Remember how Australia won a pot of medals at its Sydney Games in 2000? Remember how part-Aboriginal runner Cathy Freeman's 400 meter victory was the biggest deal in the history of the world for about a week in 2000?
So, how much did the Aussies want to win in 2000?
This much:
From the Associated Press
7 October 1997
East Germany's chief track and field coach during the era of government-sanctioned steroid abuse was named Australia's head coach today, a move that stunned a German investigator into sports doping.
Dr. Werner Franke, the German Parliamentary investigator into East German secret police files detailing sports drug abuse, said Dr. Eckhard Arbeit was "a major person responsible for the use of anabolic steroids."
Arbeit, 56, was head coach for throwing events of the East German track and field team from 1982-88 and chief coach in 1989-90. "At the time he was coach, there were plans of who should take how much drugs and how this should be co-ordinated. All that was his responsibility," Franke told The Associated Press on Wednesday by telephone from Germany.
After a few weeks of controversy, the Aussies fired Arbeit. But think of his hiring as a leading indicator of how much the Australian sports authorities wanted to win.
As far as I can tell, Arbeit has been employed since 2007 with the South African track team.
Now, Australia has been a sports-oriented country for a long time, although it didn't win a lot of Olympic medals until after WWII. Then it did well until 1976, when its number of gold medals dropped from 8 in 1972 to 0 in 1976, probably due in large part to the rise of the East German women, which was not looked upon favorably in Australia. So, the appointment of the former coach of the East German lady shotputters as head of the Australian track & field team was a sign of pretty serious intent to Do What It Takes.
I don't want to rag too much on Australia. It's more like, jeez, even Australia, with all its traditional advantages and virtues in sports feels compelled to hire the guy who must have been number one on their list of cheaters they loathed, well ...
Now, Australia has been a sports-oriented country for a long time, although it didn't win a lot of Olympic medals until after WWII. Then it did well until 1976, when its number of gold medals dropped from 8 in 1972 to 0 in 1976, probably due in large part to the rise of the East German women, which was not looked upon favorably in Australia. So, the appointment of the former coach of the East German lady shotputters as head of the Australian track & field team was a sign of pretty serious intent to Do What It Takes.
I don't want to rag too much on Australia. It's more like, jeez, even Australia, with all its traditional advantages and virtues in sports feels compelled to hire the guy who must have been number one on their list of cheaters they loathed, well ...
Posts
59 comments:
Arbeit macht schnell
It seems like there is home field advantage at the Olympics. The British did exceptionally well this year. The Chinese did well 4 years ago. Australia did well in 2000.
Is there a technical explanation for this? Do host countries get to have more athletes per event or something?
Arbeit macht frei
Australia seems too happy-go-lucky to be into steroids.
But they also seem really into sports, so who knows.
An East German named Arbeit?! The man's his own stereotype!
I was searching letsrun.com for discussions about why Cross Country isn't an Olympic event and someone linked to this article on a thread about the decline of Cross Country in general.
Who plotted to kill World Cross Country Championships?
""""""
The reason given then was to expand cross-country running. Insiders, however, knew this was an idea promoted by European federations to try and balance cross country to give their athletes a chance to finish in respectable positions.
This was because cross-country had become very much a competition among Kenyan, Ethiopian and Moroccan athletes.
But as it turned, Kenya dominated the inaugural 4km races in Marrakech, Morocco, in 1998 when John Kibowen and Daniel Komen leading a Kenyan brigade that swept all the medals on offer.
""""""
I'm not sure if I completely buy this though, but it's interesting that some are thinking this.
http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/?id=2000051474&cid=39&story=Who%20plotted%20to%20kill%20World%20Cross%20Country%20Championships?&articleID=2000051474
Anyone knows that drug tests are really just a form of IQ test. Use the stuff while training, stop in time to be clean for the big show.
Duh-oh.
In this strange turn of events, it was actually less controversial for Arbeit to be set free.
Arbeit macht geld
So instead of giving women steroids he now enlists men to compete against women. It's the perfect con because the prevailing logic has become so byzantine and postmodern that we decry dopers as cheats, but celebrate men in drag racing women as courageous pioneers.
australia cut funding to a lot of their sports programs about 3 years ago, deliberately, on purpose. the thinking was "We don't need this anymore."
about 1 week ago the entire country was in a panic, realizing, oh @%!&, we did need that.
look for australian performance in a couple sports to improve again in the next 3 years or so.
