coachbarrie wrote:
Going to end this thread as I am not sure there is much extra value in its continued discussion. Those who believe every endurance athlete cheat and all race directors are attached to being blind eye to drug tests are not going to change their mind about triathlon or any other endurance sport (its pretty clear reading various blogs and chains).
Those who think that nobody in their sport cheat are either totally blind to the realities or just dont know what is going on.
I sit in the middle. Some sports have a bigger problem then others for various reasons.
I am not as close to high end track and field or cycling so I cannot give all the answers how to solve their problems. As an endurance coach, I do hope they find solutions because it hurts everyone when great performances are not to be appreciated and trusted and respected.
For triathlon, as a sport where I have spent nearly 40 years of my life, I will continue to help be a positive solution, and to call out any cheater, or federation or race organizer who is not pulling their weight to help be a part of the solution for a clean sport. There are cheaters, there will be cheaters, and many of us need to find solutions (that will continue to evolve) to rid them from triathlon. Having personally lived and traveled and spent numerous hours with some of the sports greatest athletes, I feel very confident in having put my faith into some great people and athletes who have been doing it fairly and properly.
End of the thread for me. Best of summer to all of those who are racing where ever you maybe. I am off to Mt Tremblant (next weekend), Stockholm (the following weekend), Muskoka the following weekend, Edmonton the following weekend, then Chicago and Kona. A fair amount of triathlon events over the next eight weeks. Regards in safe and fair racing
Barrie Shepley
Hey Barrie, all the best in your travels. Certainly over those 5 events you will personally witness several doped out performances. I agree we should be hard on dopers....but let's keep in mind that we really don't know what EPOing was going on in triathlon before the EPO test came out in 2000. Dmitri Gaag won ITU World's in 1999 and beat Simon Lessing...later busted....Brigitte McMahon beat Michellie Jones for the Sydney Gold. That gold medal was the FIRST GOLD MEDAL handed out in the history of our sport. How can we sit here and say our sport has largely been drug free when the biggest prize that Les MacDonald and all the ITU machinery worked towards creating was then stolen by an EPO doper. The mid 90's times at Roth and Kona during the exact same period as Bjarne Riis' 60% TdF reign are still competitive in today's world with very inferior aerodynamics and tire technology.
I think you might just be too close to all these professionals to be objective. As a fan you and I want them to be clean. Heck, I want Usein Bolt to be clean. I want Ledecky to be clean. I wanted Ben Johnson to be clean. You are going to see a lot of awesome performances at the races you will be at in the next while and it is certain you will see many doped ones too that will fly under the radar both age group and pro. Where there is reward there is gonna be corner cutting.
I don't think it is helpful saying that triathlon has not had a drug culture compared to other sports. What this does is let druggies feel "safe" over here in triathlon. Perhaps the way of saying it is, "we have been equally affected by doping as all endurance sports, we have just been less affective in policing it and catching the villains". This would be a more fair introspective view of ourselves, rather than patting ourselves on the back saying "Our sport has been better". I don't think we can say that. The biggest prizes in our sport have been stolen by dopers....ITU World's, Olympic Gold and Kona. Based on this alone one could argue we are more doped out than NFL or MLB (which we know is likely not the case).