Olympics Doping Thread

[doolols]

Re: Re:

However, there's only 2 gold medals available for each gender in road racing (mass start road race and ITT), as opposed to a huge amount of track events, so for a nation which, at the time of the program being set up, had little real cycling heritage, track cycling was an obvious target for two reasons:
1) much smaller set of variables in outcomes and shallower pool of opposition therefore better chance of success
2) much larger number of Olympic medals available, a currency much more immediately obvious to the non-fan than the various trophies and competitions available on the road other than the Tour de France

That's a great point. In this era of media focus and marketing, I can see track cycling offering a pool of medals - good for prestige, pushes us up the medal table, "Gold for Great Britain", etc. Would we have been so cynical to target a section of sport like this. Oh yes, I'm sure. And one suited to highly analytical methods. It's less about your cycling history and pedigree (where we had little), and more about the marginal gains (sorry, but it's true).

 

[luckyboy]

Couple of Salazar's boys and 3 guys from countries with no testing! Love it. Shame they went so slow

 

[BullsFan22]

Re:

Couple of Salazar's boys and 3 guys from countries with no testing! Love it. Shame they went so slow

Hey, just be happy Rupp didn't medal.

 

[PremierAndrew]

Re: Re:

Couple of Salazar's boys and 3 guys from countries with no testing! Love it. Shame they went so slow

Hey, just be happy Rupp didn't medal.

Why? Is Rupp cheating clean athletes out of success? Or is it a level playing field?

 

[The Hegelian]

It's not a big improvement. It's a totally astonishing shift from being cycling minnows - track and road - to being utterly, utterly dominant, always, almost without a blip, in every big race that really matters.

Forgetting, for one moment, the hyperbole, how is it that British Cycling is doing this? Are we dopers, and everyone else is clean? Is everyone doping, and we're just doing it better than everyone else?

These wins aren't massive. They're minor increments each time, and we're not blasting the opposition out of the park. We're winning by small margins. So exactly what are we doing that makes us winners, and everyone else losers? Because so many on here are convinced that the whole of British cycling is doped to the gills, and they even have "proof" (because we've improved over a few years). When some of us point to investment in programmes and facilities, others say that those programmes and facilities exist in other countries, too.

So, come on accusers - exactly what is British cycling doing?

Well, we have pretty good evidence that the Russians are doped to the gills. 3 of their 4 pursuiters were banned right? The Italians took their place in the event, right?

And team GB (plus just about everyone else) has been destroying those doped up Russians for years, right?

So.......well, it must be better funding and facilities that allows a clean team to destroy a doped to the gills team, right?

Yes, that must be it.

 

[BullsFan22]

So were Gatlin and Merritt met with boos on the track? Did anyone speak out about having convicted dopers competing in Rio today?

 

[The Hegelian]

Re: Re:

However, there's only 2 gold medals available for each gender in road racing (mass start road race and ITT), as opposed to a huge amount of track events, so for a nation which, at the time of the program being set up, had little real cycling heritage, track cycling was an obvious target for two reasons:
1) much smaller set of variables in outcomes and shallower pool of opposition therefore better chance of success
2) much larger number of Olympic medals available, a currency much more immediately obvious to the non-fan than the various trophies and competitions available on the road other than the Tour de France

That's a great point. In this era of media focus and marketing, I can see track cycling offering a pool of medals - good for prestige, pushes us up the medal table, "Gold for Great Britain", etc. Would we have been so cynical to target a section of sport like this. Oh yes, I'm sure. And one suited to highly analytical methods. It's less about your cycling history and pedigree (where we had little), and more about the marginal gains (sorry, but it's true).

Implicit in this argument - perhaps explicit - is that the key factor in British success is actually intellectual superiority rather than pure physical talent. i.e. the Brits do 'highly analytical methods' better than anyone else.

That explains their peaking, the maximum extraction of 'gold' from financial investment, and the breeding of seemingly endless amounts of new talent - it is ultimately rooted in a cognitive system; the perfect philosophy-science of marginal gains.

The only issue here is that that perfect philosophy-science, when examined, does not actually exist. The body of knowledge that produces cycling excellence is basically global; top coaches go from nation to nation. Sutton is Australian for example. No one seriously believes the Sky/Brailsford narrative about marginal gains - that is guff for the masses who read tabloids.

