Doping in XC skiing

[python]

duerr admits

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/23/us-olympics-doping-austria-idUSBREA1M05V20140223

'...i have trusted the wrong people'

wtf does that mean, brain-dead

they said that it was undetectable ? they told you to fly home ?

 

[Dazed and Confused]

duerr admits

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/23/us-olympics-doping-austria-idUSBREA1M05V20140223

'...i have trusted the wrong people'

wtf does that mean, brain-dead

they said that it was undetectable ? they told you to fly home ?

Lets give him some time. This is much better than the usual denial.

 

[roundabout]

duerr admits

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/23/us-olympics-doping-austria-idUSBREA1M05V20140223

'...i have trusted the wrong people'

wtf does that mean, brain-dead

they said that it was undetectable ? they told you to fly home ?

The best part is that he said that he doped alone

 

[Cloxxki]

The best part is that he said that he doped alone

Give him 4 years if he doesn't name names and get people hung for it.
No Di Luca sweetheart treatment please. Not naming the ones involved really is like active cover up of someone else's doping efforts.

AND PLEASE get his TdS samples re-tested. And his bio passport re-written. We now know his values need to come down.

 

[Walkman]

Give him 4 years if he doesn't name names and get people hung for it.
No Di Luca sweetheart treatment please. Not naming the ones involved really is like active cover up of someone else's doping efforts.

AND PLEASE get his TdS samples re-tested. And his bio passport re-written. We now know his values need to come down.

This!!

Reduce his sentence if he cooperates and increase it if he does not.

 

[alternator]

Some questions that should have been asked in the Norwegian media regarding news events last two weeks.

1. The article in New York Times 140207:
He told me that two biathletes from those Games had also tested positive for the drug on the final day, but that he and the International Olympic Committee president at the time, Jacques Rogge, had decided against pursuing their cases because “it would raise a huge stink around the world.”

Considering that the Olympic games mentioned above was Salt Lake 2002, which was a clean sweep for Ole Einar Bjoerndalen winning all the gold medals, three individual and the relay – maybe a follow up question would have been expected in Norwegian media.

2. Reuters 140207:
Estonian Kristina Smigun was exposed as being doped during Torino Olympics.

Her younger sister and training partner, former skier Katrin Smigun is married to chief ski wax technician of the Norwegian Olympic team Knut Nystad. Yes, they met before Torino Olympics and Katrin stopped skiing 2006.
Sounds like most countries media would have asked their chief ski wax technician a few questions about his doped sister in law, but in Norway silence.

3. Deutsche Welle 140221;
German Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle has tested positive for a banned substance at the Sochi Olympics.

Evi took a silver in relay in Torino 2006 and a gold medal in team sprint Vancouver 2010. Both medals together with Claudia Künzel, now named Claudia Nystad. Claudia is married to Trond Nystad, the Head coach of the Norwegian men cross-country skiing team. Trond Nystad is brother to Knut Nystad.
So when the close skiing partner to the wife of Trond Nystad is caught for doping, you would have thought there would be some questions in the Norwegian media to the husband - the Head coach of the Norwegian men cross-country skiing team. Silence.


I’m not implying Trond and Knut would have had any knowledge, but in a normal media climate at least some questions would have been raised. You might wonder where Trond and Claudia now keep the gold medal from Vancoucer, on the wall or in a closet? You might wonder what the topic is in the Nystad/Smigun family dinners.

Pretty tenuous if you ask me, as long as Claudia Nystad does not get caught doping (her third leg was pretty good considering she was just returning to competition). It just shows that the cross-country skiing world is a small one.

On the subject of making tenuous connections, how about this one:
Kristina Smigun is/was a pretty lady. She turned out to be a doper.
Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle is pretty, and used to be even prettier. She turned out to be a doper as well.
Julia Tchepalova... same thing - and she was caught with EPO in her test.
Manuela Di Centa was very pretty (and still looks good). She was one of the biggest dopers of the 90s.

Based on this, I predict that Gabriela Soukalova will be the next caught doper

 

[spalco]

Give him 4 years if he doesn't name names and get people hung for it.
No Di Luca sweetheart treatment please. Not naming the ones involved really is like active cover up of someone else's doping efforts.

AND PLEASE get his TdS samples re-tested. And his bio passport re-written. We now know his values need to come down.

I don't think he's going to ski again on an international level anyway anymore. The president of the Austrian skiing federation (who's a tremendous hypocrite too, make no mistake) basically implied today he might cut off funding for the Austrian XC team totally in reaction to this positive.
I don't even think that's an exaggeration (we'll see though), cross-country matters far too little to Austria to justify the bad PR after a doping positive at the Olympics. If someone's getting caught, at least do it during the 4 years in between. There will be some kind of consequences for sure.

