So is Sir Wiggo a cheat then?

[Destination]

Indeed, the main part of the reason we are not all juicing constantly in our life is that these drugs have sideeffects over time.
Flo-Jo anyone?
Arnie heart valves?
and onwards, so those who wish to compete, should be able to do it safely, in an environment where no one else does.

 

[jpaul]

part of the reason we are not all juicing constantly in our life is that these drugs have sideeffects over time.

they haven't really come up with a good intelligence enhancing drug yet ? would we know if they had (a la limitless)



re: Mo : It's the hypocrisy with respect to the Russians too, they just didn't have the money to do it under the radar.


tears welling up
Mo Farah tackles tough topics
Posted by Athletics Weekly | Feb 22, 2020 |

Farah and Lough believe the fall-out from the Salazar scandal has led to him being unable to cash in fully on his 2016 Olympic triumphs. “There’s been a lot of stuff, financially and emotionally, where I have suffered a lot,” he told The Times.

“I didn’t have a clue,” he says. “For me [when news broke of the ban last September] it was like, wow, four years. I was thinking, ‘Oh my God’. I know I never did anything. I know he was my coach. But to put up with this year after year, it’s not you, it’s the coach, but it’s you it is aimed at, is quite frustrating.”

Farah also explained why he didn’t leave Salazar more swiftly. When he was still with the Oregon Project, Farah says Salazar “hadn’t been found guilty”, adding: “And it wasn’t just about me. As a single man I could have just said ‘move’. But I had three kids — actually I think my son was just born — I had four kids, three at school, my wife’s there, we’d bought a house. I’m not just going to say, ‘There’s been some allegations, we’re going.’”

down to his last pair of Nike vaporfly

 

[Maccy]

Damn... it was a bold claim and Maccy was absolutely right to ask for a source.... but fair enough - you did call it!

Damn you dowie!

 

[One More Solo]

Simple solution to stop cheating, just get rid of the doping rules and let them pump whatever they want into their systems. I'd love to see somebody running 100m in 5s or doing 100mph on a bike.

People are naive to think that’s not far off what we’re already seeing. It’s not totally unfettered obviously but studies like the following:

https://www.frontiersin.org/article...=EMLX&utm_campaign=PRD_FEOPS_20170000_ARTICLE
https://www.parliament.uk/documents...t/WADA's-athlete-doping-prevalence-survey.pdf

Suggest the prevalence of doping is significantly higher than testing would suggest.

I feel (a tiny tiny bit) sorry for Farah/Wiggo in the sense they’re hung out to dry for something plenty of athletes are guilty of, but at the same time their sports are filthy with no genuine appetite for change given the commercial implications and they’ve massively benefited from that. Reap what you sow in that sense.

 

[Somnambulist]

Simple solution to stop cheating, just get rid of the doping rules and let them pump whatever they want into their systems. I'd love to see somebody running 100m in 5s or doing 100mph on a bike.

There are a couple of problems with this -
1) elite athletes start their athletic journey's young, and compete at sub-junior and junior level before they become visible at the highest level. Winning matters even at youth level. In a world where there was no drug-testing, both teenage boys and girls would 100% be getting pressured by coaches or the state to start using without them fully understanding the implications. Wanting a free for all would lead to more of this.

2) just because a sport could be competed untested doesn't mean countries themselves would change their drug laws - it wouldn't be fair to have untested sport if in one country athletes can freely buy pharma-grade gear and in other it's flat-out illegal and they're limited to buying underground lab stuff that's of questionable quality

3) bigger countries with more relaxed drug laws would just do what the Russians did and run systematic state-sponsored doping programs with the best available drugs, whilst poorer countries or ones with more prohibitive laws would only have doping at the coach or individual level, older, less effective drugs etc.

 

[Somnambulist]

re: Mo : It's the hypocrisy with respect to the Russians too, they just didn't have the money to do it under the radar.

I think there is a difference between you (and perhaps your coach) doing stuff on the low and the state actively giving you as much help as they can to supply drugs, get you past testing etc.

 

[R.P.L]

People are naive to think that’s not far off what we’re already seeing. It’s not totally unfettered obviously but studies like the following:

https://www.frontiersin.org/article...=EMLX&utm_campaign=PRD_FEOPS_20170000_ARTICLE
https://www.parliament.uk/documents...t/WADA's-athlete-doping-prevalence-survey.pdf

Suggest the prevalence of doping is significantly higher than testing would suggest.

I feel (a tiny tiny bit) sorry for Farah/Wiggo in the sense they’re hung out to dry for something plenty of athletes are guilty of, but at the same time their sports are filthy with no genuine appetite for change given the commercial implications and they’ve massively benefited from that. Reap what you sow in that sense.

Like I said, I think it's very common at the top level of sport but having controls is important to stop at least the extremes of doping for the sake of not having athletes dying. I agree that it's unfair to single out individuals like that, but that's the world we live in. I have used the same argument to defend Lance Armstrong in the past (to clarify, I'm no fan of his but he only played the game better than everyone else) to much derision.

I think there is a difference between you (and perhaps your coach) doing stuff on the low and the state actively giving you as much help as they can to supply drugs, get you past testing etc.