 

[BullsFan22]

Aaaand the East Germ....errr....I mean American swim team keeps on keeping on. Another crushing performance in pool. 4x100m medley for the women was never in doubt.

 

[BullsFan22]

And and the men as well. What happened to the Chinese? Why the DQ?

 

[gooner]

Peaty 56.59 secs in his 100m breaststroke in the relay.

That smashes his own world record. I suspected that when I was watching it at the time.

 

[Alexandre B.]

Re:

...mens sprint final GB v GB.....ouch!

Mark L

See the international pedigree of Callum Skinner before the Games : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callum_Skinner
"Everything else is training"
"He was smashing records his whole life"

 

[Alexandre B.]

Re:

GB Rowing and GB Cycling - got the funding from national lottery, used it well, more funding flows for the next Olympic cycle. There doesn't have to be a conspiracy theory every time they win, sometimes money talks. The set ups in Caversham and Manchester are both impressive.

Of course they're going to peak every four years, when else would they peak? Maybe the question is why did the others not peak properly?

It's more a matter of being better than the rest than peaking.

 

[Robert5091]

http://www.smh.com.au/sport/olympic...ys-top-runners-are-dirty-20160814-gqs3ra.html
New Zealand athlete says top runners are dirty
"I can't put names or say that [if it was the top five from the 10,000m event] because that's going to name names. What I can say is the top guys, a lot of top guys, are dirty. If they were clean there still would be grey aspects ... I'm saying they add a bit more," Robertson said.

The New Zealand runner, who finished 12th, is in an unique position to comment having lived and trained in Kenya for eight years. He is now living in Ethiopia.
"It's just the mentality there [Kenya and east African countries] to join the game," Robertson said.
Robertson has made statements to the IOC in the past with information of drug use in Kenya and had subsequently received death threats.
Two officials at a Kenyan high altitude training camp have also been arrested after they were filmed admitting they gave athletes at the popular training camp drugs.

Mo Farah and the British team use the camp. English newspapers have reported that three British athletes had been identified as having been given drugs at the camp but Farah was not one of them.

 

[TheSpud]

Re: Re:

GB Rowing and GB Cycling - got the funding from national lottery, used it well, more funding flows for the next Olympic cycle. There doesn't have to be a conspiracy theory every time they win, sometimes money talks. The set ups in Caversham and Manchester are both impressive.

Of course they're going to peak every four years, when else would they peak? Maybe the question is why did the others not peak properly?

It's more a matter of being better than the rest than peaking.

I remember reading somewhere that Track Cycling was specifically chosen / targeted because of the number of golds up for grabs (and to a lesser extent rowing, although we were good at that anyway). The ability to focus on the minutiae (marginal gains if you want) also had a lot more scope - a 100th here and there does make a difference in a track environment (much more so than road). From memory the tech regs were a lot less restrictive at that stage too, allowing much more innovation - remember all those black bikes designed in association with McLaren, and others. All much more easy to control than, say, trying to build British success in hammer throwing.

 

[kwikki]

Re: Re:

Got to say, the idea of GB 'peaking' for the Olympics better than everyone else isn't ridiculous. They do genuinely have good sports science people on board, and they do have the pretty massive motivation of the omnipotent Funding Cycle. The ridiculous thing is suggesting that that in itself explains away the times posted by Team GB, and that it makes doping allegations unbelievable. If you've got a program as good as GB's, you probably do have ways of legitimately peaking for the Olympic cycle; we know from people like Ferrari that there's huge crossover between legitimate sports science and doping, and GB probably has the best at both. Doping isn't a panacea, especially since other teams are likely doping as well. It's all tied up with questions of motivation and training, in ways which aren't fully captured by polarised arguments.

True. But it would never explain things like Radcliffe, Farah, Wiggins and Froome, all in far far far more competitive sports.

Anyone who wants to make an intelligent argument that Britain win the minor medals no one remembers, through peaking, might make some sense. But a blanket - "All brits are clean cos they are brits" argument is just stupid and no surprise that the dumbest people on the forum are the ones who make it

They also don't exist, which is why you won't be able cite a single example of anybody saying "All brits are clean cos they are brits".

