I have to give the East Germans some credit for Heike Drechsler. She produced amazing performances over a long period of time and she didn’t/doesn’t look like a man. She was even able to reproduce which many of the East Germans who started doping from 1972 onward were not able to do.
Do Athletes Who Dope have Shorter Careers?
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KeymasterHeike is actually a unique case study because she excelled in both the mega-doping era and the controlled-doping era. What’s funny is that you can actually see the change in her performance level through the eras.
ELITETRACK Founder
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Participant
LJ info on Heike Drechsler
2004 6.49 1.30 Pirae 02/10/2004
2003 6.07 0.20 Roma 11/07/2003
2002 6.85 0.30 Leverkusen 27/07/2002
2001 6.79 -1.00 Bremen 24/06/2001
2000 6.99 1.90 Sydney 29/09/2000
1999 6.91 0.60 Stockholm 30/07/1999
1998 7.16 1.00 Budapest 22/08/1998
1997 6.89 -0.10 AthÃna 09/08/1997
1996 6.75 1.40 Milano 07/09/1996
1995 7.07 0.00 Linz 22/08/1995
1994 7.29 0.90 Oslo 22/07/1994
1993 7.21 0.00 Zürich 04/08/1993
1992 7.48 0.40 Lausanne 08/07/1992
1991 7.37 1.80 Sestriere 31/07/1991
1990 7.30 0.60 Split 28/08/1990
1988 7.48 1.20 Neubrandenburg 09/07/1988
1987 7.40 0.70 Potsdam 21/08/1987
1986 7.45 1.10 Dresden 03/07/1986
1986 7.45 0.90 Tallinn 21/06/1986
1985 7.44 2.00 Berlin 22/09/1985
1984 7.40 1.80 Dresden 26/07/1984
1983 7.14 1.10 Bratislava 04/06/1983
1982 6.98 1.10 Potsdam 18/08/1982
1981 6.91 1.00 Jena 09/08/1981
1980 6.64 2.00 Santiago de Cuba 15/08/1980
1979 6.07 01/01/1979
1978 5.69 01/01/1978
1977 4.40As a 13 year old jumped 14 and a half feet, at 14 she jumped 18 and a half feet, at 15 she hits just short of 20 feet. These jumps in performance are not uncommon in teenage girls, except 22-23′ feet as a junior is like a 1 in 100,000 shot of ever happening. Here performance holds from 18-38 at an elite level. Her performance at the 24 foot level is from 20-28 years of age and stays pretty level throughout that time span. Most PED performers don’t have that type of longevity and consistency in PRs.
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Keymaster
[code]Most PED performers don’t have that type of longevity and consistency in PRs. [/code]Have you ever heard of Mo Greene? What about Marion Jones? or Heike? All had EXTREMELY long careers and all doped (Mo Greene by strong allegation only).
Also, is this phenomenon that you point out (which I for one don’t believe BTW), due to the fact that these people are having their careers ended by drug busts or because of the drugs? For example, you’re not using Ben Johnson as an example of a PED person with a short career are you?
ELITETRACK Founder
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Participant
[code]Most PED performers don’t have that type of longevity and consistency in PRs. [/code]Have you ever heard of Mo Greene? What about Marion Jones? or Heike? All had EXTREMELY long careers and all doped (Mo Greene by strong allegation only).
Also, is this phenomenon that you point out (which I for one don’t believe BTW), due to the fact that these people are having their careers ended by drug busts or because of the drugs? For example, you’re not using Ben Johnson as an example of a PED person with a short career are you?
Everyone you are pointing out had a sharp drop in performance and sharp increase and peak for short time.
Believe what you want, the guys and gals who are running masters meets from 30-39 see the type drops similar to Heike’s. Not the rapid blowouts seen in the types like Mo Greene going from 9.8 to 10.3. She’s a lot more like Christine Arron in terms of performances. The difference is Heike wasn’t winning championship meets in her 30’s. Her performance started to decline around that point, Mo Greene was getting faster.
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Keymaster
Mo Greene ran at the top of the world for about 10 years. Heike for even longer. Same with Marion. In all cases, there PRs were achieved in the middle of this run (which is to be expected for anyone doping or not). All were dopers. Mo only dropped off after a series of injuries / surgeries that were largely undisclosed.
As for the masters analogy…that’s an unfair comparison. Those guys aren’t training and competing at the highest levels like the pros are during their 20s and early 30s. That training takes a toll on the body that can only be withstood for so long before the injuries start to mount and big dropoffs occur (whether doped or not).
ELITETRACK Founder
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Participant
Mo Greene ran at the top of the world for about 10 years. Heike for even longer. Same with Marion. In all cases, there PRs were achieved in the middle of this run (which is to be expected for anyone doping or not). All were dopers. Mo only dropped off after a series of injuries / surgeries that were largely undisclosed.
As for the masters analogy…that’s an unfair comparison. Those guys aren’t training and competing at the highest levels like the pros are during their 20s and early 30s. That training takes a toll on the body that can only be withstood for so long before the injuries start to mount and big dropoffs occur (whether doped or not).
It’s not unfair. In all the entire East German documentation on doping and there is a boatload and then some of it there has been no link of doping by Heike. She was too young to be fed the concoctions the GDR was feeding the likes of Koch and Kratochvilova which made an era of their female athletes look like men even to this day. She’s not the prettiest woman in world, but she doesn’t have the manly features of many of the athletes of that era, because they didn’t offset testosterone with estrogen.
Also there are many masters athletes who actually have a harder time because of manual labor jobs followed by a 2-3 hour training session and lack superior recovery treatments or methodologies.