Good googling, on the East German coach, Steve! Indeed, the Aussie medals in 2000 were really skewed towards swimming and cycling where doping helps a lot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_at_the_2000_Summer_Olympics
Care to take a stab at how Great Britain went from 1 gold medal in 1996 to 29 in 2012? Overall It looks less skewed than the Aussies in 2000. GB won big in equestrian and boxing. Some of this success came from big investment in obscure sports. No doubt patriotism helped as Andy Murray finally won something big--though, alas, not a true major. Still a lot of medals came in rowing, canoeing and cycling. Alas, swimming is the one event GB didn't hit their target. They did everything right for the Olympics except hire an East German coach for the swimmers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain_at_the_2012_Summer_Olympics
also remember the home team wins a lot more medals than usual. the UK hasn't won that many medals in decades.
They used kangaroos.
The dire performace of British athletes in Atlanta produced a great deal of soul-searching and John Major earmarked a large proportion of the money from the National Lottery to pay for better facilities such as the Natyional Velodrome in Manchester. Since then the number of medals won by British athletes has risen enormously. Now there are complaints that too many are privately educated etc etc. Diverstiy-mongers are at work, so expect a fall in the number of medals at Rio.
http://mylife24fps.blogspot.com/2012/08/thinking-like-director-in-documentation.html
A city of loud fools and flakes.
Ha ha, "head coach for throwing events of the East German track and field team from 1982-88" LOL. The throwing events all had world record distances set in the 1980s that still stand today. Check them out for yourself and understand just how steroid-fuelled the whole show must have been:
Discus
Hammer Throw
Shot Put
The olympics is held in your home country once in your life, if you are lucky. If this olympics coincides with your peak physical condition, you are extra lucky. For you to win a gold medal there and beat the GOAT tennis player in straight sets in the final, after losing 4 grand slam finals previously, is easily as good as winning a grand slam singles event IMO.
Surely there is just as much pressure there as in a grand slam final. I would be very surprised if Murray does not win a grand slam final in the future, this should prove a turning point for him.
Now, that's pretty interesting, but it's not at all clear how many golf fans consciously noticed at the time that the most publicized golfer in history was changing shape from month to month in front of their eyes.
Part of it is that most people just wouldn't think of golfers ever doping. They just wouldn't fathom it unlike other sports.
Golfing presumably doesn't test for doping.
Are there any other lucrative sports that don't test for doping, and that likely don't have any athletes that dope?
An enterprising young athlete could have a nice career for himself if he found one of these sports and doped for it. A lot of these niche sports have pretty good prize money even if they don't have pro leagues because they're upper middle class hobbies and upper middle class weekend warrior types will spend a lot of money supporting the sport's ecology.
Imagine being world jai alai champion or something.
"Golfing presumably doesn't test for doping.
Are there any other lucrative sports that don't test for doping, and that likely don't have any athletes that dope?
An enterprising young athlete could have a nice career for himself if he found one of these sports and doped for it. A lot of these niche sports have pretty good prize money even if they don't have pro leagues because they're upper middle class hobbies and upper middle class weekend warrior types will spend a lot of money supporting the sport's ecology.
Imagine being world jai alai champion or something."
When I heard the racewalker guy was doping, that's when it was obvious to me that every sport on the planet is filled with rampant cheats. Even shooters and archers have their own performance enhancing drugs.
God bless Steve for rescuing Dora from obscurity, but readers are best advised not to go to his/her Wikipedia entry, and for sure not to click on the link to the 'mika operation" of the Australian aboriginals -- which sort of brings it all full circle.
God bless Steve for rescuing Dora from obscurity, but readers are best advised not to go to his/her Wikipedia entry
I just saw the two pics of him on his Wiki page.
How did get by undetected for so long? He clearly looks like a man in a wig.
That reminds me of something else I wanted to mention: how sports fans often don't really notice when there's something odd-looking about some sports star. Take the example of Dora Ratjen, who came in fourth in the women's high jump in front of 80,000 fans in the Berlin Olympics.
