Most Suspicious Performances: All sports edition

[blackcat]

Re: Re:

Sir Donald Bradman.
Heather McKay

that's a point, how does the clinic explain bradman. clearly not doping with anything that would improve his performance, but so far beyond his peers its laughable. if he came along now you would all be adamant he doped his tits off.

like Hitch implies, i) smaller catchment of competitors. lets see how Bradman would have done on the baseball diamond.
thus, a performer off-the-bell-curve, the outlier, will have less competitors, less outliers, who bring their game to the competition.

ii) i think Bradman's one talent, was not actually with the bat in hand. It was actually the mental fortitude. He was not a well liked person by those around him. He was not held in high standing in the stockbroking community of Adelaide where he forged his post cricket career.

There have been a few batsmen, in this era with the new bat technology, that have had seasons like Bradman. Steve Smith the Australian captain, the former captain of Sri Lanka, Kumar Sangakara, they have all had ridiculous seasons too.

Bradman's talent was in his head, much like Lance Armstrong's competitive zest.

 

[42x16ss]

Re: Re:

that's a point, how does the clinic explain bradman.

With the one simple quality the clinic has that people like you lack.

Common sense.

the clinic has common sense? WTF are you on about? that might be the least accurate statement i've ever read, please tell me you are being facetious. whether you are a denier or a acolyte the one thing this place doesn't have is common sense. it is cloud cuckoo land.

Clearly you don't believe that because you continue to post here and get very angry about it.

No one goes to assylums to insult and troll the inmates, let alone get super aggresive at hearing their crackpot theories. No sane person anyway.
Imagine a video surfaced of a visitor at one of the NHS's mental health institutes standing outside the cell of some poor deluded bearded man who thinks he's jesus, banging on the bars and shouting insults at them?
Society would be disgusted. Its not an acceptable way to behave. Nor a rational one.

No. If you thought this place was "cloud cuckoo land", you would just ignore it. And let the "crazy" people, live in happily in their own delusions.

Its just a desperate ad hominem from someone who has no arguments left to defend their emotional position of hoping their favourite athletes were clean (why is that so important to you anyway), and, in the denial stage, is taking it out on internet strangers because they worked it out before him.

i think you have me confused with someone else. firstly i'm definitely not angry, this place cheers me up no end. secondly, laughing at nutters on the internet is in no way similar to the scenario you described above, as you well know. finally i don't have favourite athletes, and i'm not sure that most of them are clean anyway.

Yet you come in here to have a go at us all for saying the same thing....

 

[Archibald]

Re:

Sir Donald Bradman.

on what, pray tell??

This guy lived in an era when doctors were endorsing cigarettes as improving your game...

 

[Singer01]

Re: Re:

Yet you come in here to have a go at us all for saying the same thing.

no i come on here to have a go at how you do it, not that you do it. its the almost religious zeal that gets my on my t!ts, not the fact that most of you have a very well founded suspicion that many competitors in many sports like to get their cheat on.
i get just as annoyed at the few who refuse to see the wood for the trees, however their are less of them so i don't feel the need to contradict them as much, they get enough 'feedback' from the rest of you.

 

[Nellyspania]

Pretty much all the womens track WR's but Flo Jo, Koch and Kratochvílová win special alien prizes for setting world records that will outlive the human race.

 

[ppanther92]

For me the most notorious (after 2000, otherwise i have to include the ridiculous athletic records and so on):

Johann Mühlegg
Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic
Lance Armstrong
Michael Phelps and Ian Thorpe
Barcelonas football team or lets better say Spains sport wonder teams in general
Usain Bolt
Tiger Woods
Serena Williams
Paula Radcliffe

I am sure i forgott plenty honourable mentions, but this are the most blatant for me.

 

[Singer01]

Pretty much all the womens track WR's but Flo Jo, Koch and Kratochvílová win special alien prizes for setting world records that will outlive the human race.

i agree with Koch and Kratochvílová, nobody has been even close for 30 years, though the 800 record is the most likely to go of the 2 IMO.

not the most suspicious in terms of not beleiving he was clean, but purely from an aesthetic point of view there is no way that little skinny, nerdy looking god botherer should have been able to triple jump 60 ft.

 

[Farcanal]

Re: Re:

Bolt, without a doubt.
Reason being is he absolutely smashed records made by runners who ate steroids for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
100 metres is 100 metres. There can be no talk about race distance, stage of the race, weather conditions, quality of bikes, roads, etc. etc.
Guy made Ben Johnson seem like he was running backwards.