At 30 he’s running with the super elite then at 33 he falls off the face of the planet, to a time which puts him as the 12th best Masters athlete for his division. At 32 in 2006 he ranks #1 on that list for the same division. Those athletes don’t have full-time endorsements, training 4 hours a day 5-6 days a week, have therapy treatments nearly the same as Maurice. Not to mention most of them work other jobs. Say what he wants about injuries, but that’s a part of every athletes performances and these Masters athletes don’t have elite coaches and trainers to rely upon. It’s BS, it’s all a bunch of BS. Dopers are more than likely to suffer injuries because the body doesn’t adapt at the same rate especially when muscular forces out adapt the forces tendons can resist, dopers just recover faster.
2007 10.84 1.10 Carson, CA 20/05/2007
2006 10.35 -0.50 Baie Mahault 01/05/2006
2005 10.01 1.90 Carson, CA 25/06/2005
2004 9.87 0.60 AthÃna (Olympic Stadium) 22/08/2004
2003 9.94 1.40 Carson, CA 01/06/2003
2002 9.89 0.90 Roma 12/07/2002
2001 9.82 -0.20 Edmonton 05/08/2001
2000 9.86 -0.20 Berlin 01/09/2000
1999 9.79 0.10 AthÃna 16/06/1999
1998 9.90 0.30 Stockholm 05/08/1998
1997 9.86 0.20 AthÃna 03/08/1997
1996 10.08 0.30 Atlanta, GA 14/06/1996
1995 10.19 0.80 Bratislava 30/05/1995
1993 10.43 01/01/1993 -
Member
What about Jonathan Edwards? Or he is just a freak? There have never been dopping accusations on him.
Born 1966:
Age Year Mark
37-2003 – 17,61
36-2002 – 17,86
35-2001 – 17,92
34-2000 – 17,71
33-1999 – 17,52
32-1998 – 18,01
31-1997 – 17,74
30-1996 – 17,88
29-1995 – 18,29 WR
28-1994 – 17,39
27-1993 – 17,44
26-1992 – 17,34
25-1991 – 17,43
24-1990 – 16,51
23-1989 – 17,28
22-1988 – 16,74
21-1987 – 16,35
20-1986 – 16,05
19-1985 – 15,09
18-1984 – 14,87
17-1983 – 13,84 -
Participant
db you can’t be serious–Mo ran 10.8x in one race while clearly coming off of extremely serious injuries and not even running through the line. You’d have to either not care about the facts and have some sort of agenda or just be dumb to think he was in equally good health and effort and ran 10.8x. That’s just moronic. He had numerous injuries throughout his career and could still probably go 10.3-10.4 if he really desired to train for that. You’re acting like he peaked out for the season in the greatest shape and went 10.8.
And how about Linford Christie? He had an extremely long career and many say he would demolish the masters races if be were to run because he is in such great shape.
And Michael Johnson? The alien. He sure had a “really short” career and a quick peak and fall… right? Or are we being selective in the examples?
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Participant
Edwards changed his routine about 2 years prior to the WR. The routine changed to considerably lower volumes of higher quality work. He was often injured prior to this change with minor nagging injuries. Of course, dopers suffer less injuries overall, but they do suffer more catastrophic injuries or “reported” catastrophic injuries.
Much like Edwards is Heike, Alyson Felix, Muna Lee, etc.. Slender athletes with terrific power to weight ratios. This is the only thing from making believe outright that Bolt is a PED user.
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db you can’t be serious–Mo ran 10.8x in one race while clearly coming off of extremely serious injuries and not even running through the line. You’d have to either not care about the facts and have some sort of agenda or just be dumb to think he was in equally good health and effort and ran 10.8x. That’s just moronic. He had numerous injuries throughout his career and could still probably go 10.3-10.4 if he really desired to train for that. You’re acting like he peaked out for the season in the greatest shape and went 10.8.
And how about Linford Christie? He had an extremely long career and many say he would demolish the masters races if be were to run because he is in such great shape.
And Michael Johnson? The alien. He sure had a “really short” career and a quick peak and fall… right? Or are we being selective in the examples?
I don’t think Mo’s injuries were quite clear and how he suffered those injuries? What caused them? The people who last longer in the sport when not winning are the ones who have less likely to have doped. Tendinitis causes him to go from 9.87 to 10.84 in 3 years? I don’t care who doesn’t run through the line, for a 10.84 he would have to walk across the line to lose .4s in 10m. For christ sakes he went from 9.87 to 10.35 which is half a second in 2 years all because of tendinitis? It’s BS.
I am not defending michael johnson or indicting him, but to say Heike doped when you have reams and reams and reams of documentation on East German doping but she’s in none of it, but almost all of the others who set WR’s or won championships were and they all looked like males and can’t reproduce. That’s BS and nonsense. I’ll stand by the athlete who competes a long time and shows a normal progression with a long term decline. That’s not the psychological profile of a doper who dopes to win or gain money. People like Mo Greene and Linford Christie don’t compete now because even with PED’s they can’t win and why in the world would an athlete use PEDs to win a Masters Meet.
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Muna Lee clean (as of 2008 season)…. nice 😉
Not even getting into that one.
How about going away from Bob Kersee’s mass and strength (strength endurance) routines in coaching back to her old college coach. If Muna Lee doped I’d be surprised, she has no features which indicate this, but we’ll know long term about her and Bolt if they change. I already believe Bolt is showing signs of using but that is a different thread and we went over this already.
I’d coach Alyson Felix for free for one year and I wouldn’t need to do much but drop her volumes or change her events and she’d win a WC gold medal and come close to a WR at 200m or 400m depending on the route she wished to take. Almost anyone on this board would be able to do this with her.
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Participant
More nonsense.
Maurice would have easily gone under 10 in 2005 had he not gotten injured in the final (a massive headwind tends to do that). He ran 10.01 wind legal in the semis (easing up) and lead the final until he got hurt–not exactly falling off the face of the earth and pretty damn good considering he looked much better than Gatlin.
