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Performance Area => Article & Video Discussion => Topic started by: TheSituation on March 22, 2012, 10:22:48 pm
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It's in german but here's the link
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,571031,00.html
Translation:
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2008
Angel Heredia, once a doping dealer and now a chief witness for the U.S. Justice Department, talks about the powerlessness of the investigators, the motives of athletes who cheat and the drugs of the future.
He had been in hiding under an assumed name in a hotel in Laredo, Texas, for two years when the FBI finally caught up with him. The agents wanted to know from Angel Heredia if he knew a coach by the name of Trevor Graham, whether he carried the nickname “Memo”, and what he knew about doping. "No", "no", "nothing" – those were his replies. But then the agents laid the transcripts of 160 wiretapped telephone conversations on the table, as well as the e-mails and the bank statements. That’s when Angel "Memo" Heredia knew that he had lost. He decided to cooperate, and he also knew that he would only have a chance if he didn’t lie – not a single time. “He’s telling the truth,” the investigators say about Heredia today.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Heredia, will you watch the 100 meter final in Beijing?
Heredia: Of course. But the winner will not be clean. Not even any of the contestants will be clean.
SPIEGEL: Of eight runners ...
Heredia: ... eight will be doped.
SPIEGEL: There is no way to prove that.
Heredia: There is no doubt about it. The difference between 10.0 and 9.7 seconds is the drugs.
SPIEGEL: Can drugs make anyone into a world record holder?
Heredia: No, that is a misapprehension: “You take a couple of tablets today and tomorrow you can really fly.” In reality you have to train inconceivably hard, be very talented and have a perfect team of trainers and support staff. And then it is the best drugs that make the difference. It is all a great composition, a symphony. Everything is linked together, do you understand? And drugs have a long-term effect: they ensure that you can recover, that you avoid the catabolic phases. Volleyball on the beach might be healthy, but peak athletics is not healthy. You destroy your body. Marion Jones, for example ...
SPIEGEL: ... five-time Olympic medallist at Sydney 2000 ...
Heredia: ... trained with an unparalleled intensity. Drugs protect you from injury. And she triumphed and picked up all the medals.
SPIEGEL: Are you proud?
Heredia: Of course, I still am. It is still a tremendous achievement, and you must not believe that Marion’s rivals were poor, deceived competitors.
SPIEGEL: This isn’t just an American problem?
Heredia: Are you kidding me? No. All countries, all federations, all top athletes are affected, and among those responsible are the big shoe companies like Nike and Adidas. I know athletes who broke records; a year later they were injured and they got the call: “We’re cutting your sponsorship money by 50 percent.” What do you think such athletes then do?
SPIEGEL: Tell us what you did for your clients.
Heredia: Athletes hear rumors and they become worried. That the competition has other tricks, that they might get caught when they travel. There is no room for mistakes. One mistake can ruin a career.
SPIEGEL: So you became a therapist for the athletes in matters of drugs?
Heredia: More like a coach. Together we found out what was good for which body and what the decomposition times were. I designed schedules for cocktails and regimens that depended on the money the athletes offered me. Street drugs for little money, designer drugs for tens of thousands. Usually I sent the drugs by mail, but sometimes the athletes came to me.
SPIEGEL: With Marion Jones ...
Heredia: ... it was about the recovery phases. In 2000 she competed in one event after another, and she needed to relax. I gave her epo, growth hormone, adrenaline injections, insulin. Insulin helps after training, together with protein drinks: insulin transports protein and minerals more quickly through the cell membrane.
SPIEGEL: Jones was afraid of needles.
Heredia: Yes, that’s why C. J. Hunter, her husband at the time, and her trainer Trevor Graham mixed her three substances in one injection. I advised them against it because I thought it was risky.
SPIEGEL: What kind of relationship did you have with your athletes?
Heredia: Business ties. It was all about levels and dosing. I rarely spoke with Marion. It was done through her coaches.