I don't think anybody is discounting the possibility of anybody doping, are they? What a few people, me included, are objecting to is the oft repeated implied sentiment that 'All brits are dopers cos they are brits'.

Now, that really is stupid.

 

[msjett]

In the page before someone mentioned funding for Australian's in the sports they are good at. As far as I am aware since the 2000 Olympic games the Government has been cutting funding to sports. And if memory serves me most of the funding goes to athletes who are with the institute of sport programs. Also if I recall correctly swimming was receiving the most funding, but that may have changed, I am sure a bit of google time would give you some answers, as my memory isn't as good as it was.

 

[kwikki]

The Brits have really focused on sports/events where they see they can excel at, thus more funding and more active recruitment of top talent, top coaches, top doctors, etc to those sports/events. Rowing, track cycling, road cycling (maybe?), and others. Of that there is no doubt. I think a lot of countries that have the money, resources, personnel and enough enthusiasm and ministry or sport support will do that. The Lithuanians, as a good example, have always had the talent in basketball, even since the Soviet days. They really supplied the Soviet team with a lot of talented players, and even though the Union dissolved in 1991, the Lithuanian team still kept/keeps producing talent and most of all, interest in that sport. They perhaps may not be as good as they were, but they are still there or thereabouts. Same with the Dutch in speed skating, same as the Slovenians in alpine skiing and ski jumping, Hungarians in water polo, etc. It doesn't mean that doping isn't there, it just means that unless you are a country with a big population and a massive land mass like the US, China, Russia, with a lot of different sports/events where you can challenge and develop talent, you have to specialize.

I know that in the former Yugoslavia, it was team sports that dominated the scene. Basketball, football, handball, volleyball, water polo..these sports were where the Olympic Committee could really rely on for medals at world's and olympics, and most of the time they delivered. It's just historical. You don't see it as much today, because all the former Yugoslav countries aren't as strong economically and most of the national teams are spread all over world, playing for different clubs and systems, whereas in the past a lot of them would be playing in the country, where the quality was top notch, so there was no need to go abroad. Individual sports, like track and field, swimming, boxing, wrestling, judo, shooting, gymnastics, etc, relied on individual talents. There were clubs, but it wasn't as big as the US system. It went up and down, but even there you saw contenders. Obviously with a country of no more than 24, 25 million people, you are not going to be challenging the US, or USSR or China or even France and GB for most medals, but it wasn't bad.

That brings me back to the Brits. They know where their strength lies and they put a lot of eggs in those baskets. Doesn't mean they aren't doping, or aren't getting something systematic out of it, but they are smart enough to know where to put their focus. If in a few years they get more top swimmers on their team, the caliber of Adam Peaty or something similar, perhaps they'll start to fund swimming more and we'll see a similar rising trend.

I hope I didn't steer too far off topic.

I agree with this entirely. If it was Olympic success across the board I'd join in the howls of protest. But it isn't.

It isn't even success across the board within the sports focused upon. Look at the Women's track sprint team, for example.

 

[doolols]

Re: Re:

[
See the international pedigree of Callum Skinner before the Games : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callum_Skinner
"Everything else is training"
"He was smashing records his whole life"

Yup. No pedigree there. Except there is. Clear progression from bronze and silver in U-23 races 5 years ago.

 

[Cycle Chic]

Can someone explain why our track riders are spinning like Froome in the last 200metres to win ? its like they are changing gear - whats going on ?

Kenny is the best example - his legs are rotating way faster than the russian ? and Rebecca Adams coming from last to second in the last 200metres....just ridiculous

 

[Cannibal72]

Re:

I read someone (Caley Fretz?) say that GB's equipment budget is more than the entire USA track cycling budget (which I guess is the second largest, or near that), which sounded crazy. Whatever's going on the least you can say is that the 'financial doping' will be giving them a big advantage.

Apparently the USA Cycling programme for women's track has one full-time member of staff. One.

 

[Lyon]

Red herrings all...

I wonder why it is so difficult for British fans/fans of British sport to simply come out and say: "Of course our boys and girls are on drugs, just like the competition, but we do it better. Somebody decided that now was our time to shine, so we invested the money, we got the right people, we copied the competition, then did it one better."

Instead we have this circular debate where both sides look at single aspects in isolation.

