Doping In Athletics

[Peyroteo94]

we just saw 2 greater females in Chebet and Kipyegon - if they were american people would never stop talking about them

You are including Chebet because she beated Kipyegon. Just accept people can have different opinions.
You probably prefer long distance races, I prefer speed runners. Other people prefer jumps, others throws.
For me Usain Bolt is the best athlete ever but can I really call someone ridiculous for saying Mondo Duplantis is the best male athlete of all times? I don't think so.

 

[fenns]

You are including Chebet because she beated Kipyegon. Just accept people can have different opinions.
You probably prefer long distance races, I prefer speed runners. Other people prefer jumps, others throws.
For me Usain Bolt is the best athlete ever but can I really call someone ridiculous for saying Mondo Duplantis is the best male athlete of all times? I don't think so.

Chebet won 5k and 10k at both olympics and here - beating another goat candidate Kipyegon on each occasion. SLM is a great athlete but wouldn't make my women's goat top 10.

 

[Red Rick]

People are basically building a cult out of a hurdler lmao. Celebrity culture going too far.

 

[Mayomaniac]

400 hurdles is a weak event. SML is not even the the most impressive currently running - that's Faith Kipyegon - SML gets a lot of hype because she's American and married to a football player.

SML and Jefferson-Wooden really stink the place out with their performances. You never see them competing the rest of the year then they come out for thee champs and blow everyone away.

Nah, her looks probably play a way bigger part.
That said, nobody has ever won both 400m and 400m hurdles WCs and her and Paulino were the first ones to run 400m in under 48sec in 40 years, that was probably the greatest 400m final ever.
The media cult can be annoying, but nobody can deny what a freak athlete she is. Frankly it would also be better for cycling if our TdF winners still only did the same kind of superpeak once per season that she does...

 

[fenns]

Nah, her looks probably play a way bigger part.
That said, nobody has ever won both 400m and 400m hurdles WCs and her and Paulino were the first ones to run 400m in under 48sec in 40 years, that was probably the greatest 400m final ever.
The media cult can be annoying, but nobody can deny what a freak athlete she is. Frankly it would also be better for cycling if our TdF winners still only did the same kind of superpeak once per season that she does...

Yeah the looks and the whole social media/ american / god thing.

Is she really that much of a freak? The women's 400 hurdles is the weakest event on the track - full marks to her for switching to the 400 flat but she didn't win by much whereas Melissa Jefferson-Wooden thrashed the field in the most competitive event. If Melissa was prettier and spoke about Jesus more maybe she'd be the goat?

It's also kinda strange that she didn't show for Budapest 2023 - injury was the excuse. Bob Kersee's athletes have always stunk-out the sport.

Anyway we won't be seeing her now until Beijing 27 apart from a few domestic meets.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

People are basically building a cult out of a hurdler lmao. Celebrity culture going too far.

She's managed to maintain an aura of invincibility by never running unless it's a barrelled fish shoot in a domestic event, or a major championship she's been optimally prepared to launch bionic times at. Because she never runs the commercial circuit, it keeps an air of occasion about her appearances and keeps her fanbase busy denigrating any and all other athletes' achievements because they didn't beat McLaughlin-Levrone en route to achieving whatever they achieved. I mean, at one point we had people saying Bol winning the flat/hurdle double at the European Championships was worthless because SML would have beaten her if she was there. Which she obviously wouldn't have been even if she wanted to be seeing as, you know, she's American.

I liken it to the old NWA territory wrestling days, where each region had its own champions who everybody cheered or jeered all year round, and then the overall national champion would rock into town once or twice a year and be a huge audience draw.

However being a big audience draw is only good if you appear often enough to draw those tickets. If SML sells twice as many tickets to an event as Bol or Paulino (and I'm not convinced that that's the case, but for the sake of an argument), but Bol or Paulino compete at five times as many events... they're actually better for the sport than SML. SML running so sparingly, and never running outside the US, means that she can't become the big global face of athletics like a Usain Bolt was, because audiences can't pay for a ticket to go see her unless they're in a specific part of the USA, and even then they can only occasionally pay to go see her run. Say what you will about Noah Lyles, but he's rocking up to event after event all over the globe and being an audience draw.

SML has the ability and marketability to be that, but I don't think she really wants to be. She doesn't give off the vibes of somebody who genuinely likes being an athlete and who is happy to be away from home half the year travelling from country to country on the commercial circuit. I don't blame her for that - but I do wish her fanbase would let her be that, and let us appreciate the athletes that we do get to see rather than dismissing them as unworthy because they run in events when they're not at 100% peak form and travel to compete, just because they aren't running the peak times of a woman who isn't there and doesn't want to be either.

 

[Sciatic]

She's managed to maintain an aura of invincibility by never running unless it's a barrelled fish shoot in a domestic event, or a major championship she's been optimally prepared to launch bionic times at. Because she never runs the commercial circuit, it keeps an air of occasion about her appearances and keeps her fanbase busy denigrating any and all other athletes' achievements because they didn't beat McLaughlin-Levrone en route to achieving whatever they achieved. I mean, at one point we had people saying Bol winning the flat/hurdle double at the European Championships was worthless because SML would have beaten her if she was there. Which she obviously wouldn't have been even if she wanted to be seeing as, you know, she's American.

I liken it to the old NWA territory wrestling days, where each region had its own champions who everybody cheered or jeered all year round, and then the overall national champion would rock into town once or twice a year and be a huge audience draw.

