LeMond III

[sniper]

Re: Re:

No, tbh, no good points in this one.
All references to ariel and dardik are there in the US cycling scene thread, which I expect you to have read, seeing how convinced you still are he was clean.
Will post some links tomorrow if necessary.

Yeah, they're necessary.

John Swanson

you participated in that thread though. Now youre telling me you wrre just clogging it without actually reading? Ok..
Anyway. Links tomorrow.

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re: Re:

No, tbh, no good points in this one.
All references to ariel and dardik are there in the US cycling scene thread, which I expect you to have read, seeing how convinced you still are he was clean.
Will post some links tomorrow if necessary.

Yeah, they're necessary.

John Swanson

you participated in that thread though. Now youre telling me you wrre just clogging it without actually reading? Ok..
Anyway. Links tomorrow.

That's not how it works. In any paper that's ever been published anywhere, you cite your references. Why? Because nobody can be expected to keep all that crap in their head. If you make a statement of fact, you need to reference the source. The exceptions are for widely known and accepted facts. Like Armstrong doped, or F = ma, or the speed of light.

If you think about it, it's actually quite reasonable. It also makes your arguments not just persuasive but grounded in fact. It also allows others to demonstrate where the facts are either incorrect or incomplete. I'd like to think it's a standard I hold myself to in my posts.

John Swanson

 

[sniper]

Sorry, my previous response was lame. You are right here. I'll expand on my OTC observations tomorrow.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

John honest question.......................................... do you

Seriously believe Lemond demonstrated his ability 100% clean?

Without a reply.. I believe your answer to be NO because all these fools played everyone involved.
But for the sake of white sheets and all. Really?

An educated person would believe that after witnessing an understanding the past is beyond amazing.

I accept your science but never the conclusions YOU have made. All respect to you and your field of research or science.

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re:

John honest question.......................................... do you

Seriously believe Lemond demonstrated his ability 100% clean?

Without a reply.. I believe your answer to be NO because all these fools played everyone involved.
But for the sake of white sheets and all. Really?

An educated person would believe that after witnessing an understanding the past is beyond amazing.

I accept your science but never the conclusions YOU have made. All respect to you and your field of research or science.

If you're asking my personal opinion.. With no evidence what-so-ever and a best guess based on the times? I'd wager that Greg dabbled with the low-dose stuff like caffeine, amphetamines and the like. But he had no need to try anything weird. He was a winner. He put a leg over a bike and won. End of. He had some tough times after being shot and probably tried some recovery products, but ultimately it had nothing to do with how he rode. Once in a generation you get a Hererra, Gimondi, Merckx, or Lemond. Enjoy it when it happens.

Pssst. Froome ain't that guy.

John Swanson

 

[Starstruck]

Re: Re:

John honest question.......................................... do you

Seriously believe Lemond demonstrated his ability 100% clean?

Without a reply.. I believe your answer to be NO because all these fools played everyone involved.
But for the sake of white sheets and all. Really?

An educated person would believe that after witnessing an understanding the past is beyond amazing.

I accept your science but never the conclusions YOU have made. All respect to you and your field of research or science.

If you're asking my personal opinion.. With no evidence what-so-ever and a best guess based on the times? I'd wager that Greg dabbled with the low-dose stuff like caffeine, amphetamines and the like. But he had no need to try anything weird. He was a winner. He put a leg over a bike and won. End of. He had some tough times after being shot and probably tried some recovery products, but ultimately it had nothing to do with how he rode. Once in a generation you get a Hererra, Gimondi, Merckx, or Lemond. Enjoy it when it happens.

Pssst. Froome ain't that guy.

John Swanson

Yeah, 'cause amphetamines ain't weird. Kamikaze incoming. It's this sort of rationalizing that makes your pretend objectivity shine. Oh well.

I have zero idea what Greg may or may not have been up to. I rode by his house plenty of times in Belgium and I do know what people (amateurs) were doing to compete to be like him. They weren't all donkeys either.

