It’s a long staircase – time for you to highlight where I made the claim that you are rather bizarrely asking me to give an example of – second flight coming up, plenty of time…off you go…

As an aside to people making claims they can’t back up, Netflix have just (on Friday I think) released Icarus. Guy starts out making documentary about how easily an amateur cyclist can dope, and just sort of stumbles into the middle of the massive Russian doping scandal. Brilliant documentary.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/so-gatlin-spoils-the-party#post-8637888

Zzzzz – we’re clean, others aren’t, nasty foreigners – zzzzzz, sweat* dreams. God save our…….

* oops, appropriate typo though

Bon nuit

Pathetic.

Pathos should be reserved to those who turn a blind eye to what’s in front of them, not how to interpret the significance/insignficant of the word “also”. The latter would be pathetic, whatever type of squirrelt 😉

“long live our noble….” zzzzzz

What was that thread I remember seeing a few days ago. . . . . .oh yeah P*s*ing contests 😆

Examples of British athletes who have served two bans and have then come back and got quicker as they got older please.
Take your time.

Two bans – can’t think of any. But…

Christie – suspect
Chambers – cheat
Ohuruogu – banned
Farah – ?. Questions. If he was Russian, the GB public would boo him

Just sayin’

Bolt is still Bolt and supreme. Pathos of bronze will add to his legacy

A British athlete who has served two bans and come back faster as he has got older…thats easy; THM!( I’m here all week; try the fish!) I have always wondered if Mo et all would have been allowed to have slept through drug testers at the door if there was a sponsors bike in the garage. The level of interest and even questions asked in parliament around Wiggins is in marked contrast to the way Mo avoiding sleeping in or the rehabilitation of Dwayne Chambers is approached.

of a British athlete who has also got quicker as they’ve got older if you please, that was the claim.

Lewis Hamilton. Bang to rights.

Gatlin: the Valverde of athletics.

I don’t think there should be a reduction in ban length for cooperation with the authorities on a second offence.

Did anyone else think the women’s 10000m was ‘not normal’ too?

What was that thread I remember seeing a few days ago. . . . . .oh yeah P*s*ing contests

Hopefully they’re pissing into test bottles, as some of these big hitters are definitely showing a suspicious increase in performance.

Sorry, duckman, you lotst me there – too early in the morning 😉 but as was obvious for anyone other than those lining up at the urinals last night, that was not the point I was making,. I do not give a toss if there is/isn’t someone with the same/similar history as Gatlin.

My point – however inaccurately made or not – is that we happily ignore the remarkable jumps in performance of a range of GB athletes as they get older. In some cases, for plucky losers to athletes capable of not just winning but smashing records. And not a hint of a raised eyebrow….that just seems odd. But they ae British and above all that kind of thing, so an excellent night’s sleep was had all round. Phew.

Eh? Better than Zátopek? Mo? Lewis?

Hyperbole if ever there was… he might be the greatest sprinter, although I think much of his attraction is as a showman rather than just his legs.

If you want the greatest track and field athlete of all time, as the claim was, then it would surely need to be a hept/decathlete? Or at least a sprinter who did a long jump…

Did anyone else think the women’s 10000m was ‘not normal’ too?

Oh yes, I was there and there were a few raised eyebrows in the crowd.

My point – however inaccurately made or not – is that we happily ignore the remarkable jumps in performance of a range of GB athletes as they get older. In some cases, for plucky losers to athletes capable of not just winning but smashing records. And not a hint of a raised eyebrow….that just seems odd. But they ae British and above all that kind of thing, so an excellent night’s sleep was had all round. Phew.

What you seem to be missing from all that are facts: The simple fact is that Gatlin has been caught, twice, and is still out there competing. If a British athlete had been caught similarly, they would be given the same treatment, perhaps even worse. Look at the treatment of Chambers, who was vilified by the press and public alike.

Anything else is simply conjecture and does not do anyone any good.

Which makes your “point” a strawman.

My point – however inaccurately made or not – is that we happily ignore the remarkable jumps in performance of a range of GB athletes as they get older.

How about we try this the other way round then – example of a non-British athlete who’s improved as they’ve got older and is condemned solely for that reason despite no also?

Wow, lets miss the point ENTIRELY again,…

…and you talk about straw men!!!

It’s worth reading this – the press angle on this is much too simple.

Demonising Gatlin

He should have had a life ban after being caught cheating a second time.

There’s too much at stake not to get the message out there loud and clear.

Ticket sales, sponsorship, TV rights – all need a show and records if possible.

The issue people have with Galin is on 3 levels in my opinion.
1. He doped, not once, but twice.
2. He is distinctly unrepentant and in some ways plays up to he notoriety.
3. He keeps getting better even though every other sprinter who has run under 9.9s has got slower beyond the age of 26. It seems odd, not normal…

Now let’s not pretend there aren’t any Brits who have question marks hanging over their heads, there are, but the reason Gatlin gets stuck is that he has done all of the above. Dope once and repent, we could be persuaded to love you again, particularly, as is normal, if your performance falls away with age. Dope (twice), don’t repent and get better with age, I don’t care if you’re British, American or anything else, that deserves some stick.

