Everyone dopes

[blackcat]

Just for the record, the only men's ahtletic field event record that has been beaten in the last decade has been the pole vault. You have to go all the way back to 1996 for Jan Seleznys javelin WR. THe shot-putt is from 1990, the discus/hammer even further back.

On the womens side, many of the world records are still from the 80s, sprints/400/800/shot-putt.

But hey, the modern drugs are far superior to anything from 30 years ago, right?

but the pole vault should have been beaten a few times. The redhead Australian guy, woulda held it probably, on the old rules where the stay that the bar rests on was wider, and more conducive to staying up when the vaulter edged the bar. Then, since Sergei Bubka was on the IAAF board and rules committtee, got the rules changed a bit.

Steve Hooker the Aussie.

A French guy just took it down this year. like you said. And he had a different physique. Now all the track and field athletes, are a few % of red tissue muscle lighter. The new drugs that Wiggo and Frroomedawg used to lean up, they also use them to get the power to weight, even when not working directly against gravity.

 

[The Hitch]

Could you not make this point about cycling? It's not exactly the most popular sport and it is most definitely not a sport that nations stake their national pride on?

N.B. I hope I haven't cut out any context that you find essential Hitch, I apologise if I have.

Cycling is very popular. ok it's nothing compared to football, tennis and f1. But it's still very high in the sporting hierarchy.I think by now there at least a dozen cyclists who earn 1 million or more per year. Several European countries show every monument and gt on national tv. It has a number of very big sponsors pumping millions in. Even outside the annual blue ribbon that is the tour de France,one of the world's biggest annual sporting events, there are plenty of races which get 5 million or more global audience (giro is on a bad day 3 million in Italy alone. Vuelta was averaging more than that in spain 2 years ago).

I think that absolutely dwarfs what track and field as a whole gets outside of the Olympics and world championships, and even then any single field event is only making up a fraction of the pie, whereas in cycling, the cycling is the entire event.

Main point being the money is definitely there in cycling. Both on an individual level since riders can get massive bumps in their salary even as domestiques (it's not unheard of for a domestique to earn half a mil) and on a team level with megasponsors like tinkov Astana and sky pumping 10s of millions into their teams.

Ps as far as your national point goes, well the team replaces the nation as it does in football. Nationalism is important in Olympic doping because it forms the foundation of a team through which doping can be organized (connections made, money up front provided, practical aspects taken care of, knowledge of anti doping progress provided). The nationalism aspect itself is not important, rather, what it provides. In cycling the trade teams do all this. In football as well.

That said, even the team structure isn't necessary if an athlete earns enough money themselves. Then they can afford to do it themselves if they want.

We've seen this in cycling where most programmes seem to have been team based but sometimes guys went on their own.

 

[nhowson]

Ps as far as your national point goes, well the team replaces the nation as it does in football. Nationalism is important in Olympic doping because it forms the foundation of a team through which doping can be organized (connections made, money up front provided, practical aspects taken care of, knowledge of anti doping progress provided). The nationalism aspect itself is not important, rather, what it provides. In cycling the trade teams do all this. In football as well.

Touché, I hadn't thought of that. A brief point on Football befoe this goes OT, I've always thought doping wouldn't be quite as successful in that sport as in others, considering there are no drugs which teach you how to kick a football. Not saying it would have no effect, mind.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Touché, I hadn't thought of that. A brief point on Football befoe this goes OT, I've always thought doping wouldn't be quite as successful in that sport as in others, considering there are no drugs which teach you how to kick a football. Not saying it would have no effect, mind.

Massive effect. Try this: run as hard as you can - sprint - from one end of a football field to the other, then try to balance an egg on your foot, with it raised off the ground, or something else requiring fine motor control.

Wow that's a weird suggestion, but do you get my meaning? Now do it for a couple of hours.

Massive, massive effect.

 

[The Hitch]

Touché, I hadn't thought of that. A brief point on Football befoe this goes OT, I've always thought doping wouldn't be quite as successful in that sport as in others, considering there are no drugs which teach you how to kick a football. Not saying it would have no effect, mind.