 

[Archibald]

Re: Re:

Kimmage has admitted to taking PEDs.
This is not controversial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kimmage

In May 1990, Kimmage published Rough Ride, detailing his experiences as a domestique which included references to drug use, including his own.

And if we know two things about drugs, it's that they impact your performance forever and if you took drugs once, you must have taken them multiple: once a doper, always a doper. QED it follows that the man was doping when he beat the hell out of all those doped Communists. And all the Irish riders on the Rás who time to time got the better of those doped Communists, they too were clearly doped up to their eyeballs. These facts we know to be true.

of the finishers in the pro ranks in 1985 world champs, there are no communist countries represented...
Similarly the top ten of the amateur version of this race (Kimmage's 6th position) contains no communist countries being represented...
I can't find the full list of finishers for the amateur wc of 85 - Can anyone find this list and confirm what communist riders Kimmage actually beat in that race?

 

[DirtyWorks]

Re:

John honest question.......................................... do you

Seriously believe Lemond demonstrated his ability 100% clean?

As someone that followed behind Lemond in the U.S. yes. The guy showed up as a teenager and would just crush pros. The exact same story from many people. Imagine busting your @ss to national elite being a broke bike racer in a country that did not care one whit for bicycles, Here comes a kid that just dominates a bunch of adults. Chilling. Like, "give up." chilling.

Do I need to remind you he medaled in three separate events at his Junior World Championships? One of them he just showed up because he thought he'd give it a try after not doing the pursuit in forever.

I'd also like to remind everyone that eventually the doping is revealed. Here we have one of the 20th century's great cyclist.. You think for a minute that secret would stay secret, 20+ years later?

 

[sniper]

And you know he did all that clean, because...

This being cycling, this being an absolute peak period of uncontrolled drug (particularly steroid) abuse in the US, junior doping being a real thing, Jacome morphing from coach to soigneur and 'confident', the two of them doing off season training periods after which lemond would come back suspiciously strong (see oldman's posts on the topic)...with all that, as awful as it may sound, it simply looks like Lemond started doping right then and there when Jacome took him under his wings at age 15 (or was it 14, i don't know).
That's Occams razor for you.

Or you think Jacome was some kind of Jesus who guided Lemond safely through the darkness and also happened to know how to inject iron?
It's a nice theory, but it explains nothing.
It prompts you to invoke the supernatural and even then it leaves a whole bunch of facts about Lemond's carreer unaccounted for. Not to mention all these conspiracies you have to believe in in order to explain all those nasty rumors circulating about lemond.

This is not to take anything away from Lemonds talent, btw.
We know Grewal popped some pills in that period too, to try and hang on to lemond but he couldn't.
In fact, we know doping was absolutely uncontrolled and rampant in that period, and still Lemond came out on top. So yes, he must have had some raw talent. That is not up for discussion.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

There needs to be some deconstruction here.

...

Take for example, Gideon Ariel. ...

ok, "Gideon Ariel".
I think you'll find all you need to know in the following posts:
viewtopic.php?p=1915300#p1915300
viewtopic.php?p=1915464#p1915464
viewtopic.php?p=1917252#p1917252
viewtopic.php?p=1919756#p1919756
viewtopic.php?p=1923814#p1923814
viewtopic.php?p=1925551#p1925551
viewtopic.php?p=1926162#p1926162

See, there's not much to deconstruct there, John.
It's all explicit, as much as it may hurt.

