Boycott Olympics!

[Iskaral Pust]

3 hours ago, Veltigar said:

I think this article from the Guardian is very enlightening given the current subject.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jul/27/biggest-threat-future-olympic-games-rio-2016-ioc-thomas-bach-hosts?CMP=fb_gu

Yes, it's great news.  Potential host populace effectively boycotting (hosting) the games can force the IOC to change somewhat.  At least it cannot exploit the host citizenry so badly.  But sponsors need to use their power too to push for other reforms. 

The unfortunate fact is that viewers won't boycott because they don't bear any of the cost of the corruption or misallocation of resources. 

Just like FIFA, an opaque and unaccountable organization becomes the self-appointed "owner" of the global-level sports event watched by billions, and then parasitically exploits it for their own value because their cost is too widely distributed for any concerted response. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

8 hours ago, Hereward said:

Untrue. She was not very good until she was in her mid-twenties, had spectacular muscle growth, acne problems and a noticably deeper voice. She also retired just before random testing came in, and it has been alleged that 20 other Seoul medal winners, including her, failed drug test, but the IOC hushed them up on the grounds that all the sprinting winners failing would have killed the sport, so she was told to retire instead.

An allegation(s) are just that, no cheating has ever been substantiated. I read the Guardian article and I dont think the writers theory of her "improvement being too great" is very convincing. She Silvered in 84, trained with a World Class regimen and coaching for 4 more years and she took Golds in 88. There remains no proof she cheated, she never failed a test and was rigorously examined in autopsy, again no doping evident. She's the legend, unblemished.

[baxus]

20 hours ago, Veltigar said:

Don't say that, we believe in you!  

Thanks, I appreciate that!  

[Jo498]

Nobody claimed that there was proof. And you are free to venerate someone as "unblemished"...

But if you knew a little about the field you would recognize unlikely improvements and outlandish records.  I think almost everybody doped in that time; Carl Lewis  tested positive in 88 but the test was annulled for spurious reasons. The parallels between Ben Johnson and FloJo are too obvious too miss. They were both good, but not among the very best and a few years later suddenly through the ceiling.

Just look at not only the records but the development of top 10 results from almost all women's disciplines up to 800m as well as jumping and throwing events between mid-1980s and late-90s and tell me, people suddenly forgot to train properly and were therefore far slower.

Not to spoil the memory of great athletes (you have to be very good and train hard anyway, but look at women's long jump results over 7.20m. 20 athletes did this (of course several of them achieved many results in that region, if I had such data, it would be even more obvious): 5 after 2000 (4 of them Russians....), 11 before 1992. The world record jumped from 7.09 in 1978 to 7,43 in 1983 and 7,52 in 1988. Now admittedly, this is a tricky discipline (although records with wind support are not recognized) and we all know about Beamon's 8,90 jump in 1968 that stood for 23 years. But those frequent 7.40 jumps of women simply do not happen anymore. Over 7.20 is extremely good and about 7.10 often enough to win the olympics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_jump

[Criston of House Shapper]

7 hours ago, Jo498 said:

Nobody claimed that there was proof. And you are free to venerate someone as "unblemished"...

But if you knew a little about the field you would recognize unlikely improvements and outlandish records.  I think almost everybody doped in that time; Carl Lewis  tested positive in 88 but the test was annulled for spurious reasons. The parallels between Ben Johnson and FloJo are too obvious too miss. They were both good, but not among the very best and a few years later suddenly through the ceiling.

Just look at not only the records but the development of top 10 results from almost all women's disciplines up to 800m as well as jumping and throwing events between mid-1980s and late-90s and tell me, people suddenly forgot to train properly and were therefore far slower.

