Sprint historians, how could the 2003 Paris World Champs be won in 10.07 and 20.30?

One of those guys "who" likes

Not "that"

Did you go to Yale too?

I'm not from the UK, but the language you're trying to use is from there.

rojo wrote:The winning times in the men's 100 and 200 were incredibly slow. 10.07 and 20.30. On the year, no one ran faster than 20.01 in the 200. No sub-20s.

Does anyone remember why things were so slow then? Was there some sort of new drug test? Had some big stars just retired/been busted? What could explain it?

I welcome your thoughts/theories.

Don't get roped into too much of this BALCO rubbish.

It was a combination of ridiculous circumstances/injuries/non-qualifiers

The main reasons for poor 100 were :

- Gatlin had won an awesome indoor WC earlier in 6.4-mid & shouda gone 9.9-flat/low if in same shape in Paris but got injured prior to US trials & didn't even make it past 1st heat in 10.32 in trials

- Mo Greene badly injured after trials, a shadow of himself in Paris final where obviously in anywhere near top-shape, he wouda gone 9.90 at worst

- Poor Asafa got dq'ed along with Drummond

I'm not sure this was fair as I do believe he wouda run 10-flat in final & maybe won

- Darrell Brown ran an awesome 10.01WJR in prelim

he eased off in that run & definitely in 9.95 shape if he'd run it hard ( woud still be WR now )

he got attack of nerves in final & bombed

As for 200m, leaving aside Gatlin injured for trials, this was a story of Darvis Patton messing up the final

In prelim he ran an utterly beautiful 20.03 looking in about 3rd gear the whole way round

He was definitely good for 19.80 that run if flat-out to tape but wanted to conserve energy

I expected him to go 19.70 - 19.80 in final but he bombed it due to probably nerves

The '03 sprints were truely an abomination due to injuries & temperaments...

stick with eharmony wrote:

uusj wrote:

Sometimes races are just slow and tactical. Like every US championship distance event. Remember when the men's 5k was almost run in 15:00 a year or two ago?

ummmmmmm sprints are never tactical, that's just plain stupid.

No, I had some of my best results in those tactical sprints!

ventolin^3 wrote:

Don't get roped into too much of this BALCO rubbish.

You find it just coincidental that issues happened with ALL of these great sprinters right after the BALCO news was released?

Maurice Greene

Ato Boldon

Asafa Powell

John Drummond

Tim Montgomery

Dwain Chambers

Patrick Johnson

They were all great runners who were at those championships and not one of them was able to get medal - which meant to beat Darren Cambell who has a lifetime PR of 10.04?

This is not a tactical event where someone like Manzano could sneak in to medal in a slow pace.

It is the 100m dash.

uusj wrote:

Sometimes races are just slow and tactical. Like every US championship distance event. Remember when the men's 5k was almost run in 15:00 a year or two ago?

Thanks for the laugh.

Obviously there is no actual proof to the contrary (yet) but I am convinced nobody has run sub 9.90 clean.

who is john drummond?

This timeline on the USADA site pretty much says it all, the athletes knew the jig was up in 2003:

http://www.usada.org/dates-associated-with-the-balco-doping-conspiracy/

The world championships started on August 23rd that year.

Look at all the big name sprinters that suddenly had bad races or false starts at the world champs that year, there were more than a few, it's just not explainable by coincidence.

Probably the closest we've seen to a clean world champs or Olympics in decades...

How can you say it was the cleanest world champs in decades when two athletes in the final were busted (Chambers for a sample from that exact week)?

Why would intentionally running like crap (or intentionally going off drugs) improve your standing with the BALCO investigation? BALCO had no impact on the drug testing at worlds... if you were linked to BALCO you were f***ed either way (Montgomery), so what was the point of him intentionally running slow? Why would Drummond cause such a huge scene over his false start if it was supposedly on purpose?

I think ventolin's post is spot on, and he's one of the few acutal "sprint historians" here. Crap days like that happen.

What you saw in the sprints that year was a bunch of guys that had their PED supply dry up two months before the championships and most of the heavy hitters suddenly started to run like shit. Only an idiot would have kept taking THG into the world championships that year, and they didn't have enough time to find a replacement.

