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Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late
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What's the value of an Olympic medal that's only given to you 8 years later? Some Olympic programs have been de-funded for not living up to podium expectations, the coaches fired and retired. Everyone's gone, with no credit for having been among the best.

AndyF
bike geek
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [AndyF] [ In reply to ]
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I guess it's a rhetorical question intended to spur conversation, but to literally answer you i'm guessing thousandths of the true value when it comes to sponsorships, job opportunities, goodwill, etc?
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [wbattaile] [ In reply to ]
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Yeah, it was rhetorical, but I agree -- a thousandth of the value of winning it in a timely way. Justice delayed is justice denied.

AndyF
bike geek
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [AndyF] [ In reply to ]
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AndyF wrote:
Yeah, it was rhetorical, but I agree -- a thousandth of the value of winning it in a timely way. Justice delayed is justice denied.

Sort of interesting in that that are technical questions: What's different in the new testing procedures that results in a positive when the old tests didn't?

And political questions: Why retest now? New information? More funds available?
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [trail] [ In reply to ]
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trail wrote:
Sort of interesting in that that are technical questions: What's different in the new testing procedures that results in a positive when the old tests didn't?
And political questions: Why retest now? New information? More funds available?

I think the detection thresholds are improved. A french documentary has mentioned that many drugs now require 10 days to clear the system to avoid detection.

AndyF
bike geek
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [AndyF] [ In reply to ]
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AndyF wrote:
trail wrote:

Sort of interesting in that that are technical questions: What's different in the new testing procedures that results in a positive when the old tests didn't?
And political questions: Why retest now? New information? More funds available?


I think the detection thresholds are improved. A french documentary has mentioned that many drugs now require 10 days to clear the system to avoid detection.

Yeah, might be the same Carbon Isotope Ratio test that busted Danielson (I assume these positives are for anabolic steroids - by far the most effective, probably, for a lifter).

It's sort of ominous for speculation on use of other short-duration-in-the-body substances. Like EPO.

If I were WADA I'd occasionally do something like springing a 2nd test on athletes just hours after their last test. Because I imagine that an athlete would feel "safest" to dope immediately after a test.
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [trail] [ In reply to ]
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trail wrote:
AndyF wrote:
Yeah, it was rhetorical, but I agree -- a thousandth of the value of winning it in a timely way. Justice delayed is justice denied.


Sort of interesting in that that are technical questions: What's different in the new testing procedures that results in a positive when the old tests didn't?

And political questions: Why retest now? New information? More funds available?

A lot of the focus of retesting is to keep cheats out of current competitions (ex. the retests of London, Beijing were to keep athletes out of Rio).

ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [AndyF] [ In reply to ]
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AndyF wrote:
What's the value of an Olympic medal that's only given to you 8 years later? Some Olympic programs have been de-funded for not living up to podium expectations, the coaches fired and retired. Everyone's gone, with no credit for having been among the best.

I see your point in that 8 years down the line, the dust will have settled on a lot of those careers and people will have moved but that doesn't mean that you can't still try to make things right.

The tests used in 2008 were the best available at the time and there's no changing that. Now we have better tests available and I think it's very much the responsibility of the anti-doping authorities to uphold the integrity of past results as it is with current/future competitions. Case-in-point: Julie Miller.

Furthermore, I think the systematic re-analysis of historical samples serves as a major deterrent to potential dopers in the current generation of athletes. You might be able to evade today's tests, but who knows what developments are going to take place in the next 8-10 years and do you really want your family/friends/colleages/countrymen to know that your entire career was based on a lie? That's a very powerful message to send out.
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [Titanflexr] [ In reply to ]
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Spot on. Knowing that your samples are going to be refrozen and could be tested in the future when better tests are available is also a massive deterrent for athletes considering doping now. In cycling in the 90s the authorities knew about EPO but riders could still pretty much take it with impunity (as long as they didn't get caught with the syringes) because there was no test, the best they could do was a haematocrit limit of 50% for "safety reasons". If those riders had been explicitly told that their samples were being stored for future testing, might just have helped to keep a lid on things.
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [aw3] [ In reply to ]
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No, of course, making things "right" is a good thing. But I was just pointing out that it's not making things anywhere near right, in many cases.

AndyF
bike geek
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [Titanflexr] [ In reply to ]
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Titanflexr wrote:
A lot of the focus of retesting is to keep cheats out of current competitions (ex. the retests of London, Beijing were to keep athletes out of Rio).

So if you missed a medal to someone who's left the sport, you're even more hosed?
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [AndyF] [ In reply to ]
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Like everything else under the sun, Olympic and world class sports (FIFA) are all about politics, power, and money. Their distracting the media and lemming eyes on what happened in the past infers that it's all clean now, as if: Look, we can even find previous cheats like an episode of CSI. And, already knowing that the majority of three generations of athletes were conveniently chemically-aided outside their own rules allows the For-Profits to go back and decide who they want to selectively punish by erasing results, who they want to selectively reward with moving them up the virtual podium, or who they conveniently use as a sacrificial lamb. Testing previous generations now holds something over the heads of athletes, coaches and trainers, and their national federations: Better be loyal to the sport and its patrons and its sponsors--forever--and better not speak out about anything, or we might let slip some old test results.

