Doping in XC skiing

[Walkman]

No, now you are twisting the arguments 180 degree

Dæhlie's and other's statements about this advantage is not an evidence to support my hypothesis!

The hypothesis about the advantage (also referencing the Albertville 50k) is laid out by their statements, not me. And the data from Albertville 50k is supporting evidence of their hypothesis, and of their credibility.

Lets say you are right. How come the norwegians still dominated during the late 90's? If the stone grinding only was a secret until 92-94 (weird that Thomas and Björn has different opinions about that) how did they beat big doper just as they did in the beginning of the 90's?

 

[Walkman]

Obviously it was a bit of irony

Sorry. You never know around these boards.

Nevertheless Mühleg had proofen himself before, it wasn't out of nowhere. Bu that's a different story, of course.

I don't know what you want to say?! He was obviously doped before Salt Lake City. 2001 was no exception but then he did not had access to NESP.

 

[python]

can someone point to any examples of norway's main media taking even a cautiously questioning position wrt to their own in light of the latest swedish or already distant finnish documentaries ?

i am not expecting a nation to produce another travis tygart (clearly it's a different situation) but a unanimous nation-wide conformity with respect to some very serious issues at hand - particularly in light of the other known facts - would be imo undeserving of norway's democratic traditions.

so far, i have not heard or seen any...

 

[Discgear]

You are joking, right? On the mens side, 10 of the 16 sprint world cups have been won by a Norwegian, and all 16 have had a Norwegian finishing top 3 (this season could be the first time that's not happening). In the world championship, they've won 3 of the 7 championships and podiumed in all. On the ladies side they've won 9 out of 16 sprint world cups and 4 of the 7 world championships. I don't think I would consider that as being "far less successful".

Sure, but a new style requires learning new techniques. The new style wasn't very popular among a lot of people in Norway. And thus, Norway fell behind on the new style, just like they did with the new v-style in ski jumping.
On the men's side, Norway took the first two championship gold medals in sprint, and took 50% of all the sprint medals in the 4 first championships after sprint was introduced.
These were all years when Norway weren't as successful in the other disciplines.

I can see now that I was terrible unclear. What I meant was to emphasize what I wrote about the skate technique. What I wrote afterwards about sprint was of course aiming on those occasions when sprint was held in skating technique, when glide is a major factor. In Sprint Classical it's so many more dimensions of ski preparation, and for sure - The Norwegians were very dominant when sprint was held in classical technique.

But I can agree with Mr Roboto, a factor might be that Norway was late in adopting a new style. However my main point was that in skating technique glide is the only factor in ski preparation, and I don't think you can honestly say that it was obvious that Norway had a glide advantage in the 90s.

 

[blueskies]

can someone point to any examples of norway's main media taking even a cautiously questioning position wrt to their own in light of the latest swedish or already distant finnish documentaries ?

i am not expecting a nation to produce another travis tygart (clearly it's a different situation) but a unanimous nation-wide conformity with respect to some very serious issues at hand - particularly in light of the other known facts - would be imo undeserving of norway's democratic traditions.

so far, i have not heard or seen any...

Why should bad journalism be awarded? The documentary was a farce no matter one's position in the matter.

If someone makes an ignorant and stupid documentary about Greg Lemond being doped, is it undeserving of the democratic traditions of america, if they choose not to give credit to the documentary?

Why are you and others so uncritical of the sources you base yourself on?

What should the media do? Ask Dæhlie if he doped? They've done that 1432 times already. There have been plenty of articles with interviews of Hellandsjø, Kaggestad, Skjeldal, Solbakken, doctors and many, many others. It's a matter that continues to be discussed, but not in a sensationalistic and ignorant way, thank god.

You know that famous phone call between Armstrong and Lemond, where Armstrong accuses Lemond of doping, saying "everyone doped, sure, different substances, but every great winner doped...", and Lemond answered furiously that that the difference between the two of them was natural talent (Vo2max), and he said "basically.. basically, you don't know what you're talking about".

Can you be so certain, that you're not the Armstrong here?