Apparently Dora's teammates were completely oblivious despite massive red flags:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_Ratjen#Early_life
"In 1936, [Dora] took part in the Olympics, his teammate Gretel Bergmann stating: "I never had any suspicions, not even once... In the communal shower we wondered why she never showed herself naked. It was grotesque that someone could still be that shy at the age of 17. We just thought, 'She's strange. She's odd'... But no-one knew or noticed anything about her different sexuality.""
Maybe it's a German thing. Apparently Werner Herzog only recently discovered John Waters is gay despite knowing him personally for years:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9P_sxaaMJE
This should be a lesson to all those rabid anti-government types...
Misleading headline Steve. Very few of Australia's medals in 2000 were won in athletics, so the German coach had a vanishingly small impact on Australia's medal haul.
On a related note, how many track medals would America have won if not for slavery?
And Arbeit was fired after three weeks, too.
But, I would say that the fact that he was hired is suggestive of mood.
o/t
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/tax/9478101/HMRC-publishes-mugshots-of-20-most-wanted-tax-fugitives.html
Following Australia's failure at the 1976 Olympics, they established the Australian Institute of Sport which was modelled on the Soviet and East German systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Institute_of_Sport
Australian Swimmer Ian Thorpe has size 17 feet. That accounts for some recent success.
Tom Regan, re-read what Steve wrote. A country making a positive Olympic hiring decision at all on Arbeit is like a presidential campaign hiring Gordon Liddy to research the opposition party. It doesn't matter if he only lasts a day, it signals intent.
Seems opposite hemisphere or divergent longitudes would have an affect on circadian rhythm/hormonal systems.
Yes, you can see why it would have been difficult for Australians to make a mark in the Summer games before air travel and lots of indoor facilities came along. It gets to be the dead of winter and then you get on a ship for a couple of weeks. Did ocean liners back then actually have giant gymnasiums like in the Anyone Here for Love scene in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" in which the male American Olympic team works out oblivious to Jane Russell's charms?
Australia sent tiny nos to the Olympics pre WW2.( look it up ) Austs sporting interests then - and largely still-lie elsewhere
Can you name ANY Australian athletes that you suspect of doping ? cf USA -is there a track runner or a road cyclist you suspect of being lifetime 100% clean ?
Pharmaceutical intervention of every description is just part of everyday American life and while most Americans are generally law abiding there are many if not most who consider the banning of performance enhancing additives for athletic endeavour silly and un American
You do realise don't you that in many countries -Australia amongst them - that in regard to sporting matters East germany and the USA are spoken of in the same breath
"On a related note, how many track medals would America have won if not for slavery?"
a lot of medals. people need to go back and actually check out what happened in track & field before 1984 and the carl lewis era.
one thing i can say for sure is that there is no way on earth the united states loses the 4x400 relay to the bahamas, of all nations.
that would never, ever happen if the US was just 210 million europeans and no africans. there's no chance a huge, world class, well run track & field program fed 105 million euro american men would ever be beaten by a nation with only 360,000 people. the US should never under any circumstances lose the 4x400 relay to the bahamas. that was a disgrace. i was offended by that. awful, terrible stuff.
the UK went 2:59 with 3 ethnic british runners
russia went 3:00 with 4 ethnic russian runners
poland went 3:02 with 4 ethnic polish runners
australia went 3:02 with 3 melting pot europeans
south africa went 3:03 with 4 ethnic dutch runners - and 1 guy didn't even have legs
so that's about what your track & field program can do with a population of 55, 127, 38, 20, or 5(!) million europeans. so how could the US not go 2:55 if it's just made up of europeans. it has more money, better facilities, better training, and almost twice as many guys as the next largest nation.
what you're seeing is the end result of the tremendous performance depressing effect africans seem to have on everybody else's sports participation once they reach a critical mass in your sports system. eventually you end up with africans only.
then from time to time, through the natural ebb and flow and flux and variation in talent levels from year to year, you end up with a lot of guys in a sport who just aren't that good relative to the field. but now they're the only guys you've got since they're the only guys even playing, and after watching them for a while you just end up scratching your head, thinking "Seriously, there is NOT ONE white guy who could perform at this level or higher? In the entire country?"
