Are you willing to admit that most top boxers are on PEDs?

[Glass Joe]

Most dart players are.

I would imagine darts players are on Adderall

[Jackson328]

Didn't Floyd get caught by the testers having an unauthorised TUE the night before he fought Pacman> Or did I just imagine that? Then his team applied for a retrospective TUE request and it was granted? Not sure if it was actual peds, maybe saline or frozen blood?

The appearance of known masking agents in high quantities in blood tests is a good indicator. Yes I'm afraid I am very sceptical about a hell of a lot of boxers and top level athletes in general. I'm curious about Usain Bolt however as I can't recall much suspicion during his career and rumours usually abound when someone performs like he did

[Deserter]

I'm curious about Usain Bolt however as I can't recall much suspicion during his career and rumours usually abound when someone performs like he did

You and others may find this interesting reading then:

[Steveh583]

If you guys haven't watched Icarus on Netflix, get on it. Very eye opening. Basically, you aren't medalling at the olympics unless you juice.

[kbackup408]

If you guys haven't watched Icarus on Netflix, get on it. Very eye opening. Basically, you aren't medalling at the olympics unless you juice.

probably one of the best things I have seen - it was eye opening the lengths countries go to hide the juicing!

[Exoddus]

If you guys haven't watched Icarus on Netflix, get on it. Very eye opening. Basically, you aren't medalling at the olympics unless you juice.

probably one of the best things I have seen - it was eye opening the lengths countries go to hide the juicing!

Yep, and in our country (United Kingdom) we simply diagnose our top athletes with asthma. So if small traces of steroids are found. They can easily be explained.

[jtourettes]

To think otherwise would be the height of naïvety. They're even juicing in fornicating bridge tournaments.

I'd be surprised if as much as 10% of elite Pro sportsmen aren't taking some form of PED.

Personally, I think everything should be allowed, at least then it's a level playing field.

[kbackup408]

If you guys haven't watched Icarus on Netflix, get on it. Very eye opening. Basically, you aren't medalling at the olympics unless you juice.

probably one of the best things I have seen - it was eye opening the lengths countries go to hide the juicing!

Yep, and in our country (United Kingdom) we simply diagnose our top athletes with asthma. So if small traces of steroids are found. They can easily be explained.

it is a joke mate, the GB cycling team train in Fuerteventura (an island secluded with one airport making it tough for drug testers to test) - in the rare case if drug testers turn up to the island the doctors at team GB know exactly how long it would take to reach the camp

dirty old game that cycling !

[Dixonian]

I figure at the very least 60 to 70% of the guys at the very top of ANY type of athletics are gonna be doing whatever it takes to get to that level including PED's. So yeah, I'm willing to admit it, and frankly I don't care. It's their body. Though it is more admirable obviously to do it without any help, but what you were born with, but it's hard to ever tell when somebody is really clean.

Might be an interesting offshoot of this discussion to bat around which boxers or perhaps other athletes in sports you DO believe are clean. It'd probably be a shorter list than which ones aren't.

I believe Usain Bolt was clean. Passed every test, blood levels were always stable, and he passed his peak in his early thirties. Also, sometimes we overstate the progress of athletic progress over the years. I mean you consider our greater knowledge of training and conditioning, rest and recuperation and nutrition...

He'd be one of the least likely to be clean in the dirtiest of sporrs. I can't remember how many times I've read people say that about Lance Armstrong.

Why do you think he'd be the least likely to be clean?

Consider this: Jesse Owens ran 100m in 10.2 seconds in 1936. Without starting blocks, without all the innovative training methods and equipment available to today's athletes. Usain Bolt running 9.6 seconds, with modern training methods, as a taller man with a longer stride in 2009 is not superhuman in comparison.

Btw, I was always suspicious of Armstrong.

[Dixonian]

If you guys haven't watched Icarus on Netflix, get on it. Very eye opening. Basically, you aren't medalling at the olympics unless you juice.

probably one of the best things I have seen - it was eye opening the lengths countries go to hide the juicing!

Yep, and in our country (United Kingdom) we simply diagnose our top athletes with asthma. So if small traces of steroids are found. They can easily be explained.

it is a joke mate, the GB cycling team train in Fuerteventura (an island secluded with one airport making it tough for drug testers to test) - in the rare case if drug testers turn up to the island the doctors at team GB know exactly how long it would take to reach the camp

dirty old game that cycling !

All cyclists are asthmatics these days!

[DrDuke]

I'm damn sure, that every top professional athlete drinks some juices.