Not particularly picking on your post but I'm new to this and, from what I've read in the clinic generally, there seems to be a wide held belief that anyone who breaks records of previous dopers must themselves be doping.
Can someone please explain the logic of this to me because it completely passes me by?

Is it really scientific fact that there can be no progression in athletic achievement, that all humans in the future cannot run, ride, swim etc better than there ancestors without the use of PED's? Your example of a runner some 25 years previously to Bolt seems a strange comparison. Anything factually enlightening would be appreciated.

I'm sure your intentions are good and it's just an accident, but such a blatant moving of the goal posts from one sentence to the next, will unfortunately, be by many interpreted as trolling.

The fact that clean athletes can't beat world records of dopers obviously does not mean that " that there can be no progression in athletic achievement".


Oh and your maths is way off as well. gatlin and Asafa Powell were most definitely not "25 years ago".

I appreciate your advice and comments, but can you please explain how the two sentences can be seen as moving goalposts or trolling? One sentence seems the logical progression of the other to me. If an athlete sets times but is found to be doping and then 25 years later another athlete improves on those, surely that does not automatically condemn the latter as a doper. My implied question was is it not possible, over a large period of time, that training techniques, nutrition etc can have an impact greater than that of the PED taken previously?

My maths is not way off at all. The comment to which I was replying compared to Ben Johnson to Usain Bolt. I've no axe to grind about Bolt either way and am certainly not defending him, but Johnson was banned in 1987 and Bolt's last major win was London 2012, I think that is 25 years. Gatlin and Powell were not referred to and my question was about the passage of time when comparing performances.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Re: whY

.........yup! just how did she get so strong.............

Mark L

Something about that photo looks a little Shopped and Chopped.

 

[Billie]

Re: whY

.........yup! just how did she get so strong.............

Mark L

me personally i'm mainly wondering why his left boob is so much bigger than his right boob

 

[Farcanal]

Re: whY

.........yup! just how did she get so strong.............

Mark L

me personally i'm mainly wondering why his left boob is so much bigger than his right boob

Either way, I wouldn't want to say it to his/her face

 

[Irondan]

Re: whY

.........yup! just how did she get so strong.............

Mark L

me personally i'm mainly wondering why his left boob is so much bigger than his right boob

Same thing with the arms.

I think this photo is taken at the precise moment needed to make her right arm look like a bodybuilders arm. It's not normally that large, as you can see by comparing it against the other arm. They both look a little different than what she really looks like.

It doesn't take away the fact that it still is very suspicious that she's so big.

 

[thehog]

Re: whY

.........yup! just how did she get so strong.............

Mark L

me personally i'm mainly wondering why his left boob is so much bigger than his right boob

Same thing with the arms.

I think this photo is taken at the precise moment needed to make her right arm look like a bodybuilders arm. It's not normally that large, as you can see by comparing it against the other arm. They both look a little different than what she really looks like.

It doesn't take away the fact that it still is very suspicious that she's so big.

Otherwise known as the money shot...

 

[D-Queued]

We may have passed over a sport notorious for its cheating:

A Rod
Sosa
McGuire
Bonds
Clemens
and dishonorable mention to Pete Rose

Dave.

 

[More Strides than Rides]

Pretty much all the womens track WR's but Flo Jo, Koch and Kratochvílová win special alien prizes for setting world records that will outlive the human race.

i agree with Koch and Kratochvílová, nobody has been even close for 30 years, though the 800 record is the most likely to go of the 2 IMO.

Don't speak too soon. The 1500m record used to be held to that standard until a month ago when broken by Dibaba.

Good thing too, that that doped record was reclaimed by clean athletics.

 

[Irondan]

Re:

We may have passed over a sport notorious for its cheating:

A Rod
Sosa
McGuire
Bonds
Clemens
and dishonorable mention to Pete Rose

Dave.

No, we didn't pass over baseball. I mentioned them in a broad sense by saying all of MLB in the 1990's were cheating at the beginning of the thread.

If we're going to use specific names we're going to need a long list.

At the top would be the guys you mention, but I think Rafael Palmiero should be mentioned among those notorious cheaters listed above. IIRC he was doped up to his eyeballs and had the gonads to testify in front of the US Congress about how clean baseball was and specifically how clean HE was. He tested positive for steroids a few months later.

A world class douche that only Lance and his mother could love...

 

[Black Betsy]

England World Cup 1966

 

[the delgados]

Any baseball references should include Brady Anderson from the Orioles.
He was a diminutive lead-off hitter who suddenly came out of nowhere and hit 50 home runs sometime in the mid 90's. Small and speedy lead off hitters just don't come out of nowhere and hit 50 home runs. It's totally unheard of.

