Re:
Jaco0505 said:
I did a re-read of the now infamous article by Esten O. SÆTHER (EOS). It’s actually not difficult to read it as a hidden questioning about what’s really going on today and maybe before. I guess in Norwegian media (and Swedish) it would be totally impossible to openly question if doping might be a part of the extreme dominance by the likes of TJ and MJS. The only way to do that would be through a – on the surface – tribute article, but lifting up otherwise untouchable subjects. Let’s give it a try:
EOS starts with pointing to a new scientific study in a Dutch University where they will explore the gains of EPO-doping in cycling. Then he speculates how big a gain you can achieve and links to an article in The Science of Sport where he point out the number 5% gain. From the article:
So can you win clean? As much as I’d like to think so, when you have this situation where a guy finishing in the top 10 is using drugs and being beaten by minutes on a mountain climb, I find it difficult to believe that physiologically, the margins can be that large. I believe that the NATURAL, physiological difference between riders is tiny – maybe 1% separates a champion from tenth place. So take a drug that improves performance by, let’s be conservative and say 5%, and that mid-packer still can’t win the race, then you have to wonder about the guy who is winning…?
In the next sentence EOS points out that 5% lead was actually the exact margin that TJ had on the first hour of the 30K, and there has never been a bigger victory margin in modern XC-skiing.
Then EOS goes on with a rampage about the Russian ladies and talks about differences in training and says that the best Russian lady was 7 minutes 34 seconds behind TJ, despite being from a huge country were XC-skiing is the national sport, where the numbers of skis sold are bigger than anywhere else, where the national federation has bigger budget than anyone and where they train harder and more frequently than anyone. Note that he talks about Russia and not Norway. Usually this kind of arguments - especially in Norway - are used to explain Norwegian dominance.
EOS says that the extreme training regime the Russians used in the 90s – when they were doped – won’t work today since without doping they can’t recover. Kind of makes you think of MJS claims and the wild protests from Fredriksson.
He also points out the dominance of the Russians in the championships 1997 in Trondheim and in the WC that year with 5 Russian ladies in the top 10. However don’t forget that in the same championship: out of 36 medals in XC-skiing and Nordic combined Russia took 10 and Norway 11. Also, Bente Skari was 2nd in the overall world cup 1997 and 1st 1998 and 1999.
EOS then concludes that the 5 best Russian ladies ended up 52 minutes behind TJ in thw last weekends 30K and that is a difference that shouldn’t be possible between the two top nations in a sport.
I don’t know, but either EOS is completely stupid or he managed to – in a quite clever way – to raise questions that wouldn’t have been possibly to raise in a direct way. In one article he manages to question the Norwegian dominance in the 90s, the extreme victory margins by TJ, the extreme training claims by MJS and finally the arguments about Norwegian dominance due to economic doping and big number of skiers. Quite an achievement.