marita koch 47.60

[Rog]

Re: marita koch 47.60

Mark,

What makes you so sure that Kathy was clean?

Rog

[Rob]

Re: marita koch 47.60

..

[FrankS]

Re: marita koch 47.60

The problem is we don't know who is/isn't using drugs. Roger Black summed it up nicely in his autobiography. He said that, when having trouble regaining fitness, he was tempted to take drugs to speed his recovery - but didn't, that he would be flabbergasted if his mate Kriss Akabusi was using drugs, but that he couldn't know for certain.

[tandfman]

Re: marita koch 47.60

Moreover, I suspect that drugs don't benefit everyone equally. I don't know that you can conclude that the results of an "all-dirty" race would inevitably be the same as the results of an "all-clean" race involving the identical athletes.

[gh]

Re: marita koch 47.60

I remember a discussion at an early-70s AAU Championships, when steroids werestill "legal," so people were relatively open in talking about them.

A noted international--a future Olympian--with several years experience on the subject was fulminating mightily about how this college kid was the talk of the town and how it was all because of his new steroid regimen. "But X," we said, "How can you be so upset; you've been using roids for years."

"Yeah," he lamented, "but this guy gets twice the pop out of the same dosage as I do."

[RMc]

Re: marita koch 47.60

Nevertheless as to whether Koch was "clean" or not, did you hear her intermediate 200? 22.4, which would win many international 200s even today!
And related to a different thread on best US announcers, listening to the call by the BBC, it really demonstrated the difference in quality between European and US announcers.

[EtalainenR]

Re: marita koch 47.60

But how do you know that the BBC announcers were clean??

[marknhj]

Re: marita koch 47.60

"What makes you so sure that Kathy was clean?"

Rog,

I went to the same school as Kathy and was on the GB team with her. She was kind of old school in her approach. Didn't care very much about training (especially for the 400m), doubt if she trained more than 4 days a week, certainly never with double sessions. Doubt she'd recognise a steroid if it flew up her ***! It was pretty much out in the open back then and I hope you'll trust me when I say I would have known if she was a druggie. She was a sweetheart and 100% clean. Wonder if any of her and Gary's kids are in T&F? They have great genes.

[Conor Dary]

Re: marita koch 47.60

'I went to the same school as Kathy'

Mark, what school was that? I am curious, as I did a doctorate at the University of Nottingham (or at least almost done.)

[basehead617]

Re: marita koch 47.60

sorry to start up yet another steroid use thread, i just thought you might all be interested in seeing a video of koch's performance since track clips are pretty hard to find online.. especially older ones (if anybody knows a good central resource, let me know)

two things..

1) its true that much of the east german athletics machine was trained by doctors and coaches who gave them steroids, especially the swimmers.. but what proof can anybody here point to that Koch inparticular was juiced? wasnt her husband her coach, rather than one of the well known juicer doctor-coaches who trained some of her contemporaries? i have actually seen her left out of suspicious lists of similar-era GDR athletes. references, people?

2) i'll probably start a huge thread about this elsewhere, but here's a question for debate: why is it any less fair for someone to gain an edge with synthetic substances to aid training, than it is for someone to be born faster, stronger, or with more stamina? it would seem steroids for some would actually even the field, in an ideal circumstance. it seems the most impressive performances would be those that can be measured against a calculated range of performances based on each individual's genetic limitations. that's not as sexy as 'world's fastest man' but why are 'natural' advantages 'fair' while synthetic ones are not? after all we ingest lots of synthetic substances in our regular diets anyway.
what about engineered protein?

maybe we'll get a bit of a discussion going here, maybe i'll just start a new thread, we shall see.

[marknhj]

Re: marita koch 47.60

Borough Road College, although it's gone through several name changes since then. Now Brunel University. Some of my best memories were BRC vs. Loughborough, we beat them everytime I was there. Met an old team mate two weeks ago at Mt. Sac who I hadn't seen since 1984 (saw him on letsrun)and chatted about our 1983 meet. We won by one point, ended up in a huge drinking session in their bar with them chanting, "Loughborough rejects, Loughborough rejects" at us! My team got badly pissed (as in drunk, you americans) and did a fair amount of damage. Ended up with me standing on a table having a heading-a-pint competition against Seb Coe who was there at the time. BRC were banned from their campus and have never been back.

[Rob]

Re: marita koch 47.60

..

[Conor Dary]

Re: marita koch 47.60

Ah, a fellow student. I did a BSc there (Pure Physics) - graduated 1983

Small world, Rob. My office was in the Education Building overlooking the statue of D.H. Lawrence.
Great campus, especially the Faculty Club where I drank many a pint. Did you get down to the Trip to Jerusalem? My favorite pub.

By the way, Mark, isn't Brunel University in Bristol? I've been there many times. They also had one of the best clubs in the country once, Bristol A.C., which still holds the record for the 12 stage relay.

[Jefferson Buffalo]

Re: marita koch 47.60

Mark, is it true that you're now trying to get them to change the name of school to Brumel University? :-)

[FrankS]

Re: marita koch 47.60

So Kathy Cook never put in the training! This is amazing because if she could run under 50secs without proper training, what could she have achieved with a dedicated hard systematic approach? Maybe, 47 something?