 

[kwikki]

Except I'm not.

As I've said, how do you explain the disparity within Team GB across all sports and even within sports in which GB do well.

Explain to me why the GB Women Team sprint couldn't even manage to qualify.

Drugs are probably in the mix, but not universally, and not across all sports. Equally, some teams within teams, across sports and across nations WILL be more effectively trained and motivated than others. It IS part of the answer for success, regardless of nation.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Because it's not a lightswitch, that when turned on guarantees success? Come on, you know better than to pull that one.

The disparity between sports is because funding is unequal. This goes for every country and every sport. It's not like Britain just went "we will become the best at the Olympics", upped the funding for each sport by the same amount and said ava kedavra. They have said as much - they wanted to target areas with a lot of potential for Olympic medals, so sports like swimming (where there's a gazillion medals available) and track cycling (where there's a fairly shallow pool of competition since most of the money in the sport is on the road) along with sports where there was already a strong British presence like rowing became focal points for funding. That's why it isn't in all sports. Which you already know.

The disparity between events within those sports is a matter for having the right people. If the Britons don't have the depth in women's sprinting that they do in men's sprinting, then of course the women's team sprint won't be as good as the men's. The shorter the races the fewer the variables, as well. This is one of the reasons they have been able to have such success in track cycling but elected to specialize in this and get their templates in place before moving to the road. A lot of the historic money in track cycling in the West was tied to the Six Days, and there are therefore a lot of endurance disciplines in track cycling which the British team has found it harder to control - Scratch, Points and Madison being the key races I can bring up here. Much like on the road, these longer and less predictable races develop over a period of time and introduce a lot more variables than the shorter disciplines where higher threshold power is paramount - tactics regarding bunch placement, efforts to gain laps, sprint points, calculating the various outcomes, who the 'legal man' is at the time in the case of the Madison, which of your opponents need to be watched most closely... there's a lot more lateral thinking that needs to be done over a longer period of time - after all, that's not to say that the sprint and keirin aren't tactical, it's just over a short period of time and explosivity; the team sprint and the pursuit are less tactical (the former in particular) and therefore equipment gains are more readily apparent. For all the head-to-head presentation of them, the team sprint and the pursuit events are simply short time trials with the secondary aspect of finding out the splits in real time rather than the later starter knowing in advance where they need to be. The changes in the Olympic program have marginalized those distance/endurance track events in favour of the more TV-friendly short bursts of action in the sprints and pursuits, and that has also had the (unintended? I'm not sure who was responsible for the changes) consequence of further cementing the British domination of the sport.

Personally, I hate the keirin (if the derny could leave the track at any time, rather than the same point every time, it would be much more interesting, though also potentially much more dangerous which I anticipate is the reason for it) and the Points race is my favourite track event because it's the most tactical. I dislike even more the Team Sprint, because it's a nothingness of an event, at least the Team Pursuit has a lot more aspects of cohesion, consistency, smoothness of changes, when to sacrifice a man and so on; the Team Sprint is like a Team Pursuit without any of the team challenges, or a Sprint without any tactics. I don't think any sport has introduced an event called "Team Sprint" that hasn't been an absolute abomination, actually.

However, Britain does seem to be very good at churning out sprint specialist trackies, rather than endurance types who also ride the road. Somebody like Elia Viviani is a great track cyclist in the Enduro disciplines, but his chances at the Olympics are marginal at best because he can only compete in the Omnium now, which includes races that will marginalize him. Even more so in the women's event where the Points race distance is comparatively short, which will harm riders like Jolien d'Hoore and is why Giorgia Bronzini, a former track world champion and top level women's sprinter, decided to work on trying to become a climber because she felt she legitimately had more chance of getting over the Vista Chinesa climbs than winning a medal on the track on the current program (!!!). While you could argue - and perhaps should - that the Omnium is intended to reward the best 'all-round' cyclist and if they're not all-round enough they should be marginalized, hence its name, there simply aren't any medals available in the endurance disciplines unless you do the Omnium. It's a bit like if the IAAF took the javelin and shot putt out of the field program, so that any javelin thrower or shot putter had to do the heptathlon/decathlon if they wanted to compete.

 

[kwikki]

Re:

Because it's not a lightswitch, that when turned on guarantees success? Come on, you know better than to pull that one.

