Leaps in athletic performance do rather raise an eyebrow. But that’s not the fun bit:
On Sunday Lamont Marcell Jacobs was the surprise winner of the most coveted prize in the Olympics with a European record of 9.80 sec, and yesterday he added another gold medal as part of the Italian 4x100m men’s relay team.
He only broke ten seconds for the 100m in May and as a consequence was not included in the Athletics Integrity Unit’s drug testing pool, which targets the world’s best athletes. Indeed, in the 100m final he was the only sprinter not on the AIU list.
Exactly those who show the leap in performance are those not long term monitored.
No, I’m not saying he’s dodgy. Nor am I saying the system is clearly nuts or anything. Rather, it’s a comment on how difficult it is to actually manage something. The universe is a complex place, plans are difficult……
My late missus always swore that Kelly Holmes was dodgy, because she appeared out of nowhere won stuff, broke records and suddenly retired. Don’t think she was right there, but she had FloJo nailed down.
The universe is a complex place, plans are difficult……
The Fat Comptroller wouldn’t agree with you.
“Plans are difficult”
Hell, no.
Plans are easy.
Oh, you wanted plans which have the desired effect, by and large, and no noticeable undesirable side effects?
Now, that’s hard.
Folk don’t even get it correct in writing software, which is a domain of complete knowledge and compile-time checks..
There is no reason, apart from him winning, to suspect Lamont Jacobs of cheating. The most notorious cheats were already among the US and international sporting elites before anyone thought of testing them for drugs (and in the deeply reported case, before he was advised to start taking performance-enhancing drugs). [Sorry that should read read US/Communist}
It is only when you get onto the AIU screen that you reach the point where taking drugs is worth it in the money-gain versus health-damage balance of net gains (except for dictatorships where it’s life rather than money).
The idea that you cannot win a race until you’ve done well in a previous race is ridiculous: I remember a young guy coming along to a 10 mile race to return the trophy that his Dad had won the previous year and taking it home again after winning (several minutes in front of me) – I had never seen him before.