That's true, although there is certainly a holier-than-thou attitude amongst westerners (particularly British in my experience, although that might just be because I've spent most of my life in England), talking about dirty Russians and Chinese as if our athletes are 100% clean.

 

[Roar87]

That's true, although there is certainly a holier-than-thou attitude amongst westerners (particularly British in my experience, although that might just be because I've spent most of my life in England), talking about dirty Russians and Chinese as if our athletes are 100% clean.

We don't have a culture of cheating in the UK though, that's the difference between us and Russia and China.

 

[R.P.L]

We don't have a culture of cheating in the UK though, that's the difference between us and Russia and China.

I'm not saying that the culture is the same; just that the blind adoration of our superstars with no acknowledgement of the possibility that they've doped is tiresome.

 

[jpaul]

yes - It's not cricket ... and bodyline bowling wasn't.
Still no UK equivalent of the vw emissions scandal, or, the Apple throttling, but maybe it's lack of opportunity/industry.

edit: forgot about Cambridge Analytica ... six degrees of separation

 

[StriderX]

LIBOR is about the closest we'll ever come to a widespread industrial scandal, we don't have any large industrial icon beyond the finance industry that isn't pretty much a foreign company.

Apparently it is very British to sell everything we own to other countries... Westinghouse being particularly offensive, ARM was equally as irritating.

 

[ltron]

Indeed, the main part of the reason we are not all juicing constantly in our life is that these drugs have sideeffects over time.
Flo-Jo anyone?
Arnie heart valves?
and onwards, so those who wish to compete, should be able to do it safely, in an environment where no one else does.

People will always try to take the unsafe and experimental drugs if they think it might give them an advantage, it's impossible to police in this way.

 

[ltron]

Simple solution to stop cheating, just get rid of the doping rules and let them pump whatever they want into their systems. I'd love to see somebody running 100m in 5s or doing 100mph on a bike.

It's not fun to watch anymore if it's based on who has the most money, the best doctors and is willing to take the most risk in terms of their health rather than ability, mental strength and hard work.

 

[One More Solo]

We don't have a culture of cheating in the UK though, that's the difference between us and Russia and China.

That’s the flimsiest of excuses, and rather xenophobic. Culture means little in the hothouse of competitive sport.

The UK has punched above its weight at the Olympics for several years now even with other countries having massive state sponsored doping scandals.

I’m not saying we’re doing the same, but it takes more than lottery funding to bridge that gap.

 

[Orionaut]

It's not fun to watch anymore if it's based on who has the most money, the best doctors and is willing to take the most risk in terms of their health rather than ability, mental strength and hard work.

So drugs=Bad and fancy running shoes=Good ??

 

[Somnambulist]

The culture is different though, at least within the sport.

In weightlifting for example, a sport I've heavily into, in Russia and some of the ex-soviet countries, coaches talk about drugs openly, they think you're stupid not to use drugs because they've been relying on them for so many decades for their training that they don't actually know how to program a natural athlete, and can't comprehend another country doesn't have an embedded drug culture like their own to produce top-tier lifters.

Since retrospective testing has gotten better at catching them out and they've been forced to stop using and gotten various bans, Russian weightlifters have gone from consistent medallers to nobodies, and countries that pride themselves on having regular testing like the USA who have invested in getting younger athletes into weightlifting and who have modern training principles that don't rely on steroids to overcome recovery issues are now placing far higher (worth noting the absolute numbers lifted are lower now than they used to be in most cases because of this).

I don't think there's anything unusual about the UK's Olympic performance - our governing body was brutal in selecting sports we were expected to do well at and pumping huge amounts of funding into them and mercilessly dropping anything that wasn't (e.g. weightlifters in this country don't get funding now because we simply don't have any that would get near the podium at Olympic level, so they have to rely on actual jobs or other sponsorship to make ends meet) and you can see the ebb and flow as we only won 1 gold in 1996 then spent the next 20 years throwing money at 'the problem' (1st world problems), resulting in the hauls at 2012, and 2016. Combine that with the countries with endemic doping getting found out with increasing frequency and it's no surprise we did well at the sports targeted for medals. I don't think we're expected to do as well this year in Japan (if it goes ahead).

 

[ltron]

So drugs=Bad and fancy running shoes=Good ??

I didn't say that, but at least fancy running shoes aren't risking your health and you can see that people are using them.

 

[Orionaut]

I didn't say that, but at least fancy running shoes aren't risking your health and you can see that people are using them.

There are very few "Top Level" athletes that are particularly healthy in any absolute sense.

They are all damaged, drugs or not.

 

[Roar87]

That’s the flimsiest of excuses, and rather xenophobic. Culture means little in the hothouse of competitive sport.

The UK has punched above its weight at the Olympics for several years now even with other countries having massive state sponsored doping scandals.

I’m not saying we’re doing the same, but it takes more than lottery funding to bridge that gap.

Okay we're now not allowed to acknowledge cultural differences because it's Xenophobic.

 

[StriderX]

Okay we're now not allowed to acknowledge cultural differences because it's Xenophobic.

Yes. You keep your thought crimes to yourself or the government's slow insidious slide into a police state will surely be unkind.

/jest