I would love to have you show that Greg has ever met any of these people, other than Eddie B of course. And once you do that, it falls on you to show what the nature of their relationship was.

this one is easy, too.
viewtopic.php?p=1923785#p1923785

As for Costill, I mention him because he's just red flagging the whole OTC physiology department, of which he was the head (/director), at least in the early years when Lemond was there. (It's not clear to me whether/when/why Costill left.)
Costill had been a stagiare at Astrand's Royal Gymnastic Central Institute (GCI/GIH) in Stockholm in the early/mid 70s. Ed Burke was his pupil writing his thesis under his guidance (there goes Burke's fairytale about discovering blood doping in 1983 ). And Hagerman coauthored some things with Costill. Costill himself (co)authored several PED-related research articles and monographs from the late 70s through to the late 80s, thereby occasionally referencing the steroid research of Gideon Ariel and Fritz Hagerman.

As I'm short of time, really, I'd ask you to just look up Dardik yourself. Believe me hes there pointing out the need for blood doping and steroids and the need to introduce scienes along the lines of the East bloc model, all whilst lobbying for the OTC. It's all there in the Lemond thread and the US cycling scene thread. I already spent loads of time gathering those links and putting relevant quotes up in those threads, so you'll have to excuse me for not doing it a second time.
Good thing is The Clinic is like a fruit machine: you open the relevant thread, then in the search window you type your key word (e.g. "Dardik" or "Costill", or "Miller"), et voila, out come all the relevant posts.
Lemond thread: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=30794&start=1880
US cycling scene thread: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=30776&start=160&hilit=hagerman+burke
The search itself is not timeconsuming; going there, clicking on each post and copy-pasting all the links into a new post otoh..well you get the picture.
I promise you, though, you won't find anything that contradicts anything I've said about Dardik on the past coupla pages. If you do, let me know and I might eat some humble pie. I strongly doubt it though.

There is also USOC's Don Miller's role you might want to look into, he teamed up with Dardik and Ariel and set up an OTC internal testing scheme to help athletes dope and fly below the radar. It's all there in the public domain (see links to articles in the US cycling scene thread).
And it's not pretty.
The only real question for me is: why hasn't any of this triggered any kind of retrospective investigation on the part of USOC? Well...More like a rethorical question.

See, you've stated as fact that all these people are connected to blood doping and that they were taking care of Greg.

No, and no.

Then you'll go back to making the exact same false and/or unsupported statements, treating them as fact.

Can you give an example? No you can't. Point being: Please just stop this pointless pissing contest, because it's classic pot-kettle stuff, and so you only end up clogging threads and discussions.

And to make a prediction

Yes, let's: you'll get hung up on some minor irrelevant detail, or a bit of semantics, and then use that as an excuse to rubbish and deflect away from all the major red flags that are right there in front of you.

 

[pmcg76]

Re: Re:

Kimmage has admitted to taking PEDs.
This is not controversial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kimmage

In May 1990, Kimmage published Rough Ride, detailing his experiences as a domestique which included references to drug use, including his own.

And if we know two things about drugs, it's that they impact your performance forever and if you took drugs once, you must have taken them multiple: once a doper, always a doper. QED it follows that the man was doping when he beat the hell out of all those doped Communists. And all the Irish riders on the Rás who time to time got the better of those doped Communists, they too were clearly doped up to their eyeballs. These facts we know to be true.

of the finishers in the pro ranks in 1985 world champs, there are no communist countries represented...
Similarly the top ten of the amateur version of this race (Kimmage's 6th position) contains no communist countries being represented...
I can't find the full list of finishers for the amateur wc of 85 - Can anyone find this list and confirm what communist riders Kimmage actually beat in that race?

Poland was part of the Eastern Bloc and Lech Piasecki won, so not sure why you think there are no Communist countries represented in the top 10. Communist riders were not allowed to turn pro back then, so there were no riders in the pro race. In the amateur race, Falk Boden(GDR)a mainstay of East German teams is 12th, Sergei Uslamine(USSR) 22nd and Marek Seyzerinski(Pol) 20th. I think it is fair to assume these riders were not entered as individuals and there would have been full teams from all countries especially considering they didnt take part in the pro race.
http://www.cyclebase.nl/?lang=en&page=results&yr=1985&id=1442&nr=1

