2012 London Olympics

[mickey]

Greetings,

I have been following the track competition with great excitement. One thing that I have noticed with two people from the Jamaican track team, Usain Bolt and Shelly Ann Fraser-Pryce, is their sudden association with the consumption of yams as explanation for their improved track performance. This was never done before. When steroids first came out it was called wild yam extract. The association of these two athletes with "yams" makes me feel very uneasy with their victories.

I hope I am wrong about this.

mickey

[Syn7]

The testing is quite strict these days and is even more scrutinized in the track and field sports. I don't think Bolt has done any illegal PED's in the timeframe required to be considered cheating. Maybe he has in the past, maybe not, I dunno. One thing I am sure of today is that he passed the tests and his record will stand. After Ben Johnson, no runner wants to get caught like that. It's one thing to be kicked out for cheating at the worlds, or nationals, it's a whole different and much worse thing when you have you Olympic medals, records and standings erased after the fact. And it's done under the whole worlds dissapointed gaze. No runner will let that happen unless they are completely retarded.

I suppose a few who simply cannot qualify without cheating may come to the conclusion that it's worth it. Better to try and fail than to just not make it at all. But Bolt is different, drugs or not, this cat is a contender. Why would he put himself in the Ben Johnson position when he has a shot even without the dope? He sucks off the blocks but he just takes off at the 30 m mark and that's why people think he cheats, coz he usually comes from behind to win. Of course the odd time he does get a good start, nobody can touch him.

[Syn7]

oh.... and they've been eating yams there forever... this is not new.

[sanjuro_ronin]

I used to train where Ben Johnson trained and saw how he and others trained.
It was some serious freaking training.
I has also seen how the Jamaican team currently trains and it is almost text book like what Ben used to.

RE: Drugs.
There are performance enhancers and then there are "training enhancers" and steroids fall into the "training enhancers".
The allow you to train harder and more because they speed up recovery while "stimulating" your body to increase lean muscle WITH the help of weight training.
Stimulants and "dopping" are performance enhancers.

Over the last few decades we have seen quite a few elite athletes get caught with either PED or training enhancers.
Why?
Lets cut the naive crap for a moment shall we?

They freaking work and there is NO way you get to elite level, having to train like they do, without them.

Period.

They are "SOP" in pro sports and in Olympic sports.

Yes, testing has gotten better BUT so have masking agents and so has the science of "cycling".

If an athelete gets caught nowadays it is usally because they F'ed up on one of the protocols.

[JamesC]

I used to train where Ben Johnson trained and saw how he and others trained.
It was some serious freaking training.
I has also seen how the Jamaican team currently trains and it is almost text book like what Ben used to.

RE: Drugs.
There are performance enhancers and then there are "training enhancers" and steroids fall into the "training enhancers".
The allow you to train harder and more because they speed up recovery while "stimulating" your body to increase lean muscle WITH the help of weight training.
Stimulants and "dopping" are performance enhancers.

Over the last few decades we have seen quite a few elite athletes get caught with either PED or training enhancers.
Why?
Lets cut the naive crap for a moment shall we?

They freaking work and there is NO way you get to elite level, having to train like they do, without them.

Period.

They are "SOP" in pro sports and in Olympic sports.

Yes, testing has gotten better BUT so have masking agents and so has the science of "cycling".

If an athelete gets caught nowadays it is usally because they F'ed up on one of the protocols.

What he said.

Do people actually believe that elite athletes don't use them just because they pass their tests? You HAVE to use them if you want to compete at the elite level.

[Frost]

For those who think the testing is much stricter and harder to get round ….well can you say BALCO and Victor Conte?
A former musician managed to run the most successful PED programme of all time (that we know of) with no medical training and no scientific background, and only got caught years into his scheme because he and his partner fell out and grassed each other up, up until then the fed government was clueless lol
Can you imagine what a real scientist can do?
As for cheating not being that well spread well……How about before the 1984 OL games when the Americans decided to test their athletes a year early so there would be no surprises…and cancelled the programme suddenly and wouldn’t make the findings public (this was when carl lewis tested positive but nothing was done about it)….or how about the fact that at least 5 of Johnsons fellow finalists in 1988 final have been charged with, or accused of taking drugs or dealing them. Or how about the head tester for the US athletic federation who kept all those samples from 1983 and who decided in the wake of the Balco scandal to retest all the samples with the current improved methods…..and found over 50% tested indicated positive and decided to stop there and destroy all samples as he didn’t want to reopen a can of worms

[mickey]

Greetings,

I do believe that the Jamaican sprinters train really hard. If their environmental conditions are right, it can resemble high altitude training, enabling them, in competitions in cooler climates to kick major butt. The reference to an outside substance as an enhancer to their hard work really undermines their efforts, while raising questions as to whether there is a hidden truth to that reference yet to be revealed.