"Yes, you can see why it would have been difficult for Australians to make a mark in the Summer games before air travel and lots of indoor facilities came along."
australia and south africa still have a big problem with this. their track & field guys peak in their summer, which is our winter. but all the major international meets are organized around our summer, their winter.
last year LJ van zyl was the fastest 400 meter hurdler in the world. but he peaked in their summer. by the time of our summer, and the 2011 world championship, his season was already pretty much over, and it is very difficult for those guys to peak again. he went 47.66, twice, during his summer. then by our summer, he had fallen all the way to 48.80.
again i note the astonishing observation that a nation with only 5 million europeans has a guy running the 400 meter hurdles regularly in 47 seconds, but if somebody in the US suggested a white guy could do this they would just be laughed at by morons like fisher deberry and joe paterno. doubled over, belly aching laughs. "White guys can't do that, come on. They can't run fast, they can't jump."
"what you're seeing is the end result of the tremendous performance depressing effect africans seem to have on everybody else's sports participation once they reach a critical mass in your sports system. eventually you end up with africans only"
Sally Pearson(McLellan) is a redheaded Australian girl. She's quite fast. She's now the Olympic champion. She would have a similar genetic background to the average American hillbilly.
Jody, you nailed it! Sometimes I think that a discussion with Americans about this topic is like a discussion with inmates from a lunatic asylum. They really believe that "without black athletes, the United States team would finish somewhere behind Ecuador." LOL
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20000227&slug=4007148
Jody, you nailed it! Sometimes I think that a discussion with Americans about this topic is like a discussion with inmates from a lunatic asylum. They really believe that "without black athletes, the United States team would finish somewhere behind Ecuador." LOL
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20000227&slug=4007148
"They really believe that 'without black athletes, the United States team would finish somewhere behind Ecuador.' LOL"
Then they must believe in racial differences. If racial 'diversity' is crucial to US wins, then not all races must be the same.
What Seattle Times ignores is this. The tough black athletes on the field exhibit the kind of power used by blacks to attack whites all over America. Whites cheering on black athletic prowess is like Jews cheering on the Wehrmacht.
Australia won a lot of medals in 2000 for the same reason that China won a lot of medals in 2008 and the UK won a lot of medals in 2012 - home field advantage.
Very few of Australia's medals in 2000 were won in athletics
They were all won in "athletics". There are no Olympic medals awarded for chess.
how many track medals would America have won if not for slavery?
Quite a lot. How many track medals would Africans have won if not for slavery? Almost none. West Africa does worse than India at the Olympics.
They were all won in "athletics". There are no Olympic medals awarded for chess.
"Athletics" means track & field.
Now, Australia has been a sports-oriented country for a long time, although it didn't win a lot of Olympic medals until after WWII. Then it did well until 1976, when its number of gold medals dropped from 8 in 1972 to 0 in 1976, probably due in large part to the rise of the East German women, which was not looked upon favorably in Australia.
Two words: Shane. Gould.
She was probably the greatest swimmer who ever lived - only Phelps (who has supplanted Spitz in the modern era) and Weissmuller and maybe Kahanamoku would be in the same league on the men's side of things.
And America has never produced a women's swimmer who could hold a candle to what Shane did, back in 1971-72: She was like an hypothetical combination of Janet Evans and Mary T Meagher and Misty Franklin all rolled into one.
PS: When it was all said and done, she also managed to push out four [count 'em, 4!!!] live births.
What a gal.
What. A. Gal.
Oops.
"Misty Franklin" = Missy Franklin.
"On a related note, how many track medals would America have won if not for slavery?"
I've always been intrigued by Roger McGrath's "White Sprinter Project" article:
"White-sprinting dominance continued throughout the 50’s. Larry Remigino won the 100 in the 1952 Olympics, and Dave Sime and Bobby Morrow ruled the rest of the decade. After breaking Patton’s record in the 220 with a 20.0 and twice tying Patton’s 9.3 in the 100, Sime, a Duke sophomore, was expected to star in the 1956 Olympics. An injury put him on the sideline, though, and, at Melbourne, Abilene Christian sophomore Bobby Morrow won both dashes and anchored the U.S. 4x100 relay team to victory and a world record. By the time Morrow finished running, he had won 80 of 88 races, tied world records in both sprints, and anchored two world-record relays."
