Did Sebastian Coe blood dope?

Asking wrote:

Coe, Ovett, Cram and Elliott likely doped.

It explains the lack of any decent British runners. In the 1980s Britain always featured among the medals from 800m to 10,000m

Ouch!...those are four of GB's iconic heroes. If true, that's going to go over about as good as the British defeat at Yorktown 😕.

Raining on the parade wrote:

Asking wrote:

Coe, Ovett, Cram and Elliott likely doped.

It explains the lack of any decent British runners. In the 1980s Britain always featured among the medals from 800m to 10,000m

Ouch!...those are four of GB's iconic heroes. If true, that's going to go over about as good as the British defeat at Yorktown 😕.

And that's why so many here argue against that. But obviously literally every medal winner in the 80s doped to be able to compete against the professional state dopers.

No coincidence that so many European times, e.g. male and female 800, cannot be touched anymore (at least by Europeans) these days with much tougher testing despite all the progress.

If anything, it's impressive that Coe and co. could beat them with what had to be somewhat amateurish, semi-private doping.

As such, that doping doesn't really bother me. Different times. What does bother me, is that those people now have a holier-than-thou attitude and pretend to stand up for a clean sport.

casual obsever wrote:

If anything, it's impressive that Coe and co. could beat them with what had to be somewhat amateurish, semi-private doping.

As such, that doping doesn't really bother me. Different times. What does bother me, is that those people now have a holier-than-thou attitude and pretend to stand up for a clean sport.

What exactly is "amateurish, semi-private doping? (Never heard of that characterization before 🤔).

And on your second statement; how do you expect them to act? Isn't this the new, clean era of athletics?

Well. It could be argued that Ovett might never have set a world record if Coe hadn't emerged in 1979 as a record breaker.

Ovett,back intbhe day, used to say he was interested in winning races and not breaking records.

And, it could also be argued that Ovett only started chasing records because of pressure from the press and track fans.

Then, of course, once the bar was set so very highl by Coe and Ovett, those who followed, Cram, Williamson, Peter Elliott etc had to raise their game tremendously.

And, nothing lasts forever. Take Australia in the 50s. They had a succession of great milers,and then it just dried up.

Portsea57 wrote:

I remember Brendan Foster saying ( during Coe/Ovett heyday) something like, " If Ovett knew what Peter Coe knows, he'd be running even faster".

Now,at the time, I assumed that Foster was referring to superior training methods but could he have meant something else?

No. Foster shared a room in the athletes' villages with Coe at some of his early champs. He was always a lot closer to Coe than Ovett, and has been a long term supporter of Coe as an administrator and at the IAAF. The idea he would know or even suspect Coe of cheating is totally at odds with his behaviour towards him.

The UK has always had a strong tradition in athletics, one of those nations that are around the 3rd to 6th best in the world at T&F. But that doesn't mean they have always had world beaters in the same events. You can usually pick out 4 or 5 athletes that would be considered a real contender for a gold. We have had some great hurdlers, long jumpers, javelin throwers, sprinters and middle distance runners, but never all at once. It goes in cycles.

Up to the emergence of Ovett & Coe in the late 70's, there hadn't been any great British half milers/ milers since the mid 50's. Does that mean the guys in the 50's were all doping, and by association all those between were clean?

If the British guys of the Coe/Ovett period were doping, then why were the UK women middle distance runners so poor? Women are much better responders to peds than men, yet we had one woman running around 2 mins and no one breaking 4 for 1500m. The women's UK record for 400m was around 51.0 when Koch and Kratochvilova were running 48's! Surely if the men were doping and getting away with it, then the women would have been encouraged to do it too?

Daley Thompson was the best decathlete in the world at the same time, and we have had no one remotely close to him in the UK since. That must mean he doped!? Has no one come close because they were all clean?

We had no heptathlete of note in the early 80's, yet in recent years we've had 2 at or near the very top. Using the rational shown on this board, then all previous UK heptathletes that were crap must have been clean, and our 2 top current stars must be doped to the gills, in a period when there is much more testing and the biological passport makes it increasingly difficult to evade detection.