 

[Cloxxki]

I don't think he's going to ski again on an international level anyway anymore. The president of the Austrian skiing federation (who's a tremendous hypocrite too, make no mistake) basically implied today he might cut off funding for the Austrian XC team totally in reaction to this positive.
I don't even think that's an exaggeration (we'll see though), cross-country matters far too little to Austria to justify the bad PR after a doping positive at the Olympics. If someone's getting caught, at least do it during the 4 years in between. There will be some kind of consequences for sure.

Possible. Austria have a new biathlon team to build. The ancient teflon brigade got their relay medal. If guilty by association existed, they'd not seen daylight for a few years now.

Just watched/listed the 50km. Much less suspect for the Russians compared to the Norwegian women's 30km. Sundby was in there sprinting for a medal.
We know Vylexhanin is a 50%+ guy though, and the others probably aso left some anecdotes in cyberspace.
I wonder whether the tracks were not shorter by a greater margin. They skied so pedestrian, stayed together with over a dozen men until the last climb.

If anyone is suspect, it should be Noah Hoffmann. Foremost because of his last name ;-) and for basically doing what Duerr did in the TdS (great Alpe Cermis time I seem to remember?) and was expected to do in Sochi.

 

[Cloxxki]

This!!

Reduce his sentence if he cooperates and increase it if he does not.

Reduction is sweetheart deal. He's young. He can live with his folks on no income, train like crazy, don't even teach ski lessons or wait tables and come back in 2 years. Although getting caught in Feb is less than ideal for a ski doper.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Possible. Austria have a new biathlon team to build. The ancient teflon brigade got their relay medal. If guilty by association existed, they'd not seen daylight for a few years now.

They've been running the same quartet in relays for five or six years now, but it's not as bad as it sounds. Eder will probably be around in Pyeongchang. Landertinger's only 25, he'll be around for some time to come. They've been doing OK on the IBU Cup this season, especially David Komatz. Also, they have some very talented young women, which must be a first since they've been a top men's team with no women's team to speak of for years. Hauser is very promising, Innerhofer has made a significant improvement this year and Zdouc is a contender for medals at the Junior Worlds coming up. They're sending Hauser again to see if she can better what she did at home last season, but I'm not really sure why since she's been their best performer at the World Cup level this year already...

 

[Discgear]

Pretty tenuous if you ask me, as long as Claudia Nystad does not get caught doping (her third leg was pretty good considering she was just returning to competition). It just shows that the cross-country skiing world is a small one.

On the subject of making tenuous connections, how about this one:
Kristina Smigun is/was a pretty lady. She turned out to be a doper.
Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle is pretty, and used to be even prettier. She turned out to be a doper as well.
Julia Tchepalova... same thing - and she was caught with EPO in her test.
Manuela Di Centa was very pretty (and still looks good). She was one of the biggest dopers of the 90s.

Based on this, I predict that Gabriela Soukalova will be the next caught doper

Well Alternator,

I didn't ask you. In your massive three posts so far you have accused 2 swedish, 1 italian, 2 czech, 2 french, 1 austrian, 1 finn, 1 american and 1 swiss athlete of being suspicous in their olympic performances.
The only thing they have in common is being far from as succesful as the Norwegians.
Pretty tenuous if you ask me.

By the way, your sexistic comments about female athletes and doping wasn't that impressive.

 

[neineinei]

I don't think he's going to ski again on an international level anyway anymore. The president of the Austrian skiing federation (who's a tremendous hypocrite too, make no mistake) basically implied today he might cut off funding for the Austrian XC team totally in reaction to this positive.
I don't even think that's an exaggeration (we'll see though), cross-country matters far too little to Austria to justify the bad PR after a doping positive at the Olympics. If someone's getting caught, at least do it during the 4 years in between. There will be some kind of consequences for sure.

Is that Peter Schröcksnadel, who has been president of the Austrian skiing federation since 1990? He should have cut his own funding at least ten years ago, Austrian biathlon and cross country skiing has been a veritable fountain of doping scandals under his presidency.

 

[DirtyWorks]

Did I miss the discussion of Russia sweeping the 50k Olympic podium in apparently the fasted Olympic 50k ever?

The American commentary mentions "when Russia was given the games, Putin was told he'd have to clean up Russian sport." And then somehow, we're supposed to believe the podium sweep and speed of the 50k.