Runner's World (with its long-time Contributing Author, Frank Shorter) has been more-than-hinting about the 1976 Olympic Men's Marathon Champion and the seeming injustice of Shorter not officially being a Two-Time Gold Medalist. Consider Runner's World's paid circulation of 710,618 as of 2012 when stacked up against the powers that be. That is, Two-Time Olympic Gold Medalist (1976 and 1980 Moscow) Waldemar Cierpinski is now a member of the German Olympic Committee.

Like any commercial entities within cultures that have an expectation of fair play and justice, only the appearance of fair play and justice has to exist in the minds of the paying public (TV rights, sponsorships, ticket sales, merchandising, website hits sold to third-parties...)

Yet it has nothing to do with actual fair play or justice. Without any science necessary (other than preserving the deteriorating petroleum-based videotape), Park Si-Hun of South Korea, not Roy Jones, is still the Light Middleweight Olympic Boxing Champion from Seoul 1988. The Union of Soviet Social Republics remains the Olympic Men's Basketball Champion from 1972 Munich. Whatever's best for the For-Profit institutions drives their rules and enforcement: politics, power, and money.
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [markvoss] [ In reply to ]
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The key will be for journalists to continue to punch through the bullshit, I guess.

AndyF
bike geek
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [markvoss] [ In reply to ]
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Park Si-Hun of South Korea, not Roy Jones, is still the Light Middleweight Olympic Boxing Champion from Seoul 1988. The Union of Soviet Social Republics remains the Olympic Men's Basketball Champion from 1972 Munich. Whatever's best for the For-Profit institutions drives their rules and enforcement: politics, power, and money. //

And Kevin Moats is still listed as an Ironman champion and AG record holder. Even after it was WTC that busted him, he admitted using the drugs, and was convicted of it. They leave his name in the results, smearing the good names of Joe Bonness and Gregory Taylor, two long time athletes who have been very outspoken about this issue. How hard is it to just hit delete???
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [markvoss] [ In reply to ]
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100% that it's all about politics power and money. It is however very sad, as we can't even be sure that the athletes that have now been moved up are cleaner that those that have been erased. Do they retest 100% of the samples or just "randomly"?
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [aw3] [ In reply to ]
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aw3 wrote:
Furthermore, I think the systematic re-analysis of historical samples serves as a major deterrent to potential dopers in the current generation of athletes. You might be able to evade today's tests, but who knows what developments are going to take place in the next 8-10 years and do you really want your family/friends/colleages/countrymen to know that your entire career was based on a lie? That's a very powerful message to send out.

I agree with this... then have a media frenzy about it to "shame" the athlete/coach/country.... should make some folks think twice before doping...
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [argmac] [ In reply to ]
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argmac wrote:
100% that it's all about politics power and money. It is however very sad, as we can't even be sure that the athletes that have now been moved up are cleaner that those that have been erased. Do they retest 100% of the samples or just "randomly"?

For the pre-Rio retesting, they put a focus on athletes from Beijing and London who were eligible to compete in Rio.
This also means that they had little interest in busting retired athletes retroactively (bad publicity, and no immediate impact on how clean the next competition will be).

ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [Titanflexr] [ In reply to ]
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Focusing implies not being neutral. That is a big issue to me. Where there other focus areas? Was there a focus on Chinese or Russian athletes? Was there a focus on not testing big name athletes?

Anything other than testing all the samples in the same lab with the same protocol or randomly testing (the randomness certified by an independent third party) is bullshit. Remember that even televised draws can be manipulated http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-3640062/European-draws-rigged-Ex-FIFA-president-Sepp-Blatter-claims-seen-hot-cold-balls-used-aid-cheats.html
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [argmac] [ In reply to ]
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It can be "fair" if the criteria are reasonable and objective (ex. test only medal winners, test samples from athletes who have failed a post-Olympic test). That being said, the IOC criteria rarely are...there are lots of folks with agendas. Look at how the IOC used the rules to ban a whistleblower.

ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
Last edited by: Titanflexr: Aug 25, 16 16:30
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [markvoss] [ In reply to ]
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markvoss wrote:
Like everything else under the sun, Olympic and world class sports (FIFA) are all about politics, power, and money. Their distracting the media and lemming eyes on what happened in the past infers that it's all clean now, as if: Look, we can even find previous cheats like an episode of CSI. And, already knowing that the majority of three generations of athletes were conveniently chemically-aided outside their own rules allows the For-Profits to go back and decide who they want to selectively punish by erasing results, who they want to selectively reward with moving them up the virtual podium, or who they conveniently use as a sacrificial lamb. Testing previous generations now holds something over the heads of athletes, coaches and trainers, and their national federations: Better be loyal to the sport and its patrons and its sponsors--forever--and better not speak out about anything, or we might let slip some old test results.