I'm absolutely amazed at how some on the clinic will take any piece of argument, or "evidence" or a documentary and hold it up as 'proof' no matter how bad the reasoning, data or conclusions are. Why do you hold such low standards for yourself? Is it okay not to be critical of extremely poor journalism, as long as it goes in favour of your viewpoint?

 

[blueskies]

can someone point to any examples of norway's main media taking even a cautiously questioning position wrt to their own in light of the latest swedish or already distant finnish documentaries ?

i am not expecting a nation to produce another travis tygart (clearly it's a different situation) but a unanimous nation-wide conformity with respect to some very serious issues at hand - particularly in light of the other known facts - would be imo undeserving of norway's democratic traditions.

so far, i have not heard or seen any...

These are two quick articles that I found. You'll have to use google translate if you don't read norwegian:

http://e24.no/kommentarer/spaltister/dopet-langrenn/20340623

http://fotball.aftenposten.no/kommentar/kjetil_kroksaeter/article270231.ece

 

[python]

i asked a simple, valid question about norwegian media coverage. your response was a rant accusing me of being lance armstrong all despite my record of never accusing a norwegian without a proof.

as i said in my earlier post, your posting here was suspect. and now i can call them rants of raving, thin-skinned zealot.

 

[MrRoboto]

I can see now that I was terrible unclear. What I meant was to emphasize what I wrote about the skate technique. What I wrote afterwards about sprint was of course aiming on those occasions when sprint was held in skating technique, when glide is a major factor. In Sprint Classical it's so many more dimensions of ski preparation, and for sure - The Norwegians were very dominant when sprint was held in classical technique.

And the 3 first championship sprints were held in skating technique, where the norwegian men won 5 og 9 medals, where 2 of them were gold.

Not seeing anyone who claims Norway still have huge advantages when it comes to ski preparation (even though Norway probably spends more money on this than most other countries combined), so this point seems a bit redundant.

But I can agree with Mr Roboto, a factor might be that Norway was late in adopting a new style. However my main point was that in skating technique glide is the only factor in ski preparation, and I don't think you can honestly say that it was obvious that Norway had a glide advantage in the 90s.

Was it obvious in the 50km in Albertville 1992? No, the individual start makes it very hard to spot for the viewers, and even difficult for the skiers themselves to realize.

 

[Walkman]

Why should bad journalism be awarded? The documentary was a farce no matter one's position in the matter.

If someone makes an ignorant and stupid documentary about Greg Lemond being doped, is it undeserving of the democratic traditions of america, if they choose not to give credit to the documentary?

Why are you and others so uncritical of the sources you base yourself on?

What should the media do? Ask Dæhlie if he doped? They've done that 1432 times already. There have been plenty of articles with interviews of Hellandsjø, Kaggestad, Skjeldal, Solbakken, doctors and many, many others. It's a matter that continues to be discussed, but not in a sensationalistic and ignorant way, thank god.

You know that famous phone call between Armstrong and Lemond, where Armstrong accuses Lemond of doping, saying "everyone doped, sure, different substances, but every great winner doped...", and Lemond answered furiously that that the difference between the two of them was natural talent (Vo2max), and he said "basically.. basically, you don't know what you're talking about".

Can you be so certain, that you're not the Armstrong here?

I'm absolutely amazed at how some on the clinic will take any piece of argument, or "evidence" or a documentary and hold it up as 'proof' no matter how bad the reasoning, data or conclusions are. Why do you hold such low standards for yourself? Is it okay not to be critical of extremely poor journalism, as long as it goes in favour of your viewpoint?

Let me answer this.

Because Per Elofsson was superior to all norwegians talent wise and with regards to VO2 MAX, excluding Dæhlie even thought I don't trust the claims of 96 (give me a solid source please).

Elofsson had a VO2 MAX at 88, when he was 20! He had the best skiing technic in both classic and freestyle. He also had one of the best,if not the best man to prep his skis, Perry Olsson, who today is in charge of Northugs and Björgens skis.

