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The Olympics and doping

Dec 30, 2010
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I previously noted that Spain had a dramatic improvement in performance at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics over previous Olympics. Canada had their best Olympics, by far (up to that point in time) at their home Vacouver Olympics in 2010. Britain more than doubled their medal haul between Athens in 2004, and London 2012. Russia more than doubled their medal haul from the last winter Olympics in Vancouver, compared to what they got here in Sochi.

I know that there may be other reasons, besides doping (and I am sure many of you will list those other reasons for me ;)), but how much of the performance increase by the home country do you suspect is due to doping ?
 
Dec 30, 2010
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andynonomous said:
...I know that there may be other reasons, besides doping (and I am sure many of you will list those other reasons for me ]

spalco said:
I'm sure a large part of that can be attributed to increased funding in general, due to a desire to do well in their home games, and even some of the more obscure sports getting support they previously didn't have.


Thanks, but I am really wondering HOW MUCH do YOU THINK doping factors in. I am not looking for the typical excuses that those in denial would bring up. Some of these other reasons may be legitimate, but certainly do not explain away all of these dramatic improvements.

The home country does not want to be humiliated with the world watching. Don't you think at least some of these peculiar performance increases are due to doping ?
 
Oct 16, 2010
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Andynonomous said:
Thanks, but I am really wondering HOW MUCH do YOU THINK doping factors in. I am not looking for the typical excuses that those in denial would bring up. Some of these other reasons may be legitimate, but certainly do not explain away all of these dramatic improvements.

The home country does not want to be humiliated with the world watching. Don't you think at least some of these peculiar performance increases are due to doping ?
I believe for most sports the benefits of doping are thrice as important as other factors such as marginal gains or training facilities or home motivation.
Home advantage in itself means little, me thinks, but better funding means better programs!
Look at the dutch iceskaters.
theyre not at home, yet blowing everybody away.
those results too are down to funding=superior dopjng
of course other factors play a role, but doping is the first thing to factor in.
 
Doping is rarely the only answer. Sure other factors matter, especially if you believe like the experts (real doping experts, not fanboy journalists with typewriters or athletes scared of doping discussion taking away their income) that doping is already very heavy at the top so one can't just win purely by doping.

Increased funding matters in smaller sports. Increased motivation can too but again depends on the sport, in the top ones everyone is already motivated anyway.

Also increased access to facilities as say in the sliding centre at winter Olympics.

However such things don't really explain improvements at the most popular sports or explain mod career transformations that just happen to occur to guys during the cycle when their nation is going to host the Olympics, so pointing away from doping to those factors is itself flawed.

At the end of the day when it comes to the medal table, the stakes for Olympic hosts are so so so high, for the governments in countries hosting the Olympics, the financial stakes so high one has to be pretty naive and imo stupid even, to think that host countries at some level wouldn't resort to doping, and maybe negotiate favourable terms for doing so. Getting 30 golds or whatever in 2012 was seen here as the greatest thing to ever happen to the nation. Worth billions in increased optimism and apparently single handedly increased the nations average life expectancy. Putin offered ovechkin 30 million just to play in Russia +bought a skater from another country. The medals table matters so much to host countries, doping has to be involved.
 
Aug 18, 2012
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spalco said:
I'm sure a large part of that can be attributed to increased funding in general, due to a desire to do well in their home games, and even some of the more obscure sports getting support they previously didn't have.

I agree with this generally but in the case of team GB was a bigger factor than for most.
 
Oct 16, 2010
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Good post and balanced view hitch
indeed sport has become ridiculohsly, yes scaringly important to nation politics, which is arguably the single most important reason why world wide antidoping efforts are such a joke.

edit, that said, i was positively surprised by the german positive. Is it wada doing the testng or was this a russian pun against germany?
 
In home Olympics, you can scare the competition into being all but clean as a whistle. See what Russia did. Sacrificed a lot of national athletes, albeit not the greatest Sochi prodigies. But the world knew they meant business. Many disappointed at some stage, especially in the distance events.

Duerr didn't even dare stick around. And rather than save him the travel, he chose to dope over having optimal legal preparation.
 
Jan 23, 2013
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In the Olympics, the host nation is guaranteed an entry in every event. Other nations have to qualify for events via tournaments, etc. So, the "home team" can have their athletes peak for the games while other nations' athletes have to peak for trials, then for the games themselves. In physiology sports (as opposed to team strategy sports) this has a significant effect.