===
One of my favorite stories is that of Mike Larrabee, (white) American 400 winner in 1964.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151094803269411&set=a.10150144237704411.295789.326683984410&type=1&theater
I guess it's just homeys killing homeys.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqUPlYQqjN0
Hey, let's invade South Africa to save those poor miners.
http://youtu.be/SqUPlYQqjN0
Don't expect any movie star to speak out on this or any rock star to write a song about it.
"Can you name ANY Australian athletes that you suspect of doping ?"
Dean Lukin, OAM (Medal of the Order of Australia).
Peter Hadfield, a very good decathlete who said he never doped (and I believe him) was bitter about several "Aussie legends" who he had to respect in public because he would not speak without proof that he could not get. I would be amazed if Dean Lukin was not one of them, because the change in his physique after he got out of weightlifting and into being a full time tuna fisherman was so dramatic. Also, super heavyweight Olympic weightlifting is not known as a drug free event.
Australians and PED? Where there's smoke...
http://swimming.about.com/b/2007/03/31/is-ian-thorpe-guilty-of-doping.htm
Not sure where the Anonymous gets the idea that the average American supports doping. They don't. They are usually too ignorant to infer when someone is doping, and if their favorite athlete finally fails a test then they turn on him.
Australia being a migrant nation, doncha know, has started to import pre-enhanced products from China, Bulgaria, cote d'ivoire, etc. Outsourcing.
Gilbert P.
Sailer, if you want to edit your posts after you already have 30 plus comments on the original you may want to make note of it. Otherwise some may get the impression that you're a fucking disingenuous prick.
Hey South African Miner guy:
It really is terrible what's going on in the rest of the world. BTW; what's Aniston doing this week?
Arbeit was initially hired because he was cheap- Australian athletics ( as track and field is called in Australia )is a small sport with a limited budget ( and there is no very serious college sports industry to rely on for elite coaching )
It was felt by some that the DDR coaches were very able in both legitimate coaching techniques as well as the illegitimate techniques . Perhaps this is correct as there are still quite a number of former DDR coaches in a variety of sports plying their trade in a variety of countries
The Arbeit appointment however was a public relations disaster and was quickly rescinded
By the way the appointment of foreign coaches in all sports is common in Australia -and many Australian coaches coach non Australian teams and individuals
RE Dean Lucan -maybe there is a question mark -He only won gold in 1984 because of the boycott ( probably ranked about 10th )and received a lot of publicity because he trained at sea on a tuna boat -and was a millionaire through the family fishing business . Weightlifting in Australia is a minor sport which is internationally riddled with doping ( probably historically the leading Olympic doping sport ) and such a non bourgious activity ( like the combative sports ) that I've never really thought of it since . Maybe Lucan does warrant an asterisk after his name although I confess I follow these things closely and haven't heard this raised before
All right, some other examples then. Carey Hall, Stephen Pate and Mark Roland, all actually caught and suspended, in cycling.
Australia does have a relatively clean and positive sporting ethos, but modern sports are corrupt, and just as no girl found in a brothel is likely to be a real virgin, no nation in the international sports system is pure.
Amy Van Dyken won 4 golds in swimming in 96 at Atlanta. I believe that was the most single golds by an athlete at that Olympics.
It's believed that she was on steroids. She was a regular client at BALCO though she never failed a drug test.
"Sailer, if you want to edit your posts after you already have 30 plus comments on the original you may want to make note of it. Otherwise some may get the impression that you're a fucking disingenuous prick."
All I can see is a very minor addendum. The main thrust of his argument is as it was initially:
-Australia won lots of medals when hosted at home in 2000
-3 years before that, steroid expert coach hired, then fired after furor
-This signals the length to which Australian government were committed Doing Whatever It Takes to get a large medal tally, and a knowledge of the realities of elite sport.
Australia has won between 35 and 58 medals at the last 5 Olympics averaging 46 medals and ranking on total medal count between 4th and 7th
Apart from the home field effect I don't see any statistical evidence of anything odd
In track and field it has won 3 gold medals and 14 in all in that time ( 4 in race walking included )generally in highly technical events
I don't see much ground for suspicion
Arbeit Macht Frei!
Post a Comment