Tubeless said:
Congratulations for always figuring out how to beat the competition. Norway is easily #1 in cross-country skiing - and managed to sort out what to do when faced with competitors who were blood-doped to the gills in the 1990s.
I know it's hard to admit that skiers (and coaches) will do whatever they can get away with. In the 1990's everyone knew there was no way to get caught for doping with EPO and Hgh. Until 1997 there was no Hb limit, and until 2001 you could get around the Hb limit by using plasma expanders. Everyone knew everyone else was doping. FIS was fully aware what was going on - and felt they simply could not do anything about it. Not very different from what happened in cycling.
Can you tell us how Daehli, Alsgaard & Ulvang (and other countrymen of yours) were able to overcome the 5-7% performance advantage obtained by the Italians, Finns, Russians and others during the wild 1990's? Superior ski grinding?
Yes I can tell you; "natural selection".
Instead of my words, I will quote Bjorn Ferry from a couple of weeks ago:
"I think I train harder and better than the Norwegians, I don't believe there is something we are missing there. But the recruitment in Norway is exceptional. Their very best athletes chose cross country. In sweden both Football and Ice hockey are more popular and typically recruits our strongest athletes."
Norway is as we all know the only country with xc as the undisputed most popular sport. Not only do we have an immense base of young skiers where many started skiing from 2 years old, but the most physically talented typically chose cross country. In other countries, xc get perhaps an athlete no 5, no 10, or 20? How important is this factor? Well you can only imagine if from any era, we would lose our top skier, or our top 2 skiers. We would almost be without any medals.
I think this is extremely under-estimated. Quite honestly I'm not particularily proud of Norways performance in xc, but it's great to watch and win of course. We expect Gold, and better damn well get most of the golds, for this very reason.
A clean top 8 finisher will finish at a race time of about +4%. A clean top 20 finisher will finish at a race time of about +10%. (consider individual starts of course)
The question of how a doper can be beaten is then from what genetic and physiological base performance does he start? If he is a top 10, competing against Norways best, even if doped, it may easily be an even race. Now that's not taking into account all the advantages Norway has with funding, large support teams etc. So there are many factors where you can stretch these calculations further, but it's not really necessary to make the point.
And in the 90s it was also very special. We were awarded the 1994 olympics in 1988. This had a lot of positive effects with many organizational structures initiated for professional athletics. These developments fueled by the obvious determination of everyone involved focused on the home olympic event paid off greatly, in particular research projects on ski preparation and altitude training. These particular things made us strong enough in the 90s to still win a good share.
But still I see the natural selection as the factor that makes by far the biggest difference. A factor that existed in 1924, in the 90s, and today. This is what keeps us consistently above the competition. Why else would we be better? It's not really much other reason that can make sense.
Still it will not always be enough. Our women were not at all much successful in the 90s. You will not at all times have athletes that are exceptionally gifted, like Dæhlie and Alsgaard. On the women's side, we were missing this in the 90s, or we may have been faced with a competition that were more talented, specially when doped. It will fluctuate, but because of the nature of this factor described, it will keep hitting back and work again and again.