Athletes from host nations have the advantage of training at the venue in which the event will be held. This makes a bigger difference when the venues are varied (i.e. mountains for skiing) than it does for arena sports like track, skating, basketball, etc.

Jet-lag plays a factor when the host nation is half-way around the globe and travel times are compressed.

It would be interesting to see statistics for doping positives to determine if a softer hand is applied to the host nation's athletes. Does anyone have those figures?
 
Oct 16, 2010
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TheBean said:
good points

It would be interesting to see statistics for doping positives to determine if a softer hand is applied to the host nation's athletes.
this is most likely the case, in various direct and indirect ways.
just one example: most chaperones are local fanboys.
 
The Sochi bobsleigh track was closed all year to everyone except the Russian team to train on :)
Not sure about the ski tracks, but they were quite specific in terms of waxing (base of man-made snow) and technical corners, both for XC and biathlon.

There are ways to get your advantage as host nation. I had not thought of the wildcard entry, just having trials. Indeed a difference in preparation, also mentally.

I still think the biggest doping effect is having the competition be cumbered in their doping efforts, and scared of your aggression in catching them in the act.

How much influence does the host nation have with anti-doping proceedings? Can they influence labs, have specific samples go missing, etc?
 
Sep 25, 2009
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'the host nation advantage', besides the traditional cliches and a doping angle, in the case of russia has several more explanations:

firstly, returning to the nation-wide obsession with sports participation and pushing its popularity to the general public, is nothing more or less than a strategic, long-term proven soviet model of the state-sponsored project. the purpose is political - a distraction from the authoritarian reality and quelling the young peoples energy in the 'other' direction. petro-rubles and the shrewd putin made it a reality. thus, i dont think that sochi was a one-timer...

secondly, the lull in the soviet/russian sports domination is easily explainable by the very recent disintegration of the ussr. it was only 20 yo. there was a general collapse of everything, not just the funding for sports. it is OVER.

thirdly, look at their gold medal count - nearly 40% are in the obscure sports (by russian measures) earned by the recently naturalized foreigners (read: purchased gold medals...a korean and an american yielding 5 golds of 13.

and lastly, being the host, they are super sensitive to any domestic doping scandal. does not mean they suddenly stopped, rather, it is 'decentralized'.
i do not believe that the sochi dope testing was influenced by the russian manipulation as it would challenge the traditional dominance of the ioc in the area. the sochi testing lab was based on a moscow wada lab, but about 2/3 were the international staff. if the lab benefited their home athletes, it was probably in the earlier phase by advising how to avoid testing positive. understand, it would be a state secret if it was followed.
 
Andynonomous said:
... Canada had their best Olympics, by far (up to that point in time) at their home Va(n)couver Olympics in 2010. ...

I know that there may be other reasons, besides doping (and I am sure many of you will list those other reasons for me ;)), but how much of the performance increase by the home country do you suspect is due to doping ?


First:

At least part of the Canadian scenario has to be explained by the fact that Dudley Do Right was the only country to ever host an Olympics, and not win a gold medal. Emphasizing futility by doing so twice.

So, just like the old yarn about 100 chimpanzees, 100 typewriters and 100 years, if you give the Canadians enough chances they may not write Shakespeare, but they might actually win a gold medal.

Second:

Who needs doping when you have judged figure skating?

Of course, they probably dope too.


The Hitch said:
Doping is rarely the only answer. ...

Also increased access to facilities as say in the sliding centre at winter Olympics.

.... Putin offered ovechkin 30 million just to play in Russia +bought a skater from another country. The medals table matters so much to host countries, doping has to be involved.

Exclusive access = HUGE

Ovechkin = another question mark in his palmares.

Dave.
 
TheBean said:
In the Olympics, the host nation is guaranteed an entry in every event. Other nations have to qualify for events via tournaments, etc. So, the "home team" can have their athletes peak for the games while other nations' athletes have to peak for trials, then for the games themselves. In physiology sports (as opposed to team strategy sports) this has a significant effect.

Athletes from host nations have the advantage of training at the venue in which the event will be held. This makes a bigger difference when the venues are varied (i.e. mountains for skiing) than it does for arena sports like track, skating, basketball, etc.

Budget, budget, budget! When a country hosts, the budget for Olympic sports spikes. So, athletes just getting by can actually not worry about the rent. That's for many sports.
 
