yes I think she would.

check also the last comment of Olaf Sabatschus on www.tri2be.de (in german)...says the same thing (and that she was so stupid to try this)

I think she still would have won too. Comparing Badmann, who looked stoked to be out there, to Nina who looked like she knew what was really going on and was dissapointed, it probably weighed her performance down a bit even.

Oh yeah, Ezra, the one who's irritated by my bold type from a few days earlier.

How's it going buddy?

By the way, it's Kraft.

But I'm just anal retentive that way.

No, no... and no. Here's why: let's look at this logically. First, Nina is a proven liar/fraudster so to begin your analysis with the assumption that her previous performances were clean is simply unjustified. All of Nina's performances should now be viewed as suspect. Second, from the Balco inquiry we know that athletes tend to use more than one PED at a time. It is unlikely that Nina has only used EPO once - we only have her word and we now know what that is worth: nothing. Finally there is both scientific and anecdotal evidence of the potential gains from EPO. the Irish 10 and 5, 000m champion Cathal Lombard admitted to using EPO prior to the Athens Olympics. Most revealing was the fact that Cathal lowered his pr in the 10,000m by over 3 minutes in the year prior to his bust for EPO. Whether this gain was the direct result of increased aerobic capacity or increased ability to absorb higher and higher workloads during training, the fact remains that the both are a direct result of the use of a PED. Given that this corresponds to a performance gain of between 5 and 10 percent, reverse engineering Nina's performance (it appeared she was working very hard unlike some previous winners) it seems unlikely she could have ever come close of winning without EPO. 5% of 9 hours is 27 minutes, 10% is... well you do the math. Anytime an athlete at a world-class level delivers a performance that is outside a normal range we should be doubtful, to be otherwise is to be naive.

the question was "do you think".
yes, I think so. your arguments do not convince me and i really don't care about justifying why I believe that Nina would have won had she been clean.

cynical: believing the worst of human nature and motives; having a sneering disbelief in e.g. selflessness of others
www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn

What good does it do you to doubt human potential?



world-class: first: ranking above all others; "was first in her class"; "the foremost figure among marine artists"; "the top graduate"
www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn

By their very definition, a world-class athlete must deliver a performance that is outside a normal range, else they are not world-class.

No, there is no reason to believe she would of or should won. I have no respect for cheaters.

Francois:

Yes, yes... and yes I understood the question. I just don't feel that your response is based on logic - I suspect it is based on faith and on your previous relationship with Nina. Sorry, but I think you are biased. Nothing too unusual about that, I also think my mother is a saint.

Fool - believing someone who has already lied to you.

World-Class - a member of a class (modified by the adjective world), otherwise you wouldn't be world class, you would be in class of your own. Finally, tell me more of this place called Princeton...

Okay, I'm joking...I know Princeton is a college ranked just behind Tufts...

I agree with Francois. She would've won anyway, for many sound physiological reasons, not least her athletic progression. So, barring an unforeseen and unavoidable circumstance during the race, and all things being equal, she probably would have done it.

Man, that's gotta sting her, though, knowing that her fitness was probably such that she'd have won regardless.

Tony

Whatever, Nina was a monster before she took EPO. She would have won. Accept it. You don't have to respect her.

This is a silly arguement. She cheated. It certainly gave her some advantage. Had Natasha been closer or ahead off the bike it would have been an entirely different race.

sometimes ya'll slay me.

ask yerself this;

a child pornographer is caught - do we think that up to this event he wasNOT engaging in child pornography?

a credit card theif is nabbed - do we think that all his purchases up to this time were on his own card?

a drunk driver is arrested - do we think every drive he made before that one was sober?

answer(s): hell fucking no, we don't.

Kraft is a doper. to think any of previous preformances were clean is plain silly. or what, philip meirhage, carmenzind, the festina team, etc etc ALL just did it that one time . . . . . .?? !!! . . . . sheesh.

like I said, I don't care what you think...the question was "do you think..."
my answer is yes. Whether you think so too, I really don't care.

anyway, I sure hope for you that you are never caught cheating or anything, because if anyone thinks like you, you might as well shoot yourself a bullet in the head.

I'm just wondering in general (and hit reply on Francois' post because I have to hit reply on somebody's to post at all) if all of you who demonize the drug cheats in athletics do the same in the artistic and intellectual world. I mean, do you guys think Sigmund Freud's cocaine induced writings/insights should be banned? Should we raid the libraries and burn all of Steven King's cocaine induced works of the late 70's through 80's? Should there be a boycott of Eric Clapton's music before he was clean? What about Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, hell just about all of mainstream music for that matter. Should Judy Garland's movies be boycotted? Should we have elected a man who was pulled over while drunk driving? As t-t-n noted it probably wasn't his first or last. Can he be trusted? Maybe we could get a list together of all the famous and infamous people who have knowingly taken illicit drugs. The point here is that if we demonized everybody who has ever taken drugs, we'd be living in hell. I think it does me a lot more good to think that Nina could have pulled off the performance if she had just been more creative with her training instead of being more creative with her physiology. If we have to question every great performance of a man, be it artistic, athletic, or intellectual, what does that do to our own mindset? I believe it is self-defeating.

a bullet in the head? where did that come from?

it is only reasonable to look critically at previous behaviour after one is shown in the present to be a thief, a liar, a cheat (and a scumbag). anybody who has been "caught cheating" has experienced this, and rightly so. present behaviour is the best indicator of future, and past behaviour. i will wager that you yourself, francois, feel likewise in the examples i listed above. it would be difficult not to.

we can all think what we wish, just pointing out that in the case of kraft, it is funny how some will exempt her from a social norm.

