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Quote from: Mutumbo000 on April 02, 2012, 10:13:29 am

If drugs are really as far in front of the testers as this dude says they are than I guess I could believe it. However, if there was a decent chance they'd get caught I don't think they'd risk it. Imagine how much Usain Bolt stands to lose financially if he tests positive to PED's. Majority of his money would come from sponsers and endorsements and his profile would be shattered overnight. Same as any top sprinter coz the sprinters at the very top have the most to lose.

With that you somehow assume that Athlete A personally believes he would be able to perform as well even with-out drugs. But how can assume that? Maybe A's opinion is that he has some serious competition and regardless of whether this competition is doping, he might think that HE HAS TO in order to stay at the top. So while there is an obvious risk to taking banned substances the NET RISK is suddenly not as high anymore. Because what would happen if A's performance drops because of not doping?

Well in World Championships and Olympics every athlete would have the incentive to dope and what you're saying would hold true. What I'm saying though is that for other meets they wouldn't bother taking the risk of doping and would rather run the risk of being beat than risk testing positive. Let's say Bolt takes PED's. If he takes PED's he's got world record breaking ability and can run 9.5s. If he's clean he can run 9.7s or 9.8s. Why would Bolt risk taking PED's for events that really don't even matter much? Same as the other sprinters at the top of the game like Tyson Gay. However, lesser knowns always have incentive to dope because they need these lesser meets to have a chance of building their profile and qualifying for spots in world championships and olympics.

Edit- In reality though all we can really do is speculate because we can't determine what kind of mindset each individual has. Same as we can't determine which athletes are actually clean. Even though the system isn't perfect I'd rather have it the way it is now than have PED's legal.

What about high jump? (Sotomayor)

Are you asking if Sotomayor was clean or the affect on drugs and high jumping? 

I have never met Sotomayor but from what I heard his drug of choice was actually cocaine.  I don't think his status as an outlier performance wise suggests he was using drugs, in fact I think the opposite.  The best evidence for drug use in sport is widespread increasing but somewhat equal performances, not a single outlier.  Sotomayor drastically outjumped his contemporaries (as well as today's athletes).  In less one wants to suggest that only one skinny cokehead cuban had access to steroids, then his outlier status actually just suggests he was an extremely rare variant.  In the absence of drastic technological increases, world record breaking performances are best modeled with an extreme value distribution, thus if Sotomayor is the extreme value, it's not shocking that he happens to be naturally head and shoulders above everyone else.

The extreme value distribution does not suggest normality at the tails; or in layman's term there is no reason to think that there should be a bunch of people within 1% of the best performance.  The same is true for longevity, earthquakes, or something like height (The tallest man ever to stand up was 8'11 and lived 70 years ago, the second tallest person to stand up was "only" 8'3.  Such a difference (8 inches) is actually not surprising when talking about extreme values!).   

In fact the greatest indictment to Usain Bolt comes in the form of Yohan Blake.  It's totally possible that Bolt is running ridiculous times cleanly if he is the extreme value.... But if all the other Jamaicans start putting up similar ridiculous times it suggests that something else is at play....
 
The high jump in particular brings up an important point regarding athletics and that is of sport psychology.   

IMHO it's often true that sport psychology  > drugs.

Take for example the mile run.  For so many years nobody could run 4 minutes.  Then Roger Bannister did it and then suddenly within a couple years everyone was doing it.  The history of running sub 10 in the 100m is quite similar in that once the barrier was broken many people started breaking it. 

Jumps in general are just down right now.   The long jump, high jump and triple jump records were all set in the early 1990's and nobody comes close today.  I wouldn't argue that this is proof that those jumpers were dirty, but simply that the best jumpers of today don't have the push to really test what they believe is possible because they can go get gold jumping what are not historic jumps. 

The short sprints are a bit different now in that people see amazing times and start believing they can do it too.  Don't underestimate how big a factor belief is at all levels of sport.