Despite all that, he could only compete with all the dopers for 2-3 years befor his body broke down. At the same time norwegians such as Alsgaard, Estil, Aukland, Hjelmeset and other could pick up medals left and right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QSVGyTQiWQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DS0cTEi4M7o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPPXoDXm17k

 

[blueskies]

and I don't think you can honestly say that it was obvious that Norway had a glide advantage in the 90s.

You're probably not going to get any better evidence of this than the scientific articles you've been discussing.

I could find numerous of old clips where it's evident that norwegian racers had very good glide, and just about always in the top.

And just as it's clear. Glide doesn't explain Dæhlie or any other. It's part of the picture. Reality isn't simple; it's complex. Not one factor is an explanation or an excuse. It's the totality of information that needs to digested.

In XC, the recruitment to the sport is not nearly the same as in cycling. The incentives for extreme doped up performances in cycling was huge. The fact that it's easy to differentiate Mühlegg's performance in 2002 from other doped up performances, goes to tell that doping in XC has to be understood in a different way than doping in cycling. Is it possible to distinguish one insane doped up performance in cycling? No.. there were tons of them.

We know that many doped and many got caught. We know that there were gliding differences and efficiency differences. We know that the recruitment in Norway is bigger than in most other countries, that more money was spent on the sport and that Dæhlie and Alsgaard were extraordinary physical talents, no matter if they were clean or not.

Here's the big thing, in cycling we know that the base level talent and performance upon which doping was exerted was very high. Doping efficiency is higher in cycling than in XC because it's a much more level playing field with regards to equipment and efficiency (factors that are largely independent of doping) compared to XC.

It's not at all as evident as in cycling, that the base level talent and performance upon which doping was exerted in XC was the very highest. Arguments that support this hypothesis is that many of the known dopers came from nations with small recruitment and less money spent on the sport, and that the general recruitment is lower, which lessens incentives of extreme performances. Finland is an exemption, but given their uncompetitiveness after the scandal, one might wonder how high the base level was, but also how efficient their doping+training regime really was, again, referring to Mühlegg.

You'll counter this by saying that, yes of course the base level talent and performance was indeed very high, because we know that both swedish skiers and norwegian skiers doped, nations that have always been strong in XC skiing. Well, that's a tautology..

 

[dukoff]

Lets say you are right. How come the norwegians still dominated during the late 90's? If the stone grinding only was a secret until 92-94 (weird that Thomas and Björn has different opinions about that) how did they beat big doper just as they did in the beginning of the 90's?

I don't have the Thomas reference at hand, but the way it has been quoted here I see no discrepency.

Dæhlie is putting the period from December 89 to after the 1992 olympics as the time they had "indisputably better skis", and describes the period they managed to keep it a secret. The advantage would obviuosly not dissappear over night. Going forward from 1992, one would assume that in 2 years time, the other nations would have the same knowledge as the Norwegians had in 1992, as they had developed and tested it for 2 years. Still then the Norwegians would have extra two years of additional testing and sensitivity-data on performance. So they would still be ahead, but the margin of performance you can pull out of year 3-4 vs year 1-2, is obviously considerably less.

I would suggest the main advantage after a couple years would in majority be better optimalization with respect to smaller changes in conditions, and more experience/data for not so common conditions. Something which would likely be seen as a better hit-rate on producing good skis than others, not an advantage in every race.

will discuss the rest in other post..

 

[blueskies]

Let me answer this.

Because Per Elofsson was superior to all norwegians talent wise and with regards to VO2 MAX, excluding Dæhlie even thought I don't trust the claims of 96 (give me a solid source please).

Elofsson had a VO2 MAX at 88, when he was 20! He had the best skiing technic in both classic and freestyle. He also had one of the best,if not the best man to prep his skis, Perry Olsson, who today is in charge of Northugs and Björgens skis.

Despite all that, he could only compete with all the dopers for 2-3 years befor his body broke down. At the same time norwegians such as Alsgaard, Estil, Aukland, Hjelmeset and other could pick up medals left and right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QSVGyTQiWQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DS0cTEi4M7o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPPXoDXm17k

So now the claim is that Elofsson, who had his best championship in Lahti 2001, was the only clean one, while all the norwegians and everyone else were doping?