Part II: How Heredia outwitted the drug testers and became the dealer to the world’s best athletes.
SPIEGEL: Was there a doping cycle?
Heredia: Yes. When the season ended in October, we waited for a couple of weeks for the body to cleanse itself. Then in November, we loaded growth hormone and epo, and twice a week we examined the body to make sure that no lumps were forming in the blood. Then we gave testosterone shots. This first program lasted eight to ten weeks, then we took a break.
SPIEGEL: And then the goals for the season were established?
Heredia: Yes, that depended on the athlete. Some wanted to run a good time in April to win contracts for the tournaments. Others focused on nothing but the trials, the U.S. qualification for international championships. Others cared only about the Olympics. Then we set the countdown for the goal in question, and the next cycle began. I had to know my athletes well and have an overview of what federation tested with which methods.
SPIEGEL: Where does one get this information?
Heredia: Vigilance. Informers.
SPIEGEL: You were once a good discus thrower yourself.
Heredia: Very good in Mexico, but very average by international standards. I had played soccer, boxed and done karate before I ended up in track and field. At 13 or 14 I believed in clean sports. Doping was a crime to me; back then I even asked my father if I could take aspirin.
SPIEGEL: Why did you begin doping?
Heredia: Like all athletes: because others were doing it. All of a sudden, kids that I used to beat were throwing ten meters further. Then I had an injury but I wanted to qualify for the Olympic team anyway. Doping became to me what it is for most athletes: part of the sport. If you train for 12 hours today and your trainer expects you to train for 12 hours again tomorrow, you dope. Otherwise you can’t do it.
SPIEGEL: What did you take?
Heredia: Growth hormone. Testosterone.
SPIEGEL: But you failed to qualify for the Olympics anyway.
Heredia: Yes, but I read anything I could find about medicine, spoke with other athletes, and soon people were saying: Angel knows how it’s done. He knows how to pass the tests. The first athletes began to ask me for advice. That’s how it started, and at some point the trainer Trevor Graham asked me if I could help him. I explained to him how epo works, and I was in business.
SPIEGEL: What qualified you for the role of dealer to the world’s best athletes?
Heredia: My father is a chemistry professor. I love chemistry, and I was an athlete. My role was an obsession. For example, I learned everything about testosterone: that there is a type of testosterone with a high half-life and another that works very quickly. I learned that you can rub it in, take it orally, inject it. It became a kick: I was allowed to work with the best of the best, and I made them even better.
SPIEGEL: And how did you become the best in your world?
Heredia: With precision. You want an example? Everyone talks about epo. Epo is fashionable. But without adding iron, epo only works half as well. That’s the kind of thing you have to know. There are oxygen carriers that make epo work incredibly fast – they are actually better than epo alone. I call my drug “Epo Boost.” I inject it and it releases many tiny oxygen molecules throughout the body. In that way you increase the effect of epo by a factor of ten.
SPIEGEL: Do you have any other secrets?
Heredia: Oh yes, of course. There are tablets for the kidneys that block the metabolites of steroids, so when athletes give a urine sample, they don’t excrete the metabolites and thus test negative. Or there is an enzyme that slowly consumes proteins - epo has protein structures, and the enzyme thus ensures that the B sample of the doping test has a completely different value than the A sample. Then there are chemicals that you take a couple of hours before the race that prevent acidification in the muscles. Together with epo they are an absolute miracle. I’ve created 20 different drugs that are still undetectable for the doping testers.
SPIEGEL: What trainers have you worked together with?
Heredia: Particularly with Trevor Graham.
SPIEGEL: Graham has a lifetime ban because he purportedly helped Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery, Justin Gatlin and many others to cheat. Who else?
Heredia: With Winthrop Graham, his cousin. With John Smith, Maurice Greene’s coach. With Raymond Stewart, the Jamaican. With Dennis Mitchell ...
SPIEGEL: ... who won gold in the 4 x 100 meters in 1992 and today is a coach. How did the collaboration work?
