are we seeing the effects of new PED

[sniper]

Going back to the original post, Of all the top swimmers, Dale Oen would have been one of the least suspicious. At the time of the 'technological doping' with the suits of 2009, he was one of the most vociferous opponents - swimming the final in Rome in briefs and coming nowhere in a race he would almost certainly have medalled. One can never tell, but that is not the attitude of a win at all costs doper.

why not?
perhaps he thought "I'm already doped to the gills, and now I also have to buy one of those fancy suits? Damn".
He probably knew that in a level playing field ('level' in terms of swimsuits, that is!), he'd be the strongest.
In other words, if he was indeed doped to the gills, it makes sense he would be an opponent of special suits.

 

[Benotti69]

I haven't followed the 'doping in football' thread so apologies for the repetition.

I posted because i find it strange that so many so called fit and healthy people can have cardiac arrests. Is it about correct for their age group in the population? In schools now in Italy before children can partake in sport they must have had a full medical check up which includes a heart scan (ultrasound i think).

 

[hrotha]

why not?
perhaps he thought "I'm already doped to the gills, and now I also have to buy one of those fancy suits? Damn".
He probably knew that in a level playing field ('level' in terms of swimsuits, that is!), he'd be the strongest.
In other words, if he was indeed doped to the gills, it makes sense he would be an opponent of special suits.

It's more likely that the two things aren't connected in the mind of a doper. For him, doping isn't cheating, since everybody's at it and apparently they usually believe it's still their own talent making the difference. Fancy swimsuits are not like that.

 

[2008885]

why not?
perhaps he thought "I'm already doped to the gills, and now I also have to buy one of those fancy suits? Damn".
He probably knew that in a level playing field ('level' in terms of swimsuits, that is!), he'd be the strongest.
In other words, if he was indeed doped to the gills, it makes sense he would be an opponent of special suits.

Can you run that by us again please??

 

[lilac harry quinn]

Good post. What proportion of swimmers opposed the suits?

That's an interesting question. Speedo introduced the LZR Racer, the first suit with non permeable panels in 2008, and there was very little outcry from the swimmers other than to complain, as the German team did, that the Adidas suits they were contactually obliged to wear, meant that they couldn't compete on a level playing field.

Most swimmers who could broke their contracts and swam in the LZR, which led to Arena, Adidas and Jaked developing completely non permeable suits that turned out much faster than the LZR. Now the Speedo swimmers, with the exception of Phelps and Adlington who were on huge contracts switched. Phelps and Adlington were soundly beaten in the World Championships by lesser swimmers.

After those Championships, Phelps, the sport's biggest drawing card, said that he wouldn't compete again until the suits were banned: and so they were. Now swimmers have to compete in textile suits which for men can only go from the waist to the knee and for women have to have an open back.

So you could say that Phelps opposed the suits, but really only when it disadvantaged him. The same applies to a few other swimmers. The only ones I can think of who made a point of racing in textile at this time were Dale Oen, Yuliya Efimova and Yannick Agnel.

 

[GJB123]

Can you run that by us again please??

Don't bother trying to understand the typical "sniper logic". There is simply not much logic to most things he says, I am sorry to say.

 

[lilac harry quinn]

why not?
perhaps he thought "I'm already doped to the gills, and now I also have to buy one of those fancy suits? Damn".
He probably knew that in a level playing field ('level' in terms of swimsuits, that is!), he'd be the strongest.
In other words, if he was indeed doped to the gills, it makes sense he would be an opponent of special suits.

Well he wouldn't have been paying for his suit; come on, it's a professional sport. He had a suit contract with Arena who made the fastest suit of 2009 but chose not to wear it.

No sportsman or woman should be above suspicion, but yours is one of the most idiotic posts I've read.

 

[sniper]

Well he wouldn't have been paying for his suit; come on, it's a professional sport. He had a suit contract with Arena who made the fastest suit of 2009 but chose not to wear it.

No sportsman or woman should be above suspicion, but yours is one of the most idiotic posts I've read.

i just didn't agree with your post saying that because Oen was against special suits, he presumably wasn't a heavy doper.
See hrotha's post above: the two things are simply not connected.

And we better take as a point of departure the commom sense knowledge that at this top level you have to be doped to the gills to even get through the qualifications. (Again, see hrotha's post). I don't see how Oen's whining about a swim suit changes this state of affairs.

 

[sniper]

I haven't followed the 'doping in football' thread so apologies for the repetition.