The injury was bad enough he missed the rest of the season and the ’06 season because of it. In ’07 he had a great start in his 60m race, but fell and reportedly was still not 100% from the injury and then ran a crap time in his only outdoor meet–remembering also it was his first 100m in what–2 years–and he didn’t run through the line. To use essentially ONE race as your evidence of him having some massive drop-off is complete nonsense and an outright lie.
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Participant
Deciding who dopes based on “observable features” is dumb considering there are things out that don’t even change the endocrine profile of an athlete.
If we’re only going by what can be visually seen or what we stereotype as drug use, we’ve already been left behind.
Tim Montgomery was on practically every drug available and still wasn’t bigger or stronger than kids you’ll find on a high school football team that have done moderately intelligent training and eating for a few years.
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Keymaster
2 points really quickly:
1). You’re waaay wrong if you think Heike wasn’t doped. Perhaps not in the latter stages of her career (which is what I was alluding to in my first post in this thread) but she was DEFINITELY doped. And contrary to what you keep stating it is perhaps more well-documented than any other athletes except Tim, Marion, and Barry Bonds. There was a major book that came out in the 90s that was quite specific about her doping regime. All you’ve got to do is google Heike Dreschler Doping and you’ll get a slew of info. Or start out here. Heck, she actually ADMITTED that she was doped in the early part of her career.
2). Muna has trained with Vince Anderson for the better part of a year. While she was with Kersee for a while she did not run well under him and has really begun to excel with Vince who has a proven record as a ‘clean’ coach.
This can be an interesting discussion but let’s try to keep this thread focused on athletes who we KNOW have doped. There’s enough of them out there to make a case…we don’t need to bring in people’s names where there isn’t any need to.
BTW- This may be one of the first times Davan and I are on the same side on a topic related to doping.
ELITETRACK Founder
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Participant
well clearly I am wrong about Heike’s GDR days. However, I think any woman who gives birth while still competing you’d find it difficult to say they were doping. If the information I gathered is correct she doped from 17-21 years of age and then it was no more.
Her spying as a stasi member was not about doping and more about defections and anti-state activity.
She’s a cheat, but like so many of East Germans was she or was she not aware, they all used the vitamin excuse including the woman who called them out. Obviously she didn’t have the outward physiological changes many of her teammates had so she was far too young to be aware.
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Participant
We’ll continue to have our eyes covered if we keep believing there are “drug coaches” and “clean coaches” or drug groups and clean groups and it is that clear cut.
Wow, I agree, but there are drug personalities/psychologies and there are coaches like me who would call out any athlete they knew were doping. The travesty is more athletes are NOT calling other athletes out.
Also, Vince Anderson has had many athletes leave him to go to coaches like Trevor Graham.
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Participant
As for the topic change of this thread and back to it’s point. Athlete’s who dope have shorter careers.
Here’s my reasoning and opinion. (I don’t think you can find empirically either way)
1. All athletes or most of them start clean.
2. The reason to dope(cheat) comes at the point when they can no longer win or have to win to find satisfaction in participation in the sport. This doesn’t happen until the HS level or collegiate level. However, you’ll find it tough to find a systemic doping regime in collegiate track and field these days, unless the football program and S&C;staff what to supply it to them.
3. If you have to dope to win and can no longer win while doping then why compete any longer.
4. This seems to happen at a neatly convenient time. Age 27-33 for most athletes across the board and not just track athletes. Why??? The effect of anabolic PED’s on connective tissues (muscle,tendon, ligament, fascae, and bone) actually causes some very bad unbalanced physiological consequences with increased force outputs and rate of force development that occur with there consumption. Tendon and Ligaments deteriorate with long term use, while bone and muscle get stronger and harder.
5. After the injuries occur to the tendon and ligament tissues (in some case muscles), the athlete loses performance even with PED usage because the tendons and ligaments no longer replicate like they had even at pre-PED usage levels thus all performance is dictated by the performance of muscle and bone.
6. If you can’t compete to the level of satisfaction that makes you want to compete well then you get out. How can someone who dopes, do it for a long period of time in which it does not produce results for that individual.
7. The examples are out there to justify this reasoning. In American “Sports” were PED’s are used at a very high percentage it seems there is a 5-7 year window maybe 8 years at most were an athlete begins to use PED’s before performance drops significantly. In Baseball, Clemens, Canseco, McGwire, Bonds, Sosa, Tejeda, Pettite etc… The longest term of use known and high level of performance was McGwire with Andro and that was about 11 years on an unproven substance although many believe he took something else between 1995-2001, his career was plaqued with injuries. The older athletes needed prescribed playing schedules while continuing to were down to nagging injuries and the younger players fell off the planet. In football, were PED usage is likely the highest in sport, players like Merriman come to mind, but Bill Romanowski seems to be counter intuitive to what I believe. The guys who survive injuries in the NFL by taking corticosteroids not just anabolic steriods. Take corticosteroids before a WADA administered organizations competition and see what happens to you.
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Participantanother reason is becuase they want to see what how high the limits of their performance could possibly be…
also becuase they believe many others are doing it and they need to be on a level playing field with them.
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Participant
As for the topic change of this thread and back to it’s point. Athlete’s who dope have shorter careers.
Here’s my reasoning and opinion. (I don’t think you can find empirically either way)
1. All athletes or most of them start clean.
2. The reason to dope(cheat) comes at the point when they can no longer win or have to win to find satisfaction in participation in the sport. This doesn’t happen until the HS level or collegiate level. However, you’ll find it tough to find a systemic doping regime in collegiate track and field these days, unless the football program and S&C;staff what to supply it to them.
