[HN Gopher] Why are so many athletics records falling?
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Why are so many athletics records falling?
Author : prostoalex
Score : 29 points
Date : 2021-03-10 02:14 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| meowzero wrote:
| Also style of play is a factor. In basketball, thanks to various
| analytics, 3 pointers are becoming more important. 3-point
| shooting records have been breaking all over the place these days
| in the NBA.
|
| OTOH, because of the playing style changes, certain records might
| never be broken such as John Stockton's assists record. It was
| already a ridiculous record, but it would be much harder to break
| with the current style of play.
| tburmeister wrote:
| The article is specifically about the sport of athletics,
| better known as track and field in the US; it has nothing to do
| with basketball.
| DrBazza wrote:
| The Valencia Half Marathon in Dec. 2020 Kibiwott Kandie reduced
| the HM WR by 30 seconds, and 4 men in total beat the old record
| in the same race. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/55206158
|
| In the words of Jen Barber "the shoes!"
|
| > There is a ban on any shoes that have a sole thicker than 40mm.
| > Kandie was using Adidas shoes that have 39mm of foam.
|
| There's also the fact that African runners train differently, and
| even their gait/pose is slightly different with their chests
| thrust out slightly.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| It's interesting because most athletes will deny records being
| beat due to equipment - they are afraid the result being taken
| away due to some regulation.
| tburmeister wrote:
| Ethiopians and Kenyans have been dominant in track and field
| since the 90s, that's not exactly a recent change; both
| countries, btw, train fairly differently from each other, and I
| would contend that "gaits" differ far more between individual
| athletes than they do between continents. The ascendance of
| Uganda in the past few years has been interesting.
| ldbooth wrote:
| Just the shoes eh? Mass communication/information and the ease at
| which we access it, and how it influences my belief systems is a
| huge shift for me. I've never been to an ultra, but I love
| listening to ultra athletes and they set a bar beyond what I
| would otherwise have thought possible in my amateur/pleasure
| exercise.
| hluska wrote:
| It's interesting that you bring up an ultra. I'm training for
| one in five months and while I'm unlikely to run the event
| itself (covid), I'm still training. Listening to elites talk
| about how they prepare has taught me a lot while reminding me
| that I'm still firmly in the camp of hobbyist. :)
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/HZdMr
| analog31 wrote:
| Interestingly, I think we'd see the same thing in music if there
| were "records." I'm a musician, as are my kids, so I've observed
| youth music over the past half century. I think the technical
| ability of young classical musicians has increased over that time
| span, rather noticeably. I've brought this up with teachers, and
| they agree with me.
|
| Kids are expected to play a difficult movement from a major
| concerto for their college audition -- pieces that were
| considered to be the domain of a handful of rare prodigies in my
| generation. I can't tell you how many times I've heard the
| Tchaikovsky in violin recitals.
|
| Granted, whether this corresponds to an advance in the artistic
| dimension of music is an open question, one that probably has no
| objective answer.
| meowzero wrote:
| I've noticed this too in other fields. I wonder if it's because
| of the internet? There's so many information out there. Not to
| mention there are so many sources you can look up to study. You
| can go to YouTube now and look up Tchaikovsky violin concerto
| and find a ton of videos that one might be able to study.
|
| I only played the violin casually when I was young. But I
| would've loved if I had vast libraries of music, videos, etc.
| available to me in the 90's. I think I would've been much
| better.
|
| A recent example for me is photography. When I started to learn
| photography about 5-6 years ago, I was able to find so many
| resources on the net to improve quickly. You can find so many
| examples of good photos of every genre these days. It would've
| been harder 15+ years ago if I had to scour magazines or photo
| books to find inspirations, or if I wanted to study a certain
| technique.
| varjag wrote:
| There definitely was no shortage of online photography
| materials in 2006...
| analog31 wrote:
| Some people have cited the Suzuki method, which became
| widespread after my time as a student. Naturally the people
| who mentioned that to me are teachers.
| meowzero wrote:
| I was taught using the Suzuki book, but not the method. My
| teacher never told me listen to the record it came with. Of
| course, it wouldn't have done me any good since I didn't
| have a record player.
|
| One piece my teacher wanted me to learn was Autumn by
| Vivaldi. I remember listening to my CD of Vivaldi's Four
| Seasons constantly to hear how a certain part should sound.
| Now only if I had a video, then I can see how they would've
| played it. :)
| analog31 wrote:
| Indeed, the method is not strictly followed in the US.