I don't think your analogies are on target. Its not about drug use, its about cheating. If it was shown that Clapton stole lyrics from someone and claimed them as his own, then I'd think less of his artistry. If King plagerized another author, same thing.

I don't care if Nina smokes pot while on vacation and breaks from training. Didn't an olympic triathlete in Sydney get caught using pot? Don't care. I don't care that Jan Ullrich took ectasy. However, I do care if they are using EPO. They are cheating and should face whatever penalties are out there. Two years sounds about right to me.

She's a great athlete. Just too bad she crossed that line.

That is a very well-made point. But what was it? Do you want to do away with a ban on certain substances? Are you saying, open it all up, take anything you want, use whatever you want? I'm not saying that is a "wrong" position. I just am asking for clarification.

How about when we get to genetic engineering? Should people be banned from competition who have had their genes tweaked?

No, compare their bike times. Every prior year, Badmann beat Kraft by a considerable margin on the bike. In 2003, Badmann had a bad year, losing the first time to Bowden. She still beat Kraft by 7 minutes. Then in 2004, Kraft beats Badmann by 7 minutes with the help of EPO. Badmann's 2004 ride was 31 minutes slower than her 2003 ride. Kraft's 2003 ride was only 17 minutes slower than her 2003 ride. I think it is fair to say that the EPO added atleast 15 minutes to her bike ride. Then you have the run where Heather Fuhr and Lisa Bentley, the two best runners in the sport, only beat her by a minute. They both beat her by about 5 minutes in 2003. So the EPO probably added about 20 minutes to her time which gives her a 9:53 and puts her behind Badmann. Then you also have to consider that Badmann probably would have ran harder since it was clear about half way through the marathon that she was racing for 2nd. So that gives Badmann a time faster than 9:50. So Kraft probably would have lost to Badmann by about 5 minutes without the EPO.

KRAFT

05:24:53 2004
05:07:34 2003
05:06:15 2002
05:29:30 2001

BADMANN
05:31:37 2004
05:00:02 2003
04:52:26 2002
05:16:07 2001

Depends on whether to believe shes been clean at the races before hawaii. Of cause Id like to believe this. Not because I like her, but because Id like the Idea of triathlon not being poluted with doping more than we have poves.

Do I believe shes been clean before? We have her word about it. Whats it worth? Nothing (IMO).

Could she have been clean though? Of cause. But consider this. Whats the likelihood of someone starting to use EPO (or whatever) to be caught at his/her first race? Maybe thats the likelihood of her being clean before Hawaii.

Cheers Torsten

I think you make a good point, the analogies are off. As many of his fans know, Clapton "stole" heavily from the likes of Robert Johnson, but made it clear that he did, so he's in the clear (not to be mistaken with being on "the clear"). In a sanctioned race like IMH it is 100% obvious to every athlete competing, especially the pro's in contention for large sums of cash, that PED's are not welcome and use of them will lead to a DQ and suspension from future sanctioned races for a designated amount of time, generally between 2 years and life.

I think my issue is with the drug war in general. I don't want to see everybody using drugs freely and liberally, as I think our personal power is greatest when we attain a lucidity only possible through sobriety. I believe that because PED's/drugs are illegal, and illegal things are taboo to talk about, it actually proliferates employment of them due to their mysteriousness and superhuman feats associated with them, be it mental, physical, or supernatural. It's human nature to reach for the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge.

Supposedly there is something like several million people illegally using steroids in the US alone, in addition to the large sum of older folks on hormone therapy that are receiving steroids by a doctor. I've also read that up to 1% of the US population smokes pot on a regular basis, like more than once a week. A CHP officer once told me that somewhere in the neighborhood of 7-10% of everyone driving is not sober, whether they've been drinking, doing illicit drugs, or are on medications that advise them not to drive. It's a gigantic societal problem that is not at all limited to athletics. As for the original analogy regarding artists, it is illegal for them too, it's just not frowned upon as heavily by the companies who distribute their works. So I think Steven King using his "on switch", as he referred to cocaine, could be debated as cheating other authors, who were writing while sober, from being on the best seller list.

I don't know if legalization is the answer, but I have a feeling that will be something the US experiments with in the future, especially to combat terrorist funding and to reduce the deficit that the costs of the war on drugs adds to.

With the advent of gene doping (Does anybody here really understand that? I don't.)it seems that violation of the major sanctions/federations policies is only going to rise. I'd rather see the policy of the federations being that doping is allowed, but only clean contestants are elligible for prize money. Doped athletes would have to disclose that they are not elligible for prize money before the competition. Drug testing would continue for those in the money spots, and those found cheating would never be elligible for prize money again, period, no two year slap on the wrist.

What do you guys think? How do we combat the root of this problem? Do we even understand the root of the problem?

While I must admit that when I first read Androgynotopia's [why couldn't you get a simpler posting name:)] post I thought, what a load of trash, it has merit and precedent. Body building has a similar system - competitions for those who foresake and for those who, well let's just say might not. Regardless of whether certain individuals choose to use PED's, their performances are still spectacular. For example Nina didn't just cruise the race, she worked probably harder than anyone else. Maybe it's time to recognize that we have gone beyond the point of no return - there are probably no "clean" records in swimming, track or triathlon. Maybe it's time to get over it and move on. I know I have. Now let's talk about a real sport - pro wrestling!