Toby dammit wrote:
Coe definitely used blood transfusions to oxygenate his blood. A friend went to his uni and swears he used to go off for his transfusions periodically. Its a well known fact.
There are accounts of winter sports athletes blood doping as far back as the late 60s and track athletes picking up on it in the early to mid 70s. Blood doping was ripe in Europe during mid-70s to mid-80s; it is hard to believe other Europeans were blood doping and GB athletes weren't. However, the great GB middle distance runners like Coe/Overt/Cram appear to come from a golden era, they were exceptionally talented from a young age. Overt at age 18, won the silver medal in the 800 meters in the 1974 European Athletics Championships, setting a new European Junior 800m record of 1:45x in the process. Overt reached the 800m finals in the 1976 Olympics at age 20 or 21. Coe for example ran a 1:46x 800 and the equivalent of a 3:55 mile at age 20. Cram at age 19 reached the final of the 1500m at the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games and at 21 took 1500m gold at the Commonwealth Games and the European Championships. There were other young GB athletes on the scene during those days like Graham Williamson who set the World Junior record in 1978 running a 3:37x 1500m. As well as Ray Flynn, Frank Clement, Frank O'Mara, John Robson, Frank O'Mara and Marcus O'Sullivan.
It just so happened that in a period of 5 years, GB produced over half a dozen young athletes roughly equivalent to Alan Webb/German Fernandez and Grant Fisher. When you have that many young great athletes it is not too surprising that a few are going to become world beaters.