Now that's a charming swede if I ever saw one.

I thought the argument was that the norwegians couldn't possibly beat the doped up racers clean..

(ps I don't think Elofsson doped, and I wish he didn't have to retire early)

 

[MrRoboto]

Edit: I realize this post didn't make much sense

 

[Tubeless]

You forget to recognize that the data shows more than just glide. It also shows who is over-performing compared to their glide, which includes DeZolt and many others finishing within top 10, but no Norwegians. The data is also important to indicate the magnitude of difference that could exist at the time between racers, purely based on skis.

It could also have been seen that other weaker racers, even though they didn't have a good finish time, could still had good skis. Well it doesn't show that. Or to be more accurate, it does show poor racers with good skis. But good only compared to everyone else than the Norwegians, which didn't have good skis, they had skis from a different planet.

You can always say, like you do, that each evidence may be an extreme non-representable case. But the differences here are just too big. And you can't say that without having to accept that each statement has a probability. Note that the 50k speed data could have shown the opposite, that Norwegians over-performed with only an average glide. And the leaked 1997 Lahti blood screening data could have shown Norwegians with Hb of 190-200. It could easily done that, and if it was true they were doped to the gills, the probability is that the data would show that. Still, it doesn't.

FIS blood-screening data since the adoption of the Hb limits in 1997 is not that useful, given the use of plasma expanders to pass the test. Many teams also discovered that the use of plasma expanders in fact gave a performance advantage in the race itself, as expanded total blood volume helps raise the heart's stroke volume. And at some level of blood doping when you get close to 20 g/l, Hb can get get too concentrated which not only is dangerous to your health, but is also not optimal for the oxygen transfer at the tissue level.

Would you be willing to admit Norwegians used plasma expanders? They were not banned until 2001.

 

[Kokoso]

Let the Norwegians be. Who even cares about them?

What about Bauer? I think endurance - wise one of the greatest skiers for quite a long time. Has he been doping? Or is it just talent?

 

[Tubeless]

Dæhlie certainly isn't the only Norwegian standing out in the data. You can easily distinguish also Vegard Ulvang who finished 9th. Skjeldal who finished 20th is best determined by counting the 3rd in reverse from the time-gap. The results show the 1-min gap beeing between Isometsa (22nd) and Kuusisto (23rd). Hence the racer with the highest average speed of the two laps is Skjeldal. Terje Langli is not so easy to pick out, but would be one of the higher dots in the group.

I think it's important to establish the reason for the performance in 1992 specifically, because the dominance in 1992 in particular is extreme. Ulvang for example pulled off five wins and four 2nds in this season, something he was never able to either before or after.

If to assess the advantage going forward from 1992, I would perhaps suggest a half-life of one or two seasons. Probably some conditions it would be easier to develop structures and experience for, so the truth is likely more scattered. But we gotta work with some average.

You did not answer the questions so let's try again.

2 problems with your numbers. You're implying that stone grinding attributed to a 2% unique gain for the Norwegians to offset the 5-6% gain from EPO that non-Norwegians were using:

- You concur the 2% does not apply to all types of snow conditions. In transformed (old or frozen) snow or in cold conditions, stone-grinding has a small / insignificant advantage. Yet Daehlie was beating the known dopers in all types of snow conditions.

- By your own admission, other nations caught on with the stone grinding trick by the early 1990's. Yet Daehlie kept winning throughout the 1990's.

In particular, the results from the Thunder Bay world championships in 1995 are difficult to explain away:

- There were no Hb limits in place. Fauner was reported as having a Hb of 192 and Smirnov 197. The performance advantage at these Hb levels is arguably more than the typical 5-6% attributed to "normal" use of EPO.

- Daehlie got 3 silver medals, and was only beaten by Smirnov or Fauner is those races.

- So what natural advantage did Daehli have in Thunder Bay to offset the 6-10% performance gain other top competitors got from doping?

To encourage you to respond directly and without obfuscation, I will refer to your own statement from earlier in this thread:

The party who escapes from discussing data/numbers and turns into such circumstantial argumentation is typically not someone who has yet proven a point.

