Olympics Doping Thread

[Bwlch y Groes]

Worth bearing in mind that Gladwell was essentially quoting Ross Tucker, though. Tucker believes they should go back to the old rule of restricting testosterone in female athletes, and I think he has a point. Not sure where I stand on it - it's a huge grey area with ethical considerations for both intersex athletes like Semenya and Wambui and their rivals

 

[lean mean &green]

Re: Re:

..semenya/bolt may be compared....both won without truly extending themselves

however issue with semenya is obvious....bolt...less so

Mark L

What issue is there with Semenya? Was she not born with high levels of ability?

Whereas Bolt has to dope to get high levels of ability.

Why is Semenya the problem?

Seems to me this is all arseways. An athlete with born ability is persecuted but those who dope hugely are protected. Yep that is modern sport.

I'm with you on this. Malcolm Gladwell, a pseudo-intellectual pompous shallow-thinking 'writer' whose ideas have now permeated the discourse of sports, parroted by writers like Syed, was quoted in the New Yorker as saying

“One woman, born with the biological equivalent of a turbocharger, is now being allowed to ‘compete’ against the 99 per cent of women who have no such advantage.’’

Well, yeah. That's literally the point. 99% of women aren't good enough to compete in the Olympics. Most people don't have large lungs, or long legs, or athletic talent. You can't ban people just for being too good.

The hypocrisy is that the IAAF allowed others to dominate events for years, Michael Johnson 400m and now look at Bolt over 3 Olympics? I mean sure Semenya would dominate for a long time, but at least it may be natural talent for a change!

Haha. That's a bit naïve don't you think? Setting aside all of the complex gender issues with Caster, why on earth would you assume she is competing on bread and water?

 

[King Boonen]

Re: Re:

..semenya/bolt may be compared....both won without truly extending themselves

however issue with semenya is obvious....bolt...less so

Mark L

What issue is there with Semenya? Was she not born with high levels of ability?

Whereas Bolt has to dope to get high levels of ability.

Why is Semenya the problem?

Seems to me this is all arseways. An athlete with born ability is persecuted but those who dope hugely are protected. Yep that is modern sport.

I'm with you on this. Malcolm Gladwell, a pseudo-intellectual pompous shallow-thinking 'writer' whose ideas have now permeated the discourse of sports, parroted by writers like Syed, was quoted in the New Yorker as saying

“One woman, born with the biological equivalent of a turbocharger, is now being allowed to ‘compete’ against the 99 per cent of women who have no such advantage.’’

Well, yeah. That's literally the point. 99% of women aren't good enough to compete in the Olympics. Most people don't have large lungs, or long legs, or athletic talent. You can't ban people just for being too good.

The hypocrisy is that the IAAF allowed others to dominate events for years, Michael Johnson 400m and now look at Bolt over 3 Olympics? I mean sure Semenya would dominate for a long time, but at least it may be natural talent for a change!

Haha. That's a bit naïve don't you think? Setting aside all of the complex gender issues with Caster, why on earth would you assume she is competing on bread and water?

Because she actually can?

 

[lean mean &green]

Re: Re:

Because she actually can?"

Maybe so but you're missing the point. Expecting a spirit of fair play is a sizable assumption in the atmosphere of world class athletics. I try to apply skepticism more evenly on "clinic" related mattters.

 

[Benotti69]

Re: Re:

Because she actually can?"

Maybe so but you're missing the point. Expecting a spirit of fair play is a sizable assumption in the atmosphere of world class athletics. I try to apply skepticism more evenly on "clinic" related mattters.

I dont expect anything form the powers that be in sport.

I was just commenting that they claim she has an unfair 'natural' advantage and want to ban her for that.

Hypocrites. That is what sport is about, those with natural talent and ability shine! Not the best dopers, with the best doping doctors and best dope!!

I dont know whether Semenya dopes, if i had to guess, then she does, but that is not why they want to ban her.

 

[Rob27172]

Re:

...no-one seeks to ban semenya.........just limit high levels of testosterone if the athlete wishes

to compete as a woman......

Mark L

But she is a woman !! So why should she have to change her bilogical make up to compete as one.

The equivalent is telling anyone with a hematocrit level above 45 that they need to reduce it before being able to compete with normal humans.

What about allowing men to take testosterone if they are not at the AVERAGE level of an olympian to see if that levels the playing field

or maybe we should ban any man with a testosterone level above AVERAGE to make sure they dont have an advantage.