[Dixonian]

I'm curious about Usain Bolt however as I can't recall much suspicion during his career and rumours usually abound when someone performs like he did

You and others may find this interesting reading then:

While it's an interesting read there are no great revelations here. And some of the reasoning behind his arguments are pretty tenuous. I mean to make the point he was a gifted sprinter as a youngster is somehow part of the proof of his possible guilt is just bizarre. So if he hadn't have shown talent as a youngster what would that mean?

[Wee Tommy]

My mates an up and coming pro. I had the opportunity to buy some EPO last year and my intention was to wait till he had a big fight come up and offer him it for his camp. He refused and gave me absolute pelters for even suggesting it. Won’t take anything, fat burners or pre workouts, nothing at all. So there have to be some more guys like him in the sport.

Saying that I believe 90% of the top ten will be on it.

[kbackup408]

I'm curious about Usain Bolt however as I can't recall much suspicion during his career and rumours usually abound when someone performs like he did

You and others may find this interesting reading then:

^ that was fascinating pal great read !

[banjo]

I don't regard it as cheating when everyone is at it.

[Steveh583]

I figure at the very least 60 to 70% of the guys at the very top of ANY type of athletics are gonna be doing whatever it takes to get to that level including PED's. So yeah, I'm willing to admit it, and frankly I don't care. It's their body. Though it is more admirable obviously to do it without any help, but what you were born with, but it's hard to ever tell when somebody is really clean.

Might be an interesting offshoot of this discussion to bat around which boxers or perhaps other athletes in sports you DO believe are clean. It'd probably be a shorter list than which ones aren't.

I believe Usain Bolt was clean. Passed every test, blood levels were always stable, and he passed his peak in his early thirties. Also, sometimes we overstate the progress of athletic progress over the years. I mean you consider our greater knowledge of training and conditioning, rest and recuperation and nutrition...

Lance Armstrong passed over 200 tests..think about that for a moment...

[Onetimeonly]

I figure at the very least 60 to 70% of the guys at the very top of ANY type of athletics are gonna be doing whatever it takes to get to that level including PED's. So yeah, I'm willing to admit it, and frankly I don't care. It's their body. Though it is more admirable obviously to do it without any help, but what you were born with, but it's hard to ever tell when somebody is really clean.

Might be an interesting offshoot of this discussion to bat around which boxers or perhaps other athletes in sports you DO believe are clean. It'd probably be a shorter list than which ones aren't.

I believe Usain Bolt was clean. Passed every test, blood levels were always stable, and he passed his peak in his early thirties. Also, sometimes we overstate the progress of athletic progress over the years. I mean you consider our greater knowledge of training and conditioning, rest and recuperation and nutrition...

He'd be one of the least likely to be clean in the dirtiest of sporrs. I can't remember how many times I've read people say that about Lance Armstrong.

Why do you think he'd be the least likely to be clean?

Consider this: Jesse Owens ran 100m in 10.2 seconds in 1936. Without starting blocks, without all the innovative training methods and equipment available to today's athletes. Usain Bolt running 9.6 seconds, with modern training methods, as a taller man with a longer stride in 2009 is not superhuman in comparison.

Btw, I was always suspicious of Armstrong.

It's one of the dirtiest sports there is. There hasn't been an athlete in decades I'd go to bat for as assuredly being clean.

[stujones]

I think a lot of boxers "misuse" the PED..... its the work on strength as opposed to other factors...... Tyson (later career) springs to mind and, I'm going to say, I don't think its doing AJ any good in all areas of his game. Tyson especially, first career - he had a bit of puppy fat and his arms had those nice elongated muscles and he was famous for a minimal weight regime (and he didn't look like that) - Tyson mark two, had seemingly a lower body fat percentage, a much changed arm physique, weighed more but would gas within 4 rounds.

It clearly helps, but I still think there is a knowledge needed, by some athletes as to what PED to use and how to train with it. You can see Dwain Chambers post ban is clearly physically smaller, also the other side of 30, but still clocks in some effective performances and does practically as well as he did in his prime years and obviously juicing like crazy.

[jameswilson]

As mentioned above Icarus is a great watch. The thing that stuck with me is these devices which remove and refit the sealing element of the test tubes that store the urine and blood. When they found a test to detect if this thing had been used they found nigh on every test tube had been tampered with.

I’m fairly sure that’s how most of our athletes get away with it. I can’t imagine the people within the drug testing world earn that much. If your offered £250k to swap test tubes I don’t know that there aren’t many who would take that, and we know the very top boxers can afford that.

There’s so much in the history of sport that stinks and needs explaining. Flo Jo back in the 80s improving her PB by so much in such a short time and then retiring after the 88 Olympics at what would have been the height of her earning power stands out for me.

I’ve mentioned it a ton on here during similar discussions but two other great documentaries on steroids are ‘Bigger faster stronger’ and ‘9.79 the race that shocked the World.’