@Farcanal: I'm a Canadian who doesn't follow track and field, so the reference to Johnson was instinctual. I see your point, but I've read enough about the sport to know the difference between the two times is massive. And as has already been mentioned, I do not believe human evolution would account for the difference in times. Sure, nutrition and training methods may have improved. But certainly not enough to overcome the massive amounts of roids Johnson was taking.

 

[Nick C.]

Brady Anderson was not quite diminutive at 6'1" but his jump was as large as Luis Gonzalez who also went from a 12-25 HR hitter to 50+. I used to get Muscle and Fitness back then and he was in there talking about creatine as I recall it. His big claim to fame was the sideburns which were either derivative of or copied by someone from Beverly Hills 90210.

 

[blackcat]

Pretty much all the womens track WR's but Flo Jo, Koch and Kratochvílová win special alien prizes for setting world records that will outlive the human race.

i agree with Koch and Kratochvílová, nobody has been even close for 30 years, though the 800 record is the most likely to go of the 2 IMO.

not the most suspicious in terms of not beleiving he was clean, but purely from an aesthetic point of view there is no way that little skinny, nerdy looking god botherer should have been able to triple jump 60 ft.

couldnt Edwards benchpress 330lbs too? 150kgs?

Like Agassi and his powerlifter "coach" made him bench in this vicinity, #NOTNORMAL

 

[the delgados]

Nick C.
I should hire an editor before posting. Or maybe just go check myself; but I'm lazy. Anyway, I stand corrected.
Point still stands, though. Guy came out of nowhere to hit 50 home runs. I believe but am not sure (mental note: check before posting) that his previous high was somewhere in the mid-twenty range. Excuse me while I go to google.

 

[blackcat]

Re: Re:

I appreciate your advice and comments, but can you please explain how the two sentences can be seen as moving goalposts or trolling? One sentence seems the logical progression of the other to me. If an athlete sets times but is found to be doping and then 25 years later another athlete improves on those, surely that does not automatically condemn the latter as a doper. My implied question was is it not possible, over a large period of time, that training techniques, nutrition etc can have an impact greater than that of the PED taken previously?

My maths is not way off at all. The comment to which I was replying compared to Ben Johnson to Usain Bolt. I've no axe to grind about Bolt either way and am certainly not defending him, but Johnson was banned in 1987 and Bolt's last major win was London 2012, I think that is 25 years. Gatlin and Powell were not referred to and my question was about the passage of time when comparing performances.

well, speak to some biologist/anthropologist/sports scientist... ask about human evolution.

then find out what % doping can provide for this particular sport.

then estimate the catchment or pool of athletes that have competed in the era, the mature era when the sport has exhausted all possible gains.

then work out if the athlete off-the-bell-curve, the outlier athlete, can put a (rule-of-thumb) 10% gain on the previous WR when this new athlete is a clean athlete.

then see the discrepancy in times between all the athletes in T&F and trackcycling and swimming @ Olympics, and how this one particular example provides such an astounding anomaly

then like Hoberman and Yesalis two PED academics in America, on at Penn State other Texas smaller college, find out what they intimate on the psychology of athletes and the norms that prevail, so you have in cycling a phenomenon where, not a few dope, not most dope, but like Bassons demonstrated, they were all doping. Why does this one WR athlete now prove to be the one athlete, who has a moral stance fundamentally different, and can surpass this 10% PED advantage to break FloJo's WR.

there is your answer. there

 

[the delgados]

Maybe add Jose Bautista--right fielder from the American League East Champion Toronto Blue Jays!--in the mix.
He was a middling career journeyman who bounced around several teams and finally decided to "tweak" his swing and hit home runs at will.
Truly a stunning transition.
But don't bother suggesting that perhaps, just maybe he saw the writing on the wall to Toronto Blue Jays fans. Don't even go there.

 

[Cake]

Re:

Brady Anderson was not quite diminutive at 6'1" but his jump was as large as Luis Gonzalez who also went from a 12-25 HR hitter to 50+. I used to get Muscle and Fitness back then and he was in there talking about creatine as I recall it. His big claim to fame was the sideburns which were either derivative of or copied by someone from Beverly Hills 90210.

Am I right in thinking creatine is illegal in some pro sports but not in others? And if this is correct, how can that be when all sports have signed up (ho ho) to the World Antidoping Code. I thought the aim behind that was (partly) to standardise which drugs are legal and which are illegal?

 

[thehog]

Australian swim team from 1996 through to 2008 was amped to the max. Some have come basket cases now. Perkins is about the only normal one.

Thrope and Hackett have gone bananas.