Heredia: It’s a small world. It gets around who can provide you with something how quickly and at what price, who is discreet. The coaches approached me and asked if I could help them, and I said: yes. Then they gave me money, $15,000 or thereabouts, we got a first shipment and then we did business. At some point it led to one-on-one cooperation with the athletes.
SPIEGEL: Was there a regimen of sorts?
Heredia: Yes. I always combined several things. For example, I had one substance called actovison that increased blood circulation – not detectable. That was good from a health standpoint and even better from a competitive standpoint. Then we had the growth factors IGF-1 and IGF-2. And epo. Epo increases the number of red blood cells and thus the transportation of oxygen, which is the key for every athlete: the athlete wants to recover quickly, keep the load at a constantly high level and achieve a constant performance.
SPIEGEL: Once again: a constant performance at the world-class level is unthinkable without doping?
Heredia: Correct. 400 meters in 44 seconds? Unthinkable. 71 meters with a discus? No way. You might be able to run 100 meters in 9.8 seconds once with a tailwind. But ten times a year under 10 seconds, in the rain or heat? Only with doping.
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SPIEGEL: Testosterone, growth hormone, epo – that was your combination?
Heredia: Yes, with individual variations. And then amazing things are possible. In 2002 Jerome Young was ranked number 38 in the 400 meters. Then we began to work together, and in 2003 he won almost every big race.
SPIEGEL: How were you paid?
Heredia: I had an annual wage. For big wins I got a $40,000 bonus.
SPIEGEL: Your athletes have won 26 Olympic medals. How much money did you earn?
Heredia: I can’t answer that due to the investigations. But let’s put it this way: 16 to 18 successful athletes each year at between $15,000 and $20,000 per athlete. I had a good run. I had a good life.
SPIEGEL: Did you live in the shadows of the sports world, where no one was allowed to see you?
Heredia: No. I rarely traveled to the big events, but that was because of jealousy: the Americans didn’t want me to work with the Jamaicans and vice versa. But shadows? No. It was one big chain, from athletes to agents to sponsors, and I was part of it. But everyone knew how the game worked. Everyone wanted it to be this way, because everyone got rich off it.
SPIEGEL: Which agents do you mean?
Heredia: The big marketers – Robert Wagner, for example – who support the athletes and want to get them into top form because they place the athletes at the track meetings.
The Austrian marketer Wagner, founder of World Athletics Management, wrote last Thursday in an e-mail to SPIEGEL, that he “never doped athletes” or “supported and promoted” doping. And Angel Heredia, the chief witness, sat in an office in New York, an athletic man in a black shirt, still in excellent shape, and wrote down names on a sheet of paper. 41 track and field athletes, he said, were his clients, as well as boxers, soccer players and cross-country skiers. His Jamaicans: Raymond Stewart, Beverly McDonald, Brandon Simpson. From the Bahamas: Chandra Sturrup. A couple of his Americans: Jerome Young, Antonio Pettigrew, Tim Montgomery, Duane Ross, Michelle Collins, Marion Jones, C. J. Hunter, Ramon Clay, Dennis Mitchell, Joshua J. Johnson, Randall Evans, Justin Gatlin, Maurice Greene. Some of those named by Heredia have been caught doping. Others have admitted to doping, while still others deny it.
SPIEGEL: Maurice Greene? The 100 meter superstar Greene is one of the poster athletes of the Olympic movement; he swears he is clean.
Heredia: The investigations are ongoing, but if he maintains he is clean, I can only answer that that is a lie.
SPIEGEL: Can you be more specific?
Heredia: I helped him. I made a schedule for him. I equipped him.
SPIEGEL: Equipped?
Heredia: Yes, we worked together in 2003 and 2004.
SPIEGEL: Do you have receipts?
Heredia: Yes, I have a $10,000 bank transfer receipt, for example.
SPIEGEL: Greene says he spent that money on friends.
