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

Carmelo Bosco resta invece fermo sull'idea che la ritrasfusione sia lecita sul piano e del tutto non dannosa, anche se sconsiglia la trasfusione totale o parziale di sangue perchè può portare con sè germi e virus. È propenso anche ad scludere che il doppio attacco di mononucleosi che ha colpito Sebastian Coe sia da imputare a emodoping. "Per me - sostiene - l'inglese non si sottopone all' "emodoping" perchè ormai gli 800 metri sono da considerare gara di velocità prolungata e non di mezzofondo".

Carmelo Bosco instead keeps thinking that retransfusion (?) is ethically allowed (guessing; original quote lacks a word or a few) and completely safe, while advising against total or partial transfusion, as it can bring along germs and viruses. He'd also rule out the possibility of Sebastian Coe's double mononucleosis being caused by blood doping. "To me - he says - the Englishman doesn't use blood doping, as nowadays 800 m is a prolonged speed (sprint) competition and not middle distance (endurance)"

preciously jaded wrote:

Aouita ran in the 5000m only at the Los Angeles Olympics.

Steve Scott wrote quite candidly in his biography "The Miler" about being offered PEDs by a medical doctor he visited. According to Scott, the doctor assured him that many of his competitors were using PEDs.

It doesn't specify that those with positive test results ran more than 1 event!!

I guess that as Scott is an American then his quote is honest and therefore true?

If you read Butcher's book, The Perfect Distance, he mentions that Wessinghage, Coghlan, Walker, etc all believed Coe & Ovett to be clean. If any group is going to be in the know about an athlete's misdemeanors, then it will be their peers in the same event.

Thanks for the translation, just about how I translated the paragraph in my mind.... And you are right that there is a word missing in my typing, ie. it should be "piano etico" and not "piano". And "ritrasfusione" indeed in this context means retransfusion (only a technical simple term for blood doping, I've seen the term "autoemotrasfusione" also used).

Diabalo wrote:If any group is going to be in the know about an athlete's misdemeanors, then it will be their peers in the same event.

Is it? Are you sure about that? The pragmatic athletes mostly shrug their shoulders and plainly state they don't know.

We have Radcliffe shouting about dopers yet seems to be entirely disinterested in supporting Shubakova's efforts and sacrifices to clean up the sport. We have Coe and other sports administrators who seems to wander through life knowing next to nothing yet operating an international federation.

Not sure if you were referring to the original article or the Kaalo Maaninka article, but in any case, I did ask Jari Porttila if he was the author of the original article on Seb Coe but I never did receive a response from him.

No test for blood doping at the time and none of the East Germans failed an in comp test for steroids.

Even if he was doping he would still be able to compete

I was referring that I know for certain that Jari Porttila was the author of the Kaarlo Maaninka article a week later (8/19/1983) and assumed that he could also be the author of the Coe-article.

For history buffs, the actual frontpage of the 1983 Maaninka-issue is the right one in the following picture - "MAANINKA CONFESSES BLOOD EXCHANGE". (I've never quite figured out why Finns ("verenvaihto"), Germans ("Blutwechsel") and Swedes ("blodbyte") use that weird "exchange"-term for blood transfusions)

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zT1WbC00oaE/WWiZe4K4xGI/AAAAAAAAADc/bfYBTNONMYkU3x8Oij6RNcVXfWhdWZIYACLcBGAs/s1600/maaninka198183.jpg

Good for you for trying to solve the enigma. I am going actually to read the Coe-article next time I visit the Finnish National Library and see if I can do anything about the issue.

Aragon wrote:

Good for you for trying to solve the enigma. I am going actually to read the Coe-article next time I visit the Finnish National Library and see if I can do anything about the issue.

That would be great, please let us know what you find!

Having visited the Finnish National Library today, out of curiosity I went through the sports section of the issue described in this thread (Iltalehti 8/13/1983) and even when there is no author in the short article, there is a strong likelihood that it was indeed written by Jari Porttila, because there are at least two other articles by him in the same issue of the paper.

My gut feeling is that there is something fishy about the quotation where Coe's teammate allegedly stated the information as fact, because had Porttila had a true "deep throat" inside the UK team revealing inside information about Coe's blood doping practices, it might've been an international caliber level item in the journalist's CV and most likely he would've referred to the episode later. He has later mentioned in passing Kaarlo Maaninka having confessed blood doping to him and about his role in writing about the the doping case of Martti Vainio in 1984, but somehow this episode just isn't worth mentioning (assuming he is the author).

As an interesting anecdote, there was a book published some fifteen years ago about the downfall and bankrupcy of the newspaper where Porttila worked (Uusi Suomi) where it is claimed that the journalist was "famous for writing interviews with people he hadn't even met", his method being buing foreign newspapers and journals and making them more interesting by adding some juicy language.

As a finn I can tell all you, that Mr Porttila was and is a bloody joke. A typical sensational journalist. At that time ( also currently) Iltalehti was a lousy paper full of inaccurate stories. Jari Porttila´ s biggest achievment in athletics was , that

he longjumped around six meters. This whole story is total bullshit. Why the hell a british team insider tells this kind of

sensation to small finnish newspaper an not to some big European newspaper and make big money.

Porttila seems like such an odd last name for a Finn.