 

[sniper]

Links to posts on Dardik, (blood) doping, and the OTC:

viewtopic.php?p=1915300#p1915300
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=30794&p=1915464&hilit=dardik#p1915464
viewtopic.php?p=1915473#p1915473
viewtopic.php?p=1916206#p1916206

Yes, it's jawdropping, and yes, it's all there in the public domain. And USOC doesn't seem to give a ***. Have they ever reviewed that period?
Nor does Lemond seem to be very preoccupied. At least I've never heard him speak about it.
As if nothing ever happened there. As if they all saw Jesus, just in time for the opening of the OTC.

 

[Irondan]

Re:

Links to posts on Dardik, (blood) doping, and the OTC:

viewtopic.php?p=1915300#p1915300
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=30794&p=1915464&hilit=dardik#p1915464
viewtopic.php?p=1915473#p1915473
viewtopic.php?p=1916206#p1916206

Yes, it's jawdropping, and yes, it's all there in the public domain. And USOC doesn't seem to give a ****. Have they ever reviewed that period?
Nor does Lemond seem to be very preoccupied. At least I've never heard him speak about it.
As if nothing ever happened there. As if they all saw Jesus, just in time for the opening of the OTC.

Why would they review it? They (USADA) can't even review things that happened 3 to 5 years ago (Horner).

Why review something that was legal at the time?

 

[pmcg76]

Re: Re:

There needs to be some deconstruction here.

...

Take for example, Gideon Ariel. ...

ok, "Gideon Ariel".
I think you'll find all you need to know in the following posts:
viewtopic.php?p=1915300#p1915300
viewtopic.php?p=1915464#p1915464
viewtopic.php?p=1917252#p1917252
viewtopic.php?p=1919756#p1919756
viewtopic.php?p=1923814#p1923814
viewtopic.php?p=1925551#p1925551
viewtopic.php?p=1926162#p1926162

See, there's not much to deconstruct there, John.
It's all explicit, as much as it may hurt.

I would love to have you show that Greg has ever met any of these people, other than Eddie B of course. And once you do that, it falls on you to show what the nature of their relationship was.

this one is easy, too.
viewtopic.php?p=1923785#p1923785

As for Costill, I mention him because he's just red flagging the whole OTC physiology department, of which he was the head (/director), at least in the early years when Lemond was there. (It's not clear to me whether/when/why Costill left.)
Costill had been a stagiare at Astrand's Royal Gymnastic Central Institute (GCI/GIH) in Stockholm in the early/mid 70s. Ed Burke was his pupil writing his thesis under his guidance (there goes Burke's fairytale about discovering blood doping in 1983 ). And Hagerman coauthored some things with Costill. Costill himself (co)authored several PED-related research articles and monographs from the late 70s through to the late 80s, thereby occasionally referencing the steroid research of Gideon Ariel and Fritz Hagerman.

As I'm short of time, really, I'd ask you to just look up Dardik yourself. Believe me hes there pointing out the need for blood doping and steroids and the need to introduce scienes along the lines of the East bloc model, all whilst lobbying for the OTC. It's all there in the Lemond thread and the US cycling scene thread. I already spent loads of time gathering those links and putting relevant quotes up in those threads, so you'll have to excuse me for not doing it a second time.
Good thing is The Clinic is like a fruit machine: you open the relevant thread, then in the search window you type your key word (e.g. "Dardik" or "Costill", or "Miller"), et voila, out come all the relevant posts.
Lemond thread: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=30794&start=1880
US cycling scene thread: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=30776&start=160&hilit=hagerman+burke
The search itself is not timeconsuming; going there, clicking on each post and copy-pasting all the links into a new post otoh..well you get the picture.
I promise you, though, you won't find anything that contradicts anything I've said about Dardik on the past coupla pages. If you do, let me know and I might eat some humble pie. I strongly doubt it though.