 

[ToreBear]

Finally, it’s not easy to comment either signatures blueskies or ToreBear, but I have to address ToreBear in the following:


Since you are trying to disgrace both those experts, prof. Saltin is the long time guru within antidoping – an highly regarded expert, and both Endsjø and Saltin looked quite credible to me. If they are not to be trusted, who can we trust among the medical expertise? Damsgaard, who was working closely with Armstrong? Lereim, who indeed acted very strange in the documentary.
Another view of those two seniors, could be that they have seen quite a few things during their years, and now can allow themselves to be just a little bit more frank and outspoken.

And you are quite dishonest in your quoting of Saltin, what he said was following:

-For sure, a few individuals have normal values from 16.5 up to 17, and today they will get a dispensation, but out of 100 skiers that will be true for maybe 5 that have those high normals. And that’s not an explanation to [interrupted, but obviously aiming at the presented data] and then he turned to the Norwegians, since they had been so aggrevated in the discussion, and expressed annoyance that he and his collegues had the last 10-12 years been asking that the tests that FIS took during the 90s - about 800 male and more than 300 female - would be released, but as he expressed it:

- It’s tragic it hasn’t been done, especially not in Norway since they are holding the data.

I call it like I see it. But I tried to be sensitive in my critique, I have other theories too. Also I'm not a stenographer so I go by memory.

When Saltin manages to draw clear conclusions as he seems to do in this article:
http://www.aftonbladet.se/sportbladet/vintersport/skidor/article16334102.ab

Without knowing the details of how the data is obtained, I question his judgement.

The same with Ensjø:
http://www.vg.no/sport/ski/vm/2013/artikkel.php?artid=10114460

Though he now seems more guarded.

You say Ensjø and Saltin looked quite credible. Well making people look credible is easy to do when you can cut out pieces you don't like when editing. Thats kind of how television can work. You can not judge people by how they look, You have to go with what they say. This documentary had an agenda, and all the little details that enhances it's theory was enhanced, while the details opposing the theory were put in the background.

I don't know the details about Damsgaards job at that time to know if he did it well or fudged it.

Of course Lereim seemed to act strange in the documentary, that was the hole point. We don't know the prehistory of Lereims contacts with Svens. We don't know the hole story. But what Svens wanted to further was the idea that Lereim is a dopingdoc. This was followed on from the Finnish documentary. And both documentaries used Kyro as a main source.

Some cutting here, some mood music there and of course Lereim seemed strange.

Now Saltin seems to insinuate that Norway has all of the Fis values, and is the major stumbling block in not making them public. AFAIK these values are the property of the national federations and the athletes. If Norway had them, which seems odd, how could they make them public without the owner approving?

Saltin should know this, so how can he say what he does? To me it makes no sence that an experienced and well regarded man can say so many strange things. So I have to find the most plausible explanation.

If you want to go into the realm of conspiracies, you could replace Will Smith with Bengt Saltin in Enemy of the State. Of course the state in this case would be both the Norwegian and Swedish doctors who worked with the ski associations in the 90s since they seem to say pretty much the same thing.

That would make a cool story. But I have trouble seeing such a major conspiracy taking place in two such open countries without somebody talking. (Unless of course one goes a bit further and looks for mysterious disappearances of people etc.)

Of course I haven't read the Millenium series, so my imagination might be lacking. (I plan to read it though, so don't reveal anything)

 

[sworks]

Alsgaard is from another planet. Very impressed.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy9cm5NU_1M

 

[dukoff]

FIS blood-screening data since the adoption of the Hb limits in 1997 is not that useful, given the use of plasma expanders to pass the test. Many teams also discovered that the use of plasma expanders in fact gave a performance advantage in the race itself, as expanded total blood volume helps raise the heart's stroke volume. And at some level of blood doping when you get close to 20 g/l, Hb can get get too concentrated which not only is dangerous to your health, but is also not optimal for the oxygen transfer at the tissue level.

Would you be willing to admit Norwegians used plasma expanders? They were not banned until 2001.

No. Foremost because although it was not banned as substance it would be banned "by method".

