A Finnish paper published an article in 1983 stating that Seb Coe dropped out of World Championships to avoid a doping positive

Is Letsrun seeking an interview with Seb Coe? He needs to answer questions.

I will pose a possible reason:

If he was suffering from an ailment and taking medications to treat it, then he might not have been able to pass doping controls. Rules were very different then when it comes to TUEs.

Also there was a window around that time where blood doping (transfers) was actually not against the rules.

Would be interesting to hear from Coe on it though.

luv2run wrote:Would be interesting to hear from Coe on it though.

Despite being very involved in the sport at the time, Coe knows nothing.

We should all wander through life knowing nothing yet doing so well.

Mr. Obvious wrote:

Is Letsrun seeking an interview with Seb Coe? He needs to answer questions.

Definitely not right now. We don't speak Finnish. I'm sure there are plenty of media entities in the UK that that can ask him questions if this has any substance. If we need to follow up, we will.

It should be pointed out that the initial source in 1983 was Iltalehti . It's described on Wikipedia is a "Tabloid newspaper." Anyone in FInland know what the reputation of the paper is/was? I see it has the 6th biggest circulation in the country.

Is tabloid being used generically or does it connotate something like the National Enquirer in the US?

I'd say that at least nowadays Iltalehti isn't too bad, nothing like National Enquirer or Daily Mail. I'm too young to say how it was in the 80s.

rojo wrote:

It should be pointed out that the initial source in 1983 was Iltalehti . It's described on Wikipedia is a "Tabloid newspaper." Anyone in FInland know what the reputation of the paper is/was? I see it has the 6th biggest circulation in the country.

Is tabloid being used generically or does it connotate something like the National Enquirer in the US?

Iltalehti is a Finnish daily tabloid newspaper very similar to Sun or National Enquirer.

As a Finn, I can vouch for the reputation of the paper on general level. While at least today it certainly has its pages of sensational gossip and bare boobs, as far as I know, the main reporting in the paper is still objective and there are now and then breakthrough investigative stories. In 1980s it was actually started as the "evening edition" of one largest daily newspapers, conservatively oriented Uusi Suomi, which was founded already in 1847.

As a curiosity, only a week after that article was published, in the same paper there was a full-page interview with runner Kaarlo Maaninka where the runner confessed that he blood doped in Moscow Olympics three years earlier.

I don't have precise information on the article as I haven't seen it, but my wild quess would be that the author of that article is Jari Porttila (who was in the sports department of the paper). Perhaps he could even help you to tell something about the mysterious "deep throat" of the story, assuming that Mr. Porttila indeed is behind the article.

There's been no definitive research that suggests sprinters benefit as much or at all from blood doping as endurance athletes.

It's safe to say Coe - by his own admission - was an 800m guy who dabbled in the 1500/mile. His 400m PB was 46.87 and everything above a mile was pedestrian. They say the 800m is the least dopable event for a reason. It's run on pure rage, not dope.

If anything you should see if he took steroids, HGH, or some combination of Sprinting drugs. Again - doubtful.

luv2run wrote:

I will pose a possible reason:

.

Coe has enough people making excuses for him right now.

I'm as anti-doping as they come, but rumors printed in a 1983 Finnish newspaper don't seem like a very solid source to base accusations on.

TruthSayer wrote:

There's been no definitive research that suggests sprinters benefit as much or at all from blood doping as endurance athletes.

It's safe to say Coe - by his own admission - was an 800m guy who dabbled in the 1500/mile. His 400m PB was 46.87 and everything above a mile was pedestrian. They say the 800m is the least dopable event for a reason. It's run on pure rage, not dope.

If anything you should see if he took steroids, HGH, or some combination of Sprinting drugs. Again - doubtful.

I don't pretend to know what Coe did or did not do or take, but shouldn't the argument work the other way? I would think that blood doping is exactly what one would prescibe to stretch a 400m/800m-trained guy into a 1500 meter runner (add some endurance to go with the speed). Conversely the steroid/HGH combo you mention would do the reverse: help a 1500m guy run a good 800m.

I've never bought the undopability of the 800m. If certain things are good for sprints (steroids, HGH etc.) and others are optimal for 3k (blood transfusions, EPO), every distance in between must benefit from both just in differing dosages.

