Kipchoge, Rupp, & Flanagan Are All Guilty of Mechanical Doping in 2016 - Will Anything Be Done About It?

Seems overly dramatic to me. Until Nike starts producing shoes with wheels on them I won't complain. Should we just go back to cinder tracks if we are going to ban everything? I'd say PED's are probably a bigger issue at this point than the shoes and we never really got that addressed.

Oh; spoiler alert...World athletics does nothing other than kick the can down the road. They know who butters their bread.

lmao

Did y’all folk addressed this to WORLD ATHLETICS, IOC CHANGE.ORG or some organization that could REALLY do something about it or y’all just shooting the breeze in your own website?

RoJo's 2016 Olympic Marathon obsession is beyond ridiculous.

They aren't guilty of mechanical doping simply because you say they are guilty of mechanical doping. Shocking, I know.

Um... no. The answer is no.

They haven't invalidated Cierpinski's gold medals when we have the Stasi files that show his doping in plain hard facts on paper. No, no one is going to do a damn thing about the 2016 results and continuing to bang this drum makes little sense.

As if no other marathon winner in the history of the Olympics has ever worn a prototype by Nike or Adidas on their way to gold Lets go back to the '60's or 50's and see that any athlete who had Adidas or Puma had a huge technical advantage over everyone else. You cannot make an argument that it is only because of the % of greater efficiency with the Vaporfly prototypes that makes this a special case. We have no way of knowing in the past just how much better the hand built Nike spikes for Carl Lewis were for the '84 games, or Shorter's custom Adidas flats in '72.

Oh for Chri## sake. Get over yourself. Nike found a way to make people run faster, so what? Every other mfg just needs to get their acts together and stop being so fu##ing lazy, responding to Nike all the time.

LR pontificating about vacating a valid Olympic marathon result because they have a romantic ethical view of distance running is just annoying.

Better invalidate any athlete that has ever had custom shoes made for their foot. Meb had custom skechers. Why nothing on him?

It would be flat out wrong to invalidate results in this manner. I agree that the athletes wearing Vaporfly shoes in 2016 did have an unfair advantage in shoe technology. However, they were allowed by every governing body and lawmaker in sport to start the Olympic Marathon (and the trials) in the shoes. It would be grossly unfair to those athletes to disqualify them years after the fact for a rule that was not enforced on the day of the race. It is also absurd to use the margin of victory, coupled with speculation about how many seconds the shoes may or may not be worth to say that the results would have been different without the shoes. One must look at how the races played out. For example, at the Rio Olympics, Kipchoge waited to make his move until very late in the race and still won with ease by a large margin. He could have won that race with any strategy and with any shoes. If the officials had been concerned about illegal shoes they should have made Kipchoge wear trainers. The results would have been the same. I believe the same can be said of Rupp at the Olympic Trials.

I do understand that it is possible to compare this situation to the development of a previously undiscovered designer drug. In that case it is possible that a drug that is not on anti-doping authorities radar could be used before it is explicitly banned. I think that this is different because the spirit of anti-doping is for athletes to compete without using any drugs to enhance their performance beyond what is naturally possible. In the case of footwear, it has always been the goal to create the best/fastest shoe possible (without the benefit of springs/wheels). Nike did not use any previously undiscovered materials in their Vaporfly shoes. Carbon fiber plates have been around for decades. The foam may have been slightly better than what was previously available, however, the real advantage seems to come from the unique shape of the shoes.

Going forward, World Athletics needs to create rules to limit mechanical advantage gained by footwear. Our sport needs officials and governing bodies to work to ensure that there is a level playing field. That being said, invalidating results from four years ago would be a slap in the face to athletes who did not know that shoe technology would ever be mentioned in the same sentence as doping. The only way to make footwear a complete non-factor would be to require athletes to either run barefoot or to all wear identical shoes. Both of those idea are asinine, so is invalidating the 2016 Olympic Marathon.

You cannot invalidate something that was legal. No ex post facto. Never mind that it is still legal.....

"Having a secret device that improves your running economy by several percentage points is clearly unfair assistance. In my mind, all of the athletes who wore them in Rio are guilty of mechanical doping."

This^

If tomorrow doesn't bring a massive correction to this travesty, I'm out.

So this is the hill you're gonna die on. ...alrighty then

Well, at least the article doesn’t contain the word “cheaterfly.”

Ruojowrote:World Athletics should at least make a statement acknowledging that a rules violation took place but without a penalty being given. At least that way there is some sort of an asterisk attached to the results. This type of thing happens all the time in professional sports. Both the NBA and NFL issue statements after games saying officials failed to call fouls properly.

There's a difference here. The NBA and NFL issue these statements immediately after the game. Not 4 years later!

Nice job Rojo getting everyone riled up.

Rojo's response: Yes, but World Athletics often invalidates stuff years after the face in doping as in track and field it takes time to realize stuff.

Let me respond.

1) Just because they didn't invalidate Cierpinski, doesn't mean that it shouldn't have happened? Two wrongs don't make a right.

2) Yes I can make an argument that " because of the % of greater efficiency with the Vaporfly prototypes that makes this a special case. "

I assume other shoe companies were trying to give their athletes an edge with their shoes and they may have given them a small advantage. I believe before the Vaporflys the adidas marathon shoes were superior. But never before have we had a scientific research paper - actually paid for by Nike - saying the impact is a) real and b) huge.

The analogy is pass interference in the NFL. In the past all of the companies were hand checking and grabbing the receiver a little bit and no flag is called, but this is the equivalent of the tackle that was missed in New Orleands last year. When someone gets tackled we know it's interference.

3) Since the athletes probably had no idea about this as the science papers weren't out in 2016, I totally get it and will accept it if the outcome is to acknowledge it and let it stand. Personally I want the Astros to lose the WS title and have it be vacated but at least you had a formal acknowledgment from the governing body. At a minimum, we need some sort of acknowledgment from World Athletics.

If they are going to DQ Kipchoge and be a stickler for the rules with Kemboi, then something needs to be done here.

Plus 1. Exactly.

PeanutButterJelly wrote:

So this is the hill you're gonna die on. ...alrighty then

Seriously. Love the website, but I'm sick of the website putting all their focus into this single issue. And the borderline false reporting (Vaporflys will be banned!) every other day doesn't help.

Too funny. Let's go after Nike but Semenya and the 2 other podium finishers didn't have unfair advantages? Men racing women is ok but lets go after a shoe? I would guess Sifan Hassan is next. She had an unfair spike or something. Goodbye to this idiotic website.

To quote Frank from Old School "Everybody's doing it"

https://www.wired.com/story/exclusive-brooks-hyperion-elite-could-beat-nike-vaporflys/

ps. I think all their records and victories, including Des's, are valid.