Hell while we are at it lets ban tall people from swimming as they have longer levers and that is an unnatural advantage that the rest of us dont have.

Likewise we should also ban anyone with with long legs from competing in the high jump - unfair advantage.

If we start going down the route of banning people because they have an unfair advantage over another human when it is a NATURAL OCCURENCE - then where do we stop.

However we could look at the alternative thought on this - they want to ban her because she is not pretty enough to sell sponsorship and make money for the games or the sponsors.
Guarantee you if she looked like maria sharapova they would be saying it is all natural and there is nothing they can morally do about it.

 

[Benotti69]

Re:

...no-one seeks to ban semenya.........just limit high levels of testosterone if the athlete wishes

to compete as a woman......

Mark L

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/11/caster-semenya-sebastian-coe-iaaf-cas-testosterone-olympics

'Sebastian Coe has indicated the IAAF is to challenge the ruling that suspended the monitoring of female athletes with higher than usual levels of testosterone.'

Why does Coe not get on top of doping and make a real change to sport and level the playing field down to natural ability?

Bet if Semenya was anglo-saxon she would be celebrated as a natural superstar!

 

[buckle]

Boxers are forced to fight within weight categories. Perhaps endurance athletes should be rated by BP. As for the SA athlete, I think they should buy her off.

 

[gooner]

Re: Re:

...no-one seeks to ban semenya.........just limit high levels of testosterone if the athlete wishes

to compete as a woman......

Mark L

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/11/caster-semenya-sebastian-coe-iaaf-cas-testosterone-olympics

'Sebastian Coe has indicated the IAAF is to challenge the ruling that suspended the monitoring of female athletes with higher than usual levels of testosterone.'

Why does Coe not get on top of doping and make a real change to sport and level the playing field down to natural ability?

Bet if Semenya was anglo-saxon she would be celebrated as a natural superstar!

And Ross Tucker then? Who by the way I'm in agreement with on this.

This is a lot more complex than the way you suggest. Nothing to do with anglo-saxon as you say.

 

[El Pistolero]

I'm going to be blunt, but as long as Semenya has a vagina she should be allowed to compete. It's that simple.

Otherwise we can start banning people from competition for all kinds of arbitrary reasons... Isn't being a genetic freak kind of the whole point of being the best?

 

[TMP402]

Three Olympic champions from China are among 11 weightlifters who face being stripped of their medals after failing retests of their Beijing 2008 doping samples.

The 11 medallists tested positive for a range of banned substances, says the International Weightlifting Federation.

Among those to fail are gold medallists Cao Lei, Liu Chunhong and Chen Xiexia.

The other eight medallists to test positive are from Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Ukraine.

 

[GreasyChain]

Re:

I'm going to be blunt, but as long as Semenya has a vagina she should be allowed to compete. It's that simple.

Otherwise we can start banning people from competition for all kinds of arbitrary reasons... Isn't being a genetic freak kind of the whole point of being the best?

Caster Semenya is a man who was born with a rare condition that meant his genitals didn't form properly. That doesn't make him a woman. Not now and not ever. Just because modern SJWs and PC nazis insist that anybody can be anything they want doesn't mean I have to accept their deluded fantasies.

Bruce Jenner claims to be a woman. A woman couldn't have won the 1976 Decathlon. So clearly Jenner is just mad. Shame for him but meh. The problem comes if you imagine young Bruce deciding to call himself Caitlin in Montreal and winning the Pentathlon. According to the Semenya apologists there's no problem. He can call himself she and that's that. Which destroys any point in having separate events for women and bothering about drug testing for female athletes. CS has more testosterone in his body than poor bearded Tammy but apparently that's ok and any real women being soundly thrashed should just stop whining.

Odd how that attitude doesn't apply to Lance Armstrong thrashing everybody.

Is Sarah Storey not a woman as part of her body didn't form properly? What's the difference? I can't see any difference. But what do I know. I've only got a biology degree and not a day release certificate in gender studies from <edited by mods> poly.

 

[PremierAndrew]

Re: Re:

I'm going to be blunt, but as long as Semenya has a vagina she should be allowed to compete. It's that simple.

Otherwise we can start banning people from competition for all kinds of arbitrary reasons... Isn't being a genetic freak kind of the whole point of being the best?

Caster Semenya is a man who was born with a rare condition that meant his genitals didn't form properly.

Ok so why did 'he' suddenly develop female genitalia instead

 

[RobbieCanuck]

Re: Re:

I'm going to be blunt, but as long as Semenya has a vagina she should be allowed to compete. It's that simple.

