eotbs wrote:
Dear LetsRun,
This forum stopped being fun, because of the haters.
Almost every athlete is accused of doping, and done so by so very many posters.
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There are so many people in my life who I am trying to get interested in the sport of track & field. Even though I come to this site every day, I have shown almost none of them this site, because I'm embarrassed to be a fan of the same sport as the 'fans' who make the un-ending doping allegation posts.
"Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman." - Justice Louis D. Brandeis
I empathize with your point of view, lamenting the continual talk of doping in the sport of track and field. Like me, you seem to care about the sport a great deal, about its perception, and about its continued relevance, health and growth.
But unlike you - I think a very different tack is necessary to restore the sport. As the initial quotation suggests, I think the solution is in talking about what ails the sport - until it gets fixed. Ignoring the filth that continually sickens the sport is only asking to be re-infected again and again, and to never be fully healed. So disinfect and medicate. Talk about it. Talk about it some more. It's "ugly" medicine - bitter to the taste, with unpleasant side-effects. But it works.
Just consider how sick the sport is:
-- Doctors, coaches and athletes are all being sanctioned for doping - serious enough violations to receive lifetime bans;
-- Officials within governing and testing agencies - the ones who are supposed to be keeping the sport clean - have fallen under serious scrutiny
-- Record books are being grotesquely distorted - cheating future generations of the opportunity to even dream about making a clean and legitimate impact in the sport.
This is real - and forms the backdrop against which even the most base doping posts are written. Fans are hurt/fatigued/jaded - take your pick - just tired of what's happening to their sport. I empathize with your position - but this doping thing has gone on for decades now and has risen to farcical levels - given the things we're now asked to believe. Too many things just don't pass the look test because we can't "un-know" what we do about what's happening out there.
Think about this: An entire generation has been raised on this doping saga and believes this is what track and field is - a game of guess who the dirty ones are - because there always is one.
I'm just not seeing a path to getting this fixed without talking about it. Yeah, part of that is going to be some talk that's just expressed in a base way. Ugly medicine. But attempting to bring new fans to the sport as you want to see it - not as it actually is - is a recipe for failure. Eventually they will see it for what it is - and they'll become conflicted. They'll have to ask if it's worth their investment of time and money - have to ask if they can trust the results.
It's the giant "dirty bomb" that can destroy any professional sport - lack of confidence in the integrity of the play on the field.
You have to get the grime out, get this thing disinfected. Get the cheaters out, get the PEDs out - and make it a product that new fans and runners can fully embrace. Because when you have physiologists, kinesiologists - and even an astrophysicist -- running to crunch numbers to question and re-examine predictive models of expected human limits because of marked outlier status, you better know and understand what's propelling this in your sport - since they're on to this, and they will make determinations.
The media will continue to talk about this - and that's a good. And as far as I'm concerned, the more disinfectant, the better. I want this talked about in forums. I don't want coaches, runners, doctors, officials to be comfortable with what they're up to. Let's get this fixed!