agip wrote:
nah, I'm going with the 'albeto, rupp, mo, ritz and centro are hardcore dopers' thesis, thanks.
Not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, all of the guys mentioned were pretty damn talented to begin with, and Rupp, Ritz, and Centro were all low 8:40 guys coming out of high school, Rupp and Centro on low mileage. Moreover, Rupp ran 13:37 the summer after high school, 28:15 as a true frosh in college, and Ritz won a bronze medal in world cross, dropped a 13:27 as a true frosh, and had already run an 8:11 two-mile (same as Webb) and had an enormous base before he joined Salazar's group. Goucher? Well he went from 13:11 to nowheresville back to 13:10. He did come back, but he didn't really improve.
I think people get suspicious of the various associations, the thyroid medication, the iron bullet injections, and the synthetic altitude house, all of which may skirt the envelope of legality. Forget about drugs. I don't see Ritz breaking 13:00 without that house. The thing is, Ritz had one great year coming off of his base with Hudson before lighting up the track, but his 10k PR is not really any better than one would've otherwise expected. Heck, the Brojos projected him to be the first American under 27:00, yet Ritz struggled to make the Olympic team and was nowhere near being able to kick with his teammates, despite doing purportedly the same workouts. Yes, he didn't have the same base, but, then again, he may just lack the raw leg speed.
Rupp and Mo's finishes at the Olympics do make you have to wonder though. Heck, I think if Galen had stuck on Mo like glue and not waited until the end to make his move, he may very well have won gold. Impossible? No, not with raw talent, high altitude living/low altitude training, and an underwater treadmill to stave off injury and put in more miles? Improbable? Well, probably.
It's up to others to decide. I do know that we've never had a more talented schoolboy than Rupp, unless you think he was doing drugs then, considering what he did with relatively low mileage. I mean, if Cam Levins breaks 13:00 and 27:00 this year, is it because of drugs or hard work, or do drugs give him the ability to sustain the kind of mileage he is doing, whereas, Al Sal's group has the live high/train low and run extra miles in the pool down to a science?
I don't know how I feel about this. I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that Ritz's 2:07 marathon was clean, unless you think Steve Jones was dirty back in the early to mid-80s.
A Duck, while I get the gist of your point about Catholic morality, I have Catholic friends that throw morality completely out the window when under pressure. It's almost like Catholicism has a built in, "Sin, but confess and repent" repeatedly mentality built into it. I'd like to think these guys are clean, but, I just don't know. It is true that Wejo went from essentially a 4:30 high school mile at low altitude to a 28:06 PR. Ritz, Centro, and Rupp were a heck of a lot more talented as preps. What about Jager? Is he doped up too? I mean, 8:06 in his first year of steepling and really his first full healthy year. And he maintained his fitness for a LONG time, having opened up at Mt. Sac. Is Jerry's group under the same kind of pressure?