Otherwise we can start banning people from competition for all kinds of arbitrary reasons... Isn't being a genetic freak kind of the whole point of being the best?

Caster Semenya is a man who was born with a rare condition that meant his genitals didn't form properly.

Ok so why did 'he' suddenly develop female genitalia instead

Caster Semenya is not a man. She is biologically inter-sex. She was born without a womb or ovaries but with internal testes that produce more testosterone than the "normal" woman produces. She had no control over her biological circumstances. She identifies as a woman. I agree with El Pistolero. Every elite athlete has some biological advantage such as height, the length of the arms or legs or the size of ones hands etc. The Olympic Code is based on inclusiveness and not exclusiveness and she should be allowed compete just as she is. She is after all, first and foremost a human being! She deserves her success!

 

[Amazinmets87]

http://leastthing.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/more-on-justin-gatlins-age-defying-times.html?m=1

 

[gooner]

Interesting read on weightlifting in China.

Whistle-blowers are rare but Zhou Chunlan, a onetime weightlifting national champion, remembers swallowing pills during training without having any idea what they were. Eventually, she grew a beard. “Everything is for the gold medals,” she tells TIME, of the Chinese sports system, which she says filled her body with so many male hormones that she became infertile.

If Liu and the other Chinese weightlifters are stripped of their Beijing gold medals, the question remains: Did they have any choice in any doping? Liu, who was originally selected as a judo athlete, has toiled in the state sports system since she was a little girl. (Four years ago, she was receiving less than $10,000 in annual salary for her record-breaking contributions to the state.) Eight years ago, I visited a shabby sports school in eastern Shandong province where young weightlifters spent the days in a clanging gym in lieu of primary school. After training, the kids, with their callused and chalk-stained hands, walked up to a table lined with paper cups. Each cup held a few pills, which they swallowed, one after the other, with gulps of warm water.

What were the pills for? I asked one girl. “It’s medicine to make me strong,” she told me. An alarmed coach intervened, described the pills as “natural herbs” and tried to hustle me from the room. When I asked if I could take one of the pills home with me — I wanted to see whether it really was just herbs — he refused. His excuse? They were too expensive to waste on someone not in the Chinese sports system.

http://time.com/4465661/china-olympics-weightlifting-doping/?xid=time_socialflow_facebook

 

[Zypherov]

Interesting read on weightlifting in China.

Whistle-blowers are rare but Zhou Chunlan, a onetime weightlifting national champion, remembers swallowing pills during training without having any idea what they were. Eventually, she grew a beard. “Everything is for the gold medals,” she tells TIME, of the Chinese sports system, which she says filled her body with so many male hormones that she became infertile.

If Liu and the other Chinese weightlifters are stripped of their Beijing gold medals, the question remains: Did they have any choice in any doping? Liu, who was originally selected as a judo athlete, has toiled in the state sports system since she was a little girl. (Four years ago, she was receiving less than $10,000 in annual salary for her record-breaking contributions to the state.) Eight years ago, I visited a shabby sports school in eastern Shandong province where young weightlifters spent the days in a clanging gym in lieu of primary school. After training, the kids, with their callused and chalk-stained hands, walked up to a table lined with paper cups. Each cup held a few pills, which they swallowed, one after the other, with gulps of warm water.

What were the pills for? I asked one girl. “It’s medicine to make me strong,” she told me. An alarmed coach intervened, described the pills as “natural herbs” and tried to hustle me from the room. When I asked if I could take one of the pills home with me — I wanted to see whether it really was just herbs — he refused. His excuse? They were too expensive to waste on someone not in the Chinese sports system.

http://time.com/4465661/china-olympics-weightlifting-doping/?xid=time_socialflow_facebook

With State sponsored doping taking place in Russia, it's definite that it's taking place in Communist China. Are there many brave journalists who would venture into China to uncover the truth. What China achieved at the Beijing Olympics especially in weightlifting was unnatural. Who knows what the level of corruption is in China in sports. But I would venture to guess that it is widespread.

 

[Rob27172]

Re: Re:

[quote="[ Caster Semenya is a man who was born with a rare condition that meant his genitals didn't form properly. That doesn't make him a woman. Not now and not ever. Just because modern SJWs and PC nazis insist that anybody can be anything they want doesn't mean I have to accept their deluded fantasies.