3. If you have to dope to win and can no longer win while doping then why compete any longer.
4. This seems to happen at a neatly convenient time. Age 27-33 for most athletes across the board and not just track athletes. Why??? The effect of anabolic PED’s on connective tissues (muscle,tendon, ligament, fascae, and bone) actually causes some very bad unbalanced physiological consequences with increased force outputs and rate of force development that occur with there consumption. Tendon and Ligaments deteriorate with long term use, while bone and muscle get stronger and harder.
5. After the injuries occur to the tendon and ligament tissues (in some case muscles), the athlete loses performance even with PED usage because the tendons and ligaments no longer replicate like they had even at pre-PED usage levels thus all performance is dictated by the performance of muscle and bone.
6. If you can’t compete to the level of satisfaction that makes you want to compete well then you get out. How can someone who dopes, do it for a long period of time in which it does not produce results for that individual.
1. What do you mean by start? Start competing at all? Talking middle school or younger level or do you mean start taking it seriously?
2. What about people who win (at whatever level) and decide to use anyway? From D1 athletes I’ve talked to, I’m not so sure your position on the systemic doping is really correct, though it may certainly be less formal (not necessarily the coaches playing the role, but other athletes/assistants/whatever).
3. Well then I guess everyone that runs the 100m/200m is going to quit because there is no hope for them to beat Bolt, right?
4. Plenty of athletes, clean and not, have their careers limited/shortened/ended by connective tissue injuries. It is almost inevitable, over a long enough time, when pushing the human body to such extremes. When Mo had his motorcycle accident, I don’t think you can say the damage caused do his bones and ligaments in that leg were hurt because of PEDs or it was convenient for him to get into a wreck. The same goes for many others. I saw plenty of connective tissue injuries each year in high school and college track–it just happens.
5. This would be true for everyone though.
6. This doesn’t make sense. It is obviously going to produce some results, maybe not the best possible results. Do you really think it is only the winners that are cheating? I am not so extreme as to believe EVERY athlete or even every winner is cheating, but I think a lot more are than many want to believe. If people only kept competing because they truly believed they would be the greatest, we’d have a very small population of athletes. There are entire divisions of athletics where the people have no chance of winning, yet continue to compete, and in some cases, probably continue to dope as well.
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Participant
[quote author="dbandre" date="1221891562"]As for the topic change of this thread and back to it’s point. Athlete’s who dope have shorter careers.
Here’s my reasoning and opinion. (I don’t think you can find empirically either way)
1. All athletes or most of them start clean.
2. The reason to dope(cheat) comes at the point when they can no longer win or have to win to find satisfaction in participation in the sport. This doesn’t happen until the HS level or collegiate level. However, you’ll find it tough to find a systemic doping regime in collegiate track and field these days, unless the football program and S&C;staff what to supply it to them.
3. If you have to dope to win and can no longer win while doping then why compete any longer.
4. This seems to happen at a neatly convenient time. Age 27-33 for most athletes across the board and not just track athletes. Why??? The effect of anabolic PED’s on connective tissues (muscle,tendon, ligament, fascae, and bone) actually causes some very bad unbalanced physiological consequences with increased force outputs and rate of force development that occur with there consumption. Tendon and Ligaments deteriorate with long term use, while bone and muscle get stronger and harder.
5. After the injuries occur to the tendon and ligament tissues (in some case muscles), the athlete loses performance even with PED usage because the tendons and ligaments no longer replicate like they had even at pre-PED usage levels thus all performance is dictated by the performance of muscle and bone.
6. If you can’t compete to the level of satisfaction that makes you want to compete well then you get out. How can someone who dopes, do it for a long period of time in which it does not produce results for that individual.
1. What do you mean by start? Start competing at all? Talking middle school or younger level or do you mean start taking it seriously?
2. What about people who win (at whatever level) and decide to use anyway? From D1 athletes I’ve talked to, I’m not so sure your position on the systemic doping is really correct, though it may certainly be less formal (not necessarily the coaches playing the role, but other athletes/assistants/whatever).
3. Well then I guess everyone that runs the 100m/200m is going to quit because there is no hope for them to beat Bolt, right?
4. Plenty of athletes, clean and not, have their careers limited/shortened/ended by connective tissue injuries. It is almost inevitable, over a long enough time, when pushing the human body to such extremes. When Mo had his motorcycle accident, I don’t think you can say the damage caused do his bones and ligaments in that leg were hurt because of PEDs or it was convenient for him to get into a wreck. The same goes for many others. I saw plenty of connective tissue injuries each year in high school and college track–it just happens.
5. This would be true for everyone though.
6. This doesn’t make sense. It is obviously going to produce some results, maybe not the best possible results. Do you really think it is only the winners that are cheating? I am not so extreme as to believe EVERY athlete or even every winner is cheating, but I think a lot more are than many want to believe. If people only kept competing because they truly believed they would be the greatest, we’d have a very small population of athletes. There are entire divisions of athletics where the people have no chance of winning, yet continue to compete, and in some cases, probably continue to dope as well.[/quote]
1. Whenever they start competing in a sport.
2. I think you’ll find if people can win without taking them no matter the level they won’t take them until they have to face that decision or they base the decision on breaking a record. Like I said, it’s not systemic a track coaching staff at the collegiate level would need on the order of 10K per year per athlete to make a difference. You are much more likely to see this type of support and systemic doping in friends of the program (alumni and post-collegians) in collegiate athletics and with little knowledge of the coaching staff.
3. Bolt doesn’t run every 100/200m race and it’s about money too. You have to produce results to make money and you need money to get the PED’s.
4. This is true, but under most circumstances athletes who have a progressive training protocol last a long time and produce consistent results and have limited injuries especially if their coach has the philosophy that a hurt athlete is an athlete who should not compete. However, younger athletes can come back stronger from a previous connective tissue injury, after long term anabolic PED use this is not possible, because the tissue loses it’s elasticity due to calcification.
https://www.springerlink.com/content/lu77j40738wn3165/
5. Like I stated in #4, younger athletes don’t have a problem with this if they are still developmental. They can return stronger. So it’s not true for everyone. Obviously if a young person suffers catastrophic injuries to tendons or ligaments they will be compromised, but we are talking all injuries to these connective tissues in general.