However being a big audience draw is only good if you appear often enough to draw those tickets. If SML sells twice as many tickets to an event as Bol or Paulino (and I'm not convinced that that's the case, but for the sake of an argument), but Bol or Paulino compete at five times as many events... they're actually better for the sport than SML. SML running so sparingly, and never running outside the US, means that she can't become the big global face of athletics like a Usain Bolt was, because audiences can't pay for a ticket to go see her unless they're in a specific part of the USA, and even then they can only occasionally pay to go see her run. Say what you will about Noah Lyles, but he's rocking up to event after event all over the globe and being an audience draw.

SML has the ability and marketability to be that, but I don't think she really wants to be. She doesn't give off the vibes of somebody who genuinely likes being an athlete and who is happy to be away from home half the year travelling from country to country on the commercial circuit. I don't blame her for that - but I do wish her fanbase would let her be that, and let us appreciate the athletes that we do get to see rather than dismissing them as unworthy because they run in events when they're not at 100% peak form and travel to compete, just because they aren't running the peak times of a woman who isn't there and doesn't want to be either.

I can’t imagine that her presence alone sells that many more tickets. Maybe if the organizers promote a her vs Bol event, but you say that rarely happens. Maybe it’s changed since I haven’t gone to a meet in quite a while, but formerly track & field fans go because they enjoy the sport as a whole, but may have preferences for sprints, distances, jumps, whatever. Not so much to see athletes whose replica jersey they are wearing.

 

[Peyroteo94]

I can’t imagine that her presence alone sells that many more tickets. Maybe if the organizers promote a her vs Bol event, but you say that rarely happens. Maybe it’s changed since I haven’t gone to a meet in quite a while, but formerly track & field fans go because they enjoy the sport as a whole, but may have preferences for sprints, distances, jumps, whatever. Not so much to see athletes whose replica jersey they are wearing.

But who is Femke Bol next to Sydney? Are you pretending there is a rivalry?

 

[Sciatic]

But who is Femke Bol next to Sydney? Are you pretending there is a rivalry?

It was just the 1st thing that came to mind re: promoting a rivalry for ticket sales. In that regard it doesn’t matter if it’s lopsided, just something to put on a poster or online advert. As I said O don’t think “selling” individual athletes gets many more fans in the stands. But I don’t really know.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I can’t imagine that her presence alone sells that many more tickets. Maybe if the organizers promote a her vs Bol event, but you say that rarely happens. Maybe it’s changed since I haven’t gone to a meet in quite a while, but formerly track & field fans go because they enjoy the sport as a whole, but may have preferences for sprints, distances, jumps, whatever. Not so much to see athletes whose replica jersey they are wearing.

I doubt that it does too, but that's largely because she primarily runs major championships where you get a whole program. There were people who would be maybe considering buying a Continental Tour or Diamond League ticket, who would be more likely to do so if Usain Bolt was running. There are people that you might not be buying tickets specifically for like it's combat sports or anything like that, but where the chance to see that particular competitor plays a role in audience interest and also interest in the event from sponsors and advertisers that gives the organisers better reach to promote the event and sell tickets not specifically relating to that specific athlete appearing.

I think she is a draw, simply because it's so rare for her to run that is carries some sense of occasion when she chooses to do so, but the issue is that the wider audience hasn't had the chance to get to know her and to develop an attachment to following her achievements.

But who is Femke Bol next to Sydney? Are you pretending there is a rivalry?

The thing was that while SML was injured, Bol improved greatly and had completely obliterated the field she was facing a hundred times over. And that might not even be that hyperbolic a figure, since Bol is the complete opposite of SML and runs anywhere and everywhere, a couple of years she was maybe even running too much. The fact SML was running even less than usual led to a situation where there was nobody left but her for Bol to test herself against, but she couldn't test herself against SML, and the most egregious of the latter's stans kept on slating any achievement as worthless and complaining about any article or video or punditry that didn't basically preface the story "Bol achieves excellent time / wins major accolade / beats all comers - but McLaughlin-Levrone would have been better" and insisting that fans could only enjoy the athletics they were watching viewed through the prism of how much better SML would have been had she been there; simultaneously there was a lot of unfounded speculation about the nature of SML's injuries that led some of the more vocal Bol fans to vastly overstate her chances against SML.

There was never a rivalry between the women on track nor have they pretended that there is; they didn't face each other for over two years and SML has won every face-off between them. It was purely an invention of the fandoms and the media. To continue my analogy of the old NWA, Femke is like the regional champion of your territory's federation, whose exploits you follow week to week, and Sydney is the overarching national champion who jets in once or twice a year to remind you why she's the champion.

 

[Brullnux]

Lillian Odira out of nowhere to win the 800m with a CR.

As mitigation, she was a 400m runner until her pregnancy and then has only been training properly for 18 months, so the rapid improvement is maybe not that crazy.

 

[BullsFan22]

There is no doubt that SML is juicing. Another obvious character is Cole Hocker.

The US had 26 medals. The next nation? Kenya, with 11. Now, we know what sort of trouble the Kenyans have been in the last 10 years or so. To think that US athletes aren't juicing is absurd.

 

[Ripper]

Waaaiiitttt. He's going to the Enhanced games but "will contest the allegation?" He's basically admitting that he doesn't a)really practice a clean regime b)will likely "enhance" further to go to those games to make money. Doesn't he have an agent....and a therapist to talk him through these things? His attorney should be asking those questions.

Yup. He does not seem like too bright a bulb.