| For one thing, American teachers tend to teach reading a
| lot earlier. But I believe the emphasis on ear training,
| playing in groups, and starting out learning by
| imitation, are beneficial.
|
| Teachers of my generation were afraid that if you learned
| by ear, you'd never learn to read.
| bsder wrote:
| I'd go further. A lot of "classical" training now
| basically acknowledges that "reading" just isn't that
| relevant for a classical musician and wastes time when
| most of your repertory is memorized.
|
| Sure, you need to be able to read enough to get through
| to the point that you can memorize a new piece. However,
| you don't need to be able to read at the level of, say, a
| studio musician who sees new and unfamiliar music every
| single day.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Well you can also take beta blockers during performances to
| calm you.
|
| And you can take ADD drugs to maintain attention during
| practice.
| klyrs wrote:
| Short time scale. I wonder how they'd actually compare to
| Paganini. Besides Saint-Saens, I don't know of a composer whose
| music would even serve as a benchmark beyond that skill level.
| I guess anybody could write trickier etudes, but musicality
| cannot be ignored.
| LanceH wrote:
| I only saw the top of the article, but a major factor in track
| right now is the use of an electronic pacer. There will be a ring
| of lights on the inside line of the track. Stay ahead of the
| light and you're on record pace.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/10/14/lights-trac...
| lovedswain wrote:
| One of my favourite (and simultaneously most depressing)
| documentaries, Icarus, leaves no doubt professional sport is
| riddled with it.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus_(2017_film)
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Did you reply to the right comment? Professional sport is
| riddled with... pacing lights?
| rybosworld wrote:
| It's the epidemic no one is talking about
| mikestew wrote:
| "Riddled with" what, exactly? The scourge that is pacing
| lights? Or did you post to the wrong thread?
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Yeah, they replied wrong. Icarus is about PEDs. But I do
| like the idea of some diehard track enthusiast being
| enthralled and depressed by a tell-all documentary about
| pacing lights.
| lovedswain wrote:
| Hilarious, I seem to have randomly pattern matched the
| wrong comment to reply to after logging in
| mikestew wrote:
| Greyhound racing dogs have been paced by a mechanical rabbit
| for decades. I always assumed the reason something similar
| wasn't done for track was because it was deemed against the
| rules. And perhaps the rules simply changed, because I'm having
| a hard time thinking of pacing lights as innovative.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| IDK about pro track but in HS track, pacing in meets is
| illegal. I've seen runners DQ for a teammate running on the
| infield urging them along.
| coderzach wrote:
| Having a human rabbit isn't something you can really stop.
|
| Am I an idiot who went out way too fast for the first 600m
| and then died, or did I exactly hit my teammate's pace, and
| then fall off intentionally?
| kmonsen wrote:
| The legal system does not work like this even though I
| see it all the time, and a lot from programmers.
|
| You mostly cannot get off on a technicality like this. If
| they judge believe that a reasonable person thinks there
| was a human rabbit they can DQ you even if there are
| other explanations.
|
| Same with all the plausible deniability with passwords
| etc, the judge can simple not believe you and put you in
| jail until you remember the password (even if you do not
| remember it).
| swirepe wrote:
| >Same with all the plausible deniability with passwords
| etc, the judge can simple not believe you and put you in
| jail until you remember the password (even if you do not
| remember it).
|
| In America, you can be compelled to surrender something
| you _have_ , but not something you _know._
|
| So the jail you're waiting in while you remember you
| password is probably in Guantanamo Bay.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Am I an idiot who went out way too fast for the first
| 600m and then died, or did I exactly hit my teammate's
| pace, and then fall off intentionally?
|
| Nobody would be fooled by such a patently ridiculous
| argument. People have common sense.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| The infield is not the race area proper, it's the area
| inside the track. GP is referring to having a non-racer
| (though still a teammate) run alongside the track as a
| motivator/pacer for those actually on the track for the
| race itself.
| Ichthypresbyter wrote:
| In some events (including top-level marathons like London
| or Berlin) pacing is legal as long as the pacer is
| themselves entered in the race. Historically records
| wouldn't count if the pacer didn't finish, but I don't
| think that's still the case.
