Nice read this morning on Wikipedia about the “innovations” of Dr. Conconi in working with Francesco Moser (1984 World Hour Record) and various Italian endurance sports, most notably, the Italian XC ski success.
Some of us remember the live coverage when Silivio Fauner out sprinted Bjorn Dahlie and shut down all of Norway’s dreams winning the 4x10k XC relay in Lillehamer.
Systematic blood doping at the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. The U.S. cycling team’s successes were coloured by revelations that riders had blood transfusions before their events, a practice known as blood-doping. The transfusions were to increase red blood cells in riders’ blood. That would take more oxygen to their muscles. They received the blood of others with similar blood types. The practice, instigated by national coach Eddie Borysewicz, was not against Olympic rules although Games medical guidelines discouraged it. Borysewicz and a colleague, Ed Burke, set up a clinic in a Los Angeles motel room and four of the seven athletes who had transfusions won medals. The U.S. federation banned blood-doping in January 1985. Borysewicz and Burke were fined a month’s pay. Mike Fraysse, a former president of the federation, was demoted from first to third vice-president. Steve Hegg, won a gold and a silver; Rebecca Twigg, Pat McDonough and Leonard Nitz won silver medals. The others were John Beckman, Mark Whitehead and Brent Emery. They were identified in the subsequent inquiry as having had transfusions. The rest of the team had refused.
…and in the process of re visiting that, Eddie Broysewicz’s name re surfaces. Who was coach of LA’s first team?
Nice read this morning on Wikipedia about the “innovations” of Dr. Conconi in working with Francesco Moser (1984 World Hour Record) and various Italian endurance sports, most notably, the Italian XC ski success.
I’d say that USA/Italy were way behind the curve, East Germany/Soviets of the era were far ahead of the US in sports pharmaceutics.
I remember hearing it was FInland that was at the forefront of blood doping in the 60’s. Remember hearing a rumor that perhaps Zapotec might have, but not really sure about that one. Maybe some old runners here can remember some of the old stories…
Monty, I think you mean the Finnish runner Lasse Viren (Munich 1972, Montreal 1976).
Maybe Conconi just refined it better than the Finnish. Have a read of his “innovations in balancing the cocktail of EPO, HGH etc” to go undetected and also “use safely”
when i was a runner, in the 70s, we heard rumors of lasse viren blood doping. but, based on no evidence that remember being presented. however, the rumors were prevalent, and i don’t see why finland isn’t as likely a finalist as italy, the u.s. or east germany, back then, as the genesis for blood doping.
What is even more interesting is how the mid 90’s Norway XC ski team gets off the hook, having beaten the Italian and Finnish dopers. You guys are correct, that my rewind in time only goes to the 80’s…probably should have rewound to the 60’s and 70’s.
The main reason for my rewind to Eddie B and Dr. Conconi is to do with the more widespread doping we see today in endurance sports. In the case of Eddie B, he was the US “innovator” (probably had a team behind him). Francesco Conconi was the European “innovator”. Both produced lots of champions and marquis event wins. I’m guessing that in today’s airing with Oprah, Lance is going to rewind us back to 1988 when he started riding with Eddie B (or was it a bit earlier…either way).
By the way, we Canadians (Charlie Francis) seemed to have the sprint doping “innovation game” nailed sometime after the LA Olympics before the Seoul Games…Johnson’s 1987 9.83 at IAAF Rome coming to mind
i think lance had some early brushes with eddie b in the 80s, but he did not begin riding for him full time until the beginning of 91. that’s when he moved to north san diego county to ride with subaru montgomery. that was the first nexus of eddie b, tom weisel and lance armstrong. i don’t know when the doping started and i’m really interested in knowing that. i had no hint of it, and he was living under my roof. i’d be very interested in knowing whether the doping was going on then, or whether it started later.
1976-2004Coach to junior national Polish team
North Jersey Bicycle Club (circa 1977)
Coach to USA team at 1980 and 1984 Olympics
1988 Sunkyong Amateur team
1989 Montgomery/Avenir Pro Cycling Team
1990 Subaru Montgomery Pro cycling team
1994 Montgomery Bell Pro Team
1996 US Postal Services team
2004 Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team.
Finland has been in the forefront of using doping in xc-skiing, most likely since the seventies. The Norwegian xc-skiing national coach went public with his complains after the 1984 winter Olympics. But nothing happen, then in 2001 most of the top Finnish athletes got caught and it came out that the doping program was an integrated part of the national team.