Heredia: I know that’s not true.
SPIEGEL: What did Greene, who denies having doped, get from you?
Heredia: IGF-1 and IGF-2, epo and ATP – that stands for adenosine triphosphate, which intensifies muscle contraction.
SPIEGEL: Undetectable for testers?
Heredia: Undetectable. We’ve used ointments that do not leave any traces and that enable a consistently high testosterone level in athletes.
SPIEGEL: Is there doping at every level of athletics?
Heredia: Yes, the only difference is the quality of the doping. Athletes with little money use simple steroids and hope they don’t get tested. The stars earn 50,000 dollars a month, not including starting bonuses and shoe sponsorship contracts. The very best invest 100,000 dollars – I’ll then build you a designer drug that can’t be detected.
SPIEGEL: Explain how this works.
Heredia: Designer drugs are composed of several different chemicals that trigger the desired reaction. At the end of the chain I change one or two molecules in such a way that the entire structure is undetectable for the doping testers.
SPIEGEL: The drug testers’ hunt of athletes ...
Heredia: ... is also a sport. A competition. Pure adrenaline. We have to be one or two years ahead of them. We have to know which drug is entering research where, which animals it is being used in, and where we can get it. And we have to be familiar with the testers’ methods.
SPIEGEL: Can the testers win this race?
Heredia: Theoretically yes. If all federations and sponsors and managers and athletes and trainers were all in agreement, if they were to invest all the money that the sport generates and if every athlete were to be tested twice a week – but only then. What’s happening now is laughable. It’s a token. They should save their money – or give it to me. I’ll give it to the orphans of Mexico! There will be doping for as long as there is commercial sports, performance-related shoe contracts and television contracts.
4. Teil: “Peak performances without doping are a fairytale.”
SPIEGEL: So the idea that sports are a fair competition within established rules actually died long ago?
Heredia: Yes, of course. Unless we were to go back to ancient times. Without television, without Adidas and Nike. It’s obvious: if you finish in 8th place at a big event, you get $5,000; if you finish first you get $100,000. Athletes think about this. Then they think that everyone else dopes anyway, and they are right. And you think athletes believe in morals and ideals? Peak performances without doping are a fairytale, my friend.
SPIEGEL: Do you advocate the authorization of doping?
Heredia: No, but I believe we should authorize the use of epo, IGF and testosterone, as well as adrenaline and epitestosterone – substances that the body produces itself. Simply for pragmatic reasons, because it is impossible to detect them, and also because of the fairness aspect.
SPIEGEL: Are you serious: fairness?
Heredia: Yes. Take for example the most popular drug: epo. Epo changes the hemoglobin value, and it is simply the case that people have different hemoglobin levels. Authorizing the use of epo would enable the fairness and equality that supposedly everyone wants. After all, there are genetic differences between athletes.
SPIEGEL: Differences between living things are called nature. You want to make all athletes the same through doping?
Heredia: Normal athletes have a level of 3 nanograms of testosterone per milliliter of blood; the sprinter Tim Montgomery has 3 nanograms, but Maurice Greene has 9 nanograms. So what can Tim do? It isn’t doping with endogenous substances that’s unfair, it is nature that’s unfair.
SPIEGEL: And what would you ban?
Heredia: Everything else that can be dangerous. Amphetamines? Ban them. Steroids? Ban them.
SPIEGEL: Are there still any clean disciplines?
Heredia: Track and field, swimming, cross-country skiing and cycling can no longer be saved. Golf? Not clean either. Soccer? Soccer players come to me and say they have to be able to run up and down the touchline without becoming tired, and they have to play every three days. Basketball players take fat burners – amphetamines, ephedrin. Baseball? Haha. Steroids in pre-season, amphetamines during the games. Even archers take downers so that their arm remains steady. Everyone dopes.
SPIEGEL: Did you produce the drugs yourself, or did you simply procure them?
