Was Deena Kastor clean?

Yes, Deena was at her best in the EPO era, but not only did she continue at a high level into her masters AR days, but she was not really among the world contenders for a lot of medals on the track or close to the WR in the marathon. She had two silvers in world xc and bronze in the marathon in Athens. 8:42/14:51/30:50/2:19:36. She held her speed very, very well, that's about all you can say.

notcool wrote:

I ran on the same team with Deena in HS and she was the hardest worker I have ever seen. Very dedicated and focused on top of loads of natural talent. She didn’t all of a sudden get good. She was always great. I didn’t really run with her much because she mainly trained with the guys team instead of the girls and even then left tons of the guys in her dust. She really was and is remarkable and it wasn’t because of doping.

Everyone jumps on my case for suggesting that Deena might be doping "without eviednce." But I bet nobody will jump down this woman's post even though she is saying (in essence) "Deena worked hard and was super nice when I knew her in high school so she couldn't have been doping later on in her career." I'm sure Daniel Komen's childhood friends would say the same thing about him. It just doesn't mean anything.

rekrunner wrote:

In multiple surveys conducted in 2014, letsrun asked this question about female stars, including Deena.

If popular vote is any indication, only 13.7% of the respondents believed Deena was dirty, putting her strongly on the clean end of the spectrum. There is likely a small percentage of hardcore respondents who believe everyone is dirty above a certain level, as the "cleanest" stars came in at around 7-8%..

Compare this to other names in the survey, and we can see that perceptions vary widely, for athletes with "exactly the same evidence":

Ryan Hall (11%)

Geb (26.9%)

Bekele (28.33%)

Paula (*) (28.48%)

Komen (39.06%)

El G (56.83%)

(*) Some would say leaked blood tests results are evidence, but this survey was conducted before the leak.

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2014/02/female-track-field-stars-dirty-clean-doping-poll-results/

Interesting. I guess I'm not the only one one who is suspicious. I tend to see this survey as evidence that Letsrun readers are biased toward Americans rather than as evidence that Deena was clean. Also, I am surprised these percentages are so low. Nearly three quarters of Letsrun readers think Bekele was clean!?!

rekrunner wrote:

In multiple surveys conducted in 2014, letsrun asked this question about female stars, including Deena.

If popular vote is any indication, only 13.7% of the respondents believed Deena was dirty, putting her strongly on the clean end of the spectrum. There is likely a small percentage of hardcore respondents who believe everyone is dirty above a certain level, as the "cleanest" stars came in at around 7-8%..

Compare this to other names in the survey, and we can see that perceptions vary widely, for athletes with "exactly the same evidence":

Ryan Hall (11%)

Geb (26.9%)

Bekele (28.33%)

Paula (*) (28.48%)

Komen (39.06%)

El G (56.83%)

(*) Some would say leaked blood tests results are evidence, but this survey was conducted before the leak.

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2014/02/female-track-field-stars-dirty-clean-doping-poll-results/

Also, 14% of letsrun readers think Beonit Samuelson was doping? Would sure like to hear them explain that one.

CoachO wrote:

While it would probably be unwise to consider anyone above reproach as there is always some uncertainty involved, I consider Coach Vigil as close as they come. He is kind of the last ambassador of a "golden age" of coaches who just seem purely interested in really hard work and a spartan lifestyle. I know that Coach Vigil believes Deena to be completely clean. Does that make it so? No. But as has already been alluded, she's probably as close to the sure thing as we can get around here.

Do you assume Vigil would know what his runners are self-injecting in the privacy of their own homes?

colorunner123 wrote:

Also, 14% of letsrun readers think Beonit Samuelson was doping? Would sure like to hear them explain that one.

She was with Athletics West, our good old doping club.

But yes, overall those numbers are too low (and biased of course), n part, because here are so many optimistic fans, and several PR shills, and in part, because that survey was before some frustrating developments;

1) In 2011, we learned about the 18% blood dopers (minimal estimate) of elite endurance runners in the previous decade (likely not well known here in 2014).

2) Then we learned that the IAAF was corrupt, and accepted bribes to cover up positives.

3) Then we learned that the IAAF barely acted on blood values indicative of doping.

4) Then we learned that gold medals won are more suspicious than bronze medals (because doping works, no surprise here).

5) Then we learned that we have likely more than 44% dopers overall - this number is actually qualitatively supported by point 1 and the fact that most cheats are caught for roids, not EPO or blood transfusions.