There is also USOC's Don Miller's role you might want to look into, he teamed up with Dardik and Ariel and set up an OTC internal testing scheme to help athletes dope and fly below the radar. It's all there in the public domain (see links to articles in the US cycling scene thread).
And it's not pretty.
The only real question for me is: why hasn't any of this triggered any kind of retrospective investigation on the part of USOC? Well...More like a rethorical question.

See, you've stated as fact that all these people are connected to blood doping and that they were taking care of Greg.

No, and no.

Then you'll go back to making the exact same false and/or unsupported statements, treating them as fact.

Can you give an example? No you can't. Point being: Please just stop this pointless pissing contest, because it's classic pot-kettle stuff, and so you only end up clogging threads and discussions.

And to make a prediction

Yes, let's: you'll get hung up on some minor irrelevant detail, or a bit of semantics, and then use that as an excuse to rubbish and deflect away from all the major red flags that are right there in front of you.

I read the first of the links and unsurprisingly there is nothing there to confirm that there was doping at the OTC other than your usual assumptions. Based on your penchant for misrepresentation and plain making things up, I dont see much point in giving credence to anything you link, anyways most seem to be variation of the first link.

For example, in the first linked article, there is the usual talk you would expect from sports scientists about improving athletes through the use of biomechanics, cardiology research, preventetive medicine etc, etc.

There is a paragraph on steroids where Gideon says they are in widespread use in some countries. Dardik then also says that usage is happneing but he would not give athletes steroids. I did note you highlighted sections that could be misrepresented to paint a certain picture but did not highlight where Dardik said he would not give athletes steroids. Again you seem to be making the link from sports scientists doing what they actually do, to assuming they would then be acting unethically.

Gideon had carried out research on steroids prior to entering the OTC but as ACoggan, DJ Baltimore and others who work in the research field have pointed out to you several times, research does not equal unethical behaviour. Again it is you who is making that assumption.

I did also note that it said some 200 athletes would pass through the OTC so the idea that any of these guys had strong links with LeMond seems highly unlikely. He might have come into contact with them at some point but it would seem unlikley they had much if any imput into his career. Cycling was hardly high on the US Olympic priority list at that time as by all accounts it was very much a niche sport in the US. I would imagine athletics, swimming, rowing, gymnastics all had more importance

Lets not forget all your claims are based on assumptions and speculation, the one person who we do know was actually at the OTC was Steve Tilford has said they were never given any doping products whilst there.

Just more smoke and mirrors.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

<edited by mods>

Looking for adhoms and strawmen in your posts is like shooting fish in a friggin barrel.
First sentence, and yes, we have a hit:

...
I read the first of the links and unsurprisingly there is nothing there to confirm that there was doping at the OTC other than your usual assumptions.

i didn't say that there is.
Basically you're constantly making stuff up about me.
I appreciate the consistency with which you do that.
But please stop it

It's not about me, so stop making it about me.

pcmg, you can do better. (although admittedly the evidence for this final statement is rather thin )

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re: Re:

There needs to be some deconstruction here.

...

Take for example, Gideon Ariel. ...

ok, "Gideon Ariel".
I think you'll find all you need to know in the following posts:
viewtopic.php?p=1915300#p1915300
viewtopic.php?p=1915464#p1915464
viewtopic.php?p=1917252#p1917252
viewtopic.php?p=1919756#p1919756
viewtopic.php?p=1923814#p1923814
viewtopic.php?p=1925551#p1925551
viewtopic.php?p=1926162#p1926162

See, there's not much to deconstruct there, John.
It's all explicit, as much as it may hurt.