Not to spoil the memory of great athletes (you have to be very good and train hard anyway, but look at women's long jump results over 7.20m. 20 athletes did this (of course several of them achieved many results in that region, if I had such data, it would be even more obvious): 5 after 2000 (4 of them Russians....), 11 before 1992. The world record jumped from 7.09 in 1978 to 7,43 in 1983 and 7,52 in 1988. Now admittedly, this is a tricky discipline (although records with wind support are not recognized) and we all know about Beamon's 8,90 jump in 1968 that stood for 23 years. But those frequent 7.40 jumps of women simply do not happen anymore. Over 7.20 is extremely good and about 7.10 often enough to win the olympics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_jump

Maybe there just aren't as many people doing athletics anymore, so you have a smaller field and the elite would be much smaller and therefore less of them perform exceptionally well. Of course I'm just speculating here. But my theory is, that if there were only one sport, the Chinese would win most of the time because they have the most people. So maybe the distribution nowadays is just skewed towards other sports.

[Iskaral Pust]

52 minutes ago, Criston of House Shapper said:

Maybe there just aren't as many people doing athletics anymore, so you have a smaller field and the elite would be much smaller and therefore less of them perform exceptionally well. Of course I'm just speculating here. But my theory is, that if there were only one sport, the Chinese would win most of the time because they have the most people. So maybe the distribution nowadays is just skewed towards other sports.

Wealthy countries do a pretty good job of tracking genetic freaks into their best available sport.  There may be fewer people competing in athletics generally but there are more very good athletes competing in each althletic discipline.  Identification and specialization have improved. 

And to the question of China winning most medals, I would strongly expect that a multiple regression on medal count by country over time would find that a composite factor of population size, GDP per capita, state focus on patriotism and racial make-up would have a very high r^2. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

Looking at triple crown track times over the last century and you will notice Secretariats times as a astonishing leap as well. Doesnt always mean or prove cheating is involved. As for FloJo, she's been gone 19 yrs now and it seems too much like Monday morning Quarter-backing to get on a bandwagon indicting her this far after her career. She may or may not of doped (I dont believe she did) but we really cannot prove such a thing after the fact, she was autopsied already btw, so its a closed case to me. Of course I understand others may disagree.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

11 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

An allegation(s) are just that, no cheating has ever been substantiated. I read the Guardian article and I dont think the writers theory of her "improvement being too great" is very convincing. She Silvered in 84, trained with a World Class regimen and coaching for 4 more years and she took Golds in 88. There remains no proof she cheated, she never failed a test and was rigorously examined in autopsy, again no doping evident. She's the legend, unblemished.

Well, Car Lewis was never tested positive during his career. was he? 

My guess, if there were old Flo-Jo samples floating around somewhere, and we would test with todays methods for everything that was fashionable back then, we would get some positives back. And the he/she started working with the best staff has always been code for "then I started to have access to the good stuff." 

No, she had never been convicted, but it's still a fairly sound assumption Flo-Jo was using doping. I mean that there had never been proof of doping line was also used by Lance Armstrong for quite a long time, while everybody was fully aware that cycling as a sport was simply rotten to the core. And Armstrong only was convicted after the returned from his retirement to win another tour. If he had stayed retired there he would have died a "clean athlete". And the track and field sports are equally rotten. Same story with Usain Bolt. He has never been caught thus far, yet the smart money would still be on that Bolt isn't running faster than convicted doping offenders Powel, Gatlin, Gay because he simply is a freak of nature, who simply has the better running technique. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

Its all in how we carry those default assumptions. Anectdotally ive gathered over the years most (or a lot of) people assume a lot of athletes are dirty and just havent been caught yet. I dont view it that way, I get I'm in the minority with that view.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

In a way yes. Though, this also just anecdotally. When that cycling doping shit show came down a few years ago, that Spanish (?) doctor in the center basically said something along the line, fighting against doping in cycling and in the track and field sports is a lost battle. Those sports are just undermined with doping. After the Beijing Olympics I read some comments from athletes about Bolt, those were made off record regarding doping. You could really read the sarcasm out of it.

Yeah, it's pretty impressive. He (Bolt) stretches, a bit, jogs a bit backstage and then he goes out and burns a new record on the tracks. Do you think he is clean? Yeah, sure. 