Heredia: I didn’t have my own laboratory, I had… let’s say access to labs in Mexico City. I purchased and procured the raw materials ...
SPIEGEL: ... from where?
Heredia: Everywhere. Australia, South Africa, Austria, Bulgaria, China. I got growth hormone from the Swiss company Serono. It was never difficult to import it to Mexico, because the laws aren’t that strict. You can easily buy it in pharmacies in Mexico. Whenever a new drug was entering the test phase somewhere in the world, we knew about it and we ordered it. Then I combined substances. Sometimes I produced a gel.
SPIEGEL: Did you ever take the doping testers seriously?
Heredia: No, we laughed at them. Today, of course, it is the testers who are laughing.
SPIEGEL: How do you make a living today?
Heredia: I still have a little bit of money. I’m studying again. I want to become a pharmacist. That’s my dream, but I don’t know if I’ll find a job, if I will be charged, if I will be deported, or where I’ll go. I don’t have a life anymore. I walk around and make sure no one is following me. But compared to Jerome Young I’m doing okay.
SPIEGEL: What is the 2003 world champion doing today?
Heredia: He’s 31 years old, and he sits in a truck and delivers bread. People say he broke the laws of the sport, but that’s not true: it was exactly these rules that Jerome followed.
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You think he's exaggerating?
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Man, that's mindblowing.
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You think he's exaggerating?
I believe a lot of what he's saying but I think he's definitely exaggerating at least a bit. I mean afterall it is in his interets to since he's obviously pro drugs. I mean come on golf!? Why would a golfer need to take performance enhancing drugs. Also why would basketball players need to take fat burners or anything. Also i wouldn't believe that all the sprinting contestants in an olympic final are doped up. Sure many of them could be or probably are but how can he be sure unless he's worked with their coaches or knows the people that are providing for them.
He did name some pretty high profiled coaches, which makes me believe that they are still doping their athletes. For example he named John Smith who currently works with Carmelita Jeter who's the fastest woman in the world right now. What makes it even more suspcious isn't just her coach but also her age. She's 32. Check out her progression times.
http://speedendurance.com/2009/10/19/asafa-powell-and-carmelita-jeter-peak-training-age/
2003 her PR was 11.79. In 3 years she managed to get that down to 11.48. In 2007 she starts working with John Smith and than suddenly she's taken her time down to 11.02 in less than a year before eventually dropping down to 10.64.
Regardless of that I still like to give people the benefit of the doubt until they are proven positive or admit they're doping. But i wreckon the athletic federations don't really want to be rigorous with the best athletes because imagine how much it would hurt sprintings profile if somebody like Usain Bolt tested positive. It would be an even bigger scandal than the Ben Johnson case.
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I do not think it is an exaggeration.
In a kinesiology class I took we watched documentaries that exposed other horror stories, such as the scandals in East Germany.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2005/nov/01/athletics.gdnsport3
Those athletes did not know they were being doped until they started experiencing side effects such as facial hair growth and things of that nature (in female athletes).
I don't believe it's impossble to run 9.7 without drugs. But it may be a false hope because I understand that all sprinters are pretty much doping. That I have heard before.
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You think he's exaggerating?
I believe a lot of what he's saying but I think he's definitely exaggerating at least a bit. I mean afterall it is in his interets to since he's obviously pro drugs. I mean come on golf!? Why would a golfer need to take performance enhancing drugs. Also why would basketball players need to take fat burners or anything. Also i wouldn't believe that all the sprinting contestants in an olympic final are doped up. Sure many of them could be or probably are but how can he be sure unless he's worked with their coaches or knows the people that are providing for them.
He did name some pretty high profiled coaches, which makes me believe that they are still doping their athletes. For example he named John Smith who currently works with Carmelita Jeter who's the fastest woman in the world right now. What makes it even more suspcious isn't just her coach but also her age. She's 32. Check out her progression times.
http://speedendurance.com/2009/10/19/asafa-powell-and-carmelita-jeter-peak-training-age/
2003 her PR was 11.79. In 3 years she managed to get that down to 11.48. In 2007 she starts working with John Smith and than suddenly she's taken her time down to 11.02 in less than a year before eventually dropping down to 10.64.
