Remember when Salazar bashed Geb?

He never bashed Geb. He said it wasn't possible that "all these people were running 45 seconds faster than Henry Rono."

He said he could believe one or two (Geb and Tergat) but not so many. At the time only Geb, Tergat, and Koech had run that fast.

Now, off the top off my head, Bekele, Gebrselassie, Tergat, Dinkessa, Kemboi, Hassan, Koech, Sihine, Gebremariam, Kamathi, Mezgebu, Ondieki, and Mourhit have broken 27:00.

Koman and Sammy Kipketter and what about El G.

the sad truth is that the majority of the top runners in the world right now have cheated in some form or fashion. its sad, but for some people it is a way out of poverty unknown to any western europeans or americans.

depending on who you agree with in a philosophical context, this is "just" or "unjust". peter singer would claim it is just while kant's catagorical imperitive would render the act of cheating under any circumstance unjust, for two examples.

Salazar knows that Geb was cheating because he's a major player in the running game and has been there on nearly every level and facet of the sport, having quite a bit of experience himself with these accusations.

when it comes down to it, the only person who is not cheating is the athlete themselves, and even then sometimes they may have illegitamate coaches or doctors. talk is cheap, but evidence suggests that geb, salazar, and most great runners since 1980 have been cheating, the percent rising every year since.

He might have been right about Mourhit.

No, the sad thing is you wasted your time learning about philosophy when you could have spent the time learning the difference between fact and opinion. The fact is that you can provide no worthwhile evidence that the majority of the top runners are cheating. I see nothing in the form of progressions and distributions of top runners that would lead me to believe that the majortity of them are doping. Feel free to provide said evidence now.

Salazar has always said that a lot of top athletes were on drugs, which is where the altitude tents came in.

Salazar has a big mouth and is a huge hypocrite.

[quote]the verdict is in wrote:

He never bashed Geb. He said it wasn't possible that "all these people were running 45 seconds faster than Henry Rono."

[quote]

Henry Rono, the fat alcoholic?

A wonder that not more people have run faster than him.

Don't forget wrote:

Koman and Sammy Kipketter and what about El G.

Komen and El Guerrouj never did it. Kipketer did.

Improvement is natural. Why is it that anyone who improves and makes the standards better is on drugs. If no one improved om the best times from the 70's and 80's these same guys would be accusing runners of not being as tough as they were back then.

Obviously, some runners are going to cheat- but not all great runners cheat.

The sad truth is that you expect someone to entertain this fabricated piece of garbage as true though you have provided not a shred of recognizable evidence.

What's also sad is that your brain has been so damaged that you have found a way to rationalize the preposterous theory that some of the starving Ethiopians and Kenyans have somehow scraped up hundreds of thousands of dollars from a young age to supply themselves with performance enhacing substances.

In light of this theory, I've some questions for you:

1. Where did the Africans get this money from?

2. From what age did they begin using drugs? Bekele ran a 4:25 at age 14 and an 8:47 2 mile at age 15. Was he using drugs then? Was he using drugs when he won world junior X-C in 2001? Or when he won World X-C in 2002?

If not, did he begin using drugs when he was at 13:26 for 5K? Or did it only begin when he first broke 27 for 10K?

Also, how did Gebrselassie last 12 years at the top while using drugs the whole time? Did Gebrselassie actually die at some time in that 12 year time period and a group of rich Ethiopians, masquerading as famine-suffering, poverty stricken fellows, engineer in a top secret lab in the middle of Ethiopian farm country a robotic look alike of Gebrselassie? If so, how does this explain his chronic Achilles problems? Can robots get injured, or was this just a cover to smoothly transition to the rise of a drugged up Bekele?

Are Sihine, Gebremariam, Dinkess, Wendimu, and the younger Bekele also doped? Are the marathoners using? What about the women? What is your time cutoff for using drugs?

Is a 13:30 runner clean but a 13:29.99 runner dirty?

Please, more details.

And if we study neo-protic organic morphology and relate this to textual pre-dialectic theory and the intricacies of complex analytical biochemical evolutionary synthetic exegesis, we might come up with a different answer.