And with Bolt it's really like Armstrong and the Tour for me. You know the main competitioners are convicted doping offenders, and the guy that beats them is supposed to be clean? 

Similar story with the weight lifters. I don't expect any of those guys walking away with a medal from the olympics to be clean. It's one of those sports that have huge doping tradition. And I don't really blame any of the athletes individually. They are raised in a doping culture within their disciplines. Yes, it's a bit along the Lance Armstrong line of defense: "Who did I cheat? We were all using doping." Or as Carl Lewis put it: "Who cares I failed a doping test?" Anyway, back to Flo-Jo. She was also raised into the same doping culture as Carl Lewis, and their peers. So why should she be the exception?

Of course banning a whistleblower with Stepanova from participating at the Olympics is not really doing much to promote a culture change. 

[Veltigar]

7 minutes ago, Notone said:

 Spanish (?) doctor

Fuentes was indeed Spanish  

 

[Criston of House Shapper]

17 minutes ago, Notone said:

Of course banning a whistleblower with Stepanova from participating at the Olympics is not really doing much to promote a culture change. 

It's a loose-loose-situation anyhow. If you let her participate, she will get more publicity and maybe get assassinated or attacked otherwise. I think that would be worse. It's a good thing she's not out in the open and can be protected from Russian vendetta.

[Rorshach]

I may be naive regarding Russia, but I would think that assasinating Stephanova would lead to more people being completely convinced of russian athletes being state-sponsored cheats. As such, even if Russia of course would deny any links, you'd get a culture automatically assuming any russian doing ok was doped. Therefore, I would guess that assasinating her would be off the table.

As for the IOC, banning her for me just underlines they care f*ck all about the problem, as long as they get paid. Sepp Blatter would be proud.

[Slick Mongoose]

The more I find out about just how much doping improves performance, and how easy it is to beat the tests, and how much of a doping problem there is even in amateur sport, the more I simply assume that all physical sports are rife with doping. The benefits are enormous and the risk of getting caught minimal.

Most sports that don't have a bad reputation for doping simply get away with hardly doing any proper testing of athletes - no positive tests, no scandal. Tennis, for example, or football.

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

38 minutes ago, Criston of House Shapper said:

It's a loose-loose-situation anyhow. If you let her participate, she will get more publicity and maybe get assassinated or attacked otherwise. I think that would be worse. It's a good thing she's not out in the open and can be protected from Russian vendetta.

Assasinating Stepanova? She would be nuisance for Moscow at the very most. She did and does not pose a threat in any imaginable way for Putin. So there's really no upside whatsoever to order a hit on her. I mean you don't blow up the house, because you have a fly in your living room. The Russian narrative would possibly be something along the line, that she is a vengeful propaganda tool, who is simply out for revenge because she was not deemed good enough to start for Russia and thus came up with that doping fabrication. 

Letting her start might however encourage more athletes from other federations come forward. So the IOC decission was and is simply outrageous.

[Criston of House Shapper]

11 hours ago, Notone said:

Assasinating Stepanova? She would be nuisance for Moscow at the very most. She did and does not pose a threat in any imaginable way for Putin. So there's really no upside whatsoever to order a hit on her. I mean you don't blow up the house, because you have a fly in your living room. The Russian narrative would possibly be something along the line, that she is a vengeful propaganda tool, who is simply out for revenge because she was not deemed good enough to start for Russia and thus came up with that doping fabrication. 

Letting her start might however encourage more athletes from other federations come forward. So the IOC decission was and is simply outrageous.

I'm not thinking of the Russian state, more some random patriotic idiot, who was offended by Stepanova's traiterous behaviour. Someone like that wouldn't really care about the consequences and might just want to be out for blood. People like that exist and the threat of some attack like that has to be taken seriously. Nothing good could come out of letting her start.

