02-09-2024, 02:42 AM
I was listening to the news on the radio this morning and heard a story that former Australian swimmer James Magnussen is returning to swimming in the ‘Enhanced games’
https://www.news.com.au/sport/olympics/a...4aec2996c6
Basically, it is an anything goes competition.
Drugs, Supersuits….whatever aid you can get.
Big prizemoney for breaking world bests.
I checked the date.
It’s not April 1st.
My first reaction was WTF. Stupid idiots.
But then I had a think about it.
Was Lance Armstrong the only cyclist using performance enhancers? Of course, he wasn’t and many of those who finished close behind him were probably similarly doped up. Yet his name is ‘shame’ and others not so much.
I had a look at a ‘shame’ file of track and field athletes who were denied records because of doping infringements. The thing that struck me was that list contained a number of athletes who still hold ‘legitimate’ world records. So, they were caught on some occasions, got away with it on others.
Marita Koch (400 metres) Jarmila Kratochvilova ( 800 metres) hold records that date back to the 1980’s. Both athletes were part of Eastern European regimes where doping was well documented. Florence Griffith Joyner set records that women are still not within ‘cooee’ of achieving.
Some of the men’s throwing records also date back over 40 years
So the whole world record thing in many sports is a farce and not worth a pinch of salt.
The reality is the only true measure of ultimate human ‘achievement’ that can be taken as reliable is, very sadly
, the records set by the druggies.
https://www.news.com.au/sport/olympics/a...4aec2996c6
Basically, it is an anything goes competition.
Drugs, Supersuits….whatever aid you can get.
Big prizemoney for breaking world bests.
I checked the date.
It’s not April 1st.
My first reaction was WTF. Stupid idiots.
But then I had a think about it.
Was Lance Armstrong the only cyclist using performance enhancers? Of course, he wasn’t and many of those who finished close behind him were probably similarly doped up. Yet his name is ‘shame’ and others not so much.
I had a look at a ‘shame’ file of track and field athletes who were denied records because of doping infringements. The thing that struck me was that list contained a number of athletes who still hold ‘legitimate’ world records. So, they were caught on some occasions, got away with it on others.
Marita Koch (400 metres) Jarmila Kratochvilova ( 800 metres) hold records that date back to the 1980’s. Both athletes were part of Eastern European regimes where doping was well documented. Florence Griffith Joyner set records that women are still not within ‘cooee’ of achieving.
Some of the men’s throwing records also date back over 40 years
So the whole world record thing in many sports is a farce and not worth a pinch of salt.
The reality is the only true measure of ultimate human ‘achievement’ that can be taken as reliable is, very sadly
, the records set by the druggies.