[Jackson328]

I'm curious about Usain Bolt however as I can't recall much suspicion during his career and rumours usually abound when someone performs like he did

You and others may find this interesting reading then:

That was interesting. I'd read a few years ago about how the Jamaica Athletics governing body seemed not to bother testing their athletes too much pre-competition, especially in the months before the 2012 Olympics, but I hadn't realised quite how few they actually did test!

[Deserter]

I'm curious about Usain Bolt however as I can't recall much suspicion during his career and rumours usually abound when someone performs like he did

You and others may find this interesting reading then:

While it's an interesting read there are no great revelations here. And some of the reasoning behind his arguments are pretty tenuous. I mean to make the point he was a gifted sprinter as a youngster is somehow part of the proof of his possible guilt is just bizarre. So if he hadn't have shown talent as a youngster what would that mean?

In relation to being gifted, the author clearly states that it is "a precursor rather than an indicator" so I'm not clear why you're so confused.

Far more importantly, he summarizes and contextualizes a lot of disparate information to create a very compelling case.

I find it more interesting that someone who is aware of the fact that sprinting is notoriously full of drugs cheats (Bolt is the only one of the athletes who have recorded the top 20 times ever that hasn't failed a test), who trained with a team that was full of drugs cheats in a country that didn't test its athletes properly, can somehow still believe he is likely to be clean,. Add in facts such as 'in less that 12 months between 2007 and 2008, Bolt moved from a promising sprinter, to the fastest man alive" and the odds of him being clean diminish even further.
To be clear, either way Bolt is still an exceptional athlete, but you really would have to be close to a 'flat Earther' to believe that he was clean when literally everyone around him was using performance enhancing drugs yet he was still outperforming all of them by such a margin.

[stujones]

As mentioned above Icarus is a great watch. The thing that stuck with me is these devices which remove and refit the sealing element of the test tubes that store the urine and blood. When they found a test to detect if this thing had been used they found nigh on every test tube had been tampered with.

I’m fairly sure that’s how most of our athletes get away with it. I can’t imagine the people within the drug testing world earn that much. If your offered £250k to swap test tubes I don’t know that there aren’t many who would take that, and we know the very top boxers can afford that.

There’s so much in the history of sport that stinks and needs explaining. Flo Jo back in the 80s improving her PB by so much in such a short time and then retiring after the 88 Olympics at what would have been the height of her earning power stands out for me.

I’ve mentioned it a ton on here during similar discussions but two other great documentaries on steroids are ‘Bigger faster stronger’ and ‘9.79 the race that shocked the World.’

Yes - and then when the Chinese athletes dominates women's middle / long distance running for about a season and then quit, 1993 was the year - Robbed Sonia O Sullivan of a double in 1993 IMO.

Paula Ivan - When the experts talk about "flo jo" - you can sense that they knew the score.... they don't say the same for Ivan - I think she was equally as dodgy. Basically nowhere in the worlds (at least Flo Jo was always world class even before her miraculous improvement) to Olympic stardum in less than a year. One more season and then she retired in her prime.

[Loftgroov]

To be clear, either way Bolt is still an exceptional athlete, but you really would have to be close to a 'flat Earther' to believe that he was clean when literally everyone around him was using performance enhancing drugs yet he was still outperforming all of them by such a margin.

This is what ultimately did for Armstrong. All those drug tests he past, and protestations of being a clean athlete, but the simple fact was he was smashing elite level, juiced athletes.

I'll always remember watching this footage below, live in 2001. Armstrong gave Ulrich (an elite rider and complete juicer) a look and then just fu.cked off up the mountain. So many people who know cycling... just KNEW... this was unnatural.

[Deserter]

To be clear, either way Bolt is still an exceptional athlete, but you really would have to be close to a 'flat Earther' to believe that he was clean when literally everyone around him was using performance enhancing drugs yet he was still outperforming all of them by such a margin.

This is what ultimately did for Armstrong. All those drug tests he past, and protestations of being a clean athlete, but the simple fact was he was smashing elite level, juiced athletes.

I'll always remember watching this footage below, live in 2001. Armstrong gave Ulrich (an elite rider and complete juicer) a look and then just fu.cked off up the mountain. So many people who know cycling... just KNEW... this was unnatural.

So true mate. When I was working in the UK just over a decade ago one of my roles was publisher of some cycling magazines and it's safe to say that everyone in that world knew he was on the gear and laughed at the 'casuals' who were either naive to it or in some cases even defended him against accusations.

[paddy chavez]

Most dart players are.

I play in a darts league and I've known a couple of guys have a line if Coke before their match it makes them concentrate better and they play better .