Usain Bolt says that he has no respect for Carl Lewis because of Lewis’ often voiced suspicions that the Jamaican sprinters are drug-assisted. But is Lewis right to be suspicious?
I’m not sure what to think. It does seem kind of odd that such a small country as Jamaica should take positions 1, 2 and 3 at the 200 metres. Pound has stated elsewhere that he doesn’t watch the Olympics now. The dopers are so far ahead of the testers that one can’t be sure of any result.
Carl would know. At a time when only urine testing was used he tested positive 3 times in 1988 and the U.S. Olympic Committee hid the results for 15 years. So who knows?
Usain Bolt is the most tested sprinter ever I think
When he appeared on the scene and left everybody behind him, they immediately put him on the “doped” list and even if he got tested nefore and after most competitions he started at, and always came up negative, people are still hanging that sign around his neck
personally I think the Jamaicans win because it’s one of the few ways for them to get out of misery and problems. And when you have one great sprinter and others train with him, they get better. Like when a country has a great tennis player, two or three years later they usually have a great team up,too
What do you say about the kenian guys who win all the long distances? are they doped? or is it because they ran km to school every day as kids?
Quite possibly. (Note: German source machine translated.)
It’s quite likely that virtually everyone in the sprint finals is doping to some extent. Gatlin, for example, serves two suspensions for doping, comes back, and ties his personal best time. So either his doping program was shit, or he’s back on it. Anyways, if Carl Lewis is going to accuse other sprinters of doping without coming clean about exactly what he took back in the day, I don’t have much respect for him either. As for testing, purportedly Jamaica never/rarely tests out of season, and purportedly the sprinters dope by adding muscle mass via roids and weight training during that period. They’ll never get caught by doping control after races because they aren’t taking anything then.
Or maybe they’re all clean as a whistle. I don’t have any crystal ball and don’t have anything like an expert opinion.
well the africans have always dominated the long distances… and it’s natural that they do… they have the anatomy for it and do natural training. The doping only brings the last 2%, not the basic performance… you could dope me as much as you want, I’d still not run a marathon
doping is a problem that comes from the ever harder pressure to make more records, push the line a bit further…
If you watch Bolt run, he’s got a different gait than the other runners in part because he’s so tall and he makes best use of it; you can see how he runs fast even if you can’t reproduce it. Yes, he’s muscly and I wouldn’t say definitively he’s never used, but I’d be inclined to look more at the likes of Blake than Bolt.
Is it up to the Jamaican authorities though? Does the IAAF not conduct mandatory out-of-season doping tests like other sports?
I’m pretty sure that British track & field athletes are required to inform some authority or another of there whereabouts at all times, in case a test is required. Not sure which body it is though.
It’s sad, because I love track and field (especially sprinting), and I agree with the principle of banning PEDs, but it would almost make more sense to ask which sprinting medalists since before the days of Ben Johnson have NOT been using PEDs. I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer was “none”. A lot of other events also have their doping problems, of course.
I agree with this. If it’s as easy to do and not get caught as a former anti-doping chief suggests, why wouldn’t they do it? It’s the same with baseball. I hate that they did it, but I understand their reasons.
This is very damning even if there isn’t any direct proof. And “innocent until guilty” is how the court system works. It doesn’t apply to individual opinions and impressions - particularly in situations like this, where the entire issue is the possibility that people are beating the system.
Whenever things like this pop up, I always remember the study that asked Olympic athletes if they would cheat if they knew they would not get caught. Something like 90% said yes they would cheat.
So my immediate conclusion is that both Lewis and Bolt probably doped.
It’s possible but there’s no particularly strong reason to believe it. Given all the testing he won’t be on drugs now, but he might have been using, they might have been using, in preparation, like Steve Waugh did. Of course, Michael Phelps is just as likely to be guilty, if not moreso, given his unexpectedly good performance.
Now, the American women’s relay team, that’s a different matter. They just set the world record, by a very long way, and that weas previoudly held by the East Germans, and Soviet bloc women in the 80s were famous for drugging up. Any world record dating from the days before widespread testing is inherently suspect, having lasted an unusually long time despite improvements in training, nutrition, footwear and so on, and a performance which suddenly overtakes such a long-standing and probably corrupt record is equally dubious.