|
| For instance, in Roger Bannister's record-breaking four-
| minute mile run, Chris Brasher and Christopher Chataway
| acted as pacers. According to a prearranged plan, Brasher
| led the first two laps, then dropped back (and finished
| last). Chataway then led, until Bannister kicked with just
| over half a lap to go.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| Because of slowly but steadily improving equipment, training,
| nutrition, medical treatment. Why didn't I get a heart attack in
| my 50s like both grandfathers and my dad? Sure, I exercise a
| little (but I should do more, lose some more weight etc). But I
| also have magic statins and also take daily coated aspirin and
| some other things that weren't available in 1980 for my
| ancestors. Why didn't I get lung cancer like some family members?
| Because I never freaking smoked. The same ideas should apply to
| athletes.
| jacques_chester wrote:
| > _Because of slowly but steadily improving equipment,
| training, nutrition, medical treatment._
|
| The simplest predictor is "how many people practice a sport?"
|
| Insofar as fitness for a particular athletic trial follows the
| central limit theorem, larger samples will open the door to
| more spectacular outliers. The relationship between total
| participants and the time it takes for a record to fall shows
| up in sport after sport.
|
| The other factor is: new PEDs that are forbidden but difficult
| to detect at a given point in time. These affect some sports
| more than others. Periodically records in these sports are
| "reset" through administrative twiddling. For example, every 20
| years or so Olympic Weightlifting weight classes get changed,
| meaning all the old records are essentially obsoleted.
| majormajor wrote:
| Even if the number of new entrants to a sport per year stay
| constant, I think you'd expect records to continually fall as
| the cumulative sample over time gets larger and larger.
|
| That said, yeah, them falling _more rapidly_ is also helped
| by the training /equipment/nutrition/drugs/etc improvements.
| gwern wrote:
| Yes, you'd expect records to always keep falling given a
| fixed distribution, but it will slow down fast. The
| expected maximum of _n_ random samples is roughly log(n) in
| size (formulas: https://www.gwern.net/Order-statistics ),
| so you need to increase dramatically to noticeably increase
| the maximum.
|
| Or to put it another way, since a record is defined as
| 'beating all previous samples', the chance of the next
| sample setting a record is always 1/n. So if you have m
| entrants per year adding to that total n, the probability
| is always positive, but it quickly becomes very small.
| jacques_chester wrote:
| The training, equipment etc improvements themselves follow
| population. More natural and designed experiments, more
| alternatives available, more accumulated know-how and
| theory.
|
| But any given combination of factors is itself part of the
| athletic trial. The Soviet Russian system of weightlifting
| carefully husbanded the outstanding weightlifters they had
| to work with and so selected for athletes who responded
| well to that training. The Bulgarian system was based on
| masses of warm bodies, enormous drug regimens and ruthless
| elimination upon injury. It selected for athletes who
| responded well to drugs and weren't injury prone.
| Afficionados of the sport argue constantly about which is
| "better", since both turned out world record upon world
| record. But such a debate was beside the point: an athletic
| system selects whatever it is set up to select for. The
| rest of the effect is then down to numbers.
| justinator wrote:
| Diseases of Affluence don't regularly affect elite athletes in
| their 20's. I would say that because of affluence in our
| culture, we actually have elite athletes. I come from a long
| line of artichoke farmers, but hell if I've ever grown one
| myself. Taking a few months off to climbs mountains as fast as
| I can to set some record is something I can do because I've
| broken free from my generational toiling.
| 48snickers wrote:
| This is article is pretty light on details. There may be many
| reasons for the recent spat of records (most of the ones
| mentioned, btw, are regional), but the shoes are definitely a big
| contributor.
|
| It's worth noting that 9(!) world records in track and field were
| set in 2020 (https://trackandfieldnews.com/records/mens-world-
| records/). Two of those were not on the track (pole vault, shot),
| and thee were set by a single individual (Cheptegei). I'm too
| lazy to try to dig up and chart the historical record
| progressions, but that does seem like a fair blip.
|
| Myself, and virtually every competitive runner that I know at the
| amateur level, has invested in so called "super shoes" from one
| of the various manufacturers, with impressive (relative) results-
| generally, everyone has PR'd since the switch. Aside from that
| small sample set, numerous other studies have shown that the
| shoes deliver: -
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/13/upshot/nike-v... -
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-018-1024-z
|
| At the end of the day, none of these shoes is actually giving you
| any energy for free- they're just much less lossy than the
| previous generation of shoes. This feels like the right direction
| of progress to me.