The disparity between sports is because funding is unequal. This goes for every country and every sport. It's not like Britain just went "we will become the best at the Olympics", upped the funding for each sport by the same amount and said ava kedavra. They have said as much - they wanted to target areas with a lot of potential for Olympic medals, so sports like swimming (where there's a gazillion medals available) and track cycling (where there's a fairly shallow pool of competition since most of the money in the sport is on the road) along with sports where there was already a strong British presence like rowing became focal points for funding. That's why it isn't in all sports. Which you already know.

The disparity between events within those sports is a matter for having the right people. If the Britons don't have the depth in women's sprinting that they do in men's sprinting, then of course the women's team sprint won't be as good as the men's. The shorter the races the fewer the variables, as well. This is one of the reasons they have been able to have such success in track cycling but elected to specialize in this and get their templates in place before moving to the road. A lot of the historic money in track cycling in the West was tied to the Six Days, and there are therefore a lot of endurance disciplines in track cycling which the British team has found it harder to control - Scratch, Points and Madison being the key races I can bring up here. Much like on the road, these longer and less predictable races develop over a period of time and introduce a lot more variables than the shorter disciplines where higher threshold power is paramount - tactics regarding bunch placement, efforts to gain laps, sprint points, calculating the various outcomes, who the 'legal man' is at the time in the case of the Madison, which of your opponents need to be watched most closely... there's a lot more lateral thinking that needs to be done over a longer period of time - after all, that's not to say that the sprint and keirin aren't tactical, it's just over a short period of time and explosivity; the team sprint and the pursuit are less tactical (the former in particular) and therefore equipment gains are more readily apparent. For all the head-to-head presentation of them, the team sprint and the pursuit events are simply short time trials with the secondary aspect of finding out the splits in real time rather than the later starter knowing in advance where they need to be. The changes in the Olympic program have marginalized those distance/endurance track events in favour of the more TV-friendly short bursts of action in the sprints and pursuits, and that has also had the (unintended? I'm not sure who was responsible for the changes) consequence of further cementing the British domination of the sport.

Personally, I hate the keirin (if the derny could leave the track at any time, rather than the same point every time, it would be much more interesting, though also potentially much more dangerous which I anticipate is the reason for it) and the Points race is my favourite track event because it's the most tactical. I dislike even more the Team Sprint, because it's a nothingness of an event, at least the Team Pursuit has a lot more aspects of cohesion, consistency, smoothness of changes, when to sacrifice a man and so on; the Team Sprint is like a Team Pursuit without any of the team challenges, or a Sprint without any tactics. I don't think any sport has introduced an event called "Team Sprint" that hasn't been an absolute abomination, actually.

However, Britain does seem to be very good at churning out sprint specialist trackies, rather than endurance types who also ride the road. Somebody like Elia Viviani is a great track cyclist in the Enduro disciplines, but his chances at the Olympics are marginal at best because he can only compete in the Omnium now, which includes races that will marginalize him. Even more so in the women's event where the Points race distance is comparatively short, which will harm riders like Jolien d'Hoore and is why Giorgia Bronzini, a former track world champion and top level women's sprinter, decided to work on trying to become a climber because she felt she legitimately had more chance of getting over the Vista Chinesa climbs than winning a medal on the track on the current program (!!!). While you could argue - and perhaps should - that the Omnium is intended to reward the best 'all-round' cyclist and if they're not all-round enough they should be marginalized, hence its name, there simply aren't any medals available in the endurance disciplines unless you do the Omnium. It's a bit like if the IAAF took the javelin and shot putt out of the field program, so that any javelin thrower or shot putter had to do the heptathlon/decathlon if they wanted to compete.

So the drugs worked for the men's sprint team but they absolutely failed for the women

In essence, much of what you say accords with what I am saying. My view is that right athletes/right trainers/right approach/no shortage of money=success.

Sure, drugs might be in the mix.

 

[doolols]

Re: Re:

My view is that right athletes/right trainers/right approach/no shortage of money=success.
Sure, drugs might be in the mix.

And that, my friends, is the end of the discussion. It is absolutely the case, and there is no further need for argument It is not denying the use of drugs, but highlights that funding and targeting are major factors.