6. There are not many sports where athletes use PED’s in an amateur status as compared to their professional counterparts unless their psychological state of mind is they need the PED’s to be able to compete. It’s a zero sum game. If you don’t believe you need them you will not use them, if you believe you do need them you will use them. We could even add the ethical and moral arguments still have the same outcomes. The desire to compete at a certain level of competence is the overriding factor in determining use of PEDs. Secondary is cost-benefit determination. Those 2 factors alone make PED usage rarer at levels that are not professional in nature.
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Participant
Mortac:
I don’t sip enough to think professional athletes have the toughest professions on the body.
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Participant
1
1. Whenever they start competing in a sport.
2. I think you’ll find if people can win without taking them no matter the level they won’t take them until they have to face that decision or they base the decision on breaking a record. Like I said, it’s not systemic a track coaching staff at the collegiate level would need on the order of 10K per year per athlete to make a difference. You are much more likely to see this type of support and systemic doping in friends of the program (alumni and post-collegians) in collegiate athletics and with little knowledge of the coaching staff.
3. Bolt doesn’t run every 100/200m race and it’s about money too. You have to produce results to make money and you need money to get the PED’s.
4. This is true, but under most circumstances athletes who have a progressive training protocol last a long time and produce consistent results and have limited injuries especially if their coach has the philosophy that a hurt athlete is an athlete who should not compete. However, younger athletes can come back stronger from a previous connective tissue injury, after long term anabolic PED use this is not possible, because the tissue loses it’s elasticity due to calcification.
https://www.springerlink.com/content/lu77j40738wn3165/
5. Like I stated in #4, younger athletes don’t have a problem with this if they are still developmental. They can return stronger. So it’s not true for everyone. Obviously if a young person suffers catastrophic injuries to tendons or ligaments they will be compromised, but we are talking all injuries to these connective tissues in general.
6. There are not many sports where athletes use PED’s in an amateur status as compared to their professional counterparts unless their psychological state of mind is they need the PED’s to be able to compete. It’s a zero sum game. If you don’t believe you need them you will not use them, if you believe you do need them you will use them. We could even add the ethical and moral arguments still have the same outcomes. The desire to compete at a certain level of competence is the overriding factor in determining use of PEDs. Secondary is cost-benefit determination. Those 2 factors alone make PED usage rarer at levels that are not professional in nature.
1. That’s pretty broad then.
2. I don’t think that is the case in every event. Sadly, unless we get another 2003 World Champs where people win running 10.0x, I don’t think you’re ever going to see a lifetime clean men’s 100m champ, shotput, etc. $10k per athlete? Gimme a break now. People don’t need to run Tim Montgomery drug plans to get benefits and judging by the fact there are Olympians that still test positive for stanzolol and dianabol, I doubt everyone is using the sophistication you speak of.
3. Unless Bolt, Powell, and Gay are injured or don’t show up, nobody has proven to really have any chance of beating them in a one off race or winning a championship against the three of them, so that doesn’t mean much either unless you want to keep broadening your definition of “winning.” There are guys that make decent money running 10.2s or even slower depending on the country, so that makes a pretty large group of potential dopers.
4. Stop with the nonsense. Acting like every connective tissue injury to older athletes is because of PED use is ridiculous. Hell, my uncle blew his achilles playing volleyball–pretty sure Uncle Todd wasn’t roiding up for a family volleyball game. Injuries happen and we’re talking about people trying to push the limits of the human body if we’re discussing WRs or medals. Even the coaches we consider the greatest here have had a number of athletes at varying levels have catastrophic injuries.
5. Rarer doesn’t mean they’re eliminated and don’t exist in some form. Give me a break man–look at life. People lie/cheat/steal in varying aspects at varying levels, even if it’s only for a minor benefit. Some people don’t leave $.50 for the bagel they take out of the break room at their office, some people embezzle millions of dollars, some people vandalize mailboxes and some people are part of mass murders–life isn’t as clear cut as you want to make it out to be in this respect and attempting to gain an advantage in some way exists EVERYWHERE.
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Keymaster
I’ll agree with Dan that the effects of anabolics should lead to enhancements in muscular strength that may outpace tendon strength BUT I will also say this is not borne out in your theory. Can you give specific examples of known (as in tested or proven ala Tim) dopers who had abbreviated careers due to injury?
ELITETRACK Founder
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Participant
I’ll agree with Dan that the effects of anabolics should lead to enhancements in muscular strength that may outpace tendon strength BUT I will also say this is not borne out in your theory. Can you give specific examples of known (as in tested or proven ala Tim) dopers who had abbreviated careers due to injury?
I don’t think you’ll find many in track and field who will admit to long term use (5+ years) of PEDs. Therefore it becomes hard to quantify. Looking at the problems of some of the athletes eastern bloc countries would be the best place to start and how many of their athletes had short careers and subsequent problems later on. You know we won’t have specific examples and Johnson use which began in 1988
To summarize the reviews:
Anabolic-Androgenic Steroids induce reversible changes to collagen structures creating stiffer, less elastic tendons where tendon strength is unaffected and muscular strength outpace tendon strength thus causing tendon ruptures.
However,
https://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1724489
specifically addresses the long term steroid usage issue.
Other factors leading to tendon rupture include local steroid
injections, use of anabolic steroids, and history of chronic
tendinitis. These predisposing conditions cause tendon
degeneration by altering collagen synthesis or strength, causing
sclerosis and fibrosis in the tendon, fatty degeneration,
necrosis, or calcification.Some of these conditions are at odds with the opinion of the reviews.