There are no underlying trends and there is no evidence to support the rumour that any of the 80's guys were doping.

What is more suspicious is the fact that some nations have a group of sprinters in the top 3 or 4 for practically decades. What are the chances of that being just a random outcome?

The brits do close ranks though when scandal breaks.

One only has to observe the Paula Radcliffe controversy ,although the pending Lie-Detector test may finally clear up the issue.

Ovett was way more talented than Coe

Started out at 400 and could compete at XC and half-marathon

Won a title at 5000

MD.. wrote:

Ovett was way more talented than Coe

Started out at 400 and could compete at XC and half-marathon

Won a title at 5000

Despite Coe having significantly faster pbs over 400m, 800m, 1000m, 1500m and 1 mile. Plus more world records and Olympic medals. But of course talent has nothing to do with that!

Ovett had a greater range. That does not mean more talented. They were both primarily middle distance runners, 800 and 1500m, and in that area Coe's record is better. That is just factual.

Deanouk wrote:

MD.. wrote:

Ovett was way more talented than Coe

Started out at 400 and could compete at XC and half-marathon

Won a title at 5000

Despite Coe having significantly faster pbs over 400m, 800m, 1000m, 1500m and 1 mile. Plus more world records and Olympic medals. But of course talent has nothing to do with that!

Ovett had a greater range. That does not mean more talented. They were both primarily middle distance runners, 800 and 1500m, and in that area Coe's record is better. That is just factual.

Range is talent

Coe had better training

Ovett could have run faster

Oh no no no wrote:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12259017.Doping_cheat_Jenkins_apos__role_in_Black_apos_s_success/

That is an interesting article, but it certainly doesn't mean Black was getting drugs from Jenkins. He says himself that he didn't need to announce to the world that he visited Jenkins in jail. Although I don't think I would have had any links with a convicted doper.

I don't think for one minute that there haven't been some UK athletes who haven't doped, but no more and no less than athletes from any other country. I just don't think the middle distance guys from the 80's were a group that did.

MD.. wrote:

Deanouk wrote:

Despite Coe having significantly faster pbs over 400m, 800m, 1000m, 1500m and 1 mile. Plus more world records and Olympic medals. But of course talent has nothing to do with that!

Ovett had a greater range. That does not mean more talented. They were both primarily middle distance runners, 800 and 1500m, and in that area Coe's record is better. That is just factual.

Range is talent

Coe had better training

Ovett could have run faster

No, range is range. Just because Michael Johnson could likely beat Bolt over 800m does not make him a more talented 200m runner.

To suggest Coe had better training is a great disservice and slight to Harry Wilson, who was the UK National middle distance coach. They both had access to the same knowledge, training manuals and facilities. Suggesting Coe was better trained is intangible, cannot possibly be measured, and thus is an opinion. Times they ran and medals they won are not subjective. In every department Coe achieved more. The fact that Ovett chose to run X Country and Coe indoors is a moot point to their talent as middle distance runners. They were different means to the same end. Notably, to be the best they could over 800 and 1500m.

Deano didn't Coe and Ovett train a couple of times together with the BMC crowd? I recall reading somewhere about Peter Coe, Harry Wilson and Frank Horwill have a heated (friendly?) debate over a few beers at one training weekend. The Brits were spoiled during that late 70s to mid 80s era. Athletics was then the 2nd most popular sport in the UK behind football. The London Marathon started in 1981. The BBC Sports Personality of the Year was won by athletes in 4 out of 6 years and they even interrupted the BBC TV 9 O'Clock national news to televise Coe's world mile record run live.

Was there any British athlete in athletics during the 1970's and 1980's who was caught for blood doping or steroids?

Didn't Coe choose not to run 3000m/5000m races because he found it boring?

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

Kalla wrote:

Cova was always so fortunate that no one successfully took up the pace in his major championship wins and allowed him to sprint away.

Didn't Coe run less mileage than his contemporaries? It is amazing what he achieved with the "low" mileage.