Regardless of that I still like to give people the benefit of the doubt until they are proven positive or admit they're doping. But i wreckon the athletic federations don't really want to be rigorous with the best athletes because imagine how much it would hurt sprintings profile if somebody like Usain Bolt tested positive. It would be an even bigger scandal than the Ben Johnson case.
considering how rapidly some pepole an improve their vertical jump over 12 or 16 weeks, I think the rapid changes in this article is possible without drugs but who knows.
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SPIEGEL: Differences between living things are called nature. You want to make all athletes the same through doping?
Heredia: Normal athletes have a level of 3 nanograms of testosterone per milliliter of blood; the sprinter Tim Montgomery has 3 nanograms, but Maurice Greene has 9 nanograms. So what can Tim do? It isn’t doping with endogenous substances that’s unfair, it is nature that’s unfair.
I like this a lot ^^^
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I do not think it is an exaggeration.
In a kinesiology class I took we watched documentaries that exposed other horror stories, such as the scandals in East Germany.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2005/nov/01/athletics.gdnsport3
Those athletes did not know they were being doped until they started experiencing side effects such as facial hair growth and things of that nature (in female athletes).
I don't believe it's impossble to run 9.7 without drugs. But it may be a false hope because I understand that all sprinters are pretty much doping. That I have heard before.
"The victims all received Oral-Turinabol - an anabolic steroid containing testosterone made by Jenapharm. The "blue bean" had astonishing powers - accelerating muscle build-up and boosting recovery times - but its subsequent side effects were catastrophic: infertility among women, embarrassing hair growth, breast cancer, heart problems and testicular cancer. An estimated 800 athletes developed serious ailments".
"Intriguingly, some of the world records set by East German athletes while using Oral-Turinabol have not been bettered."
That must have been potent as fuk.
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Yeah I believe that the blue-bean, was disguised as their multivitamins or something like that. years later some of the athletes filed lawsuits for being duped into doping. But yeah imagine if the multivitamins you were taking...
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I do not think it is an exaggeration.
In a kinesiology class I took we watched documentaries that exposed other horror stories, such as the scandals in East Germany.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2005/nov/01/athletics.gdnsport3
Those athletes did not know they were being doped until they started experiencing side effects such as facial hair growth and things of that nature (in female athletes).
I don't believe it's impossble to run 9.7 without drugs. But it may be a false hope because I understand that all sprinters are pretty much doping. That I have heard before.
"The victims all received Oral-Turinabol - an anabolic steroid containing testosterone made by Jenapharm. The "blue bean" had astonishing powers - accelerating muscle build-up and boosting recovery times - but its subsequent side effects were catastrophic: infertility among women, embarrassing hair growth, breast cancer, heart problems and testicular cancer. An estimated 800 athletes developed serious ailments".
"Intriguingly, some of the world records set by East German athletes while using Oral-Turinabol have not been bettered."
That must have been potent as fuk.
The drugs were not especially potent, but women + drugs vs women w/out drugs is absolutely mindblowing. In the mid 80's eastern bloc women ran 47.xx in the 400m (no testing). Nobody comes close to that now.
About the article... I'd say he is probably exaggerating in so far as I bet he doesn't know for sure everything he says is absolutely true... I don't buy any of the limits to human performance that are possible with/without drugs because human variation is so crazy we really can't put limits to it. That said, drugs are part of sport and it's a personal choice everyone has to make for themselves. In the end all you know is what you have done, I can say I have ran 10.67 clean... but then again my PR has been beaten by girls.