| fiftyfifty wrote:
| On track and field and running websites there is a lot more
| cynicism towards the rush of records that's taken place over the
| last year or so. Yes the new shoes probably help, but Covid has
| also made it difficult for drug testers to access athletes for
| random drug tests, many athletes have been able to take
| performance enhancing drugs with impunity over the last year.
| rybosworld wrote:
| Interesting - that is the first I am hearing this. Why does
| covid affect the drug testing?
| baryphonic wrote:
| My guess is the close quarters nature of drug testing (most
| protocols involve physical observation of the person giving
| the sample during the process) is a concern during COVID.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> Why does covid affect the drug testing?
|
| Because they cannot visit the athletes randomly. Because the
| athletes aren't training every day at a center, instead are
| training solo at lots of different places. Because much
| testing is tied to specific events (eg olympics) that have
| been cancelled. Cancel enough events and multi-month windows
| open where athletes know they will not be subject to testing.
|
| And with fewer events, those that are still happening become
| much more important. If there is only one qualifying event on
| the calendar then there is all the more pressure to perform
| on that day. There is no point in saving anything for the
| rest of the season. So athletes will risk injury if that
| means doing a little better that one day. If they are hurt
| they know they will have have a long while to recover.
| sorenjan wrote:
| But the testing doesn't just take place at competitions.
| Athletes have to report where they are every day, and
| failure to do so leads to warnings and eventually
| sanctions. They can be tested at any time, but maybe
| various agencies have cut back on that during the pandemic.
|
| https://www.wada-ama.org/en/what-we-do/adams
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > They can be tested at any time
|
| Assuming that the various lockdown protocols allow it.
| Many countries have had (or still have) massive intra-
| country travel restrictions, some such as Italy had
| periods of complete curfew.
|
| Also, laboratories were generally either ordered or
| "volunteered" to prioritise covid19 swabs over drug
| tests.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| It becomes more difficult as athletes move further away
| from standard training facilities. They still need to
| report their locations but those locations are now more
| scattered. That is IF athletes are in the system. With so
| many events cancelled and athletes looking at a year or
| more between competitions, many might not need to
| participate in anti-doping programs for extended periods
| of time.
| hydroxideOH- wrote:
| Regular random testing of athletes slowed down over the last
| year since almost all competitions were cancelled.
| asmos7 wrote:
| SARMs, notably GW501516 otherwise known as Cardarine. SARMs
| occupy a legal gray area in the US and are widely available
| online as research chemicals.
|
| https://www.chemyo.com/gw501516/
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Is that like "break a record, die of cancer" kind of choice.
| I wonder if you gave an athlete that choice explicitly which
| path would they choose.
| mikestew wrote:
| There was a survey or study of some sort related to this
| very question. My search foo fails me at the moment, but
| the question was directed to elite athletes: "Olympic medal
| and take ten (or maybe five) years off your life?". IIRC,
| close to half said, "where do I sign?".
|
| Damned if I can find a link, though. It was all over every
| athletic-oriented magazine ten years ago. EDIT: there's
| even a Wikipedia page:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman%27s_dilemma
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Quite a few would pick cancer and the record. Top athletes
| do all kinds of terrible damage to themselves even without
| the assistance of illegal drugs. Top cyclists have to wear
| heart rate monitors that wake them up when their heart
| rates get too low because their training makes their hearts
| so efficient that when they rest, the heart rate can get
| too low to be sustained. Top cyclists dying in their sleep
| happens far more frequently than it does for random
| selections of the general population. To combat this, an
| alarm wakes them up so they can exercise to get their heart
| rate up. Even knowing this, cyclists will train themselves
| at a level that ends up creating this condition.
| fractionalhare wrote:
| _> Top cyclists have to wear heart rate monitors that
| wake them up when their heart rates get too low because
| their training makes their hearts so efficient that when
| they rest, the heart rate can get too low to be
| sustained._
|
| Do you have a source for this? I don't believe it. I
| tried searching for a few mins and couldn't find anything
| to confirm it either.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if cyclists die in their sleep
| often due to _drug use_. But I would be _very_ surprised
| if you can literally overtrain your heart to the point of
| dying in your sleep due to low resting heart rate.
| FpUser wrote:
| Not sure about dying but here is my personal experience.
| I am far from being anywhere close to a real cyclist.
