives - but instead of sanctions it was used as a warning to make sure there were no positives during the competitions.
You're right that the names of the US stars were well known, but if the cheating of the 90s and the 2000s is any indication of the extent going back into the 80s(not a stretch to make that connection IMO), much of US sprinting history is an injustice to US sprinting history. And Ben aside, Carl Lewis did enough to tarnish his own image with his own arrogance. Holding him out to be a standard of anything resembling class and sportsmanship and ethics is an injustice in itself.
Avocado's Number wrote:
Yes in Munich wrote:Yes, in Munich. It was Ryun's own fault for choosing to run in the middle of the pack. He could have led, run wide, or run at the back to avoid contact. He was not fouled. It was a normal part of 1500m running. He wasn't ready for a physical race. He was clipped and fell. His fault.
It's not even clear that he was clipped. Ryun himself didn't know what happened. The Americans made two very different claims during the appeal process. During the initial appeal, Ryun claimed that a hole in his shoe and a gash on his ankle proved that someone had spiked him. After the initial appeal was denied, however, Timmons claimed that, on videotape, it could be seen that, as Ryun was moving up next to Pakistan's Mohamed Younis, who was to Ryun's left on the inside, Younis's elbow hit Ryun's midsection, causing him to fall. Whether Ryun was passing too close to Younis, or Younis was swinging his arm too wide into Ryun, is a matter of conjecture. It does, however, seem highly probable that whatever contact there was would not have ordinarily caused a fall. As Ryun has acknowledged, a childhood illness had left him with permanent nerve damage in his inner ear, with 50% hearing loss in his right ear and occasional dizziness and equilibrium problems that sometimes caused him to fall after the slightest contact in a race. (In talking about a somewhat similar occurrence in an earlier race following some jostling in the pack, Ryun said, "Someone with good balance would probably have recovered easily," but in his case, "the slightest jarring of my stride can send me down in a heap the next moment.") At the very least, Ryun should have recognized that he was susceptible to such problems and stayed out of trouble. (It was only a heat, not a semi-final; other than Keino, the competition to advance to the next round was not that tough.) A much more serious injustice in that race was to Billy Fordjour of Ghana, who was running next to Ryun on the outside; Ryun crashed into Fordjour, who in turn crashed to the ground. After the race, Fordjour shook Ryun's hand and said that he was sorry about what had happened, but many people over the years have wrongly assumed that Fordjour, who had demonstrated nothing but graciousness and good sportsmanship, was acknowledging his fault in effectively ending Ryun's Olympic career.
Thank you AN and the previous poster for filling this in - I always wondered what had happened in that race, I wish that there were more first hand sources, but thanks guys for sharing what you have heard.
Jim and Frank wrote:
Jim Ryun getting robbed in Munich.
Shorter getting robbed in Montreal.
Oddly, they are both American. What are the odds?
The obvious answer is the prohibiting of women from competing in distance events for much of the history of the modern Olympics and all of ancient Greek Olympic history.
Nothing else comes close.
So someone cheated someone else out of one medal? You are going to compare that to 50% of the population simply being barred from competition? Seriously?
So someone tripped and lost their big chance? You are going to compare that to 50% of the population simply being barred from competition? Seriously?
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Sorry, but this one really isn't debatable.
Not really. The best athletes in the world were there. Gender division has allowed far inferior athletes to compete in a less competitive subcategory.
Harrythehat wrote:
Not really. The best athletes in the world were there. Gender division has allowed far inferior athletes to compete in a less competitive subcategory.
Sorry, but yours is probably the dumbest answer on the thread (though I have to admit that I don't have time to go back and read every answer to be sure).
Am I living in the twilight zone? The Boston Marathon weather was terrible!
Is there a rule against attaching a helium balloon to yourself while running a road race?
Matt Choi was drinking beer halfway through the Boston Marathon
Des Linden: "The entire sport" has changed since she first started running Boston.
How rare is it to run a sub 5 minute mile AND bench press 225?
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