I know nothing about XC skiing, so maybe this was possible?

 

[DirtyWorks]

Wow Russia did a Gewiss, that was pretty hilarious.

Unbelievable. They just dropped everyone.

The American voice over started discussing how Putin was required to "clean up Russian athletics" with the winning bid as they were skating into the stadium, then seconds later declares the Russians all clean before the sprint.

I watch XC skiing every four years and that was absurd.

I can export the video and share it, but it will get taken down by the IOC. FWIW, the IOC issued a DMCA takedown for BBC fluff of the commentator skiing down the Olympic run declaring the IOC owns the right to the images of the run itself.

 

[Cloxxki]

Unbelievable. They just dropped everyone.

The American voice over started discussing how Putin was required to "clean up Russian athletics" with the winning bid as they were skating into the stadium, then seconds later declares the Russians all clean before the sprint.

I watch XC skiing every four years and that was absurd.

I can export the video and share it, but it will get taken down by the IOC. FWIW, the IOC issued a DMCA takedown for BBC fluff of the commentator skiing down the Olympic run declaring the IOC owns the right to the images of the run itself.

I got a bit of a feeling as with local crits, which you KNOW are going to be won by the local favorite.
"Everyone who challenges us is going to REALLY be tested".

How can a race be called fast or hard if they arrive at the last hill, 48km in, in a big bunch? They just had 3 out of the 4 Boonen types.
Strangely Northug didn't get himself in shape. Normally such a race would have been cake for him. He would round the last left hander in 5th and still win. Sundby stayed close but isn't a sprinter. Got nipped. It's not strange for any Russian to beat him in the last few hundred meters. Strange is no-one else took part.
The more I think of it, the more it seems the Russians were as ever, and the rest was clean-ish. No crazy jump skating for minutes on end, that is not done anymore, even by Martin Fourcade. People won races doing it, so it can't be that they all agreed to not do it anymore because it is inefficient.
They all stayed together so it wasn't a crazy fast race. The course may have been short and fast, but see who all hung on.

 

[kingjr]

The Russians did nothing out of the ordinary, Northug had no form, Hellner was ill and Cologna broke a ski and Sundby is not the greatest sprinter. Soedergren is too old and Olsson wasn't at his best either. Angerer didn't even start and Teichmann was only a shadow of his former self, same goes for Bauer. Instead there was an ex-biathlete like Semenov in the mix. Not exactly the strongest competition ever.

 

[jsem94]

The Russians did nothing out of the ordinary, Northug had no form, Hellner was ill and Cologna broke a ski and Sundby is not the greatest sprinter. Soedergren is too old and Olsson wasn't at his best either. Angerer didn't even start and Teichmann was only a shadow of his former self, same goes for Bauer. Instead there was an ex-biathlete like Semenov in the mix. Not exactly the strongest competition ever.

Completely agree.

 

[alternator]

Well Alternator,

I didn't ask you. In your massive three posts so far you have accused 2 swedish, 1 italian, 2 czech, 2 french, 1 austrian, 1 finn, 1 american and 1 swiss athlete of being suspicous in their olympic performances.
The only thing they have in common is being far from as succesful as the Norwegians.
Pretty tenuous if you ask me.

By the way, your sexistic comments about female athletes and doping wasn't that impressive.

I thought my sexist comments were of similar class with accusing Norwegians because the brother of one of the wax technicians of the Norwegian team married the sister of a doping athlete. I just tried to fit in to the thread...

 

[alternator]

Perhaps I should be a little more indirect about accusations and suspicions... what do you think about the Norwegian woman sprinter with the unfortunate, but seemingly fairly frequent case of acne? Anybody else notice the same?

 

[Shardi]

The Russians did nothing out of the ordinary, Northug had no form, Hellner was ill and Cologna broke a ski and Sundby is not the greatest sprinter. Soedergren is too old and Olsson wasn't at his best either. Angerer didn't even start and Teichmann was only a shadow of his former self, same goes for Bauer. Instead there was an ex-biathlete like Semenov in the mix. Not exactly the strongest competition ever.

Agree too. With so many freestyle aces gone, pulling away in the last slope after beeing carried by guys like Olsson, Södergren, Richardsson (all old, or classic specialists, with no punch at all) is not strange at all.

Legkov, Kologna, Northug, Hellner, Vylegshanin, Sundby. Those are the high profile riders of the last years, atleast in freestyle. Take away 3 of them, and ur left with 3 of the top4 in the race.

Chernousov managing to stay with them and outsprint sundby for 3rd, is a bigger surprise.