I don't know Usain Bolt or Maurice Greene personally, but I can tell you that I personally know someone who ran 48.mid in the 400m hurdles who I would bet 99.9999% is clean. Additionally, from talking to him I REALLY truly believe Ato ran 9.84 cleanly. Of course I don't know either for sure.... But I don't believe it's impossible to achieve really fast times without drugs, maybe WR require drugs but I don't think it's impossible that someone in an olympic final is clean.
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What about high jump? (Sotomayor)
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This is exaggeration by far. Its like the fortune tellers they mix 1 bit truth with a 1000 lies. So they believe everything is true. But this mind blowing, its not impossible to get from 10.2 to 9.7 without drugs.
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People need to read better. He said that drugs make it possible for athletes to have close to peak performance through-out the year, not that very good numbers are impossible to achieve with-out drugs in general. I personally believe that it is unlikely for top athletes to be clean at important competitions. Even if nobody would dope, but every top athlete believes everyone else is doping, suddenly it will be very hard for that individual to NOT take drugs for say the Olympics, which might be a once in a lifetime opportunity. Of course every other top-athlete will believe the same and suddenly nearly everyone is taking drugs.
Sports competition, in the final analysis, is just a more cultivated form of a battle for resources (material and immaterial), that has been happening in our species and in other species for millions of years. The modern human mind is able to create boundaries and rules for this battle, but whenever there is a way to gain an advantage by breaking those rules, competitors at the top will be very, very hard pressed to do so. Those people are not like the majority of people posting in this forum for whom training and sports is a more or less serious hobby. This is their career that they work for every single day for multiple hours just like we spend that time in school or work to succeed with our resource-gathering strategy. The difference between the two is that professional sports is very unforgiving and there is little place for average performers - unlike in many other fields of human life today. Top athletes make it their life goal to succeed and the way this is done quickly becomes secondary.
So no, I do not think that he is exaggerating at all.
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If drugs are really as far in front of the testers as this dude says they are than I guess I could believe it. However, if there was a decent chance they'd get caught I don't think they'd risk it. Imagine how much Usain Bolt stands to lose financially if he tests positive to PED's. Majority of his money would come from sponsers and endorsements and his profile would be shattered overnight. Same as any top sprinter coz the sprinters at the very top have the most to lose. Up and coming athletes that don't have much profile or guys that are past their peak or realize they just can't compete with the best without PED's would take them regardless though (e.g Steve Mullings). Once you get caught though your career is over just look at Ben Johnson and Dwain Chambers as examples of that. Even if your career isn't over (Justin Gatlin) your name is forever tarnished.
I wreckon heaps of NFL athletes juice up though. There's really not as much stigma to it if you get caught because you only get banned for a few weeks and than everybody kind of forgets about it. To back that statement up you just got to look at people like Bill Romanowski coming out and admitting he took steroids in parts of his NFL career and barely anybody blinks an eye or dare suggests that his accomplishments are somehow tarnished.
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If drugs are really as far in front of the testers as this dude says they are than I guess I could believe it. However, if there was a decent chance they'd get caught I don't think they'd risk it. Imagine how much Usain Bolt stands to lose financially if he tests positive to PED's. Majority of his money would come from sponsers and endorsements and his profile would be shattered overnight. Same as any top sprinter coz the sprinters at the very top have the most to lose.
With that you somehow assume that Athlete A personally believes he would be able to perform as well even with-out drugs. But how can assume that? Maybe A's opinion is that he has some serious competition and regardless of whether this competition is doping, he might think that HE HAS TO in order to stay at the top. So while there is an obvious risk to taking banned substances the NET RISK is suddenly not as high anymore. Because what would happen if A's performance drops because of not doping?
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If drugs are really as far in front of the testers as this dude says they are than I guess I could believe it. However, if there was a decent chance they'd get caught I don't think they'd risk it. Imagine how much Usain Bolt stands to lose financially if he tests positive to PED's. Majority of his money would come from sponsers and endorsements and his profile would be shattered overnight. Same as any top sprinter coz the sprinters at the very top have the most to lose.