I would love to have you show that Greg has ever met any of these people, other than Eddie B of course. And once you do that, it falls on you to show what the nature of their relationship was.

this one is easy, too.
viewtopic.php?p=1923785#p1923785

As for Costill, I mention him because he's just red flagging the whole OTC physiology department, of which he was the head (/director), at least in the early years when Lemond was there. (It's not clear to me whether/when/why Costill left.)
Costill had been a stagiare at Astrand's Royal Gymnastic Central Institute (GCI/GIH) in Stockholm in the early/mid 70s. Ed Burke was his pupil writing his thesis under his guidance (there goes Burke's fairytale about discovering blood doping in 1983 ). And Hagerman coauthored some things with Costill. Costill himself (co)authored several PED-related research articles and monographs from the late 70s through to the late 80s, thereby occasionally referencing the steroid research of Gideon Ariel and Fritz Hagerman.

As I'm short of time, really, I'd ask you to just look up Dardik yourself. Believe me hes there pointing out the need for blood doping and steroids and the need to introduce scienes along the lines of the East bloc model, all whilst lobbying for the OTC. It's all there in the Lemond thread and the US cycling scene thread. I already spent loads of time gathering those links and putting relevant quotes up in those threads, so you'll have to excuse me for not doing it a second time.
Good thing is The Clinic is like a fruit machine: you open the relevant thread, then in the search window you type your key word (e.g. "Dardik" or "Costill", or "Miller"), et voila, out come all the relevant posts.
Lemond thread: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=30794&start=1880
US cycling scene thread: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=30776&start=160&hilit=hagerman+burke
The search itself is not timeconsuming; going there, clicking on each post and copy-pasting all the links into a new post otoh..well you get the picture.
I promise you, though, you won't find anything that contradicts anything I've said about Dardik on the past coupla pages. If you do, let me know and I might eat some humble pie. I strongly doubt it though.

There is also USOC's Don Miller's role you might want to look into, he teamed up with Dardik and Ariel and set up an OTC internal testing scheme to help athletes dope and fly below the radar. It's all there in the public domain (see links to articles in the US cycling scene thread).
And it's not pretty.
The only real question for me is: why hasn't any of this triggered any kind of retrospective investigation on the part of USOC? Well...More like a rethorical question.

See, you've stated as fact that all these people are connected to blood doping and that they were taking care of Greg.

No, and no.

Then you'll go back to making the exact same false and/or unsupported statements, treating them as fact.

Can you give an example? No you can't. Point being: Please just stop this pointless pissing contest, because it's classic pot-kettle stuff, and so you only end up clogging threads and discussions.

And to make a prediction

Yes, let's: you'll get hung up on some minor irrelevant detail, or a bit of semantics, and then use that as an excuse to rubbish and deflect away from all the major red flags that are right there in front of you.

The first, and the last three of those posts have nothing to do with Gideon Ariel. Zilch. The remaining posts have information which can be summarized as Ariel going to Munich for the Olympics. While there he became acquainted with the training center in Leipzig. He was very impressed by the professionalism of it all and wanted to re-create that in the US. At the same time he became acutely aware of doping, specifically anabolic steroids. Curiosity, and questions from athletes, lead Ariel to conduct a double-blind study of their efficacy. He showed that yes, steroids were very effective in a variety of ways.

To quote the good doctor: "but we would excel without the use of any performance-enhancing drugs."

That actually sounds like an interesting, ethical career. How to set up a professional athlete development program that's effective without using drugs. To that end, you would need to set up regional centers to collect athlete data, including the use of PEDs. That knowledge would then accumulate and be disseminated throughout the program. This is what he advocated.

One last thing. Citing a large number of lengthy posts isn't a very good way of referencing facts. There's way too much "analysis" that needs to be discarded in order to find the facts. A better way is to use a small, direct quote and link to the primary source.

John Swanson

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

...

If you're asking my personal opinion.. With no evidence what-so-ever and a best guess based on the times? I'd wager that Greg dabbled with the low-dose stuff like caffeine, amphetamines and the like. But he had no need to try anything weird. He was a winner. He put a leg over a bike and won. End of. He had some tough times after being shot and probably tried some recovery products, but ultimately it had nothing to do with how he rode. Once in a generation you get a Hererra, Gimondi, Merckx, or Lemond. Enjoy it when it happens.