| Still I used to ride a bit too much and at some point my
| resting heart rate dropped down to below 45. At this
| point I got really scared and cut down on my cycling. Now
| it is more like 50 so it is ok. Funny thing I also swim a
| lot but it does not seem to affect my heart rate as much
| as cycling has.
| nl wrote:
| Paul Kimmage wrote about it in his book:
|
| _There was the confession of the top Italian'Y'and his
| explanation ofhow he had narrowly cheated death after a
| stage of the Tour of Italy.Boosted before the stage by an
| injection of EPO, he had gone to bed hat night and slept
| peacefully for two hours, unaware that the oxygen-
| enhanced blood, flowing through his veins, was rapidly
| thickening to treacle. EPO is transformed into a lethal
| cocktail, not during a race when the blood is pumped
| around the body by a 180 beats-per-minute, high-revving,
| super-fit, heart rate but at night when the revsdrop way
| below the norm. As Y's pulse dropped to a low of twenty-
| fivebeats per minute, his blood began to clot and his
| heart began to stall.Had he not been sharing with a team-
| mate, there is every chance they would have found him
| dead in the morning...Y lived to tell the tale.Others
| were not so fortunate._
|
| and Robin Parisotto wrote this:
|
| _Between 1987 and 1990, 18 cyclists died tragically and
| suddenly all from heart attack or stroke. EPO was known
| to thicken the blood the common cause of heart attack or
| stroke. Many victims developed clots that broke off and
| travelled to their hearts or brains; others died of
| simple cardiac arrest, the organ struggling to pump blood
| the consistency of oil._
|
| These are all from [1], which is a review of the evidence
| as to if this actually occurred. It cast doubt on it, but
| I've read enough accounts to think that cyclists _did_
| believe it occurred and probably were wearing HR monitors
| in bed when on EPO.
|
| [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17460263.
| 2011.55...
| dh5 wrote:
| The commenter may have been referring to Rendell's Death
| of Marco Pantani which IIRC had a line that went
| something like "during the day he lived to ride, at night
| he rode to live."
| mft_ wrote:
| It was detailed in a biography of Marco Pantani -
| referring to him and his peers. This was probably partly
| (at least) related to epo - the increased oxygen carrying
| capacity of the blood was probably what led to their
| exceptionally low heart rates.
|
| I've not read about this phenomenon outside of the epo-
| dominated era.
| dh5 wrote:
| You may be thinking of Marco Pantani, who cycled in an
| era of widespread EPO use which dramatically thickens
| their blood. That coupled with a low resting heart rate
| can indeed lead to death. I'm not aware of low heart rate
| by itself being a killer.
| mikestew wrote:
| _Top cyclists dying in their sleep happens far more
| frequently than it does for random selections of the
| general population._
|
| That's because the performance-enhancing drug EPO
| thickens the blood so much that the heart can't pump it,
| not because of low heart rates. Low heart rate in itself
| is not necessarily a "condition". I assume you're
| slightly misremembering the details of a story similar to
| this one:
|
| https://www.ridemedia.com.au/features/epo-and-the-spate-
| of-s...
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Could be a bit of both?
|
| I've heard of EPO-users getting up in the middle of the
| night to trainer cycle because exercise increases blood
| flow which reduces clotting risk. Lower heart rates may
| cause/compound this.
|
| Even a non-fatal minor clot in a leg or lung will doom a
| cyclist.
|
| In hospitals, sedentary patients will receive anti-
| clotting drugs, but may not (or get reduced dosages) if
| they're able to walk around a lot.
| plank_time wrote:
| Almost all the top cyclists were on performance enhancing
| drugs, so it's hard to get a good feel for whether or not
| what you describe is because of their training or the
| damage the drugs did.
| jacques_chester wrote:
| SARMs are unambiguously forbidden at all times by WADA's
| prohibited substances list. There's no shade of grey if you
| are in a participating sport.
|
| https://www.wada-ama.org/en/content/what-is-
| prohibited/prohi...
| amelius wrote:
| So this means that when Covid is over, the record-breaking
| streak is over too?
| wott wrote:
| Yes and no. Nowadays, a lot of the anti-doping control relies
| on monitoring _variations_ in levels of this and that and
| punishing abnormal variations (biological passport). Only
| rare idiots could get caught by showing huge _absolute_
| levels of this or that.
|
| So, it is said that now, you dope young athletes _before_
| they enter the highly-controlled circuit. Then their levels
| can remain high and pass for their natural levels, you just
| have to keep the variations small by giving small continuous
| doses.
