Drugs in UK sports....

[deiseach]

Brendan Foster seems to be one of the good guys - which only goes to prove that jingoism infects even the best of us.

[Bingo]

Whats this about? Paula on the juice?

[INDIANA]

I always book marked those games in my mind as the watershed for Radcliffe. Shortly after her performances kicked on from international to world class. Maybe it was simplyextra motivation...

Her marathon world record should have set alarm bells off years ago...minutes faster then previous record and women who've been proven to be juicing can't get near. Wonder will she up on bbc commentary team for world championships...

VO2 Max is off the charts by all accounts

[muppet]

There's one of them court things that no one can mention, about someone that no one can mention, about something that no one can mention.

So inevitably it is all over twitter. Along with another story about one of them court things that no one can mention.......

Look up #superinjunction

[ballinaman]

I always book marked those games in my mind as the watershed for Radcliffe. Shortly after her performances kicked on from international to world class. Maybe it was simplyextra motivation...

Her marathon world record should have set alarm bells off years ago...minutes faster then previous record and women who've been proven to be juicing can't get near. Wonder will she up on bbc commentary team for world championships...

VO2 Max is off the charts by all accounts

V02 max is just a number, it's one of a number of factors in running economy. I've a 70 V02 max and I know lads who have lower than me and can beat me and the same for myself with lads who have higher...V02 max can be increased micro doping they said on the bbc panorama doc on Salazar a few months back.

[imtommygunn]

I always book marked those games in my mind as the watershed for Radcliffe. Shortly after her performances kicked on from international to world class. Maybe it was simplyextra motivation...

Her marathon world record should have set alarm bells off years ago...minutes faster then previous record and women who've been proven to be juicing can't get near. Wonder will she up on bbc commentary team for world championships...

I personally don't think she was at it at all. A current prominent brit I wouldn't be so sure about mind you... That was from way before any bbc stuff i thought that too. Though it does pain me that the xenophobic daily mail jump on it and if it were your woman i'd say they'd be nowhere near it.

Do you mingle in athletics circles much who speak about these kind of things bm?

[ballinaman]

I always book marked those games in my mind as the watershed for Radcliffe. Shortly after her performances kicked on from international to world class. Maybe it was simplyextra motivation...

Her marathon world record should have set alarm bells off years ago...minutes faster then previous record and women who've been proven to be juicing can't get near. Wonder will she up on bbc commentary team for world championships...

I personally don't think she was at it at all. A current prominent brit I wouldn't be so sure about mind you... That was from way before any bbc stuff i thought that too. Though it does pain me that the xenophobic daily mail jump on it and if it were your woman i'd say they'd be nowhere near it.

Do you mingle in athletics circles much who speak about these kind of things bm?

Well there was a guy at a race recently who used to be an elite athlete who ran in America, still a quality runner now and is convinced that Mo is on it..very reliable source from England he said, cover ups order of the day now.
That's 3rd hand info by this stage so you'd have to take that into account...

[imtommygunn]

Ha yeah. Salazar had a paper from years ago on how to beat the africans - involved performance enhancing drugs. Surprised it hasn't come out but damned if i can find it.

I'm not convinced mo too popular in athletics circles over uk. Lack of local races etc gets to them. It's still something we'll maybe never know though. Some will believe him and some won't.

Proper elite level athletics becoming very hard to have faith in to be honest. 100 metres loaded with boys then you have turkey, russia etc and cynicism over their athletes and quite a few others too. Still interesting but most watch with cynicism.

[JimStynes]

https://ewanmackenna.wordpress.com/2015/08/13/forget-the-silky-seduction-of-pro-sport-its-time-we-saw-it-for-what-it-is/

In an area where we pay to fund the creation and promotion of false gods, it's about time the customer got real and realised that it's a lie in the name of profit, writes Ewan MacKenna

'This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.'
Morpheus, The Matrix

I've a secret to confess. It's kind of awkward for someone who makes a living watching, analysing, dissecting and delving into a very defined and specific area. But here goes. I have not believed in professional sport for quite some time. Indeed how anyone could is beyond me for, when you step back, it's clear we're being swooned by a lie as big business makes big bucks off our fawning naivety.

On Wednesday, the countdown to the Olympics dipped below the year mark. I've never covered a Games as I was always too far down the pecking order in papers but I do remember asking a colleague what it was like after he returned from Beijing in 2008. "Amazing," he enthused. "One minute you're watching Djokovic and Nadal, then you're back to the stadium to see Usain Bolt break a world record, then you get a call to say we've a chance of a medal in the show jumping. It's just remarkable."

Break that list down. Or, worse still, look forward to next August and the greatest festival of sport showing up high-end competition for what it really is. Rio de Janeiro will be my first Olympics and when asked if I was excited, I said no. What's to be excited about? Pretending it's not chemistry masquerading as sport? I'd rather the painful, depressing truth viewed through open eyes.

In 12 months we'll again have Bolt with his connections to back-street chemist Angel Hernandez taking on unrepentant double-doper Justin Gatlin in the sprint final; in long-distance we'll be told to be honoured to see Mo Farah after his refusal to leave Alberto Salazar, Galen Rupp as he's pushed forward by the suspicious Nike Oregon Project and the Kenyans with a testing system so rigid that stories emerged of athletes taking off into the woods at the sight of officials looking for urine; we'll have tennis with its biggest names shrouded by doping questions due to a cosy cartel; and we'll have the cesspit of cycling and all it represents.