I posted because i find it strange that so many so called fit and healthy people can have cardiac arrests. Is it about correct for their age group in the population? In schools now in Italy before children can partake in sport they must have had a full medical check up which includes a heart scan (ultrasound i think).

Clearly, it's not normal.
I saw a special on Oen on CNN today. A medic explained how all topathletes including Oen are checked and screened quite regularly especially also for quirky heart conditions. If one such quirkiness is found, the athlete is told to either retire or to change his training program (i.e. to take it down a couple of notches). Oen didn't have any quirky heart condition.

 

[2008885]

i just didn't agree with your post saying that because Oen was against special suits, he presumably wasn't a heavy doper.
See hrotha's post above: the two things are simply not connected.

"In other words, if he was indeed doped to the gills, it makes sense he would be an opponent of special suits."

So which is it?? Connected or not??

 

[Caruut]

That's an interesting question. Speedo introduced the LZR Racer, the first suit with non permeable panels in 2008, and there was very little outcry from the swimmers other than to complain, as the German team did, that the Adidas suits they were contactually obliged to wear, meant that they couldn't compete on a level playing field.

Most swimmers who could broke their contracts and swam in the LZR, which led to Arena, Adidas and Jaked developing completely non permeable suits that turned out much faster than the LZR. Now the Speedo swimmers, with the exception of Phelps and Adlington who were on huge contracts switched. Phelps and Adlington were soundly beaten in the World Championships by lesser swimmers.

After those Championships, Phelps, the sport's biggest drawing card, said that he wouldn't compete again until the suits were banned: and so they were. Now swimmers have to compete in textile suits which for men can only go from the waist to the knee and for women have to have an open back.

So you could say that Phelps opposed the suits, but really only when it disadvantaged him. The same applies to a few other swimmers. The only ones I can think of who made a point of racing in textile at this time were Dale Oen, Yuliya Efimova and Yannick Agnel.

Well, it seems that possibly the reason he disliked the suits was because the swimmers are tied to a contract, so it all depends on who is making the best suits at the time.

He might think that with PEDs, you don't get a sponsorship contract with a specific drug company, so you are more or less free (depending on funding, of course) to choose what you use, and therefore it's a level playing field as far as drugs are concerned. Not to say "he must do drugs", just think that they might not actually be connected.

 

[sniper]

"In other words, if he was indeed doped to the gills, it makes sense he would be an opponent of special suits."

So which is it?? Connected or not??

ok, so i rephrase: it makes sense to assume Oen was doped to gills, since that is the norm in sports like speed swimming at the elite level.
If one claims otherwise, one has to provide some evidence. Oen's preference for traditional swim pants is poor evidence.

 

[GJB123]

ok, so i rephrase: it makes sense to assume Oen was doped to gills, since that is the norm in sports like speed swimming at the elite level.
If one claims otherwise, one has to provide some evidence. Oen's preference for traditional swim pants is poor evidence.

I am sorry to sound old fashioned and all legally and stuff, but it isn't up to people like you to proof he actually doped and i do not mean that the fact he participated in top, high-level sports is admissible as proof?

Regards
GJ

 

[sniper]

I am sorry to sound old fashioned and all legally and stuff, but it isn't up to people like you to proof he actually doped and i do not mean that the fact he participated in top, high-level sports is admissible as proof?

Regards
GJ

you'll realize that most scientific consensus is based on, indeed common sense, which, in turn, is based on previous evidence, which, in turn, allows for certain assumptions (or 'working hypotheses', or 'starting points') to be made. At least, if you want to make progress in science.
Now, over the years we've seen such a shipload of evidence that the only consensus (/common sense) is this: you cannot be at the very top of your discipline if you do not dope.
So if now you or anybody claims against common sense knowledge which has been built up over the years, then you need a solid piece of counterevidence.

Note that this is how science works, but not how the law works, of course.
You'll see lots of scientific articles starting with an assumption/premisse, for which they need not adduce proof, since the proof has been provided in plenty elsewhere.

 

[I Watch Cycling In July]

To the OP,

Not an easy question to answer. We know from the previous discussion that young athletes have historically been roughly 4 times as likely to suffer SCD as non-athletes. According to a large Italian study, screening for risk factors at a young age reduces the probability by 80%, putting athletes roughly back on par with the spectators.

Caruut produced some numbers demonstrating the death rate in pro soccer over the last 10 years remains similar to per-screening death rates, but it seems that full screening only came into force around 2006.

So, the question is, are the preventable athlete SCDs attributable to insufficient screening, PEDs, or some other factor? I suspect lack of screening has a significant role. I'm assuming the Italian athletes who were cleared for competition by the study's screening used similar amounts of drugs as their overseas counterparts. It seems to be the screening not the drugs that makes the difference.