 

[dukoff]

Lets say you are right. How come the norwegians still dominated during the late 90's? If the stone grinding only was a secret until 92-94 (weird that Thomas and Björn has different opinions about that) how did they beat big doper just as they did in the beginning of the 90's?

Well going forward from 1992, one need to first define how to quantify "domination through the rest of the 90s"?
What does that mean? We need to define this in some measurable way.. Then we can look at how this may or may not have been possible.

And to start from one angle;
Assuming the Norwegians were doping, how come nobody was able to match them on results, through the whole 90s? To suggest the Norwegians doped alot more than others through a decade is simply too far fetched and unserious claim. I can't see any other answer to that question than it had to do with either a better ski preparation and/or natural selection. We can't avoid giving credit to these two factors, because the EPO was in principle availbable to everyone.

Hence, the question is not IF these factors shall be included, but of which magnitude they may be considered to have. They need to be estimated, if we want to analyze this in a serious manner.

So "natural selection" I will then define to include a series of personal factors like; genes/physique, winning mentality, techinque/efficiency.

...
Now back to the definition of "domination". What are we going to put into this? Who dominated who? These are individuals, or strings of individuals, not racing cars that will only see improvement. Obviously Dæhlie is the first Norwegian to focus on.

So if one sits back with some serious thought on the individuals involved. Who did Dæhlie dominate? Which racer(s) were supposed to beat him?

This needs to be answered, as well as how do we define the "domination in the (post 92) 90s"..

The world cup is perhaps a helpful overview:
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/598/screenshot2013030715001.jpg

 

[dukoff]

You did not answer the questions so let's try again.

2 problems with your numbers. You're implying that stone grinding attributed to a 2% unique gain for the Norwegians to offset the 5-6% gain from EPO that non-Norwegians were using:

- You concur the 2% does not apply to all types of snow conditions. In transformed (old or frozen) snow or in cold conditions, stone-grinding has a small / insignificant advantage. Yet Daehlie was beating the known dopers in all types of snow conditions.

- By your own admission, other nations caught on with the stone grinding trick by the early 1990's. Yet Daehlie kept winning throughout the 1990's.

In particular, the results from the Thunder Bay world championships in 1995 are difficult to explain away:

- There were no Hb limits in place. Fauner was reported as having a Hb of 192 and Smirnov 197. The performance advantage at these Hb levels is arguably more than the typical 5-6% attributed to "normal" use of EPO.

- Daehlie got 3 silver medals, and was only beaten by Smirnov or Fauner is those races.

- So what natural advantage did Daehli have in Thunder Bay to offset the 6-10% performance gain other top competitors got from doping?

I don't believe a 10% doping advantage is possible to beat clean unless the doper is originally, or at the specific race-day-form, a sub top-15 racer. Though I don't think either 10% is representable.

In Thunder Bay Dæhlie finished all races at +1-1.5%.
6% - 2% (altitude training) - 1.5% = 2.5%..

That is 2.5% that must be attributed to something.
This is what I consider realistic to attribute to natural selection, or combination of natural selection and ski preparation. We haven't gotten to quantify natural selection yet, but my previous post is a start on that path..

Let's stay in good mood, and there can be many interesting things to yet discuss

 

[ToreBear]

can someone point to any examples of norway's main media taking even a cautiously questioning position wrt to their own in light of the latest swedish or already distant finnish documentaries ?

i am not expecting a nation to produce another travis tygart (clearly it's a different situation) but a unanimous nation-wide conformity with respect to some very serious issues at hand - particularly in light of the other known facts - would be imo undeserving of norway's democratic traditions.

so far, i have not heard or seen any...

Well as a well functioning democracy we hold our media to a high standard, and don't swallow hole everything that comes on television. So a bad documentary, that ends up eliciting a defence that strenghtens the theory that people were not doping should increase the likelyhood that people will respond that they think people were clean.

And so it has done.

The media have been through this before and as Esten O Sæther(Norways most prominent dope hater journalist) hints, Kyros list and his information has been available to those who wanted it for the last decade.

http://www.dagbladet.no/2013/03/02/sport/langrenn/doping/25995839/

So why haven't we seen it before you might ask? Well in Norway, journalists have to have a good indication that they are in fact presenting a story based on facts. If they don't they get told by their coleagues how stupid they are in the presses own commission. They really don't like that.