We can talk about the banking sector, major pharmaceuticals, tobacco and politics, but on a consistent, worldwide level has any other industry knowingly taken us for such an expensive and make-believe ride? At best, the sports industry is certainly up there, even rivaling religion for having the gall to ask us to blindly accept miracles as just that. What is supposed to be a carefree escape from the problems of the real world is now contributing to those problems and those within and over these sports know it but mask it. But is anyone surprised? Does anyone even care? After all, the liar only lies to others but the visionary lies to himself.

Winning may well be everything to athletes but more dangerous are those behind them from sponsors to owners to governing bodies as, for them, profit is everything. In terms of selling a show, doping makes that easier as athletes across sports go stronger, faster, higher and that moves tickets. Meanwhile exposing how they do it would smear mud when a clear name moves commercial rights. It's merely a game of creating and promoting fictional heroes and cashing in on it. Look at it this way, great sports journalism was once about celebrating what we presumed to be the truth whereas now it's about destroying the myth you're being sold.

It's far from just the Olympics though. According to some, right now we're in the midst of a summer of remarkable sport. Yet slip off the blindfold and you'll realise all that is remarkable is how many of us accept what we are witnessing as genuine. The sensible talk around the Tour de France has been about how Chris Froome won, not that he won. The rumbling noise of the NFL is getting louder, a place where deflating a ball is viewed as more wrong than illegally changing your genetic make-up. The World Athletics Championships are thundering towards us amidst leaked documents showing between 2001 and 2012, 800 out of 12,000 athletes including a third of endurance medal winners at major events recorded blood tests which were "highly suggestive of doping, or at the very least abnormal". The IAAF described these reports as "sensationalist and confusing" but denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

However if the IAAF and others can't look at themselves in the mirror, then we've to ask ourselves the same question for don't think our greatest passions are exempt. The giddiness about our Rugby World Cup chances mean we've thus far ignored the fact that rugby has a history of doping. It's just two years since former French international Laurent Benezech raised serious and worthwhile questions about what he described as "medical assistance" yet in a professional era where the style of game means doping would make more sense and more profit, we're told all is suddenly well with no explanation as to when, why or how.

Soccer isn't immune either as it tries to stare down its nose at the rest. Feyenoord 1970, Ajax 1970-73 and Bayern Munich 1973-76 used amphetamines; shortly before he won the 1985 European Cup, Giovanni Trapattoni had to deny his players had used the muscle-strengthening carnitine; EPO usage casts a shadow over the Juventus side of the 1990s. So why now, when there's more money to be made, would soccer suddenly get clean? It's illogical but then so too was the decision of a Spanish judge in 2013 to destroy the blood bags belonging to Dr Eufemiano Fuentes rather than hand them over to anti-doping authorities. This after Fuentes was told he need name only cyclists he had doped when he offered to name athletes from many other sports including soccer and tennis.

Growing up, I naively used to think sport was about fun, purity, and the brilliance of an honest battle of minds and bodies for our hearts. But take the red pill and you'll see it's anything but.

[bennydorano]

All things aside - I think Ewan might be in the wrong job, seems totally disenchanted & doesn't have the Kimmage wherewithal, insider knowledge of any particular sport (bar GAA like the rest of us) or venom to genuinely expose.

I think he was an infrequent poster here IIRC?

[yellowcard]

That Radcliffe interview to the BBC is a bizarre about turn from her. From holding up placards saying 'EPO cheats out' to now saying that athletes shouldn't release their blood profiles as they are too difficult to understand. She is probably feeling a lot safer now that Coe has got elected to protect UK stars like her.

[imtommygunn]

To a certain degree you can see her point though. The passport stuff can be very open to interpretation. Still surprised she said it though.

[Teo Lurley]

It's easy enough to spot the cheats, just look at their time improvements. Some of them just don't add up. Radcliffs don't, Bolts don't, Farahs don't. Look at your one Kelly Holmes winning double gold at her age. Not to just say they're all at it but it's true that a high number of entries in every event has taken performance enhancing drugs.

[yellowcard]

To a certain degree you can see her point though. The passport stuff can be very open to interpretation. Still surprised she said it though.

I can see her point as well. If she is dirty she will not want her blood passport independently examined. If I was a clean athlete (as she proclaims to be) who has had all sorts of aspersions cast on her in the last few weeks and having had to take a super injunction out, then I'd be letting Ashenden or other known experts examine my passport to clear my name. Any other reason she gives for withholding the information is simply PR bullshit.

[screenexile]

It's easy enough to spot the cheats, just look at their time improvements. Some of them just don't add up. Radcliffs don't, Bolts don't, Farahs don't. Look at your one Kelly Holmes winning double gold at her age. Not to just say they're all at it but it's true that a high number of entries in every event has taken performance enhancing drugs.

Isn't the whole thing about Bolt that he has been a freak from an early age winning Jamaican schoolboy titles from 15 or so? Look I'm not saying he's not at it but his times have at least been consistent for a long time.

Call me naive but I love sport and tend to give the benefit of the doubt to people but it is getting much harder to do that. As McKenna says how can Bolt be exposed he's the biggest star in the world nobody is going to let that happen as so many walls will come tumbling down.

The one thing I think needs introduced is a lifetime ban for doping. I remember reading somewhere that taking one course of steroids can improve your performance by 30 odd percent and that even if you don't do it again your body retains 15% of that. Gatlin's been done twice so how can he now be seen as 'clean'??