Saying that, booing Gatlin is not for me. I was in the stadium last night and stood in silence. I won’t boo him but I sure as hell won’t cheer for him.

C’mon THM, if Gaitlin has been cheating then the UK anti doping squad will root him out and he’ll be banned (again).

And if not then, why, he must be clean as a whistle.

Just like all our plucky Brits.

Because without proof that he has reverted to his dastardly cheating ways its mere conjecture and we at STW Koolaid Towers don’t go for that sort of thing. Coz we’re all real big on proof here…

Saying that, booing Gatlin is not for me. I was in the stadium last night and stood in silence. I won’t boo him but I sure as hell won’t cheer for him.

That’s kind of how I feel – just ambivalence, really. If you can’t do it clean, you’re not relevant.

Silence would have been my response too.

What happened with the medals?

The problem is that the 100 metres event is what sells tickets. If you gave lifetime bans to all the athletes who cheated then there would be no one left racing who could go sub 10 seconds. Who would pay to watch that?

What happened with the medals?

They’re given out today, I’ll be there for that too and will report back.

Who would pay to watch that?

Me, I want a close race with th best clean athletes, if that means it’s 10.1 for the victor then so be it, what’s half a second between friends?

Yes, you did didn’t you.

Let me explain this really slowly for you:

Gatlin is condemned because he’s failed TWO doping tests, should have got a lifetime ban AND he’s getting faster as he gets older NOT because he’s a foreigner.

You then go on to make some spurious claims about Brits not being condemned because they’re Brits despite failing to come up with an example of anybody with a similar record. You then defend yourself by suggesting that you were simply complaining about Brits who don’t have a similar record to Gatlin not being condemned 🙄 and you can’t even come up with an example of a foreign athlete who is condemned for the reasons you think British athletes should be condemned but aren’t.

Ok, so what’s this all about then? Unfairly accused?

Demonising Justin Gatlin

Me, I want a close race with th best clean athletes, if that means it’s 10.1 for the victor then so be it, what’s half a second between friends?

Watching a man run 10.1 seconds when you know a man can run 9.5 seconds is rather underwhelming. Faster, higher, stronger is where it’s at for me.

Wow, that’s two new arguments I haven’t made. Brilliant. Is this the heptathlon of pissing contests….three to go aracer, three to go.

Maybe we should just recalibrate the stopwatches in order to rewhelm you.

THM – clearly for you this is an exercise in moving the goalposts in order to try and salvage your case when you’ve been called out – I CBA.

Hopefully they’re pissing into test bottles, as some of these big hitters are definitely showing a suspicious increase in performance.

I think you could be on to something there. The need to argue could be trying to prove their manliness in response to the shrunken testicles, and then there’s the aggressive behaviour and mood swings 😆

Disclaimer, i don’t think anyone with Gaitlin’s doping record should be there, but I’m not the wada or iaaf so it’s not my call.

But (and i may be missing your sarcasm)

C’mon THM, if Gaitlin has been cheating then the UK anti doping squad will root him out and he’ll be banned (again).

And if not then, why, he must be clean as a whistle.

I’d hold up the once sainted Lance as proof that no proof they’re dirty doesn’t amount to proof they’re clean.

Likelihood is our athletes are as clean/dirty as the rest, outliers like Gaitlin are not the rest.

Lance who?

Just seen this – interesting read

Maybe not so clear cut

That link must be getting a hell of a lot of traffic from this thread 🙂

It should also be remembered that for Bolt’s rise and most of his period of dominance, there was no out of competition testing performed in Jamaica. The nation was very close to being banned from international competition because of it. The revelations about Russia has allowed athletics to conveniently brush under the carpet doubts about the Jamaican and Kenyan programmes.

The revelations about Russia…

My post regarding the documentary Icarus, released on Friday on Netflix may have been lost in the fog of wee on page 2, but it’s definitely worth a watch.

That’s an interesting article about Gatlin that people keep linking to. I can understand the explanation of the first positive as a side effect of his chronic ADHD treatment. However the “I was sabotaged” defence on the second positive doesn’t seem any more credible than when used by other dopers, and the authorities were not convinced. It’s also interesting that he is commended for cooperating with doping investigations, including wearing a wire. I’m surprised they could get so much useful information from someone who is such an innocent in the world of doping…

The interesting question is what Gatling is doing if he is still cheating, and how he is evading detection. I watched Icarus last night. In the documentary, Don Catlin, a pioneer of anti doping, said WADA is incapable of catching dopers. The head of the Russian lab described how he gave the FSB a set of WADA’s high tech tamper proof bottles, and they came back in half an hour with the tops off.