And if they really screw up, like base their story on misreading a pharmaceutical order form and run with a huge fanfare like Rikets Tilstand did, they could end up out of pocket and out of credibility.

Likely Kyro's information has not passed the litmus test for publishable story until someone at SVTs UG took the bait. I thought SVT was one of the more serious organizations in Sweden, so this documentary came as a chock to me. And it has made me question the journalistic thoroughness of all the Swedish news organizations in general.

If the media in Norway find a story relating to a serious issue, they are going to make sure they have it right before they publish it. Apparently this is optional in Sweden.

So if you want speculation without a factual basis I suggest you go looking through the Norwegian blogosphere. There are a lot of people willing to throw things out there without any factual basis.


Sorry for the long explanation. But the way you asked your question, indicates you needed it.

 

[Walkman]

So now the claim is that Elofsson, who had his best championship in Lahti 2001, was the only clean one, while all the norwegians and everyone else were doping?

Now that's a charming swede if I ever saw one.

I thought the argument was that the norwegians couldn't possibly beat the doped up racers clean..

(ps I don't think Elofsson doped, and I wish he didn't have to retire early)

I am not sure about the norwegians since there are no clear evidence. But how does it look? An Indurain like domiantion during the early 90's and continuously dominating the XC-secene and beating known doper on a consistent basis.

As for Lathis; Yes, I am certain all medalists except the swedes were doping. Norwegians and maybe Sommerfeldt are both not included. I am not sure about them and there is a great chance that they were clean.

Per Elofsson was a generational talent and was to XC-skiing what Greg was to cycling. A naturally superior athlete, gifted with a mental strength others only could dream of. I genuinely believe that. Read his book and you will realize what I am talking about.

 

[Walkman]

Well going forward from 1992, one need to first define how to quantify "domination through the rest of the 90s"?
What does that mean? We need to define this in some measurable way.. Then we can look at how this may or may not have been possible.

Dominating throughout the rest of the 90s? Yes, dominating.

Just look at the picture you posted. Of the top-10 in the world cup standing 4 of them were norwegians from 92-94 and in 97. 1995 and 96 Norway had 2 in the top-10 and in 1998 they had 3 in the top ten. During these 7 years, Dæhlie won the worldcup 5 times and finished second twice. Alsgaard won it once and Ulvang finished second once and third once. The rest of the top-10 skiers are, save the swedes, ONLY know dopers.

And to start from one angle;
Assuming the Norwegians were doping, how come nobody was able to match them on results, through the whole 90s? To suggest the Norwegians doped alot more than others through a decade is simply too far fetched and unserious claim. I can't see any other answer to that question than it had to do with either a better ski preparation and/or natural selection. We can't avoid giving credit to these two factors, because the EPO was in principle availbable to everyone.

Indeed, that seems farfetched. But does it seems right that a 2% gliding advantages explains why they could beat EPO and blod-doping competitors, which we know can give up to 10-15% performance boost?

I am not saying that the norwegians doped, but those performance are indeed spectacular in an era of full blown doping.

I mean, look at a guy like Frode Estil.

In 114 wc-starts 20 podiums. Thats a 17,5% success rate.

In Olympic games he has 6 individual starts and 3 individual medals. Thats a success rate of 50%!

He has 14 individual starts in World Championships and 8 individual medals. Thats a success ate of 57%!

Now, I don't really think Estil doped, but you never know. Those statistics are pretty good.

 

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Sorry for the long explanation. But the way you asked your question, indicates you needed it.

no worries.

knowing what we NOW know about the wild, doped 90s, and having been a long-time admirer of both the sport of xc skiing in general and the norwegian phenomena in particular, i don't see how asking some uncomfortable but valid questions (in a careful, respectful of athlete's reputations way) can be so antagonistic to a whole nation's self reflection. that none of the main stream media can rise to this level is disappointing and perhaps indicative of a wider problem. but thanks anyway.