On the other hand, there don't seem to be good data available about the current SCD rate in elite athletes, but there is an impression that there are rather a lot of these tragegdies. So, we can't rule out a recent, unmeasured and unexplained increase in fatalities.

While it is known that steroid abuse increases the incidence of SCD, there does not appear to be a known link with EPO; fatalities due to blood with the viscosity of bitumen appear to be considered as a separate cause of death. Most SCDs occur during intense exercise, so it is actually plausible that increased oxygen carriers reduces the stress on the heart and therefore reduces the risk. That is pretty wild speculation though. The simple fact that most deaths occur during intense exercise does not preclude the possibility that athletes are at increased risk due to the combination of long terms exercise induced changes in their heart structure, plus short term exercise stress.

A number of comments up thread relate to exercise induced heart changes. Hypotrophic cardiomyopathy is a thickening in one specific place, not a general enlargement. I've tried to find whether exercise can worsen any pre-existing HCM, but I'm not sure that the medical types have actually decided that. There does seem to be some indication that exercise induced changes make it more difficult to detect HCM if it is present, perhaps pointing to a need to screen at a young age before athletes start to train seriously.

If long term exercise induced adaptions do indeed worsen HCM or other SCD risk factors, there is a plausible mechanism whereby EPO might play a role, as it presumably allows for increased training intensity.

Finally, I think it's worth noting that any analysis comparing athlete death rate to non-athletes might give a very distorted picture. Surviving SCA usually depends on being lucky enough to have medical help on hand at the time, which is often the case for athletes. For example, Muamba is thankfully not a statistic, without that immediate medical help, he would have been.

Thanks for bringing this subject up again, I found it interesting and was frustrated when it got drowned out by emotive clamoring last time.

 

[GJB123]

you'll realize that most scientific consensus is based on, indeed common sense, which, in turn, is based on previous evidence, which, in turn, allows for certain assumptions (or 'working hypotheses', or 'starting points') to be made. At least, if you want to make progress in science.
Now, over the years we've seen such a shipload of evidence that the only consensus (/common sense) is this: you cannot be at the very top of your discipline if you do not dope.
So if now you or anybody claims against common sense knowledge which has been built up over the years, then you need a solid piece of counterevidence.

Note that this is how science works, but not how the law works, of course.
You'll see lots of scientific articles starting with an assumption/premisse, for which they need not adduce proof, since the proof has been provided in plenty elsewhere.

Ah sniper explaining the finer art of science and scientific publications. My tip to you. Don't talk about things you understand little off or have no knowledge off. It will keep you from embarassing yourself.

Regards
GJ

 

[pmcg76]

you'll realize that most scientific consensus is based on, indeed common sense, which, in turn, is based on previous evidence, which, in turn, allows for certain assumptions (or 'working hypotheses', or 'starting points') to be made. At least, if you want to make progress in science.
Now, over the years we've seen such a shipload of evidence that the only consensus (/common sense) is this: you cannot be at the very top of your discipline if you do not dope.
So if now you or anybody claims against common sense knowledge which has been built up over the years, then you need a solid piece of counterevidence.

Note that this is how science works, but not how the law works, of course.
You'll see lots of scientific articles starting with an assumption/premisse, for which they need not adduce proof, since the proof has been provided in plenty elsewhere.

Your argument would suggest that society moves in a linear direction, incapable of change. Would you apply that argument to all parts of society or just top level sports.

 

[sniper]

Your argument would suggest that society moves in a linear direction, incapable of change. Would you apply that argument to all parts of society or just top level sports.

As soon as counterevidence pops up, consensuses are subject to revision and thus change. Why is that linear?

The point is: I haven't seen any evidence pointing towards clean topsport.
Whereas I've seen shiploads of evidence pointing towards heavily PED-contaminated topsport.

I'm not saying this state of affair can't change.
Revolutions happen. But right now, clean athletes (or revolutionary minds like Floyd) must feel a bit like Cuban Marxism. Isolated, boycotted, strangled at birth. Not profitable.

 

[richtea]

How would you go about collecting this counterevidence exactly, since failure to test positive is clearly not reliable? What standard of proof would you accept?

 

[Kender]

all this talk about swimmers being doped to the gills...

if a swimmer had gills they wouldn't need to dope to win.

 

[MarkvW]

all this talk about swimmers being doped to the gills...

if a swimmer had gills they wouldn't need to dope to win.

They would dope to make their gills more efficient.