|
| I guess after a long period without control, we can partly
| have the same effect. Of course the effect of continuous
| doping comes on top of the benefits (extra training or such)
| acquired during the non-controlled doping period.
|
| ------
|
| In cycling, there is a lot of suspicion around the young
| Slovenian and Swiss riders. Only unfounded suspicion so far.
| Several Slovenian and Swiss have already been 'caught'
| (nowadays cases come more from police investigation and
| trials than from anti-doping controls) but none of the top
| ones, and rather older ones or managers.
| jnord wrote:
| https://archive.is/HZdMr
| elteto wrote:
| A combination of advances in nutrition, training programs,
| technology and, unfortunately, performance enhancing drugs. This
| last point is contentious but make no mistake: PEDs are ahead of
| detection capabilities. I think that at this point any elite
| athlete _not_ on PEDs is doomed to fall behind.
| tolbish wrote:
| You seem very certain. Any links for further reading?
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| 90's baseball. I worked at Pac Bell park from beginning to
| opening day. When they all arrived in black SUV's, I as
| shocked at the size of most of those guys, especially Bonds,
| and McGuire. Their heads were huge too? I had know idea about
| HGH, or steroids. I just thought they were fit, and strong.
| Bonds hit a practice ball over right field durning out work
| hours. It was so effortless. It was actually the first ball
| hit into the bay, and an electrician jumped into the water to
| fetch it. He wasn't a good swimmer, so someone threw him a
| extension cord. It was a hot cord, and lucky blew the GFCI.
| (I still recall Dr. Dean Edell stating all the studies
| steroids/hgh show no correlation to athletic performance.
| Later he revised his statement, but didn't point to new
| studies? I'm still not convinced. I still think Lance
| Armstrong won on the Placebo Effect.)
| [deleted]
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Just read accounts of people who used PEDs first time and how
| effective they were. Tyler Hamilton's book is an example.
|
| When I did more weightlifting me and some other guys got
| stuck at around 75 kg and couldn't put on more weight no
| matter how hard we trained. A few months later two guys
| jumped to 90 kg in a very short time. I asked what's going on
| and they told me they got some stuff from Poland. I assume
| either steroids or HGH.
|
| PEDs are way too effective for somebody to be able to compete
| against people who take them. It's simply not possible.
|
| In the 100m a lot of top 10 guys got caught or evaded tests
| in the last years. There is no way that Bolt is beating them
| without taking something.
| joebob42 wrote:
| I think it's actually possible for ie bolt to be beating
| them without peds, I just think it isn't meaningful.
|
| Many peds (ie testosterone) are just extra dosage of
| something your body produces anyways, or cause your body to
| increase it's rate of some metabolic process. There is a
| lot of variance across people anyways: perhaps Bolt just
| produces an exceptionally high amount of testosterone
| naturally. In your example, it's not that it is impossible
| for people without supplemental test to compete with people
| that have it, it's that it's impossible for someone with
| dramatically lower test to compete with people that have
| it, regardless of whether they got it naturally or by
| supplementation.
|
| I would think that for sports to be as fair as possible,
| the real answer would be not to forbid people from
| supplementing, but instead to pick some acceptable level of
| beneficial metabolic processes and let everyone get
| themselves to that.
|
| Obviously that's a bit of a crazy idea and is not likely to
| happen, though.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Bolt was fast when he was 10 years old, and probably was
| still naturally fast when he was 21. After any injuries
| though, it's likely he started peds.
|
| I was the strongest man in one of the Bay Area gyms for a
| while, all natural, but essentially that was the focus of
| my day for several years while I worked at home (next door
| to the gym) and I had 10 hours of sleep nitely.
|
| I went to a natural bobybulding conference once and all the
| pros were staring at me - I was huge. So it can be done
| while you're young, but under perfect conditions and until
| you get injured.
| bartread wrote:
| Cycling.
|
| The year after the Festina doping scandal of the late 1990s
| the Tour de France, won by Lance Armstrong, was the fastest
| ever.
|
| Yes, the bikes were getting better. Yes, nutrition and
| training were both getting better.
|
| But they didn't get that much better in only 12 months, and
| so one might have expected - with the elimination of doping -
| that the race would have slowed somewhat.
|
| But it didn't, because probably just about everyone - and
| especially the winner - were all on drugs.
|
| Here's a list covering the period up to and include 2019 of
| confirmed cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doping
| _cases_in_cyclin...