The thing about sports that don't necessarily require physical peak from the get go, is that they extend themselves until they do.

So American football for example has a 16 game season at one game a week. It's only 16 games and once a week because the athletes wouldn't be able to handle it much longer. Association football is not as brutal as nfl so they don't have a week rest. But it's brutal enough and physically challenging enough that you can't play every day either. So the top teams play once every 3 days or so from august till may + international tournaments in the summer where rest is also 2 days between games. Then you have basketball, which is even less physically challenging than football. So what do they do? They have 1 day rests or sometimes 0 day rests.

So all.major sports essentially do, as part of an almost evolutionary process, is pack the schedules in as much as the physical requirements of the sport allow. And ultimately all these sports reach a similar level of physical requirement. Which is where the drugs come in. Not just stamina drugs to keep the players fuelled through 90 minutes after 90 minutes but also steroids and other recovery drugs to deal with the wear and tear of getting kicked in the knees constantly, and the impact on the joints of running. Injury recovery drugs during injury rehab. Painkillers are very frequent. Fifa admitted in 2010 that 40% of the players at the 2010 world cup took painkillers before every game. That would not happen in a pure technique sport.

So the player who in a one off game is able to overcome the original deficit to a doper (less strength, less speed) by being technically and mentally superior, will find over a 60 game season, that he just gets more tired and more injured with every game while others overcome thus with drugs.

The other thing about drugs in football is that while one drug Cant change everything, there are a lot of different aspects drugs can work on. A marathon runner doesn't need steroids for strength in his upper body. A cyclist doesn't need to constantly treat minor injuries all over the body from constant collisions. A weight lifter doesn't need top end speed. A sprinter doesn't need that much stamina. In football all these things are useful. So a good doping programme doesn't get you one massive benefit, but loads of little ones that add up to something big.

Finally the talent pool in football is far bigger so even a small increase can have a big effect.

 

[The Hitch]

Massive effect. Try this: run as hard as you can - sprint - from one end of a football field to the other, then try to balance an egg on your foot, with it raised off the ground, or something else requiring fine motor control.

Wow that's a weird suggestion, but do you get my meaning? Now do it for a couple of hours.

Massive, massive effect.

Or here is another experiment. Take a football video game. Play a match with a team.

Then go into edit mode and add 15 points to every physical attribute on every player on that team but leave the technical ones untouched.

Play the match again

 

[blackcat]

A marathon runner doesn't need steroids for strength in his upper body. A cyclist doesn't need to constantly treat minor injuries all over the body from constant collisions. A weight lifter doesn't need top end speed. A sprinter doesn't need that much stamina. In football all these things are useful. So a good doping programme doesn't get you one massive benefit, but loads of little ones that add up to something big.

Finally the talent pool in football is far bigger so even a small increase can have a big effect.

right on the marathon upper body. But now they are running low 2 hours and change, closer to 2 even thant 2 ten. They need muscle and speed they did not have.

like in the Team Pursuit on the track, the coaches now say this discipline, is almost a sprint discipline, than a track endurance discipline. The Brits and the Aussies will fight it out pretty much at 3 min 50 on the dot for Sao Paulo or Rio or wherever the Olympics are in 2016. That is not a track endurance event anymore. Like the marathon needs track and field speed now, more than a road marathon speed.

 

[blackcat]

Massive effect. Try this: run as hard as you can - sprint - from one end of a football field to the other, then try to balance an egg on your foot, with it raised off the ground, or something else requiring fine motor control.

Wow that's a weird suggestion, but do you get my meaning? Now do it for a couple of hours.

Massive, massive effect.

and in the last half, or last quarter, you make the contest your own, and impose your physicality and will over a more technically adept opponent if this opponent cannot match your doping with his/her doping

you can run in the last 5 minutes, like you run in the first 5 minutes.

see: Die Mannschaft at Brazil FIFA World Cup 2014.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Or here is another experiment. Take a football video game. Play a match with a team.