Lol Winter Olympics in the Netherlands. Maastricht 2022 anyone? Get a bid together. Alpine skiing from SnowWorld Landgraaf, XC and biathlon from Berg en Terblijt (Cauberg?!) or Heijenrath, ski jumping off the Gulperberg, not sure where all the fancy snow dancing and other assorted X-Games spin-offs that they've started giving Olympic medals for could go though, don't think Landgraaf is big enough for all of them.
 
Libertine Seguros said:
Lol Winter Olympics in the Netherlands. Maastricht 2022 anyone? Get a bid together. Alpine skiing from SnowWorld Landgraaf, XC and biathlon from Berg en Terblijt (Cauberg?!) or Heijenrath, ski jumping off the Gulperberg, not sure where all the fancy snow dancing and other assorted X-Games spin-offs that they've started giving Olympic medals for could go though, don't think Landgraaf is big enough for all of them.

Except costs have ramped up JUST FOR THE BID into 50 million dollars. Not one shovel breaking ground. Just the bid. Win a bid? Above 50 billion in USD.

The basis of the graft is public funds pass into IOC officials pockets. Recall the IOC requires publicly funded event assurances into the 100's of millions dollars for what is supposed to be a privately funded project. What's nice is that many locales are catching onto the scam.

I occasionally post stuff here: http://forum.cyclingnews.com/showthread.php?t=15550
 
Andynonomous said:
I previously noted that Spain had a dramatic improvement in performance at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics over previous Olympics. Canada had their best Olympics, by far (up to that point in time) at their home Vacouver Olympics in 2010. Britain more than doubled their medal haul between Athens in 2004, and London 2012. Russia more than doubled their medal haul from the last winter Olympics in Vancouver, compared to what they got here in Sochi.

I know that there may be other reasons, besides doping (and I am sure many of you will list those other reasons for me ;)), but how much of the performance increase by the home country do you suspect is due to doping ?

Miniscule to none. In Canada the Canadian Olympic Committee started the Own the Podium program and our government and private business dumped a ton of money into training specifically to improve the calibre of our athletes for 2010.

Not a single Canadian tested positive or was suspected for a non analytical violation.

Your wild speculation about doping is just the usual garbage on the Clinic's useless doping site that sees dopers behind every performance with NO evidence. Put up or shut up.
 
RobbieCanuck said:
Not a single Canadian tested positive or was suspected for a non analytical violation.
You are on a cycling forum. So answer me this mathematical question.

How many times in total, have, Miguel Indurain, Bjarne Riis, Jan Ullrich, Marco Pantani, Lance Armstrong, Alejandro Valverde, and Ivan Basso tested positive?

Every single one has either been sanctioned for doping or has admitted doping, and between them they won every TDF for 15 years and a number of other gts and important races.

Ill give you a clue, you don't need a calculator to get the answer. IIRC the answer is 1 - Indurain for Sambutamol and he may have actually used it for asthma.

So is not testing positive evidence of being clean?:cool:

Your wild speculation about doping is just the usual garbage on the Clinic's useless doping site that sees dopers behind every performance with NO evidence. Put up or shut up.

What would you say to this anti doping expert saying 60% of olympians dope?
http://www.dw.de/simon-all-sports-are-prone-to-doping/a-17391410
 
The Hitch said:
You are on a cycling forum. So answer me this mathematical question.

How many times in total, have, Miguel Indurain, Bjarne Riis, Jan Ullrich, Marco Pantani, Lance Armstrong, Alejandro Valverde, and Ivan Basso tested positive?

Every single one has either been sanctioned for doping or has admitted doping, and between them they won every TDF for 15 years and a number of other gts and important races.

Ill give you a clue, you don't need a calculator to get the answer. IIRC the answer is 1 - Indurain for Sambutamol and he may have actually used it for asthma.

So is not testing positive evidence of being clean?:cool:

What would you say to this anti doping expert saying 60% of olympians dope?
http://www.dw.de/simon-all-sports-are-prone-to-doping/a-17391410

What a pile of crap. This is a cycling forum but in case you missed it the subject of the thread is the suggestion that in the Olympics of 2010, 2012 and 2014 because the home country won the majority of medals they must of been doping. Keep on topic

Of course hundreds of cycling dopers didn't test positive and later fessed up. The knew how to beat the tests. But what we are talking about is cycling, the WORST sport in the world for doping together with a culture, a mentality that doping was the only answer to fame, money and keeping ones job. Every one without an ounce of morals jumped on the band wagon on the fallacious assumption the other guys were doing it and so must we. It would level the playing field, which of course is a pile of rubbish.