And I know that you're using pretty strong methamphetamines because I have experience with idiots on Letsrun.com and you top the scales.

And evidence suggests that you were dropped on your head as a small child and have never recovered your cognitive abilities since.

I'm confused. What did Salazar actually say about Geb?IAAF tests their athletes, yes? Mourhit is mentioned, and my understanding is that he tested positive for EPO (in a surprise test) and told to "sit it out" for a couple of years. Lagat was tested but my understanding is that his test was ambivalent (confusing), in that one test was positive and another negative and when refuted the penalty was avoided.Rani won 1500m/5000m medals in the Asian games and was later cleared because variations in nadrolone concentration from "A" to "B" samples were found.I think it's interesting that reporters ask the questions about drug free credibility of various athletes that are involved in the sport. I've seen clean athlete's reputations smeared by people who make random and unsubstantiated comments about their PED (Performance Enhancing Drug)use.The answer?Test them all. Somehow the Tour de France got testing imposed as part of the "rites of passage" to the championship. We think MLB has issues with Canseco being the "only" verified PED user? Ha! IAAF/USATF and all the other local associations have issues with credibility in this sport if and when someone of Salazar's caliber is found saying: "I don't know how people can run that much faster than Rono...."What DID he really say?Beyond that, whatever he says he says within the context of his own past history of "using" or "not using"...or does "don't do as I did, do as I say..." hold true here?I have no clue who used, uses, is "clean" or is "dirty"...isn't it up to IAAF/USATF to tell us this?Signed, in abstentia by...Victor Conte(You can reach him at any time on his cell phone because he only got a couple months of "house arrest" for everything he engineered and did over the past dozen years as it pertained to PEDs...)p.s. How many of you know some two-bit athlete who got some penalty for PED use? I do...p.p.s. How many PED users among world class athletes get caught? Hmmmm...even Ben Johnson still claims he didn't use! Marion? Malmo?

Northwestrun wrote:

Anyone remember when Geb was on his world record run a few years ago and Sports Illustrated did an article?

Salazar was quoted in that article claiming that it is "not possible to run that fast without drugs" -- insinuating Geb was juicing.

The claims here are that Salazar himself juiced, not sure if there's any validity to that either. So if AlSal can't prove anything on Geb, why was he claiming it. Also, if he believes a runner can't run that fast, he must have a limited goals for Rupp, right?

He said in 1998 or 1999 that so many athletes shouldn't be running 45 seconds faster than Rono.

At the time only 3 people had done that, Geb, Tergat, and Koech.

Forget about Salz; It's not exactly a secret that AW was dirty and Nike was dirty for helping them.

But if you look up the all-time lists at the IAAF, there is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence that some WERE juicing. Look at all the times that the 3/5/10 WRs were broken in the 1996-1998 (maybe 1999) timeframe. During this period, there was not test for epo, so, in effect, epo was "legal" then. And then the WR parade stopped, right when the story came out that there was--or would soon be--a test for epo, leading into Sydney.

Once there was a test....no new WRs in those events for 6 years (never in the case of 3000), until Bekele last year (did he spend more time training hard at high altitude, or...). El Guerrouj, however, ran consistent times close to his WR during the period that there was a test for epo.

Were Geb and Komen on epo when it was, in effect, legal? The circumstantial evidence is pretty strong that they were.

Where did the knowledge and the money come from? Look at who their agents were.

I also think Salz is right about the solution. If you're a distance athlete (maybe not 800/1500) you're either going to have to have a good chemist or an altitude house, or you can't compete at that level (think about Goucher this year after he went with Salazar).

