Is doping a temptation?
More than that, for many, it's a reality. It's very easy to do. From that point of view, it's a temptation to those with no values, those who do not respect themselves and the others. With globalisation, doping substances are of easy access. With the internet, you can just have them shipped to your home, they go through customs and there's no investigation.
Is it a sign that athletes don't trust their own capacities? They want to take the easiest route?
In high-level sports unique characteristics to develop an activity or discipline are detected early. After that, comes work, and it's all done step-by-step. When each athlete reaches their limit and thinks there's no more they can give, that's when doping comes into the equation. Many think that, to reach further, to get a medal, to win, they have to dope.
The athletes who dope are already very good, they have excellent physical characteristics. It's just that what they take, what they get better at, even if just 2%, can make a difference. Where's our limit? How far can we go? Some still search even if it's a slow progression. [...]
Do you distrust each other during competition?
No. Competition is competition, there's where it hurts, I don't think about it. I'm focused on myself and taking gold. There are, however, sometimes results which raise discomfort, but you have to believe and trust the system, despite all the polemics regarding IAAF, its former president, the son, Russia, Kenya, the doping rings IAAF knew about and decided to muffle. Unless every country sign an international anti-doping law, these things will continue to happen. [...]
What will happen to the Russian athletes?
It's a temporary issue. They're applying a punishment, but no medals will be stripped and justice won't be done. Who might have been in a podium and a final has lost the opportunity because the moment is gone. I think they will be in Rio en masse. [...]
So you never look at a great sporting feat naively, you're always suspicious?
Not always. I think our body is capable of amazing things. I just know what everyone knows, we're not machines. An athlete may run the 100m in 9.59s, but if you tell me that one decade ago an athlete, to go bellow 10s, had to be in the form of his live and would only do it once, twice, thrice a season, I'd believe it. It was a time with less doping cases and less control. Nowdays, they always run bellow 10s. Even in training. These results which they now do with a leg over their backs were pure excellency 10 years ago. The human race has not evolved that much. Technology may have, but nothing that would explain it.
What many athletes now do is ridicularize what has been done for over a century. While it used to evolve a hundredth over a hundredth, all of a sudden two tenths were taken. Sometimes that happens, as in long jump with Bob Beamon. He did something which back then may have risen some doubts, but then you could see the consistency in his results. The athlete shows they're clean by showing they're not a machine. When they achieve great results not when they want but when but when all nuances work together for that to happen, in a final, in a meeting. Athletes nowdays look like machines, they come on the track and everybody knows they will a godly performance, certainly bellow any record established decades ago.
How many times a year are you tested for doping?
I don't do many controls a year. I had a period, in 08-09, when I did more tests. In 2011 I had my biological passport done and saw the amount of testing reduced. I think there should be more. I know there are fails in the system, how can I trust the rest?
What's your opinion on Lance Armstrong, before and after he got caught?
I think everybody knew he was doped. I saw the doco and he said they were all doped and he was just the best. Lance was doped and everybody knew it, yet everybody stood shocked when he reveiled it to the world. They took his titles from him, but we know the others were on it too. They placed him at the top knowing he was doped, they protected him because he moade the sport fly.
The same happens with Usain Bolt. If he ever gets caught, athletics loses its main pillar. The same way Armstrong was cycling's pillar, Bolt is athletics'. He fills in stadiums. Are all athletes doped? No, they're not, but people pay to see the show. Ben Johnson came to Portugal and I was there to see him. Organisations think like that, they focus on entertainment and profit.
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