And what the hell an irrelevant mathematical question has to do with the point of this thread?

There is not one iota, one scintilla, one miniscule shred of evidence that any Canadian medal winner was on PEDs in 2010. So quit with the arcane argument suggested in your comment that because Canada won 26 medals in 2010 they were doping. You are paranoid about dopers behind every tree.

I would say, 1. Name your experts. 2 Give me the research 3. Show me how the 60 % figure applies specifically to the 2010, 2012 and 2014 Games, not in some speculative way but empirically.
 
RobbieCanuck said:
Miniscule to none. In Canada the Canadian Olympic Committee started the Own the Podium program and our government and private business dumped a ton of money into training specifically to improve the calibre of our athletes for 2010.

Not a single Canadian tested positive or was suspected for a non analytical violation.

Your wild speculation about doping is just the usual garbage on the Clinic's useless doping site that sees dopers behind every performance with NO evidence. Put up or shut up.

Ahahahahahahahahah, you are Canadian, eh? Let's look back and see how many Canadians have been caught (even in a country with virtually no OOC testing for any sport), hint it's not really OOC testing if your National ADA makes an appointment to drop by Mooseballitoba to test you friday after next, if that's good for you.
 
No, first you show me evidence for the outrageous statement you just made that " cycling is the WORST sport in the world for doping".

Explain that to me. Why would one particular strand of sport have all the doping and all other sports 0:confused:

In fact the evidence available - Operation Puero, showed that doping is evenly distributed within sport.

Who are my experts. How about **** Pound for one, the ****ing head of the World Anti doping Agency for years, and someone who clearly balances out Canada's average Iq from the likes of you dragging it down.

You have any evidence to the contrary or theories as to why doping would be heavily concentrated within one sport?
 
Hugh Januss said:
Ahahahahahahahahah, you are Canadian, eh? Let's look back and see how many Canadians have been caught (even in a country with virtually no OOC testing for any sport), hint it's not really OOC testing if your National ADA makes an appointment to drop by Mooseballitoba to test you friday after next, if that's good for you.

Canada, hmmm, are there any Canadians who doped. Well theres Ryder Hesjedal, who's a cyclist so obviously he doped, anyone else? Well Ben Johnson, but as Robbie just explained to us, only cycling has a culture of doping, so he must have been a cyclist too
 
The Hitch said:
No, first you show me evidence for the outrageous statement you just made that " cycling is the WORST sport in the world for doping".

Explain that to me. Why would one particular strand of sport have all the doping and all other sports 0:confused:

In fact the evidence available - Operation Puero, showed that doping is evenly distributed within sport.

Who are my experts. How about **** Pound for one, the ****ing head of the World Anti doping Agency for years, and someone who clearly balances out Canada's average Iq from the likes of you dragging it down.

You have any evidence to the contrary or theories as to why doping would be heavily concentrated within one sport?

It's the huge money in cycling as opposed to the underpaid sports like Baseball, Football(s), Hockey, Tennis, Basketball............well like that.
FFS they have busted Curlers before.
 
Hugh Januss said:
Ahahahahahahahahah, you are Canadian, eh? Let's look back and see how many Canadians have been caught (even in a country with virtually no OOC testing for any sport), hint it's not really OOC testing if your National ADA makes an appointment to drop by Mooseballitoba to test you friday after next, if that's good for you.

Sorry to argue, as this is all quite entertaining, but I thought I should pick a nit here.

Yes, there is OOC testing in Canada. I have been one degree of freedom removed from two separate cases in two different sports within the past year(ish).

One was clean.

And, oops, the other was a cyclist I believe.

Darn. Dirtiest sport. Even in Canada, eh.

So, yes, if a doping positive is the definitive discriminator, then Ben apparently must have been a cyclist.

And, if he wasn't, then Shep's BS about his first and only time experience with EPO along with GJ's crap about being too emotionally distraught to show up for doping control, when put together - along with Ryder and Michael and, and... make Ben look like he was in kindergarten playing in a sandbox all by himself.

Certainly, we could characterize him as a non-cycling aberration. Just like Reefer Rob.

As for the entertainment, I would suggest never going so far as to claim that there was no doping in 2010, even if none was detected.

That.just.totally.defies.all.logic.and.evidence.to.the.contrary.

But, please continue!!

Dave.
 

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