Pssst. Froome ain't that guy.

John Swanson

Yeah, 'cause amphetamines ain't weird. Kamikaze incoming. It's this sort of rationalizing that makes your pretend objectivity shine. Oh well.

I have zero idea what Greg may or may not have been up to. I rode by his house plenty of times in Belgium and I do know what people (amateurs) were doing to compete to be like him. They weren't all donkeys either.

agreed.

The reference to Merckx there is somewhat odd, too.
Didn't he test positive like three times?

As for Gimondi:
viewtopic.php?p=2018644#p2018644

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

...

John Swanson

John, you're seriously going to defend Gideon Ariel just to keep the Lemond is clean storyline going?
Wow, if Lemond's cleanliness really hinges on making Ariel look like a good guy...that doesn't bode well for Lemond.

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re: Re:

...

John Swanson

John, you're seriously going to defend Gideon Ariel just to keep the Lemond is clean storyline going?
Wow, if Lemond's cleanliness really hinges on making Ariel look like a good guy...that doesn't bode well for Lemond.

I'd put considerably more money on Lemond being clean than on Gideon being a guy with antidoping ethics.

I'm not defending anybody. Your position is that Gideon was somehow responsible for bringing eastern European doping methods back to the US. That might be true, but nothing that you've shown us is all that persuasive. I totally agree that being excited by what he saw in Leipzig and wanting to emulate that sounds fishy. Even worse, he wanted to determine the efficacy of anabolic steroids. Danger! Except that when you dig just a little past the surface, the reality is much more complex and nuanced. At that time athletes in the US were doping, but there was little to no knowledge of what effect that was having on their performance and health. Based on what I've seen and what you've shown us, I think Gideon imported the professionalism from the East, but not the doping program.

I understand that you view this differently, but what you have is an opinion and not a fact. I'm certainly open to the idea that the OTC became a platform to explore and promote doping, but I don't think it happened the way you're presenting it.

And to address something from a different post: Yes, Merckx was a doper. That doesn't change the fact that he was a once in a generation talent. My opinion is that he would have been a champion if he had ridden clean for his entire career.

John Swanson

 

[sniper]

In isolation it's not persuasive at all. I agree.
In isolation, Gideon ariel is just a nobody who authored some studies on steroids and happened to have a hand in the founding of the OTC.
Are we really discussing him in isolation though?

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re:

In isolation it's not persuasive at all. I agree.
In isolation, Gideon ariel is just a nobody who authored some studies on steroids and happened to have a hand in the founding of the OTC.
Are we really discussing him in isolation though?

Yes. Sometimes you need to take a look at each tree to figure out what kind of forest you have. It would actually be immensely helpful to have a short biography for each of the people you've talked about. Short on exposition, but heavy on timelines, their full curriculum vitae, and quotes. With that in hand, I think you could then construct a very coherent narrative of how it all fits together. You'd be amazed at how compelling that would be.

John Swanson

 

[sniper]

Thanks, that's the nicest thing you've said to me...ever.

 

[Aragon]

Re: Re:

When considering who brought what methods where and when, it is very flawed to think the 1970s as an information technology stone age, where the flow of information was practically nonexistent, and subsequently blood doping/hormone knowledge was somehow very secretive. While there were some underground studies, as seen below, almost all the relevant blood doping material was published in peer-reviewed journals and in more popular publications.