My opinion is most athletes after suffering injuries when involved with long-term AAS use have characterized tendon ruptures as muscle pulls and/or ligament injuries and the subsequent performance decrements ensued and thus their retirement from the sport unless they wanted to continue to use AAS and deal with persistent injuries throughout the rest of their career.
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Keymaster
Don’t have time for a full response but Johnson is documented to have started doping in 1981 and didn’t appear to be slowing down in performance improvements in 88.
ELITETRACK Founder
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Participant
Don’t have time for a full response but Johnson is documented to have started doping in 1981 and didn’t appear to be slowing down in performance improvements in 88.
At most that was a 7 year interval and not outside of the 5-8 year window I proposed that fit most athletes (doping or not). Johnson’s performances in 1992 another 4 years later were not that good and his ultimate suspension for life in 1993 suggest he still used them when competitive. He runs 10.2 at his fastest with a 1.25m/s tailwind during his comeback at age 31. He goes from 9.79s juiced to 10.2s juiced, yes I know there is a 4 year window there making it 11 years, but after a year in training and competition from 1991-1992 the best he did was 10.2s and he was still juiced??? He still has 3 years less wear and tear on his body. He still breaks down in the 8th competitive year of doping.
Someone referenced Boo in another thread discussing how the body will find homeostasis with training. This I believe to be true in most instances. However, with training and doping occurring constantly and chronically the body will never find homeostasis because the endocrine response and its feedback loops are interfered with. The result is a body that degenerates over time instead of the opposite intended responses.
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Participant
Leaving out important facts like the fact he didn’t have the same coach nor did he compete for two full years is pretty dishonest. He improved every year essentially up until ’88 and two full years off from competition is only going to hurt–you know that.
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Participanthttps://www.iaaf.org/athletes/athlete=496/index.html
10 years for Linford?
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Participant
Carl:
Did Linford dope his whole career? There is no definitive answer, you don’t know and I don’t know. Did he do it in the latter part of his career, you bet yeah. Did he do it because he was at 10.1s in 1997 at age 37.
Davan:
I mentioned his ban, but he competed in 1991 and 1992 that’s still 1.5 seasons till his best performance at 10.2s in the Canadian Olympic Trials. I didn’t think I had to introduce that he wasn’t training under Charlie Francis at the time as he was blacklisted. The problem is his performance dropped while still juiced by a significant margin .4s. The best he ran at the OG in 1992 was 10.30s in the Quarters, he ran 10.7 in the Semis.
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Participant
I’ll just bring up this term for you all to remember. Avascular Necrosis.
Floyd Landis (once had a T/E ratio of 11:1 in a drug test)
Bo Jackson
Garrison Hearst
Brett Farve (known to have abused corticosteroids and vicodin) -
Participant
Hmmm I had a foot injury in high school where the bone had avascular necrosis. I had two other friends in high school that had injuries that involved avascular necrosis as well.
I guess we were all roided up back in high school, in the case of one, at the age of 14. Yep. That makes a lot of sense, db.
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Mentioning injuries that happened acutely is so clueless, I don’t know where to begin. How about we add about 1,000+ high school all-stars from various sports to that list each year?
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And again, with BJ, you are not providing a very clear or honest picture of what went down.1. He was out of the sport 2 years and, when he came back, was at an age that not many athletes, doped or non-doped, ever improve or maintain their abilities. He was already going to get slower from that aging most likely and add in the fact that he didn’t compete for two years, and you have him getting significantly slower.
2. He doesn’t fit your mold at all because he didn’t have any major connective tissue injuries through 1988 (no idea about after) and trained hard into his 40s!
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Mentioning Floyd Landis’ injuries has to be another joke. You’re just killing me with this. Do you care about the truth of their injuries and the causes at all? -
Participant
Hmmm I had a foot injury in high school where the bone had avascular necrosis. I had two other friends in high school that had injuries that involved avascular necrosis as well.
I guess we were all roided up back in high school, in the case of one, at the age of 14. Yep. That makes a lot of sense, db.
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Mentioning injuries that happened acutely is so clueless, I don’t know where to begin. How about we add about 1,000+ high school all-stars from various sports to that list each year?
——-I didn’t say it cannot happen without it, but it’s rare and not common.
And again, with BJ, you are not providing a very clear or honest picture of what went down.
1. He was out of the sport 2 years and, when he came back, was at an age that not many athletes, doped or non-doped, ever improve or maintain their abilities. He was already going to get slower from that aging most likely and add in the fact that he didn’t compete for two years, and you have him getting significantly slower.
2. He doesn’t fit your mold at all because he didn’t have any major connective tissue injuries through 1988 (no idea about after) and trained hard into his 40s!
I thought you said dopers had longer careers and maintained performance longer??? Johnson goes downhill after his bust. I gave a 5-8 year window before performance seems to get progressively worse for most athletes who dope. Ben fits this. The problem is how much worse his performances became, not that he didn’t improve or maintain 9.79s times, but he should have had no trouble maintaining 9.9x or 10.0xs, he never attained this in the 2-2.5 years of his comeback. .4s is an eternity for a world class sprinter.
What Ben Johnson did after his 32nd birthday is of no consequence to me because it’s not verifiable. You’ve been a BJ apologist from the start when the guy is a known liar and still is to this day.
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Mentioning Floyd Landis’ injuries has to be another joke. You’re just killing me with this. Do you care about the truth of their injuries and the causes at all?[/quote]
Floyd Landis is a former mountain bike rider before becoming a road cyclist and known PED user. Unlike road racing, mountain biking puts a ton of stress on the joints. Cyclist also tend to get corticosteroid injections with TUE’s a bunch.