Then go into edit mode and add 15 points to every physical attribute on every player on that team but leave the technical ones untouched.

Play the match again

Yeah nice. Have you done this? Would like to see that.

 

[nhowson]

Or here is another experiment. Take a football video game. Play a match with a team.

Then go into edit mode and add 15 points to every physical attribute on every player on that team but leave the technical ones untouched.

Play the match again

Now there's a good analogy. Earlier I was talking (my fault here, I should have been more general) about my native A-League which is a solid match a week and generally nothing more, but the extending point is correct in hindsight.

 

[sniper]

Now there's a good analogy. Earlier I was talking (my fault here, I should have been more general) about my native A-League which is a solid match a week and generally nothing more, but the extending point is correct in hindsight.

I was initially also reluctant to see how doping could play a decisive role in sports where technique and natural ability appear at face value to be more important than lung capacity.
So your questions are certainly legitimate.
There is a 'doping in soccer/football' thread here in the clinic which is perhaps the single most informative source on the internet with regards to doping in soccer. Makes for sobering reading.

 

[sniper]

I just watched this brief interview (in German) with Hajo Seppelt, done after his documentary was transmitted on ARD.
He says his team are planning to look into other countries as well.
I genuinely hope they do.

One great thing about Hajo is that he doesn't cease to praise the whistleblowers. Also, he/his reports hardly ever points blaming fingers at the athletes, but rather focuses on the corrupt sports bodies.

 

[the sceptic]

So the state sponsored doping program is worse than the 3 cleanest nations in the world at the european championships this year. seems legit.

 

[More Strides than Rides]

There are plenty of reasons to doubt those nations, but that they beat Russia isn't enough by itself.

Starting wholistically: the frustration with doping is that it turns a competition of innate talent and (naturally) improving fitness into a contest of the "best responder". LA would no have won all of those tours, and they day Landis could have...blah blah

So in terms of talent management and sport development on the national scale, teams may or may not be following the right formula. If the base of knowledge for long term talent management is based on clean athletes and you have been doping the pro's since they were juniors, you're not going to get expected results. The converse is also true.

If you're going to discuss doping at the national level, you cannot forget that these macro factors also play a part. Kenya looses out on medals every year, not because they aren't the most talented or most doped (and every combination thereof) but because AK is just plain dumb. Their mandatory training camps and switching to national coaches before championships screws with so many top contenders.

The stereotype of Russia is that they are in the rut of Soviet style management. If this is true, the could be the most doped and still get clobberred, because of the sigificance talent managment plays when scaled for entire nations.

Edit: And before anyone puts on their boxing gloves, this is not a defence of British Cycling, "marginal gains", clean Frenchies or anything else, just the way some are discussing certain facts.

 

[Benotti69]

There are plenty of reasons to doubt those nations, but that they beat Russia isn't enough by itself.

Starting wholistically: the frustration with doping is that it turns a competition of innate talent and (naturally) improving fitness into a contest of the "best responder". LA would no have won all of those tours, and they day Landis could have...blah blah

So in terms of talent management and sport development on the national scale, teams may or may not be following the right formula. If the base of knowledge for long term talent management is based on clean athletes and you have been doping the pro's since they were juniors, you're not going to get expected results. The converse is also true.

If you're going to discuss doping at the national level, you cannot forget that these macro factors also play a part. Kenya looses out on medals every year, not because they aren't the most talented or most doped (and every combination thereof) but because AK is just plain dumb. Their mandatory training camps and switching to national coaches before championships screws with so many top contenders.

The stereotype of Russia is that they are in the rut of Soviet style management. If this is true, the could be the most doped and still get clobberred, because of the sigificance talent managment plays when scaled for entire nations.

The Russians got their Astronauts from the people who were tested and passed the G Force test before any money was spent training them. The Americans trained their Astronauts to be pilots, at enormous cost before finally seeing if they would be able to stay awake during lift off!!!!

