There were rumours about Gaag at the Perth World Championships in 1997. I was there & heard them first hand.

Just checking the results for that race 15th, was this before or after the race?

What was you thinking after that 99 race? Never seen anything like it, surely if there was rumours in 97 that 99 race would have put more doubts on it?

Yes, many people upset at the time with that win. Big cloud over that result straight away. But innocent until proven guilty (which he was only later as you pointed out).

This was before the race. I had arrived there on the Monday before (was working there), and a colleague of ours mentioned the rumours.
Not a well known fact, but he actually got hit by a car when he was riding about 5-6 days before the race, and apparently it had an impact.

What was it like for testing in the 90's compared to now?

i always thought that gaag had come over to tri after doping sanctions in modern pentathlon. did i have that wrong?

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

A Slowtwitch article from 2008...
https://www.slowtwitch.com/...dly_knew_ye_516.html

I 'raced' Dmitri Gaag at the World Military Games Triathlon in 1995 (the word race is loose as I finished 48th, and Gaag was in the top 5 with Hellriegel, Ranier Mueller {8:08 at Roth}, Normann Stadler, Olivier Marceau and Gaag in the top 5). He was already pretty fast then (I think he did 1:50ish Olympic tri that day on a slow course). The front end of the field was packed with future IM and ITU world champions (Marceau won 2000 ITU World's at Perth, Stadler was already 1994 world du champion, Hellrigel was 6th at ITU worlds 1992 and went on to win Kona). The back end of the field was countries who mainly had non pro amateurs (although the Canadian women won the Gold in the team points)

That was 1995, so I figure if he was doped by 1999 then his performance was plausable in full dope mode.

Also Dmitri was tiny relative to Simon. Its easy to accelerate a tiny body easily, but small runners without max top speed have to make sure they time their sprint correctly and close enough to the line that the bigger runners cannot wind it back up and re pass.

In any case Simon Lessing in my mind is the 1999 ITU world champion like Michelle Jones is the 2000 Sydney Olympics gold medalist.

Brilliant article, the race in question gets a big feature, Lessing did throw the towel in prety much on Oly distance after this race ,mentioned in the article that he'd had enough of more draft legal.

There was no test for EPO.

Interesting.

His nick name on the ITU circuit was 'The Chemsit'. Lots of suspicion, just not enough proof.

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http://www.tri-monkey.co.uk

How long did he have that nickname for?

As long as I can remember, at least 2000 onwards, but could have been before

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http://www.tri-monkey.co.uk

A couple of anecdotes:

There were a lot of suspicion amongst the athletes at time as we generally knew who was racing well (consistently at the top) and who was not. Dmitriy surprised many of us on that day.

A representative of the newly formed ITU Anti Doping Committee was standing next to my wife at the finish line and made the comment "It looks like Simon needs to work on his sprinting" As you can imagine that left a bitter taste in our mouth.

At the awards ceremony the organizers did not have the Kazakhstani national anthem so they played the "Chariots of Fire"….an awkward moment for everyone!

Ironically, the week after this race I was checking into my hotel for the Lausanne World Cup and at the same moment Dmitriy came down the stairway into the lobby. Two gentleman walked over to Dmitriy and asked him if he was Simon Lessing where he pointed to me at the check in desk. They were WADA representatives who had come to test me for an out of competition drug test.

I raced professionally for 20 years and in that time I did well over 100 drug tests. I like to say there is a reason I have never tested positive. That’s because I never took anything!

From early on in my professional career I knew that doping was going to play a factor. In the early 90's I had a chance to visit Dr Ferrari with the premise of him helping me with my "nutrition." My youth, and arrogance kept the better of me as I declined the offer. I was training hard, winning races and eating Mc Donlads. All was going great, why did I need someone to help me with my nutrition!
I made the decision to do the best that I could do within my own physical limits knowing that I would be racing clean.
[/url][url=https://flic.kr/p/2iRjvKd]Lessing[/url] by [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/57182349@N06/]lessingsimon[/url], on Flickr[/img]

Hello Simon,

Thank you for replying to my thread, as I said in the OP I really am not the type to raise suspicion or doubts on athletes based on nothing but a good performance, but that final spirit was just a freak of nature and totally out of character for the form everyone seemed to be in at the time.

I'm sure if forums like these were around back then, it would have been questioned in a public forum a hell of a lot more.

In my opinion anyone being caught doping should have every title wipped clean from there record.

Some more rumors that I heard in Ukraine - Dima was tested positive for epo, because used swiss made epo, that was marked with special substance, to prevent it to be used in sport (we know, that if you use it correctly, tests helpless). That epo Gaad got from Danil Sapunov, who got 4 year ban this week https://forum.slowtwitch.com/.../?page=unread#unread

Another story I heard from Dima - after 2000 Olympics, he got back to Hungary (that time he was training and racing there for local club), and Gergely Marcus (Hungarian vice president of ETU at that time, I think) told him, that there was few positive epo tests in Sidney and now he's going to get a medal (Gaag was 4th) - not sure what color of it.
They say, that for few day's, or hours, this info was on official ITU website, or page... But you know - it was first Olympics for triathlon, long time expected and wished since 80-s by Samaranch himself.. and Les was pretty tough guy... so it was decided to keep it as it is

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Hare Krishna

Nowbody cares about "the true".. really..... ? I use to think that in God we trust... Well, probably list or the sponsors right below, explains this conspiracy of silence. Gaag, Sapunov, all this russians, that stilling price money from first class world "clean" guys shoub be punished and convicted. But lets not talk that for yeaers, wtc did almost nothing in drug testing, welcoming pros to dop

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Hare Krishna

On a plus note during these lockdown times, your nutrition of choice (McDonalds) can be acquired via the drive thru. But hey, how come you did not stop of McDonald's against Mark Allen at Nice 1993 (or whenever that was) and decided that you could do the race on a few Leppin Squeezy's. At least a chocolate shake would have ensured that Mark Allen on only saw the bottom of your running shoes!!!! See what you got for ignoring your world class nutrition plan on race day????