What I am discussing is an opinion. There is nothing that will allow me, you, or anyone do as an epidemiological study on athletes and especially connective tissue injuries to say for certain if their career suffered from PED usage after a certain point in time resulting from long term PED usage.
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Participant
[quote author="davan" date="1222025342"]Hmmm I had a foot injury in high school where the bone had avascular necrosis. I had two other friends in high school that had injuries that involved avascular necrosis as well.
I guess we were all roided up back in high school, in the case of one, at the age of 14. Yep. That makes a lot of sense, db.
——-
Mentioning injuries that happened acutely is so clueless, I don’t know where to begin. How about we add about 1,000+ high school all-stars from various sports to that list each year?
——-I didn’t say it cannot happen without it, but it’s rare and not common.[/quote] No basis for this statement at all. I’d love to see the studies attributing AAS use with injuries that involve avascular necrosis. That is complete nonsense.
[quote]
And again, with BJ, you are not providing a very clear or honest picture of what went down.1. He was out of the sport 2 years and, when he came back, was at an age that not many athletes, doped or non-doped, ever improve or maintain their abilities. He was already going to get slower from that aging most likely and add in the fact that he didn’t compete for two years, and you have him getting significantly slower.
2. He doesn’t fit your mold at all because he didn’t have any major connective tissue injuries through 1988 (no idea about after) and trained hard into his 40s!
I thought you said dopers had longer careers and maintained performance longer??? Johnson goes downhill after his bust. I gave a 5-8 year window before performance seems to get progressively worse for most athletes who dope. Ben fits this. The problem is how much worse his performances became, not that he didn’t improve or maintain 9.79s times, but he should have had no trouble maintaining 9.9x or 10.0xs, he never attained this in the 2-2.5 years of his comeback. .4s is an eternity for a world class sprinter.[/quote]He never had the injuries you SPECIFICALLY said cause the degradation in performance AND him being out of the sport for two years and having a different coach with much different training methods would also lead to a drop-off in performance regardless of any use or non-use. You have no basis to say he should have been able to maintain what after 2 years completely out of the sport and with a new coach at such an advanced age. None at all. Not to mention, he rarely went under 10 seconds even at the peak of his career with plenty of 10.0x and 10.1x times in ’86-’88.
What Ben Johnson did after his 32nd birthday is of no consequence to me because it’s not verifiable. You’ve been a BJ apologist from the start when the guy is a known liar and still is to this day.
I’m not really sure how you define apologist–he cheated and broke rules for many years and I don’t deny that. I don’t make-up or omit facts like you have numerous times in this thread. Get back to the point, which you continue to leave when it falls apart.
Floyd Landis is a former mountain bike rider before becoming a road cyclist and known PED user. Unlike road racing, mountain biking puts a ton of stress on the joints. Cyclist also tend to get corticosteroid injections with TUE’s a bunch.
They also tend to suffer the same injury patterns, assisted or non-assisted, that Floyd Landis suffered. Stating matter-of-factly that his injuries were because of drug use is laughable and baseless.
What I am discussing is an opinion. There is nothing that will allow me, you, or anyone do as an epidemiological study on athletes and especially connective tissue injuries to say for certain if their career suffered from PED usage after a certain point in time resulting from long term PED usage.
Making up facts isn’t about someone’s opinion or not and omitting important details doesn’t provide anything to the discussion.
You’re yet to give an example of the great problem of doped athletes having shorter careers than clean athletes or how “lankier” athletes don’t tend to be drug users.
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Participant
[quote author="dbandre" date="1222052373"][quote author="davan" date="1222025342"]Hmmm I had a foot injury in high school where the bone had avascular necrosis. I had two other friends in high school that had injuries that involved avascular necrosis as well.
I guess we were all roided up back in high school, in the case of one, at the age of 14. Yep. That makes a lot of sense, db.
——-
Mentioning injuries that happened acutely is so clueless, I don’t know where to begin. How about we add about 1,000+ high school all-stars from various sports to that list each year?
——-I didn’t say it cannot happen without it, but it’s rare and not common.[/quote] No basis for this statement at all. I’d love to see the studies attributing AAS use with injuries that involve avascular necrosis. That is complete nonsense.
[quote]
And again, with BJ, you are not providing a very clear or honest picture of what went down.1. He was out of the sport 2 years and, when he came back, was at an age that not many athletes, doped or non-doped, ever improve or maintain their abilities. He was already going to get slower from that aging most likely and add in the fact that he didn’t compete for two years, and you have him getting significantly slower.
2. He doesn’t fit your mold at all because he didn’t have any major connective tissue injuries through 1988 (no idea about after) and trained hard into his 40s!
I thought you said dopers had longer careers and maintained performance longer??? Johnson goes downhill after his bust. I gave a 5-8 year window before performance seems to get progressively worse for most athletes who dope. Ben fits this. The problem is how much worse his performances became, not that he didn’t improve or maintain 9.79s times, but he should have had no trouble maintaining 9.9x or 10.0xs, he never attained this in the 2-2.5 years of his comeback. .4s is an eternity for a world class sprinter.[/quote]He never had the injuries you SPECIFICALLY said cause the degradation in performance AND him being out of the sport for two years and having a different coach with much different training methods would also lead to a drop-off in performance regardless of any use or non-use. You have no basis to say he should have been able to maintain what after 2 years completely out of the sport and with a new coach at such an advanced age. None at all. Not to mention, he rarely went under 10 seconds even at the peak of his career with plenty of 10.0x and 10.1x times in ’86-’88.
What Ben Johnson did after his 32nd birthday is of no consequence to me because it’s not verifiable. You’ve been a BJ apologist from the start when the guy is a known liar and still is to this day.
I’m not really sure how you define apologist–he cheated and broke rules for many years and I don’t deny that. I don’t make-up or omit facts like you have numerous times in this thread. Get back to the point, which you continue to leave when it falls apart.