Runner's World (with its long-time Contributing Author, Frank Shorter) has been more-than-hinting about the 1976 Olympic Men's Marathon Champion and the seeming injustice of Shorter not officially being a Two-Time Gold Medalist. Consider Runner's World's paid circulation of 710,618 as of 2012 when stacked up against the powers that be. That is, Two-Time Olympic Gold Medalist (1976 and 1980 Moscow) Waldemar Cierpinski is now a member of the German Olympic Committee.

Like any commercial entities within cultures that have an expectation of fair play and justice, only the appearance of fair play and justice has to exist in the minds of the paying public (TV rights, sponsorships, ticket sales, merchandising, website hits sold to third-parties...)

Yet it has nothing to do with actual fair play or justice. Without any science necessary (other than preserving the deteriorating petroleum-based videotape), Park Si-Hun of South Korea, not Roy Jones, is still the Light Middleweight Olympic Boxing Champion from Seoul 1988. The Union of Soviet Social Republics remains the Olympic Men's Basketball Champion from 1972 Munich. Whatever's best for the For-Profit institutions drives their rules and enforcement: politics, power, and money.

I think you're being a bit overly pessimistic here. I know you are not a swimmer but I feel pretty confident that virtually all the kids who make U.S. Oly Trials cuts have done so without any illegal aids. From there on up, there may be a few swimmers doping but again I think we would have heard about it through the swimming grapevine, vs the main things I hear from the college swimmers I know, e.g. "all I do is eat, sleep, swim, and study". Sure, there may be some small amount of doping going on in the U.S. swimming world but mostly these guys/girls are just busting their asses. Your comments make it sound like the Oly Games are just completely rigged, which I think is the reverse of the actuality. It would be impossible to actually arrange that 3-way tie for silver in the men's 100 fly, or the 2-way tie for gold in the women's 100 free. I believe that these two examples show unequivocally that fair play and justice still exist, at least in the races themselves.


"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [trail] [ In reply to ]
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trail wrote:
AndyF wrote:
trail wrote:

Sort of interesting in that that are technical questions: What's different in the new testing procedures that results in a positive when the old tests didn't?
And political questions: Why retest now? New information? More funds available?


I think the detection thresholds are improved. A french documentary has mentioned that many drugs now require 10 days to clear the system to avoid detection.


Yeah, might be the same Carbon Isotope Ratio test that busted Danielson (I assume these positives are for anabolic steroids - by far the most effective, probably, for a lifter).

It's sort of ominous for speculation on use of other short-duration-in-the-body substances. Like EPO.

If I were WADA I'd occasionally do something like springing a 2nd test on athletes just hours after their last test. Because I imagine that an athlete would feel "safest" to dope immediately after a test.


Like I speed up after I see a cop with a radar gun :-)

Except one time there were 4 cops, all about a mile apart. The stress of slowing down and speeding up after each one eventually had me set the cruise control to the speed limit and enjoy the view and improved fuel economy.

TriDork

"Happiness is a myth. All you can hope for is to get laid once in a while, drunk once in a while and to eat chocolate every day"
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [AndyF] [ In reply to ]
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Shirley Babashoff (and numerous other women) is still waiting, 40 years afterwards.

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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [ericmulk] [ In reply to ]
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All I can say, even a as reformed fanboy, I was sucked in and believed LA just busted his ass.

He did, he trained more than anyone. Started sooner in the season, trained in crappier weather, worked on the incremental gains (remember his wind tunnel jersey testing?) and we all believed that was why he won. LA did the work and he won. Oh, and he doped. Why do you assume that ass busting swimmers aren't juiced as well?

I'm not suggesting they are, but hard work doesn't imply you're clean. In fact, I'd suggest the opposite. Being juiced allows you to work harder and that makes you better.

You could be right, but your argument doesn't really wash. I think the naivety of the LA years is still around. We want the hard working guys to win, and when they do, we tend to turn a blind eye to how they won.

TriDork

"Happiness is a myth. All you can hope for is to get laid once in a while, drunk once in a while and to eat chocolate every day"
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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [tridork] [ In reply to ]
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Oh, there are definitely some guys /girls who are on the go-faster juice. That's just statistics.

I'd like to believe that it isn't as widespread in swimming as in some other sports, but who knows...

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Re: Winning a Medal 8 Years Too Late [tridork] [ In reply to ]
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tridork wrote:
All I can say, even a as reformed fanboy, I was sucked in and believed LA just busted his ass.
He did, he trained more than anyone. Started sooner in the season, trained in crappier weather, worked on the incremental gains (remember his wind tunnel jersey testing?) and we all believed that was why he won. LA did the work and he won. Oh, and he doped. Why do you assume that ass busting swimmers aren't juiced as well?
I'm not suggesting they are, but hard work doesn't imply you're clean. In fact, I'd suggest the opposite. Being juiced allows you to work harder and that makes you better.
You could be right, but your argument doesn't really wash. I think the naivety of the LA years is still around. We want the hard working guys to win, and when they do, we tend to turn a blind eye to how they won.

Personally, I was never a fan of Lance b/c I had heard on good authority that he was a first class ass hole, and this was way, way before the doping came out. In summary, I think I would summarize my view as "innocent until proven guilty". I don't view the world through rosy-eyed glasses but OTOH I'm not a total pessimist either.


"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."
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