I think the idea the Russians are terrible athletes and no matter who they doped they had no talent is not true. GB, France and Germany ran better programs and probably aided by IOC.........

 

[More Strides than Rides]

The Russians got their Astronauts from the people who were tested and passed the G Force test before any money was spent training them. The Americans trained their Astronauts to be pilots, at enormous cost before finally seeing if they would be able to stay awake during lift off!!!!

I think the idea the Russians are terrible athletes and no matter who they doped they had no talent is not true. GB, France and Germany ran better programs and probably aided by IOC.........

I agree. Colluding with the IOC is a great talent management strategy I didn't say they had no talent. I'm just saying that the importance of program management is being ignored when using Russia as a measurig stick to make comparisons about the effectiveness of doping, talent, and performance

Check my edit btw.

 

[Fearless Greg Lemond]

So the state sponsored doping program is worse than the 3 cleanest nations in the world at the european championships this year. seems legit.

It proves clean athletes can surpass doped performances. Didnt you get that memo?

 

[SeriousSam]

So the state sponsored doping program is worse than the 3 cleanest nations in the world at the european championships this year. seems legit.

Dopers are all lazy and don't train.

 

[Benotti69]

It proves clean athletes can surpass doped performances. Didnt you get that memo?

Dopers are all lazy and don't train.

Dopers dont train, drink too much coffee and eat nutella.

 

[Fearless Greg Lemond]

Dopers dont train, drink too much coffee and eat nutella.

Dont forget: they come from Spain, Italy and the former USSR.

 

[sniper]

So the state sponsored doping program is worse than the 3 cleanest nations in the world at the european championships this year. seems legit.

to be fair, 8 medals was a poor score for Germany.
in fact, if I'm not mistaken, Germany has been disappointing at several recent grand athletics events.
At the moment, i'd speculate doping in Germany is probably slightly less rampant than in Russia and Britain. (Soccer and some other sports excluded of course.)
There has been at least one major investigation into doping in Germany in recent years, and although the publication of the results of that investigation was surpressed from above, it may still have scared off a few here and there.

just speculating of course.

It proves clean athletes can surpass doped performances. Didnt you get that memo?

 

[Granville57]

So a good doping programme doesn't get you one massive benefit, but loads of little ones that add up to something big.

In other words: Marginal gains?


Btw, great posts as of late, hitch. You're on (another) roll.

 

[Fearless Greg Lemond]

Btw, great posts as of late, hitch. You're on (another) roll.

I agree, Hitch is making posting almost unnecessary hence is he is slamming home runs like Micky Mantle.

 

[86TDFWinner]

BANG on the money.
It was also Hajo Seppelt's conclusion at the end of his program.
This is so obviously not just about Russia. But I doubt others will expose themselves as naively as the Russians have done.
Get ready for many more years of (anti-)doping hypocricy.

Yeah, BUT the way the article comes across(per the headlines), he's making a bold claim and generalization that "everyone dopes", which isn't true IMO. He should release the info that backs up that statement if he truly feels that way.

"Everyone dopes"=EVERY SINGLE RIDER ON TOUR DOPES(how would he know this?)

IMO, i think Tilford is talking from both ends here. When Wonderboy and others have claimed "everyone dopes too", many here refuted that(as we knew it wasn't true). So why should we give Tilford a pass on his assumption?

I'm not naive enough to believe that they're all clean mind you, but i do think there are some who are, but again that's MY opinion. What's really disappointing is that no one will call him out on it, and they haven't so far.

 

[Granville57]

Yeah, BUT the way the article comes across(per the headlines), he's making a bold claim and generalization that "everyone dopes", which isn't true IMO. He should release the info that backs up that statement if he truly feels that way.

"Everyone dopes"=EVERY SINGLE RIDER ON TOUR DOPES(how would he know this?)

The better question would be: Where does he say this?

It seems you're confusing Tilford's headline (and his conclusions) with the OP and the title of this thread.