With that you somehow assume that Athlete A personally believes he would be able to perform as well even with-out drugs. But how can assume that? Maybe A's opinion is that he has some serious competition and regardless of whether this competition is doping, he might think that HE HAS TO in order to stay at the top. So while there is an obvious risk to taking banned substances the NET RISK is suddenly not as high anymore. Because what would happen if A's performance drops because of not doping?
Well in World Championships and Olympics every athlete would have the incentive to dope and what you're saying would hold true. What I'm saying though is that for other meets they wouldn't bother taking the risk of doping and would rather run the risk of being beat than risk testing positive. Let's say Bolt takes PED's. If he takes PED's he's got world record breaking ability and can run 9.5s. If he's clean he can run 9.7s or 9.8s. Why would Bolt risk taking PED's for events that really don't even matter much? Same as the other sprinters at the top of the game like Tyson Gay. However, lesser knowns always have incentive to dope because they need these lesser meets to have a chance of building their profile and qualifying for spots in world championships and olympics.
Edit- In reality though all we can really do is speculate because we can't determine what kind of mindset each individual has. Same as we can't determine which athletes are actually clean. Even though the system isn't perfect I'd rather have it the way it is now than have PED's legal.
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I can see where you are coming from.
Regarding "having it the way it is", that's a completely separate discussion and my opinion has changed a bit over time. Given that things stand as Mr. Heredia describes them, holding on to the current way cannot for anyone be considered reasonable. Laws are supposed to protect the normative values of a population. But when those laws illegalize the behavior of the majority, one cannot any longer take as a given those values as normative. Laws like that are obsolete in any democratic system and only survive because of the superior power of a minority or the doubts about the illegal behavior of a vast majority.
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What about high jump? (Sotomayor)
Are you asking if Sotomayor was clean or the affect on drugs and high jumping?
I have never met Sotomayor but from what I heard his drug of choice was actually cocaine. I don't think his status as an outlier performance wise suggests he was using drugs, in fact I think the opposite. The best evidence for drug use in sport is widespread increasing but somewhat equal performances, not a single outlier. Sotomayor drastically outjumped his contemporaries (as well as today's athletes). In less one wants to suggest that only one skinny cokehead cuban had access to steroids, then his outlier status actually just suggests he was an extremely rare variant. In the absence of drastic technological increases, world record breaking performances are best modeled with an extreme value distribution, thus if Sotomayor is the extreme value, it's not shocking that he happens to be naturally head and shoulders above everyone else.
The extreme value distribution does not suggest normality at the tails; or in layman's term there is no reason to think that there should be a bunch of people within 1% of the best performance. The same is true for longevity, earthquakes, or something like height (The tallest man ever to stand up was 8'11 and lived 70 years ago, the second tallest person to stand up was "only" 8'3. Such a difference (8 inches) is actually not surprising when talking about extreme values!).
In fact the greatest indictment to Usain Bolt comes in the form of Yohan Blake. It's totally possible that Bolt is running ridiculous times cleanly if he is the extreme value.... But if all the other Jamaicans start putting up similar ridiculous times it suggests that something else is at play....
The high jump in particular brings up an important point regarding athletics and that is of sport psychology.
IMHO it's often true that sport psychology > drugs.
Take for example the mile run. For so many years nobody could run 4 minutes. Then Roger Bannister did it and then suddenly within a couple years everyone was doing it. The history of running sub 10 in the 100m is quite similar in that once the barrier was broken many people started breaking it.
Jumps in general are just down right now. The long jump, high jump and triple jump records were all set in the early 1990's and nobody comes close today. I wouldn't argue that this is proof that those jumpers were dirty, but simply that the best jumpers of today don't have the push to really test what they believe is possible because they can go get gold jumping what are not historic jumps.
The short sprints are a bit different now in that people see amazing times and start believing they can do it too. Don't underestimate how big a factor belief is at all levels of sport.
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(http://www.sabiask.com/images/ciencia/robert-wadlow.jpg)