Cheating and Money

[MJD]

Re: Cheating and Money

In throwing people have been cheating since the mid 60's and sprinters have been cheating since the mid 70's. It's no coincidence that body types of 100 meter sprinters vastly changed around the Montreal Olympics. Also I doubt any serious competitor has even given thought to competing clean since the mid 70's.

There's one that slipped through the cracks.

Re: Cheating and Money

In throwing people have been cheating since the mid 60's and sprinters have been cheating since the mid 70's. It's no coincidence that body types of 100 meter sprinters vastly changed around the Montreal Olympics. Also I doubt any serious competitor has even given thought to competing clean since the mid 70's.

Re: Cheating and Money

No matter what the circumstances the cheaters when caught must be punished. Our sport is fragile enough as it is.

Re: Cheating and Money

the rumors i've heard about "cheating" in athletics are that it has always been a part of the sport.
The ancient Greeks could have given us lessons on
doing whatever was necessary to gain a competitive
edge.
Some people even argue that the present concepts of amateurism which we now hold as sacred were developed to ensure that only upper class athletes
could afford to compete.
I understand that steriods were developed by the Nazis and that after it was brought back to the US,usage among athletes was wide spread. No one objected to this state of events until the Communist East Europeans applied the scientific
method to the enterprise and became wildly successful.
Other substances thought to improve performance
were also widely used in the days before testing.
When I started running in the '60s, some sprinters
believed downing a bottle of wine before reporting
to the starting blocks would give them an edge!


It could be argued that athletics today is far
"cleaner" than it was back in the "good old days"
before widespread testing was instituted.

In case anyone hasn't noticed, we're living in a highly technological, supposedly "modern", scientific society. Part of this religion is the belief in progress by artificial means.
The use of drugs to improve our lives is accepted
as normal. This can be verified by entering any
house and checking out the medicine cabinet.
The notion that athletes should be exempt from this aspect of modern society is ignorant, hypocritical and pointless.

It seems to me that it would be far more useful
to concentrate on things that we could actually
succeed in fixing: In New York City, where I live,
60% of the high school have no athletic facilities
at all! Many of the "coaches" are morons who are
moonlighting from their real jobs.

Some people are already starting to do things that can make a difference: Norb Sander, et. al. have shown with their development of the Armory Track and Field center what can be done. I'm sure there
are others who are doing the job.
These kinds of activities would be far more beneficial to our sport than wasting resources and energies in witchhunts that interfer in peoples'
private lives.
Let's resist the urge to play God. We have enough
trouble just being human beings.

Re: Cheating and Money

Arnie: You have got to be kidding!!!!!!!

Re: Cheating and Money

Bill Toomey, US winner of Olympic Decathlon in '68, admitted he used steroids, which were legal.

Re: Cheating and Money

Here's another formula for you Arnie=out of touch if he believes no drugs in U.S. in '60s or '70s. Americans used steroids in the 1964 Olympics and talked about it because it wasn't illegal at the time. Was not illegal in 1968 either.

[Arnie]

Re: Cheating and Money

What i wanted to post was that drugs were not used in the U.S.A in the 1960s or 70s.

[Arnie]

Re: Cheating and Money

But not in the U.S.A.

[abinferno]

Re: Cheating and Money

money=root of all evil=evil^1/2
time=money
women=money*time=money^2
women=evil

there, an undeniable, mathematical proof

Re: Cheating and Money

Not just money but attention and influence/leverage. Or as one cynic put it, "Anything that gets you laid is worth cheating for".

[6 5.5hjsteve]

Re: Cheating and Money

>>money is the root of all evil......

Not
>quite. It's actually LOVE of money that is at the
>root of all evil. This is perhaps one of the most
>misquoted sayings in human history...


Thanks for the correction, and I agree. But they pretty much end up being the same due to human nature. Even the great philanthropists, as wonderful as they all are and have been through history, never gave away so much that they had to worry about paying the rent or buying groceries.

Maybe we do not all love money but at a minimum we all have a appreciation and preference for the goods and services theat money makes possible.

[racewalker]

Re: Cheating and Money

I doubt that the genie will go back into the bottle, no matter what. Drug use did exist back in the "good old days" when monetary rewards were less, so it's hard to believe it would diminish to nothing if the money dried up. Furthermore, as long as there are nations using athletics for political purposes and promoting state-sponsored drug programs, the problem will still be there.

What a rat's nest.

Re: Cheating and Money

True, but that's another part of why this sword has many edges. There is a lot of stuff that we might have missed out on due to the old system.

For example, who knows what greats like Bob Hayes and Tommie Smith might have done if they had stuck with track and field? Who knows what kind of a career Jim Ryun might have had if he'd had the resources of Steve Scott (not that Ryun's career was too shabby anyway).

There are benfits and drawbacks of both the modern system and the old system.

[Conway]

Re: Cheating and Money

That didn't seem to bother the sport in the past ... The sport was thriving here in the United States prior to "professionalism" and has been dying a slow death ever since ... And there was no dearth of outstanding athletes to cheer for ...