While I still have no faith that any athletics winners are clean, I don't like how Jamaica is being singled out as being worse just because they are dominating. A previous poster claimed this dominance by a small nation is "statistically impossible" without dope, and asked for an alternate explanation, so:
1. Unlikely dominance in a single sport by a small population is often
cultural: eg. Norway=nordic skiing, West Indies=cricket, Cuba=boxing. Canada with 1/10 the population of the USA still produces 5 times as many professional hockey players. Look at tiny Belgium: any good cyclists ever come from there?
Athletics is also not just a way of life in Jamaica, it is a way out of poverty.
2. It can be enhanced by
genetics: the best sprinters have west-African heritage, which explains the very obvious/politically incorrect racial makeup of practically every 100m final since Valeri Borzov cleaned up in '72. Jamaicans are largely descended from slaves, which came from West Africa. There are entire books about this stuff.
3. It can be enhanced by where a nation devotes its
resources. Jamaica pumps almost all of their sporting money into athletics. USA, Russia, China spread theirs around. Canada is one of the few nations to prioritize the winter olympics over the summer, but this resulted in Canadian dominance in the 2010 Olympics. Focus where the odds of success are highest. For Jamaica it is sprinting. The UK has certainly been prioritizing cycling lately, and look at their results (could be a bad example, actually
).
In Jamaica's very, very first Olympics, back when their population was half of what it is now, they managed to get gold & silver in the 400m. In 1952 they were 1st, 2nd again, and the defending champ was 5th! What are the odds of a tiny nation smaller than most major cities having the THREE fastest long-sprinters in the entire world? Were they doping in 1948 and 1952? Not likely!