To HAVE to use steroids to maintain oneself at an elite level is one of sadness. I hope things change.

I am aware that they have been eating a lot of yams in Jamaica. There was no reference to Valerie Campbell Brown (Jamaica) eating yams as reason for her abilities.

mickey `

[JamesC]

Greetings,

I do believe that the Jamaican sprinters train really hard. If their environmental conditions are right, it can resemble high altitude training, enabling them, in competitions in cooler climates to kick major butt. The reference to an outside substance as an enhancer to their hard work really undermines their efforts, while raising questions as to whether there is a hidden truth to that reference yet to be revealed.

To HAVE to use steroids to maintain oneself at an elite level is one of sadness. I hope things change.


mickey `

I don't agree. Honestly, what else is there after you've reached your genetic potential?

Is it morally wrong to push those limits once you've reached them? I don't think it is.

[sanjuro_ronin]

I don't know how many know this, but years ago the chinese were getting rgeat results in swimming, results they attributed to cordyceps, a natural energy booster from a mushroom.
It was totally legal.
Recently they discovered that this mushroom doesn't do much at all, BUT it works really well as a "masking agent".
So...

Fact is guys that IF people didn't NEED these things to run 100 meters in 9.58 sec, NO ONE would be taking them.

Am I saying the Bolt and Blake and so many others are taking PED? Nope, what I am saying is that they are taking training/recovery enhancers.

So, here is the thing:
IF they are NOT taking them and they ARE winning, then those "drugs" don't make a difference so DON'T ban them.

Lets be clear about this though, taking something to help you build muscle and aid in recovery is NOT taking a PED, PERIOD.

You STILL have to have the genetic gifts, you STILL have to put in the hours of training everyday and you STILL have to work your freaking ass off !!

[Frost]

High altitude training increasing the number of red blood cells and thus allows you to take in more oxygen, sleeping in a chamber which simulates this altitude also allows this to happen, both of these are legal, extracting your own blood and reinjecting it doe exactly the same thing but is illegal…which is morally wrong and who decides?

And to Ronin are those the same Chinese athletes who hired on mass the east german coaching staff after the wall fell down….

[Drake]

Believe it or not, you can run really fast without steroids. It's called hard work. Funny to see such cynicism on a site that eschews the impossible heights attained from hard work.

[sanjuro_ronin]

High altitude training increasing the number of red blood cells and thus allows you to take in more oxygen, sleeping in a chamber which simulates this altitude also allows this to happen, both of these are legal, extracting your own blood and reinjecting it doe exactly the same thing but is illegal…which is morally wrong and who decides?

And to Ronin are those the same Chinese athletes who hired on mass the east german coaching staff after the wall fell down….

Yep.
Did you also know that, according to some sources, the coach and trainer of Ben Johnson helped set up the Jamaican sprint program...

I don't think HA training does much for sprinters per say.
I mean, sprint is NOT an endurance event and the main issue is staving off lactic acid build up and sustaining accelration for 10- 20 seconds...

Lets be perfectly clear here that using methods to help you train MORE is NOT cheating and it is silly that the IOC views it as such.

They are penalizing athletes for training more and harder to be the best and break records, the very thing THEY WANT them to do !!

And by they I also mean US.

[sanjuro_ronin]

Believe it or not, you can run really fast without steroids. It's called hard work. Funny to see such cynicism on a site that eschews the impossible heights attained from hard work.

The issue is that steroids do NOT cause ANYONE to run faster !

[David Jamieson]

That's true. There is a spread of 3 seconds in improvement in sprinters in the last 100 years or so. The spread is less than a second in the last 70 years.

The differences are in track surfaces, shoes and training methodology, diet and drugs. And STILL the changes are not hugely significant in the field of human sporting endeavour.

Go figure. lol

[sanjuro_ronin]

That's true. There is a spread of 3 seconds in improvement in sprinters in the last 100 years or so. The spread is less than a second in the last 70 years.

The differences are in track surfaces, shoes and training methodology, diet and drugs. And STILL the changes are not hugely significant in the field of human sporting endeavour.

Go figure. lol

Well, that is a HUGE difference though, LOL !
Fact is that you take two people and clock their 100, then have them take steroids for 3 months and have them do NOTHING but take steroids and clock them again, the difference, if ANY, would be minimal.
The issue is that, with steroids, the runner can train harder and recover quicker, which leads to him/her getting better, faster.
IF THEY TRAIN HARD !