Hi,
First of all sorry for a very long first post!
Just finished reading the whole thread, really enjoyed the juicy conversation! I'll probably mostly be only observing also in the future, but just wanted to urge the "clinicians" to keep up the good work! It's especially cool to get summaries of what's going on in norwegian media, since that language is not exactly my strength...
But maybe also a small contribution from my side, although this mostly just gives "historical perspective" and might already be well-known for the majority. The finnish broadcasting union YLE has some interesting old archive footage related to finnish doping starting from the 40's.
First, there are excerpts from an interview (from 1988,
http://yle.fi/elavaarkisto/artikkel...ngilla_jo_1940-luvulla_82483.html#media=82477) with August Kiuru, an olympic and wc medalist xc-skier from 40's and 50's. He openly discusses the use of metamphetamine which was, according to him, very standard and commonplace in the finnish team during his active times. Also the athletes did not always know whether they were served a drink or "the drink" during the
competition before drinking it. He says once he took accidentally a double doze of pervitin since he did not know the drink contained it, and blacked out in the forest after skiing like a madman for a while only to wake up a couple of hours later from the snow! He also says he is sure others (nor,swe) had to also be using, since they were racing evenly against the doped finns. Of course none of that was forbidden by the rules during that time.
Kiuru also worked in the support team of finnish xc-team in wc's and olympics between 1966 and 2005. You get the feeling that using stimulants was very widespread still during the 70's. He describes how in Sapporo 1972 he was standing at the 40km mark of the 50km race when Kalevi Oikarinen who was tied at the second place run by and asked if he has "the drink". When Kiuru said he doesn't have anything, Oikarinen just outright quit the race because he though he could not compete with the norwegians without pervitin!
Kiuru said that he of course had the stuff with him but that the coaches had warned not to administer it (unlike in e.g. Vysoké Tatry where he did give it to Oikarinen who won gold), because there were supposed to be tests. But "the norwegians" (his words) had fooled the finns and cancelled the supposed tests during the night, so actually no tests ever occurred
The orders to
dope or not to dope at least in 40's to 70's finnish xc seemed to come from the coaching staff of the national team.
People here who understand finnish might also be interested in this talk show from 1985 (
http://yle.fi/elavaarkisto/artikkel...n_paljastusten_jalkeen_82383.html#media=82394) where the use of testosterone, growth hormone and blood transfusions among finnish top athletes in 70's and 80's is discussed. This is actually the show that drove Aki Karvonen to confess he had used blood transfusions before WC's in Seefeld (and also earlier as it later turned out). Also other sports are discussed, but roughly third of the show deals with blood transfusions in xc-skiing.
There is an interesting interview at the end with then still active finnish runner Ari Paunonen, who thinks that almost every top athlete worldwide is doping (at the time), though it is not explicitly clear if he refers to only distance running. It is not surprising that the guy is cynic about it, since he was maybe the greatest junior talent in finnish distance running ever, setting for example in 1977 the junior WR at 3000m that lasted for 20 years and beating for example Sebastian Coe at the world junior championships at the age of 17 (Coe was 19). Nonetheless, he never was never nearly as competitive as an adult and seems to attribute that to widespread doping.
And oh, by the way, my source revealed the key to the norwegian succes during the 90's in xc-skiing
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