|
| There is a more than strong suspicion that the majority of
| dopers have never been caught and that, in some cases
| (including Mr Armstrong), governing bodies and authorities
| may have covered for and protected them. Every now and then
| somebody is fed to the wolves so it looks like effective
| action is being taken.
|
| As a recreational activity cycling is fantastic. As a sport
| it's a complete joke.
| morei wrote:
| That's a strange metric to pick. The Tour de France is a
| team race, with lots of strategy involved. It most
| definitely isn't about getting the lowest time, only a
| lower time than the competitors (very much not the same
| thing!).
|
| e.g. It's common to see the entire peloton sit up and
| collectively agree to 'take it easy' for most of a stage to
| reserve energy for a sprint finish in the last 3 minutes.
| So the total race time is strongly affected by the mix of
| team strategies.
|
| It's also very much not a standard race year-to-year, with
| differing numbers of mountain stages versus flat stages, so
| the year-to-year times are completely incomparable.
|
| There may still be doping the sport of cycling, but the TdF
| total race times would be very weak evidence for it.
| jhayward wrote:
| The TdF has many iconic sections, mostly climbs, some
| time trials. They don't change often. Times are compared
| from year to year not over the entire 21-day race, but
| section by section.
| nl wrote:
| > the TdF total race times would be very weak evidence
| for it.
|
| Actually, the jump in TdF average speed (not total race
| time) during the early 1990s is fairly often attributed
| to EPO (and other drug) usage. The average speed in
| earlier events was lower because of the inconsistency -
| cyclists would ride much slower on days before (or after)
| a big stage, and this would drop the average speed for
| the entire race.
|
| EPO and other drugs improved recovery so cyclists would
| ride hard everyday.
|
| It's hard to know how true this is - it also corresponded
| to increased TV coverage for full stages, and more money
| in the sport. But the average speed jump after 1989 is
| significant.
| klenwell wrote:
| Here's a pretty good one from 20 years ago on cycling:
|
| _In this world, the dunces and losers are those who rely on
| their clean physiques. Voet cites the case of Charly Mottet,
| a top French rider of the eighties and nineties, who came to
| the RMO team, where amazement was expressed that "the bloke
| was clean." Mottet had, in many people's view, the talent to
| win the Tour, but Voet recognized that he lacked "the
| wherewithal to make it happen." In other words, he refused
| the tempting pharmacopoeia. Mottet was known for his weakness
| over the final third of the Tour, and the soigneur's
| conclusion is as sad as it is hypocritical: "Yes indeed,
| Charly never had the career that he deserved."_
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2000/08/21/the-hardest-
| te...
|
| It ends up inevitably being about Lance Armstrong. This was
| 10 years before he owned up to doping.
| tolbish wrote:
| Thank you for actually posting a link. I was hoping to see
| something like an article on the kinds of PEDs used, across
| various sports.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| There's a long, multi-decade cat and mouse game between grey
| area drug manufacturers and regulators. Once labs start
| testing for one drug, or if a drug is banned, manufacturers
| develop new ones, and so on.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > I think that at this point any elite athlete _not_ on PEDs is
| doomed to fall behind.
|
| Won't detection solutions catch-up eventually? Can't they keep
| samples in storage and test them again years later, and at
| least shame the doping athletes at that time?
|
| I suppose this isn't serving as an effective deterrent today,
| but it's not obvious to me why.
| hobofan wrote:
| I don't know about what's currently used as state-of-the-art
| PEDs, but in theory there could very well be PEDs that are
| near impossible to detect, by being very quickly absorbed by
| the target tissue from the bloodstream. If they then also
| completely metabolize the drug to substances that occur
| normally in you body (and at non-suspicious levels), it would
| be very hard to detect.
| statstutor wrote:
| > What do all of these athletes have in common? They were wearing
| next-generation running shoes.
|
| Related but not mentioned: Elite sportspeople are getting paid
| orders of magnitude more than they have ever been in history, to
| promote next-generation running shoes.
| hinkley wrote:
| So it might not be the shoes, but it's still the shoes, because
| they don't have a day job where they can get sick or injured.
| smm11 wrote:
| It's almost entirely the shoes.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Designer PEDs. Probably importantly, increased global prosperity,
| more genetic variations are competing now. Last 10 years has been
| crazy for powerlifting records due to broader particapation.
| taksintikk wrote:
| Optimized from birth
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