Bruce Jenner claims to be a woman. A woman couldn't have won the 1976 Decathlon. So clearly Jenner is just mad. Shame for him but meh. The problem comes if you imagine young Bruce deciding to call himself Caitlin in Montreal and winning the Pentathlon. According to the Semenya apologists there's no problem. He can call himself she and that's that. Which destroys any point in having separate events for women and bothering about drug testing for female athletes. CS has more testosterone in his body than poor bearded Tammy but apparently that's ok and any real women being soundly thrashed should just stop whining.

Odd how that attitude doesn't apply to Lance Armstrong thrashing everybody.

Is Sarah Storey not a woman as part of her body didn't form properly? What's the difference? I can't see any difference. But what do I know. I've only got a biology degree and not a day release certificate in gender studies from wankstain poly.[/quote]

You might have a biology degree but with that post you also prove you have a massive bogitry problem as well.

Sarah Storey does not have male genitalia and so is therefore not a man. Quite a simple answer to a ridiculous statement.

Caster was forced to undergo gender testing and the DOCTORS (who have actual degrees and are proffessionals) came back and said she was biologically a woman. That should be the end of it.

She is a woman that has a lot of testosterone

Just like you have a lot of vile ideas about certain humans

Luckily she can run and will hopefully be seen as a great ambassador and athlete for the way she has handled herself through all of this

While you - well you will always be a bigotted little man behind a keyboard.

 

[Lyon]

Interesting read on weightlifting in China.

If Liu and the other Chinese weightlifters are stripped of their Beijing gold medals, the question remains: Did they have any choice in any doping? Liu, who was originally selected as a judo athlete, has toiled in the state sports system since she was a little girl. (Four years ago, she was receiving less than $10,000 in annual salary for her record-breaking contributions to the state.)

A good salary in most of China and well worth fighting for. It sure beats quiting school to work on your parents farm (who have already moved to the city to work as street-sweepers so you have to live with your grandparents)

As to the question of choice, I think it is safe to say that you either go with the program or get kicked out. Most athletes are selected at a very young age, are often from the countryside, don't know any other way to make it, are told by parents/relatives to be grateful for the opportunity, are schooled to trust their coaches absolutely etc.

In short: Chinese athletes are as brainwashed as any western school kid but with less choises.

 

[gooner]

Re: Re:

I'm going to be blunt, but as long as Semenya has a vagina she should be allowed to compete. It's that simple.

Otherwise we can start banning people from competition for all kinds of arbitrary reasons... Isn't being a genetic freak kind of the whole point of being the best?

Caster Semenya is a man who was born with a rare condition that meant his genitals didn't form properly.

Ok so why did 'he' suddenly develop female genitalia instead

Caster Semenya is not a man. She is biologically inter-sex. She was born without a womb or ovaries but with internal testes that produce more testosterone than the "normal" woman produces. She had no control over her biological circumstances. She identifies as a woman. I agree with El Pistolero. Every elite athlete has some biological advantage such as height, the length of the arms or legs or the size of ones hands etc. The Olympic Code is based on inclusiveness and not exclusiveness and she should be allowed compete just as she is. She is after all, first and foremost a human being! She deserves her success!

True, but not all women are biologically intersex. Women's and men's sport are categorized for good reason. Performance and the difference in athletic sport would be testosterone. This gives a big advantage over her other competitors. It is simply not the same as saying all top female athletes would have some advantage be it the length or their arms or legs. All Caster's competitors have those physical parts, but not all are biologically intersex. Why not get rid of weight divisions in boxing then?

No one is saying she shouldn't perform, it's that there should be a limit on testosterone in these circumstances.

 

[Nellyspania]

Re: Re:

lmao ITV report on how Bolt is so great. He eats yams and puts in "hard graft". It mentioned that 21/30 fastest 100m times were by dopers.

Conclusion: "Usain Bolt has probably saved the reputation of his sport"

I've just scanned through the top 100m times and it seems the only person not to test positive apart from bolt in the top 50 is maurice greene!

What about Frankie Fredericks?

Calvin Smith?

 

[sniper]

Was reading about Australia implementing new stricter antidoping legislation quite.recently. I believe they had a rather disappointing Olympics didn't they?

 

[Zypherov]

Re: Re:

lmao ITV report on how Bolt is so great. He eats yams and puts in "hard graft". It mentioned that 21/30 fastest 100m times were by dopers.

Conclusion: "Usain Bolt has probably saved the reputation of his sport"

I've just scanned through the top 100m times and it seems the only person not to test positive apart from bolt in the top 50 is maurice greene!

