Off Topic Thread too point uh

thomond2006 wrote: »

Jarryd Hayne has impressed in his first two games for the 49ers. I wonder if he will make the final roster....

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000515090/article/jarryd-hayne-continues-to-impress-as-return-specialist

I don't know why but I love seeing guys switching sports and then being successful at the highest level. Fair play to him.

dregin wrote: »

Tell ya what's face melting - American colleagues asking me all about this top "rugby" player that's just switched to NFL... I'd never heard of him before this.

Well, I presume that's because you don't follow NRL?

Clearlier wrote: »

Damn tablet deleted my post. Quick summary. Bolt was a huge junior prodigy. 20.58 for 200m at 15 years of age and he made steady progress from there until he set the world record. 10.03 time was for his first ever 100m competition. Everyone considered him too tall for the event as it hinders getting out of the blocks. His actual progression in the 100 is not surprising considering where he started from.

I'm a big athletics fan so I'm biased but I saw what happened to cycling fans so I'm open to the possibility that I'm wrong but I do believe in Bolt largely because the progression of his times do make sense - there's no point at which he makes a dramatic inexplicable improvement.

I hope for the sake of the sport that he's clean but also that if he's doping that he'll be caught.

I'd love to believe it all and I think he is a naturally phenomenal athlete but I would certainly see dropping from 10.03s in 2007 and then breaking your PB to run the second fastest time in history is a ridiculous progression and one I'd say is a dramatic, inexplicable improvement. Regardless of his experience at the distance, you do not knock 0.34 seconds off your 100m PB from one year to the next. Later that season, he smashed the WR in the Olympic final.

As Carl Lewis (who I'd have doubts over too) said of him: “For someone to run 10.03 one year and 9.69 the next, if you don’t question that in a sport that has the reputation it has right now, you’re a fool. Period.”

The nature of his times and when he runs them really strongly suggests to me that he's on a cycle to peak at optimum times. His best times invariably came in the Olympic or WC finals. His slowest seasons (2010 and 2014) are coincidentally in years where there was neither an Olympics or a World Championship.

Even in his 200m times, he saw a massive drop from the season before the Olympics to breaking the world record (19.75 in 2007 to 19.3 in 2008) which was another mind boggling advancement in times.

Angel Hereida (now Hernandez) was the doping chemist to the top athletes. He's the guy who arranged a deal with authorities and shipped Gatlin, Montgomery and Jones, showing payments from their representatives into his accounts.

Bolt hired him as his coach after his initial breakthrough and Olympic victories. Hereida did an amazing interview in Germany the week before the 2008 Olympic final where he said: "The winner will not be clean. Not even any of the contestants will be clean. There is no doubt about it, the difference between 10.0 and 9.7 seconds is the drugs.”

If he is doping, I think the only way he can get caught is if someone breaks and calls him out. Marion Jones passed over 160 drug tests in her career despite being juiced. If he's doping, I think he could realistically retire without ever being caught.

Wang King wrote: »

The guy is tested on a regular basis in and out of competition, its bloody hard to fool the testers these days, tech has moved on since the days of Marion Jones and her hubby.
If I was to be given a million Euro and asked clean or no, I'd put it on clean...... (A fool and his money etc)
I genuinely believe he's clean, not even a hint of a failed test or anything abnormal, so hopefully he is the shining light athletics needs

I've little faith in testing. The former head of the IAAF said Jamaican athletes are particularly hard to nail down as they're so remote and can actually be hard to find at times!

We'd have been saying the same things about not being able to fool testers a decade ago when Jones was queen of the track. Testing improves but so does doping.

I really would love if he was clean but I'm too cynical and the sport has been too too damaged for me not to always query any impressive victory at this point.

Zzippy wrote: »

Not unprecedented though, didn't Michael Johnson lower the WR from 19.72 to 19.32 in one go? 1996 I think...

19.66 to 19.32 and I'd have reservations about him too which is difficult because I was a kid watching that 200m in absolute awe of him. I always thought that was the greatest performance in history and the most amazing race I'd ever seen. The years since have made me cynical about him though which depresses me.

He set the 19.66 record a month before the Olympics....which raises queries about drug cycles again. He never ran as fast as those times again in his life. In 1997 and 1998 he didn't even break 20 seconds. While he wasn't competing regularly at 200m at that point, he did run it a number of times in Golden League events.

In fact, the only time he came close to those times was in 2000....ahead of the next Olympics at 33 years old! The top sprinters have an uncanny ability to be fully fit and in the best form of their lives for six weeks every 2 years and particularly every 4 years!

Zzippy wrote: »

Have heard a few bad things about the Jamaican testing regime alright, out-of-competition testing is supposed to be almost non-existent. I'd imagine Bolt travels so much for PR stuff that he'd be tested out of Jamaica regularly, but maybe that's wishful thinking.

There was one time 6 years ago where they managed to do a completely surprise test at Racers Track Club (Bolt's club in Jamaica) and 5 athletes were done on the basis of it including Bolt's training partner, Blake.

The problem is getting there, unannounced when the athletes are in training.

Wang King wrote: »

The guy is tested on a regular basis in and out of competition, its bloody hard to fool the testers these days, tech has moved on since the days of Marion Jones and her hubby.
If I was to be given a million Euro and asked clean or no, I'd put it on clean...... (A fool and his money etc)
I genuinely believe he's clean, not even a hint of a failed test or anything abnormal, so hopefully he is the shining light athletics needs

I watched a documentary about doping in cycling recently and you'd be surprised at how easy it is to cheat.

Long story short. There's a blood passport thingy that all athletes have. It basically provides baseline levels of many metabolites and blood markers for juicing. These levels would vary from athlete to athlete. The random testing is done and measured relative to the baseline levels of the metabolites, and spikes are monitored / flagged.

The guy who did the documentary was a doctor. He measured these levels in his blood under normal circumstances for 8 weeks and did some aerobic fitness tests (vo2 max, speed tests, endurance tests - running and cycling) and then he bought EPO / an equivalent online and self administered low doses for 8 weeks. He measured the metabolites in his blood again and then did the same fitness tests.

He saw an average increase of 7% in his abilities / speed / endurance, without causing ANY effect on his metabolic profile.

7% was MASSIVE for him but he made the point that for pro athletes even 1% could make a huge difference to their performances, and if he can dope at levels and not be caught, so can the athletes.

Buer wrote: »

I've little faith in testing. The former head of the IAAF said Jamaican athletes are particularly hard to nail down as they're so remote and can actually be hard to find at times!

We'd have been saying the same things about not being able to fool testers a decade ago when Jones was queen of the track. Testing improves but so does doping.

I really would love if he was clean but I'm too cynical and the sport has been too too damaged for me not to always query any impressive victory at this point.

But surely testing is better now, half the field from the London 2012 100m final have been given doping bans at some point in their career

Tox56 wrote: »

But surely testing is better now, half the field from the London 2012 100m final have been given doping bans at some point in their career

I think about 6 of the finalists in 2004 were done for doping. The techniques are improving but that's not to suggest people aren't still getting away with it. If they didn't think they could get away with it, those lads who were caught in 2012 wouldn't have been doping.

In that race, of the "Big 5" (Powell, Gay, Bolt, Gatlin and Blake) only Bolt has never been caught and he's the one that goes faster than anyone yet people appear to have the least suspicion over.

Most damningly, Jamaica had a complete breakdown in their anti-doping programme from early 2012 until the Olympics. Essentially, no testing took place. From the 12 medals on offer in the men's and women's 100m and 200m races in the Olympics, Jamaica claimed 8!