I think that it is understandable that people do not like to hear that certain great athletes were/are on drugs however I think that it is naive to say that none of them were. Now you are right I have no proof and I am not going to claim that any particular athlete is or was dirty. But I think that when people come out and say: because there is no hard evidence against someone that that person is automatically clean that it is just as bad as saying you have a hunch that someone is dirty. Now I just don't see that as the case. Where there is smoke there is usually fire. Now I have nothing against Lagat but perhaps we should not dismiss him as innocent just because there were "complications" with his test. Maybe someone like Salazar who came back to win the Comrades when he was 36 or so wasn't clean throughout his career. Then again maybe he was. I just think that it is ok for people to say that they believe person A or person B may have been on something because we are fans and we care about what the headliners in our sport are doing. I mean if we assume the best then we could continue to pay athletes like Regina Jacobs money that should be going to someone else. We should question to keep the integrity of our sport. If we don't we are no better than baseball.

Great post nut bars!

Always cover our questions with the caveate that "I'm not sure but I think..." rather than unsubstantiated definitive comments like: "he/she is dirty and used..."

Again, we as a sport ARE no better than MLB, which found their butts OUT of the OG's partly because they don't deal with PED's well. Cycling seems to have answer the call to integrity and unless the labs doing the test "rig" the results we can conclude that the Tour de France is populated with clean athletes.

I'd be right in saying that I think our sport is populated with former and current abusers. I just wish those who used would come clean and tell us that some of their current maladies may be linked to their past abuse.

verdict is in. wow. you must have spent the whole hour after i posted that looking at a thesaurus to try to sound like an intellectual scientist of sorts. Ill start by pointing out that you really took offense to my post, I'd say sorry i offended you but i think your just a bully trying to make people feel stupid so i'll just say f@ck you.

now to address your post. and your "questions". my concrete evidence is summed up best by a coach with a lot of knowledge and a freind to us all. here's a link to his argument, which capture my beliefs:

http://www.letsrun.com/rojospeaksmay23.html

I'd also like to point out that i've spoken to some of the best africans of this past decade who have told me how easy it is and cheap to get your hands on in iten/ eldoret/ other african running meccas. about 400$ a vial. they've also informed me that although it is somewhat expensive for them, if the "younger" runners show promise, they are brought into elite training groups were they get free "medical attention". some know the shots they take after a workout are drugs, others think it's completely normal.

this brings me to my next point. younger runners often don't know how old they are or just guess, or have thier governments do it for them. I spoke to some kenyans on the world junior team a few years ago who told me they were 21 and 22, but 18 tommarrow (the day of the race) because they didnt make the senior team. defected bahraini kenyans have been exposed by their government just recently, (see lets run news) and are taking some 5 years off thier ages to compete in the world youth champs. this is enough info to reasonably answer your age drugs question. drug usage isnt a function of age but of recriutment into an elite distance program. there is my details.

your association of "complex analytical biochemical evolutionary synthetic exegesis" has nothing to do with ethical philosophy or anything i wrote about. I am a professional biochemist, and well studied in the field and have thus thought a lot about philosphy with its regards to biochemistry and evolution. in no way do the to correlate. one is a value judgement the other is science. this was just your attempt to get verbose and try to bully someone around.

the rest of your argument is just personal attacks which are meaningless because you dont know me or anything about me. but i know something about you. your a dick trying to feel better about yourself by working yourself up into a rage and finding ways to rip on others who you think are less smart than you. take it easy man, relax. it's a message board. use it for good, not personal glorification.

So what you are saying is that you think that there are a lot of top runners using PED's, and you have met others who share this opinion. On the other hand, you have no way to substantiate any of this and no basis for claiming that a majority of top runners are cheating as a fact. Am I close? I'm sure everyone here agrees that some runners both currently, and in the past have cheated, but dismisively saying that most runners cheat is asinine.

Speed Kills, you said you agree with AlSal about needing either EPO or altitude tents to be competitive, but how does this apply to those born and raised at altitude with the genetical predisposition that highland africans tend to have?

Sports Illustrated has made alot of major boo boos. That's why I ended my subscription long ago. The lack of track coverage is still an acute problem. I looked at SI at Walmart the other day. Other than newspapers, there are no other somewhat reputable sources for track articles etc. from what I gather. I read articles on the internet which are free, and there are free rags at meets with a few articles. I doubt if I would pay for if if asked to do so.