[Jo498]

It was rumored that dozens of soccer players from the Spanish top teams were on Fuentes' list, but it was hushed up. My brother suggested half in jest that the IAAF sould hire investigative journalists to uncover major doping in soccer to relieve some of the public pressure from athletics. This would be a mortally dangerous investigation, I believe, that's probably why noone has gone for such a scoop.

It's also interesting that there have been hardly any doping cases in nordic skiing, compared to cycling and running... Epo should work wonders there as well. 

(As for FloJo, for me the case is as closed as any inferred knowledge of the past without explicit proof could be. Everybody was doping then anway, but she must either have responded extremely well or used the really good stuff. It is not anecdotal at all, the stats for typical results in the 1980s and now and the incredible gap between the two FloJo records and other results are too obvious.)

[baxus]

14 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Its all in how we carry those default assumptions. Anectdotally ive gathered over the years most (or a lot of) people assume a lot of athletes are dirty and just havent been caught yet. I dont view it that way, I get I'm in the minority with that view.

The moment I finally came to terms with the fact that doping was the 100m dash finals in London, I think.

Powell grabbed his hamstring at about a halfway point and ran the rest of the race clutching his hamstring. He finished the race in 11.xx basically hopping half the way on one leg!

It was just insane.

13 hours ago, Slick Mongoose said:

Most sports that don't have a bad reputation for doping simply get away with hardly doing any proper testing of athletes - no positive tests, no scandal. Tennis, for example, or football.

That's the irony of it all - cycling and weightlifting have such a bad rep but are sports that actually do all they can against doping.

Football, basketball, tennis... When was the last time you heard of someone being suspended for doping?

When it comes to football, we probably all remember Maradona being positive for cocaine, as was Mutu over a decade later. Rio Ferdinand was suspended for 8-9 months for skipping testing... I can't think of anyone ever publicly suspended for performance enhancing drugs.

Basketball is even worse, I can't remember even a single player testing for PEDs. I know of a few players who used to play for Partizan and Crvena Zvezda Belgrade who were suspended after testing positive for marijuana but that's it.

Tennis might be the worst of the lot! We basically had three supermen for a few years there and no eyebrows were raised. Nadal played very physical tennis for almost a decade, dominating one of the Grand Slams from the age of 18. Federer maintains a very high level of performance for close to a decade and a half. Djokovic turned from someone who could barely complete a five-setter into a beast who could play 5-6 hours matches in the semifinals and finals with only a day between them and win both against some of the best players in sport's history and we're supposed to believe he did it by cutting pastry out of his diet? The only player that was suspended for doping recently has been Čilić and his suspension was cancelled rather quickly. Troicki was suspended for close to a year but that was because he didn't provide a blood sample for testing. Still, not a single player suspended for testing positive for PEDs that I can think of.

[lacuna]

2 hours ago, Jo498 said:

It's also interesting that there have been hardly any doping cases in nordic skiing, compared to cycling and running... Epo should work wonders there as well. 

 

There are many cases actually, for EPO and other substances. Wiki lists 37 cross country skiers and 20 biathletes with doping convictions/confessions, and those are just the ones caught. Virtually every competition since 2001 has had some scandal or controversy surrounding it, before which anti-doping was rudimentary at best.

[williamjm]

12 hours ago, baxus said:

Tennis might be the worst of the lot! We basically had three supermen for a few years there and no eyebrows were raised. Nadal played very physical tennis for almost a decade, dominating one of the Grand Slams from the age of 18. Federer maintains a very high level of performance for close to a decade and a half. Djokovic turned from someone who could barely complete a five-setter into a beast who could play 5-6 hours matches in the semifinals and finals with only a day between them and win both against some of the best players in sport's history and we're supposed to believe he did it by cutting pastry out of his diet? The only player that was suspended for doping recently has been Čilić and his suspension was cancelled rather quickly. Troicki was suspended for close to a year but that was because he didn't provide a blood sample for testing. Still, not a single player suspended for testing positive for PEDs that I can think of.

There is at least one high profile recent case in Sharapova, although you're right there don't seem to be many cases.