- Many publications such as Sports Illustrated and Runner's World published news items about the Swedish blood doping experiments when the first reports emerged from Scandinavia in 1971.
- Journal of Applied Physiology published in 1972 the full Ekblom-study with detailed data on the results and storage ("Blood was stored in the Karolinska Hospital Blood Bank in ACD solution with the addition of adenine
and kept at +4’ C...")
- T&F News had a scientific-oriented supplementary publication called Track Technique that in 1973 published a more popular style but still detailed article on the Ekblom-study.
- American sports community most like knew about the existence and furthermore showed at least theoretical interst on blood doping as early as 1971, as there is the following paragraph in the Runner's World article about the first publicised Swedish blood doping experiments (10/1971):

Jack Daniels, a noted US athletics physiologist who was a key figure in research on the effects of altitude for US athletes who competed in the Mexico City Olympics and who has worked closely with Jim Ryun among others, was the first to respond of five persons sent requests by T&FN. He assured us that Bjorn Ekblom was highly reputable, that he had been widely published in technical journals and that he had indeed worked with athletes. Further, both he and Ekblom had studied under P.O. Astrand, one of the world's most respected athletics physiologists, at the institution where Ekblom now teaches. "The Swedes are perhaps the most advanced nation in the study of exercise physiology. If Ekblom actually did the work, I have no reason to doubt the results if reported correctly." He promised to contact Ekblom directly.

It is still totally different but interesting matter how much the interest materialized on actual field experiments.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

When considering who brought what methods where and when, it is very flawed to think the 1970s as an information technology stone age, where the flow of information was practically nonexistent, and subsequently blood doping/hormone knowledge was somehow very secretive. While there were some underground studies, as seen below, almost all the relevant blood doping material was published in peer-reviewed journals and in more popular publications.

- Many publications such as Sports Illustrated and Runner's World published news items about the Swedish blood doping experiments when the first reports emerged from Scandinavia in 1971.
- Journal of Applied Physiology published in 1972 the full Ekblom-study with detailed data on the results and storage ("Blood was stored in the Karolinska Hospital Blood Bank in ACD solution with the addition of adenine
and kept at +4’ C...")
- T&F News had a scientific-oriented supplementary publication called Track Technique that in 1973 published a more popular style but still detailed article on the Ekblom-study.
- American sports community most like knew about the existence and furthermore showed at least theoretical interst on blood doping as early as 1971, as there is the following paragraph in the Runner's World article about the first publicised Swedish blood doping experiments (10/1971):

Jack Daniels, a noted US athletics physiologist who was a key figure in research on the effects of altitude for US athletes who competed in the Mexico City Olympics and who has worked closely with Jim Ryun among others, was the first to respond of five persons sent requests by T&FN. He assured us that Bjorn Ekblom was highly reputable, that he had been widely published in technical journals and that he had indeed worked with athletes. Further, both he and Ekblom had studied under P.O. Astrand, one of the world's most respected athletics physiologists, at the institution where Ekblom now teaches. "The Swedes are perhaps the most advanced nation in the study of exercise physiology. If Ekblom actually did the work, I have no reason to doubt the results if reported correctly." He promised to contact Ekblom directly.

It is still totally different but interesting matter how much the interest materialized on actual field experiments.

nice.

As to your point about the secrecy of it all:
don't forget that within USA sports and even at a higher governmental level, people had major trouble stomaching the relative strength of the communist countries, and one response to that was to accuse the Soviets and Germans of foul play. One consequence of that was that USA sports, whilst eagerly copying East Bloc sport scientific methods, had a greater motivation to try and keep these scientific methods secret: if it would come out that they used the same methods as the Germans and Russians, they'd be exposed as hypocrits.
Also, with media playing a far greater role in the US than elsewhere, they would be more prudent to avoid scandals. This became painfully patent during the 1983 (Panama) and 84 (LA) doping scandals.
(disclaimer: this is not my analysis; i'm merely paraphrasing what I read elsewhere, and will look for a link. But it's an analysis that strikes me as plausible)

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re: Re:

people had major trouble stomaching the relative strength of the communist countries, and one response to that was to accuse the Soviets and Germans of foul play.

Replace "communist countries" and "Soviets and Germans" with .... on .... I dunno, Team Sky, Chris Froome, Greg LeMond, whoever you want really...