Anyone know Coe's mileage? There are differing accounts: some with lots of intense, high speed reps, some not counting a morning jog, an account of him doing something like 18 miles on Christmas Day 1979 because he thought Ovett would be training hard that day, some of him only doing gym circuits in winter instead of an aerobic base.

This analysis says -

Coe - 47.5 miles a week

Ovett - 75 miles a week

Cram - 62.5 miles a week

The analysis also compares the training programmes of all 3 runners.

Deanouk wrote:To suggest Coe had better training is a great disservice and slight to Harry Wilson, who was the UK National middle distance coach

is this a joke ?

wilson, who casually came into track was a self-taught coach with no academic background worth bothering with

he was a kickaball player who turned to coaching in early middle age when he met guy called dyson, the national coach from when he decided to be a coach

wilson had no proper coaching background & his academic skills were likely negligible as no mention of him having a uni degree in any subject

I doubt he woud ever make any serious grade of coach nowdays as he had not the intellectual background to learn the required academic skills of physiology/biochemistry/biomechanics/etc

it's a miracle ovett did so well under wilson but that was likely more due to ovett being the guy in charge & doing the training he decided he wanted to do & wilson just nodding

ovet in euro-'78 hadn't even trained for the 800 as almost exclusively a miler since start-'77 & ran it as a warm up for the 1500 !!!

analysis of the vid with lot of wide-running on last bend, splits & his own comments that he sat on coe too long indicate

~ 1'42-mid/high

ability that day in a freezing meet, definitely into the 1'42-mid range or quicker if that had been a 1-off on a warm day in zurich

ovett's line on this day if fully rested in a 1-off on a warm zurich day :

~ 46.5 - 46.6 / 1'42.50

-> 2'11.87 - 2'11.95

3'28.00 - 3'28.34

3'45.06 - 3'45.47

all this for a guy who hadn't even properly trained for the 800 that meet !!!

that makes him an absolutely huge talent

Boe wrote:

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

Anyone know Coe's mileage? There are differing accounts: some with lots of intense, high speed reps, some not counting a morning jog, an account of him doing something like 18 miles on Christmas Day 1979 because he thought Ovett would be training hard that day, some of him only doing gym circuits in winter instead of an aerobic base.

https://www.slideshare.net/hattersley4/seb-coe-analysis

This analysis says -

Coe - 47.5 miles a week

Ovett - 75 miles a week

Cram - 62.5 miles a week

The analysis also compares the training programmes of all 3 runners.

The guy who made this slideshow is terrible at math, on page 7 he has assumed 1500m is 4 laps and thus has divided El G's 3:26 by 4 to conclude WR 1500m pace is 51.5s laps when really it is 55-56s per lap.

While Peter Coe was innovative, as a general rule it is widely accepted that too many western runners moved away from a Lydiard-Ovett type miles based system towards a Peter Coe speed/rep based system in the late 1980s and Western distance running collapsed. In the last 10 years or so they have moved back towards a bigger base. It is quite possible any system could have worked on Seb Coe.

Portsea57 wrote:

I remember Brendan Foster saying ( during Coe/Ovett heyday) something like, " If Ovett knew what Peter Coe knows, he'd be running even faster".

Now,at the time, I assumed that Foster was referring to superior training methods but could he have meant something else?

I think it's obvious he was talking about training methods. Ovett ran hundreds of junk miles I don't think he needed.

The multi-pace method of P. Coe worked wonders and Ovett could potentially have run a lot faster off that training.

Ovett showed unbelievable talent from a young age, running under 22s for the 200m and a great XC runner. Coe wasn't as much of a stand out talent at school age.

"... and in that area Coe's record is better."

Actually in championship 800 races Ovett beats Coe 2-1. (And the only time Coe beat Ovett in a championship 800 was LA in 1984 when Ovett was very seriously ill. He still made two Olympic finals, however!)

Regarding this "blood doping" nonsense, conspiracy theorists might like to check out what Harry Wilson, Ovett's coach/adviser says towards the end of his book "Running Dialogue: A Coaches Story" published in 1982(?) about the subject. (Sorry, can't remember the page reference and I haven't got my copy to hand)