There were doping allegations made against Maurice Greene, which first appeared in the New York Times.

Explosive 'Boldon letter' adds to Greene crisis
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2008/apr/20/ussport.drugsinsport

The author, clearly a sprinter, deals furiously with allegations by Angel Guillermo Heredia, a Mexican former discus thrower, that Greene gave him up to $40,000 for advice, steroid creams, EPO, insulin and stimulants in 2003 and 2004.

In an interview, Ben Johnson once claimed that his best 100 metre time clean was 10.18 seconds. After years of steroid use and heavy training we all know what happened in Seoul. Yes, that now infamous 9.79 seconds in the final.

We have that famous quote from Carl Lewis on Usain Bolt.

Carl Lewis raises doubts over Usain Bolt's record-setting performances
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/athletics/2826070/Carl-Lewis-questions-Usain-Bolts-record-setting-performances.html

"The reality is that if I were running now, and had the performances I had in my past, I would expect them to say something. I wouldn't even be offended at the question. So when people ask me about Bolt, I say he could be the greatest athlete of all-time. But for someone to run 10.03 one year and 9.69 the next, if you don't question that in a sport that has the reputation it has right now, you're a fool. Period."

 

[therhodeo]

Re: Re:

I'm going to be blunt, but as long as Semenya has a vagina she should be allowed to compete. It's that simple.

Otherwise we can start banning people from competition for all kinds of arbitrary reasons... Isn't being a genetic freak kind of the whole point of being the best?

Caster Semenya is a man who was born with a rare condition that meant his genitals didn't form properly. That doesn't make him a woman. Not now and not ever. Just because modern SJWs and PC nazis insist that anybody can be anything they want doesn't mean I have to accept their deluded fantasies.

Bruce Jenner claims to be a woman. A woman couldn't have won the 1976 Decathlon. So clearly Jenner is just mad. Shame for him but meh. The problem comes if you imagine young Bruce deciding to call himself Caitlin in Montreal and winning the Pentathlon. According to the Semenya apologists there's no problem. He can call himself she and that's that. Which destroys any point in having separate events for women and bothering about drug testing for female athletes. CS has more testosterone in his body than poor bearded Tammy but apparently that's ok and any real women being soundly thrashed should just stop whining.

Odd how that attitude doesn't apply to Lance Armstrong thrashing everybody.

Is Sarah Storey not a woman as part of her body didn't form properly? What's the difference? I can't see any difference. But what do I know. I've only got a biology degree and not a day release certificate in gender studies from <edited by mods> poly.

Any way you cut it Semenya is not a "he". Does she have a condition that puts sports governing bodies in a tough position? Yes. Does that make her a male? No. This is a much more nuanced issue than bigoted people like yourself want it to be.

 

[El Pistolero]

Re: Re:

lmao ITV report on how Bolt is so great. He eats yams and puts in "hard graft". It mentioned that 21/30 fastest 100m times were by dopers.

Conclusion: "Usain Bolt has probably saved the reputation of his sport"

I've just scanned through the top 100m times and it seems the only person not to test positive apart from bolt in the top 50 is maurice greene!

There were doping allegations made against Maurice Greene, which first appeared in the New York Times.

Explosive 'Boldon letter' adds to Greene crisis
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2008/apr/20/ussport.drugsinsport

The author, clearly a sprinter, deals furiously with allegations by Angel Guillermo Heredia, a Mexican former discus thrower, that Greene gave him up to $40,000 for advice, steroid creams, EPO, insulin and stimulants in 2003 and 2004.

In an interview, Ben Johnson once claimed that his best 100 metre time clean was 10.18 seconds. After years of steroid use and heavy training we all know what happened in Seoul. Yes, that now infamous 9.79 seconds in the final.

We have that famous quote from Carl Lewis on Usain Bolt.

Carl Lewis raises doubts over Usain Bolt's record-setting performances
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/athletics/2826070/Carl-Lewis-questions-Usain-Bolts-record-setting-performances.html

"The reality is that if I were running now, and had the performances I had in my past, I would expect them to say something. I wouldn't even be offended at the question. So when people ask me about Bolt, I say he could be the greatest athlete of all-time. But for someone to run 10.03 one year and 9.69 the next, if you don't question that in a sport that has the reputation it has right now, you're a fool. Period."

Carl Lewis is a major hypocrite. Even back in the day he was constantly accusing others who beat him of doping use, while we know now that he tested positive himself 3 times in 1988. He really should shut his mouth.