Awesome info +1

You really are on a McCarthy witch hunt with Coe aren't you?

The translated article from 83 is laughably poor in its accuracy.

For a start it says that UK Athletics dropped him from the Worlds. This is not true.

He pulled out of the 1500m team early in the season when the usual arguments and complaints from lesser athletes said they should go became everyday tabloid fodder. He then pulled out of the team for 800m a week before the Games on the advice of the doctors treating him at hospital. It was pretty obvious to anyone around at the time that he wasn't himself and running well below par. It didn't really come as a surprise to most in Britain when he pulled out. He wasn't dropped from the team.

The article also says he had a blood exchange which caused him to fail a drug test by his own team. Well for a start, there was no test available then that could detect blood doping, in fact I don't think there exists one today, hence the ABP. So the journalist here basically doesn't know the difference between the benefits of a blood transfusion (which they claim he had) using autologous blood and taking steroids which can be detected in a blood test.

One also has to ask that if he was taking drugs prior to Helsinki, why did they make him so piss poor in performance yet were able to be detected just that year, while in other years when he ran well, they were not detected? Was he clean in the years in which he won medals and broke records yet dirty when he was running badly and getting beat? The two things don't add up at all.

And why would being kicked off the national team for failing a drug test prevent him from any sort of running/training for the next 5 months?

It is quite pathetic the number of vultures on here who are happy to accuse Coe of drug use at this time, due to the collective responsibilities of the old IAAF coming to light, basing their claims on a foreign piece of poorly written and factually inaccurate tabloid sensationalism. If some obscure journalist on a Finnish rag was privy to such information, you can guarantee the British press would have been all over it at the time and found something concrete in the intervening 30 years to follow it up. He was a bloody Tory MP for goodness sake. Nothing dodgy from Tories escapes the UK press.

The witch hunt is getting boring and very predictable.

Looking for some verification wrote:

I'm as anti-doping as they come, but rumors printed in a 1983 Finnish newspaper don't seem like a very solid source to base accusations on.

Are you seb coe posting this?

Mr. Obvious wrote:

Is Letsrun seeking an interview with Seb Coe? He needs to answer questions.

rojo wrote:

Definitely not right now. We don't speak Finnish.

Amusing all the little Coe-fangirl apologists "800 undopable" "Just rumors" "your jealous", etc.etc.

The Finn Maaninka tested positive because he reinfused blood with traces of steroids form early in the training cycle. If word of this bust got out at this time, Coe might well have withdrawn to avoid the same fate.

Looking for some verification wrote:

I'm as anti-doping as they come, but rumors printed in a 1983 Finnish newspaper don't seem like a very solid source to base accusations on.

Because Finland isn't the U.S. or U.K? They don't write in English?

Please explain.

The Brosjo need to stop the witch hunt for Mr. Coen right now. Yall trippin with this google translate bs.

Mr. Obvious wrote:

Here is a contemporaneous account that Coe dropped out because he could not avoid testing positive.

http://www.iltasanomat.fi/yleisurheilu/art-1452839680383.html

Here is the key quote:

During the Helsinki Cup (13.8.1983) Iltalehti published a story titled "Doping kept the Coen at home." Magazine had been in contact with "the British team's inner circle" person. The source of the "Seb is simply not able to get through his own anymore doping test".

TruthSayer wrote:

There's been no definitive research that suggests sprinters benefit as much or at all from blood doping as endurance athletes.

It's safe to say Coe - by his own admission - was an 800m guy who dabbled in the 1500/mile. His 400m PB was 46.87 and everything above a mile was pedestrian. They say the 800m is the least dopable event for a reason. It's run on pure rage, not dope.

If anything you should see if he took steroids, HGH, or some combination of Sprinting drugs. Again - doubtful.

800 runners can be helped by EPO. People keep repeating the same broscience bunk over and over again.

Pacifico wrote:

The translated article from 83 is laughably poor in its accuracy.

For a start it says that UK Athletics dropped him from the Worlds. This is not true.

Actually the original article in Finnish doesn't say that he was dropped by UK Athletics, it's just Google translate that makes is sound like that.