If you are a sprinter, I don’t need to explain the latest news that rocked the Track world, unless you have been living in a cave.
As always, it’s time to move forward, but it makes you think the damage it has done to the aspiring sprinters and athletes out there. People are already saying stuff like “Tyson Gay killed T&F in America”.
Whoa… nobody killed anyone, thank God, but it does make you wonder at what cost people will do to win. And the fine line between drugs and supplements. (save that for another story)
For the men’s 100 meters, I took the top 28 performances by athlete, with a 9.88 as the cut off point, and came up with an alarming stat that shows 13 of the 28 now has drug implications to their name. (yes, I even added Tim Montgomery, Ben Johnson and Dwain Chambers to the list, even though their results have been nullified because they actually ran those times)
Make that 14 if you want to add Maurice Greene to that list (i.e. why do you pay for steroids for your friends?).
14 on 28 is 50%!
Some people even question the marks of the pre-Sydney 2000 results since drug testing wasn’t as extensive back then, and the 8 year statute of limitations is now over. (For those who cheated back then, and weren’t caught, I can assure you are breathing a sigh of relief… you know who I am talking about)
Why are people questioning the earlier Men’s marks?
For Women events, when you look at the speed, power and strength events (and I’m including the multi events, as well as the 800m) the only WR that was broken since the 1980’s was the 400mH (see my article from 2010 titled Women’s Track and Field – Underpaid and No Respect ). The PV, HT, TJ and steeplechase are relatively new events which explains the excitement of a chance of breaking a WR. That’s why women’s pole vault sells. The Javelin was shortened so that doesn’t count.
So by looking at the chart, the obvious winner is Usain Bolt, which makes Olusoji Fasuba 9.85 (coached by PJ Vazel) the 2nd best last clean sprinter if you believe the results from the 1990’s were tainted but never caught.
It also shows a lot of praise for current active sprinters Richard Thompson and Keston Bledman, who is also coached by Lance Brauman.
And then we have all those 9.88 second guys and above…
Jimson Lee
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This makes me think of Lance Armstrong. Are we all that naive to think that somebody “clean”, can be so much better than all the dirty ones? I used to think that Bolt was protected, because outing him would ruin our sport, but outing Lance didn’t seem to do much damage to cycling, so maybe his team is just really good at protecting him. Hell, Froome has gone from a nobody to rivalling LA’s times and we are supposed to believe he’s clean? Right. This battle will be never-ending. Cheaters will be caught, athletes will continue to cheat. There’s too much money to be had.
As a side note, the general public needs to be informed of the difference between stimulants and steroids. It’s not like all these track guys are injecting steroids meant for a horse!
@Derrick, my Friday article will address this issue on stimulants and steroids.
IM in favor of making track like bodybuilding. You have natural bodybuilding and then you have “bodybuilding”. Most of the money is made by the guys who inject tons of substances. People wanna see genetic/enhanced freaks of nature.
Maybe we should have Natural track and field and “track and field”. It will be no contest as to which the fans will flock to. Tnen wada/usada can still have jobs testing the “natural” athletes. :/
Am I missing something? Why did you highlight Yohan Blake? I didn’t see him implicated with the current group…
Tests don’t work. They were caught for ridiculous substances that are really easy to detect. I still wonder how they get caught. That’s what strikes me the most. The other thing that I’m amazed by is the outrageous attitude of some athletes. Gatlin for example. Here is a man who was trained by the most infamous coach ever. He get caught, denied and invented some silly story. Then when he came back from his 4 year ban he wasn’t happy with seagrave. So what did he do. He chooses another infamous coach, tested positive for testosterone too (I think his own wife was involved in some ped scandal) and a former client of graham and now at 30 he run faster than ever. What a joke. Apparently Bolt have the same kind of attitude as he seems to be linked with Angel memo Heredia another infamous PED dealer. Then you have HSI, whose best friend is Block another notorious PED dealer. So let’s be serious if you want to pretend you’re clean why do you have such weird connection to PED providers. The answer : because you’re not clean. To finish, I don’t understand WADA rules concerning testosterone. You need a ratio testo/epitesto less than 3 (before it was 4 and even 6) which is 3 times above average which is one (if I remember Mitchell had a ratio of 5 what a joke). So if you want to cheat just take testo so that your ratio is 2.5. Interestingly I read somewhere (didn’t find the article) that top female rowers had a higher level testosterone than other elite rowers. The conclusion was that top rowers had a genetical advantage. My ass. They are juicing period… The sad thing is that I believe than from the 8 100m finalist there’s always one ore two naïve guy who does the thning correctly and believe that the other guy are clean too. Anyway…
Nesta Carter did not test positive for anything, that was falsely reported. Yohan Blake did not as well, he was given a 3 month ban as a PRECAUTION, as the substance he took was not on the banned list.