Chambers and Montgomery are perfect examples, they were 10.1-10.2 guys without the drugs and that's exactly how they ran in 2003. Even before they were DQ'd they couldn't break 10.1 in the WC finals that year to break into the top 3, they were total non-factors, Kim Collins took the race start to finish in 10.07. With Chambers and Montgomery we don't even have to speculate on their drug use, it is well documented and their performances with and without taking PEDs is well understood just like Ben Johnson, who also couldn't break 10.1 when he tried to make a clean comeback. Yeah Chambers was busted that week but it's clear his program was disrupted as he certainly wasn't performing like a fully drugged up Chambers could perform ie 9.9s or better.

I don't even know how to explain someone like Ato Boldon who could barely muster a 10.22 in the semi finals in 2003 for a guy that has some of the most sub 10s and sub 20s in the history of the sport! I guess he had a bad year too. With Maurice Greene "injured" the 2003 WCs should have been Boldon's year to finally win the gold, but he couldn't get out of the semi finals. Funny how everybody from John Smith's group had a bad year that year. I guess Trevor Graham was just being altruistic when he sent that syringe full of THG to the USADA.

I don't think either Jon Drummond or Asafa intentionally false started, just their bad luck. Drummond was a 10 flat guy most of the time anyway, the winning time probably wouldn't have been much faster with him in the final. In fact Drummond finished at the US finals with 10.18 2 months prior. I don't think anyone could make the case that the 2003 WC 100m finals would have been much faster with Jon Drummond in it. We'll never know whether he could have even made it to the finals, it certainly wasn't a given. Drummond was just another HSI guy running a couple of tenths slower than usual, just another aberration right?.

Asafa Powell didn't even break 10 seconds until 2004! His PR in 2003 was something like 10.2, to contend that the finals would have been faster with him in it is ridiculous, more likely he wouldn't have made it past the semi-finals that year.

Gatlin might have been legitimately injured in 03, score 1 for ventolin I guess. Then again his coach did send the syringe full of designer steroid to the USADA, so who knows what was really going on.

By the time you take out the sprinters associated with HSI, Trevor Graham or athletes otherwise tied up in the Balco scandal (like Chambers) you weren't left with a whole lot of men in 2003 that could break 10 seconds in the 100 meter dash, let alone break 10 seconds after running the rounds. That is pretty much fact and that is why the winning time was so slow.

Boy I wish that 2003 would come around again. It seems like the fans of the sport are utter morons that are as easily fooled as grown men that buy pro wrestling tickets that sit at ringside seats...

10.07 and 20.30 are not "incredibly slow." Think about physics and a body moving through space. 0.3 to 0.5 seconds is less than the blink of an eye.

reasons given for 2003

but what post 2003 times to date.

2003 ,if have to put a year when a certain

peptide starts to hit track........

starting with liu xiang then asafa

and gay ,bolt .select few til freeforall now.

bolt on serious dope but this peptide

key and the difference.

tell me where have the sprinters been

before from qatar or south africa

up to afew years ago.

so dirty , very much igf-1 lr3 .....

aduck2022 wrote:

reasons given for 2003

but what post 2003 times to date.

2003 ,if have to put a year when a certain

peptide starts to hit track........

starting with liu xiang then asafa

and gay ,bolt .select few til freeforall now.

bolt on serious dope but this peptide

key and the difference.

tell me where have the sprinters been

before from qatar or south africa

up to afew years ago.

so dirty , very much igf-1 lr3 .....

Something is certainly happening. Runners at all distances are popping out of the woodwork all over the world running fantastic times.

You'd better make it clear that you aren't talking about True and Jager. Don't you know they support a clean sport? Jerk.

aduck2022 wrote:

reasons given for 2003

but what post 2003 times to date.

2003 ,if have to put a year when a certain

peptide starts to hit track........

starting with liu xiang then asafa

and gay ,bolt .select few til freeforall now.

bolt on serious dope but this peptide

key and the difference.

tell me where have the sprinters been

before from qatar or south africa

up to afew years ago.

so dirty , very much igf-1 lr3 .....

You say the same thing all the time

You could be correct wrote:

Something is certainly happening. Runners at all distances are popping out of the woodwork all over the world running fantastic times.

Right. And it shows that Galen Rupp is the least doped runner these days.

Boring wrote:

aduck2022 wrote:

reasons given for 2003

but what post 2003 times to date.

2003 ,if have to put a year when a certain

peptide starts to hit track........

starting with liu xiang then asafa

and gay ,bolt .select few til freeforall now.

bolt on serious dope but this peptide

key and the difference.

tell me where have the sprinters been

before from qatar or south africa

up to afew years ago.

so dirty , very much igf-1 lr3 .....

You say the same thing all the time

He's a one trick pony who has never been to a track meet in his life.