Larry Olubamiwo Interview: 'Athletes dope for money. My goal was to make a living'

Athletics in particular is a sport that is only somewhat important once a year, and only of real importance every four years. The quality of the product being sold is correlated with the success of British athletes.

There is such a catalogue of hypocrisy that it's difficult to know where to start. Compare Steve Cram's thinly veiled accusations of doping against Taoufik Makhloufi for winning "in a way we haven't seen before", compared to the hysterical cheerleading when everyone's favourite doorbell-ignoring British-Somali at the same games was winning in a way that wasn't exactly in line with how he had been performing a few years earlier.

 

Larry is the wrong person to talk about this. He seems very unrepentant, more upset that he got caught than anything else.

It seems like anti-doping gives the more famous and lucrative clients a pass whilst making examples out of the smaller profile boxers to show that boxers are indeed being tested and occasionally popped. As long as anti doping isn't completely independent you can forget a clean sport.

 

Yeah you're right about Cram. He's taken over the mantle of the UK athletics commentator who will happily take on the world, but has a Union Jack sized blindspot.

 

So what do you guys think to the 100m world record?

 

Bolt's clean !

LOL

 

Jamaica is the miracle isle,
They run with class and also style,
Their times are magical you see,
With zero testing they're PED free,

 

Yeah, British athletics commentators for the most part have been like that for more than 20 years now. Hypocrites of the highest order.

Personally I think Mo Farah deserves all the credit and accolades he receives, his progress and improvements and his career achievements are fantastic, but the same goes for all the others who win too.

 

http://www.alltime-athletics.com/m_100ok.htm

There is a 10th of a second between Bolt and the next fastest (Blake and Gay). The same gap covers the next 7 athletes, and there are around 20 athletes in the next 10th of a second, and growing exponentially from there.

Bolt is an extreme outlier based on those times. Measuring him against his peers, he's not a full Bradman, but probably still half a Bradman quicker than anyone else who has ever done the event.

However, of the next 8 athletes after him, 6 have served doping suspensions, one avoided a suspension for 3 missed tests by a matter of weeks, and the other admitted buying performance enhancing drugs (for his mates apparently). A clean Bolt therefore is an even greater outlier than he looks on paper, when you consider that his nearest rivals have major suspicion over their performances. Probably even a full Bradman better than the next "clean" athlete.

While it is theoretically possible to be a full Bradman better than everyone else (Don Bradman for example), the list in all competitive sports is very short (Don Bradman). It may be that Bolt is one of the greatest outliers in the history of sport, or maybe he isn't.

To be fair, there doesn't appear to be a series of circumstantial implausibilities surrounding Bolt like there is for certain athletes mentioned on this thread. His record is certainly eyebrow raising though.

 

Farah has more links to cheating than most cheating athletes....

 

This is an excellent article regarding the 100m sprint, also different athletes who have had a doping violation or not in the 100m. Pretty eye opening stuff.

https://medium.com/@tomnew/usain-bolt-lance-armstrong-and-the-duck-test-303b7b891e7e

 

how do you mean

 

I mean, good on him for his honesty.
He admitted he'd used PEDs before he even came to boxing. He matter-of-factly says how he did it to give himself a chance of making a living. He says he knows that other boxers, top boxers, are on PEDs, which is true.
He says UKAD aren't an honest outfit, and that seems right too.

There are a lot of people in boxing who pretend they don't personally know anyone is taking PEDs, but the fact is in the gyms there are people, boxers and trainers, who know a lot. In every top gym.
There are obvious boxing trainers in the UK who are PED users themselves, (which is legal, of course) but you have to wonder how they can keep a straight face when the PED issue is being discussed and they have to tell lies about their gyms being clean of PEDs.

 

Another thing I find very strange; promoters pay for VADA to test their fighters, doesn't this present a conflict of interest?

 

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I always like to post this when PEDs get mentioned ,just for the naive ....

This is the same guy who 'helped' Marquez into the best shape of his life at 40 years old when he almost killed Pac

Really worth reading if you are unsure about PEDs in sport