Floyd Landis is a former mountain bike rider before becoming a road cyclist and known PED user. Unlike road racing, mountain biking puts a ton of stress on the joints. Cyclist also tend to get corticosteroid injections with TUE’s a bunch.
They also tend to suffer the same injury patterns, assisted or non-assisted, that Floyd Landis suffered. Stating matter-of-factly that his injuries were because of drug use is laughable and baseless.
What I am discussing is an opinion. There is nothing that will allow me, you, or anyone do as an epidemiological study on athletes and especially connective tissue injuries to say for certain if their career suffered from PED usage after a certain point in time resulting from long term PED usage.
Making up facts isn’t about someone’s opinion or not and omitting important details doesn’t provide anything to the discussion.
You’re yet to give an example of the great problem of doped athletes having shorter careers than clean athletes or how “lankier” athletes don’t tend to be drug users.[/quote]
What athlete is going to ruin their career by saying I have calcified structures in my tendon resulting in severe tendinitis or increased calcified deposits on processes which now cause arthritis and these problems seem to be associated with degradation in performance by long term usage of AAS??? This will be the rare athlete. Antonio Pettigrew admitted to usage for 4-5 years at the end of his career which may or may not have extended his career, but did it since he stops running soon after he decided to quit doping and his usage duration is still borderline to be called long-term.
If you think edwards doped say it, if you think felix is doping say it, if you think stefan holm doped say it. if you think carl lewis doped say it, if you think frankie fredericks doped say it. if you think mike powell doped say it, mike conley, etc… I find it hard to believe someone could use AAS for so long and produce long term changes in tendon structures and jump at a high level without suffering injuries that would end their careers. I think all of those athletes are clean or were clean with respect to AAS or they if they did use them they didn’t use them for long.
My opinion is based on observation, but seriously, if an athlete takes AAS or HGH they are going to increase lean muscle mass not decrease it and long term use will result in a bulkier body, it also results in different bone structures especially the face.
There is nothing I made up or that I omitted, one can make up and form their own opinions based on their own observations.
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Participant
if an athlete takes AAS or HGH they are going to increase lean muscle mass not decrease it and long term use will result in a bulkier body, it also results in different bone structures especially the face.
I not really getting into all this, but how can you say the above, yet say Carl Lewis was legit? Did he start using braces very late…
Personally i think Carl was rediculusly talented, naturally…
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Participant
I’ll just bring up this term for you all to remember. Avascular Necrosis.
Floyd Landis (once had a T/E ratio of 11:1 in a drug test)
Bo Jackson
Garrison Hearst
Brett Farve (known to have abused corticosteroids and vicodin)Using Brett Favre as an example of career shortage in any form or fashion is an extremely poor example. He has played more games in a row than ANY OTHER FOOTBALL PLAYER EVER at one of, if not the most dangerous positions in football. He also just this past weekend had one of his best games ever throwing for more TD’s in one game than he ever has before! If he did roids they aren’t doing anything but extending his career. IMO the only testosterone boost Favre ever got was from banging a bunch of waitresses from the local golf course adjacent to my hometown.
Bo Jackson did not do roids. Hell, he barely lifted weights. Bo was one of the freakiest of freaks of all time. One of the freakiest athletes in any sport ever. He should be an NFL Hall of Famer just because…..
If anything PED’s helped extend the career of the formerly injured Barry Bonds. Didn’t Roger Clemens also have some mid-career injuries and then he began to rise and dominate again..?
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Participant
[quote author="dbandre" date="1221995336"]I’ll just bring up this term for you all to remember. Avascular Necrosis.
Floyd Landis (once had a T/E ratio of 11:1 in a drug test)
Bo Jackson
Garrison Hearst
Brett Farve (known to have abused corticosteroids and vicodin)Using Brett Favre as an example of career shortage in any form or fashion is an extremely poor example. He has played more games in a row than ANY OTHER FOOTBALL PLAYER EVER at one of, if not the most dangerous positions in football. He also just this past weekend had one of his best games ever throwing for more TD’s in one game than he ever has before! If he did roids they aren’t doing anything but extending his career. IMO the only testosterone boost Favre ever got was from banging a bunch of waitresses from the local golf course adjacent to my hometown.
Bo Jackson did not do roids. Hell, he barely lifted weights. Bo was one of the freakiest of freaks of all time. One of the freakiest athletes in any sport ever. He should be an NFL Hall of Famer just because…..
If anything PED’s helped extend the career of the formerly injured Barry Bonds. Didn’t Roger Clemens also have some mid-career injuries and then he began to rise and dominate again..?[/quote]
I am not talking about shortened careers. I just put some athletes out there with a condition which can be caused by AAS usage that will cause career-ending injury.
You don’t know what Bo took and I don’t. Same goes with Garrison, but we do know what Floyd and Brett have used. Please note, Garrison’s injury was in the foot which is not commonly attributed to steroid use. As for Landis, his was the hip, the same as Jackson the area of the body most affected by steroid use.
Barry Bonds didn’t get injuries until after he began using, Clemens initially used to get through an injury, but then continued to use them and each year he was able to pitch less and less.
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Keymaster
I am not talking about shortened careers. I just put some athletes out there with a condition which can be caused by AAS usage that will cause career-ending injury.
You don’t know what Bo took and I don’t. Same goes with Garrison, but we do know what Floyd and Brett have used. Please note, Garrison’s injury was in the foot which is not commonly attributed to steroid use. As for Landis, his was the hip, the same as Jackson the area of the body most affected by steroid use.
Barry Bonds didn’t get injuries until after he began using, Clemens initially used to get through an injury, but then continued to use them and each year he was able to pitch less and less.
Your points seem to correlate more strongly with an athlete’s age than their use of performance enhancers.
ELITETRACK Founder
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