I'm 99% certain the russians are juiced and I would really like to know why Legkov and Vylegshanin missed the 15km classic. But from a results point of view with the given circumstances, the top 4 was not so strange.

 

[BullsFan22]

Agree too. With so many freestyle aces gone, pulling away in the last slope after beeing carried by guys like Olsson, Södergren, Richardsson (all old, or classic specialists, with no punch at all) is not strange at all.

Legkov, Kologna, Northug, Hellner, Vylegshanin, Sundby. Those are the high profile riders of the last years, atleast in freestyle. Take away 3 of them, and ur left with 3 of the top4 in the race.

Chernousov managing to stay with them and outsprint sundby for 3rd, is a bigger surprise.

I'm 99% certain the russians are juiced and I would really like to know why Legkov and Vylegshanin missed the 15km classic. But from a results point of view with the given circumstances, the top 4 was not so strange.

First of all, if you follow XC skiing, you would know that Chernousov is a top skier, and has been since Vancouver (a couple WC wins, World championship medal, U23 podiums, a number of Tour de Ski and WC podiums, etc), plus he is a better skater than a classic skier, particularly in mass start races where he can use his good sprint finish, just as he did in the 50km today. Him winning a medal here is not a surprise (he was also 5th in the skiathlon two weeks ago). Legkov and Vylegzhanin have been top 5 distance skiers for the last 7 years or so. Legkov has been close numerous times to medaling at big championship races, he has just had bad luck. He has won the tour de ski, kussamo ruka triple, the Holmenkollen 50km, numerous wc and tds stages, has won the distance wc title twice and trains separately from the russian team (trains with a German and Swiss coach with Chernousov and sometimes Cologna and Northug as training partners). Him winning the gold, particularly in the 50km should not be a surprise. Vylegzhanin has had more success at big championships, numerous medals in the last 5 years at big races, another strong endurance racer and good finisher at the end of distance races (showed that today and also in the team sprint). He and the coaches decided not to race the 15km classic as it was close to the 4x10 and sprint relays and also the 50km was looming. That was to get more rest and recovery for the big races to come still. Legkov, too, took himself out of the 15km race to focus on the relay and the 50km. If you look at who was at the top of the leaderboard today, you would know that the vast majority of the guys have been pretty consistently at top echelon of WC races in the last few years. Anyone one of them could have won or gotten a medal. The pack stayed big until the last couple of km's. Had Legkov broken away Muehlegg style (heck, even Olsson Val Di Fiemme 2013 style), early in the race, and skiing away from the pack of 40 guys with high tempo throughout and not looking tired at all, then something would be up.

 

[spalco]

Is that Peter Schröcksnadel, who has been president of the Austrian skiing federation since 1990? He should have cut his own funding at least ten years ago, Austrian biathlon and cross country skiing has been a veritable fountain of doping scandals under his presidency.

Absolutely, the scandals in SLC and Torino were huge embarrassments, but he managed to shrug it off on the back of the medal count. He personally is pretty much immune against any attacks at this point, but that doesn't mean he won't sacrifice his underlings for better PR.

 

[Velo1ticker]

Trond, a question…as you know, he and cherno are the refugees from the national team and train year-round with the swiss reto burgermeister whose reputation is clean as far as i know. some say he insisted on the arrangement to escape the doping cloud always hovering over his countrymen…do you think this story is a cover to a more sophisticated doping programme (compared to the crude one back home he was on) ?

How clean was/is Reto Burgermeister?

He was suspended for to high hemoglobin levels before Turin 06.
http://ski-racing.7z9j.stackablehost.com/?q=node/5327
His pupils fail the Bjørgen test too (Bjørgen test = if you look stronger than the poster you fail).
http://www.dagbladet.no/2014/02/23/sport/ol2014/sotsji2014/31989041/

 

[MrRoboto]

Legkov seems to have gained a lot of muscle lately. I don't know how much we can trust the weight numbers that are thrown around, but the Sochi site puts him at 73 kg now:
http://www.sochi2014.com/en/athlete-alexander-legkov
I think many here too easily compare skiers with tiny cyclists.

 

[python]

some speculate that the lack of the usual peak form in a number of skiers may have to do with the unprecedented security measures in sochi.

many blogs from the athletes expressed a concern not only with the strict russian customs officers but the routine security surveillance.

it is far from unimaginable that in such circumstances some teams could have been scared from bringing over and using semi-legal and doping products.

i am far from suspecting all under-performing athletes, but among them, some, normally well known for being the masters of ski preparation and scientific peaking for major competitions, were curiously inept...

could that be missing their juice ?