Thanks for that. Did Norway have access to better wax and skis in the early 90’s to keep beating the doped Finns and Italians? In Lillehammer if I recall correctly Norway had a streak of winning 8 Gold medals in a row before being defeated by the Italians in the 4x10k and as the Conconi wikipedia link suggests, most of the Italian team was doped to the gills at the time (as were the Finns)
Also in the Conconi wikipedia link, Conconi was claiming around a 40 second improvement in 10,000m running times using EPO versus not. It is entirely believable that Norway could overcome that deficit in XC skiing just with better wax and skis. I know this is a hard question if you are Norwegian, but the fact that Norwegian athletes were cleaning up against the best doped XC skiers of the EPO era raises a few flags. I’m wondering, in Norway, if anyone is wondering if their equivalents of Miguel Indurain and Bjarne Riis were any different. Or does the general public today turn a blind eye away from all that and just accept that these guys were champions of their day and did it only with better training, nutrition, recovery, skis and wax?
The U.S. federation banned blood-doping in January 1985. Borysewicz and Burke were fined a month’s pay. Mike Fraysse, a former president of the federation, was demoted from first to third vice-president.
Yeah…what lead me to reading the Conconi wikipedia article was Fleck’s mention of blood transfusions at the LA Olympics by the US, and it occurred to me that at the very same time Ferrari was working with Moser for the 1984 cycling world hour record…a quick search revealed that Ferrari was only Conconi’s side kick at the time and it was Conconi driving the entire initiative and associated research and application of this “tangent” to human performance in endurance sport. It would be interesting to have known Moser’s Watts per kilo at his 1984 World Hour Record, or Indurain’s in 1993:
Well, someone mentioned that while not banned, the practice was discouraged.
=)
The U.S. federation banned blood-doping in January 1985. Borysewicz and Burke were fined a month’s pay. Mike Fraysse, a former president of the federation, was demoted from first to third vice-president.
He played a larger role than just Conconi’s side kick. Conconi was the head of the Department of Sports Medicine at the University of Ferrara, while Ferrari was the young Associate Professor in the trenches doing the real work. Ferrari used to say that Indurain had the highest values that he had ever tested.
Can I guarantee that no Norwegian cross country skiers have ever doped, no of course not.
Anyone who takes part in sport in Norway can get tested in and outside competition no matter level or age. I remember two junior skiers from my town that had a lot of progress one year; they got tested out of competition.
Norway has a really strong anti doping culture. If you get caught doping you are social dead in Norway. Just look at the former US Postal cyclist Steffen Kjaargaard, when he admitted that he had used PED no one used the term “everybody else did it”. He was a cheater, and nothing but a cheater.
Reasons for good results in cross country skiing.
After many bad years in the seventies and eighties the Norwegian Sports Association invested money to improve results. Olympiatoppen was established to centralize knowledge and to give trainers and leaders a place to go for training and knowledge.
Norway was one of the first countries really using training camps in altitude in a scientific way.
Norway was in front when it comes to wax and grinding. A friend of mine did grind most of the skis the all the top skiers the last 25 years.
Many young skiers want to be good skiers and are willing to use time and money to get to the top. Making money in cross country skiing is almost impossible. Few skiers are taking most of the money, but you will still find athletes willing to train year after year to become better. A good example is Anders Aukland, he did not have his international breakthrough before he was 26-27.
A culture of share knowledge. An integrated part of the cross country skiing is the culture of sharing knowledge. Unless you are the coach for the national team or some of the regional teams, hardly any coaches make any money on coaching. The Norwegian Ski Association is good at making knowledge easy available, it is easy to coaches on all levels to get help and support.
Does this mean that I can guarantee that no Norwegian skiers have ever cheated, of course not? But I will be very surprised. No one was surprised when the trough came out about the Austrian, Finnish, Russian and Italian skiers. Most in the skiing universe knew what was going on.
I partially buy into the good wax and the good grinding making Norwegian skis faster. I partially buy into the training harder part. But they had an extra ordinary run from Albertville to Lillehammer to Nagano, which spans from 1992 to 94 to 98. EPO tests came out for the Sydney Olympics for 2000. The rest of the world should have caught up on waxing and good ski grinding pretty quick. To be beating the top doped countries of the world (Finland, Italy, Russia) for that long at the peak of the EPO era is fine. We have a strong anti doping culture in Canada, yet Ben Johnson and Mark McKoy did a number on all of us naive fans in this country.
With everything shaking out in the past year the parallels are similar to cycling. A “clean guy” was beating all the dopers in cycling. I hope the wax and the grinding was enough to overcome the EPO of the other skiing countries, and I really hope so because the Norwegian guys on that 4x10K relay team were truly some of my heros. I was totally deflated when Silvio Fauner out sprinted the king Bjorn Dahlie. That was probably the most dramatic race I ever watched. Turns out the Italians were doped anyway, and I hope the clean athlete got beaten by the doper.
re: Norway’s xc dominance in the midst of an intense PED culture (Finn-Swede etc)
My high placed sources in the xc-ski world(World Cup, Olympic team) firmly believed the Norwegians to be clean, mostly out of pride (the sport is named after them, after all), and said that if the Norwegians started doping, it was all over, as in, The Bomb.
The old Eddie B doping stories from the '84 Olympic team were hilarious, but the US has always been playing catch-up.