Combining points 4 and 5, you see that at the very top, a lot more than just 44% are dopers, which isn't very well reflected in that list of record holders.

She cannot have been a doper because she's American and she's white. Only east Africans dope.

I don't even believe that I'm reading such a thread on the alt-right website letsrun.com.

who was her coach and who were the athletes to test positive?

Your evidence that she is doping is she ran fast. Her evidence that she wasn't is that she was nice. Neither is really compelling. Sometimes you get a crazy breakthrough (See Cathal Lombard who dropped like 3 mins off his 10k in his mid 20s) that screams doping but those are the exception not the rule. Most of the time it is a really talented athlete taking a small step forward. There is no way to know if you take 3s off your mile PR if that is because of better training or doping.

Yes, she was taking Kastor Oil!

Testing Expert wrote:

L.A. people fear doping control more than others. If you dope you won't be in L.A. like Deena has.

Just wondering, can we use that same logic to retroactively clear up the suspicions surrounding FloJo?

I thought about this and my values and my respect for clean athletics and balanced it with my respect for Deena.

Here's my assessment... Given the fact that there is no record of a failed drug test for either Ms. Kastor OR Ms. Drossin would lead me to believe she is clean.

If there were supplements taken, one would have to assume they were legal because no drug tests were failed.

If there were non-approved substances by USADA or WADA that were used at any of the training, nothing can be proven to be in violation at this rate because Deena was never suspected of doping or cheating.

Using the possibility of doping paradigm, one could make the case that even Prefontaine doped because it was suspected that Viren did. Doping looked different then.

We would have to assume Moses, Johnson, Lewis, Kempainen, Shorter, Waitz, Bolt, El Guerrouj, Morceli, Abdirahman, Keflezighi, Lagat, Simpson, R. Chelimo, Mutwol, Bile, Rono, etc all doped too.

Sorry, that's pretty ridiculous.

Why can't we just enjoy how talented Deena was because you can't just extrapolate Deena for evaluation reasonably in this case.

colorunner123 wrote:

CoachO wrote:

While it would probably be unwise to consider anyone above reproach as there is always some uncertainty involved, I consider Coach Vigil as close as they come. He is kind of the last ambassador of a "golden age" of coaches who just seem purely interested in really hard work and a spartan lifestyle. I know that Coach Vigil believes Deena to be completely clean. Does that make it so? No. But as has already been alluded, she's probably as close to the sure thing as we can get around here.

Do you assume Vigil would know what his runners are self-injecting in the privacy of their own homes?

By that level of suspicion, no one is clean, thus I don’t use that as my standard. The answer to your question is obvious, as is the fact that I left open the possibility that ANYONE could pull the wool over our eyes.

Smoove wrote:

If she had a flash in the pan career, maybe the doubt in your mind would be more reasonable; but it would still be irresponsible to slur someone like that without anything other than “hey, you can’t prove me wrong.”

Career long doping prevents flash in the pans, because you can train and race harder and not break down. Evidence has been presented of links to dopers, it is people like yourself who are slandering the OP by saying they're slandering her without reason.

colorunner123 wrote:

Everyone jumps on my case for suggesting that Deena might be doping "without eviednce." But I bet nobody will jump down this woman's post even though she is saying (in essence) "Deena worked hard and was super nice when I knew her in high school so she couldn't have been doping later on in her career." I'm sure Daniel Komen's childhood friends would say the same thing about him. It just doesn't mean anything.

Accusing someone of cheating without evidence, and someone saying "I don't think she'd do such a thing" are not equivalents.

If Deena consistently beat convicted dopers, then what is the point of doping? They are all fair game in my book.

colorunner123 wrote:

Do you assume Vigil would know what his runners are self-injecting in the privacy of their own homes?

Would one of the greatest coaches of all-time notice if one of his best athletes ever started outperforming the workouts and plans he was writing for her?

Of course he would.

Moron.

Stoppit Smith wrote:

Using the possibility of doping paradigm, one could make the case that even Prefontaine doped because it was suspected that Viren did. Doping looked different then.

We would have to assume Moses, Johnson, Lewis, Kempainen, Shorter, Waitz, Bolt, El Guerrouj, Morceli, Abdirahman, Keflezighi, Lagat, Simpson, R. Chelimo, Mutwol, Bile, Rono, etc all doped too.

You've got some serious Naive Googles on to be listing many/most of those names together as shocking to suspect they were doping.

Because it's a response to the bullshït you initiated. At least you seem to admit you're just talking out of your åss on this.