Bolt loses one of his Olympic golds

[White Goodman]

Noticed that Bolt has lost his relay medal from Beijing after Nesta Carter failed a drug test.

There'll be some people upset about this but he's not the only who has ever cheated in that relay squad so f*** them.

[Claretdave]

Didn't Powell also get done?

[fjthegrey]

Loads of them have. Women and men.

[White Goodman]

Didn't Powell also get done?

Yes that was who I meant .

Wasn't as early as Beijing though. Despite him being faster then than when caught.

Their rise as the dominant sprint nation by a mile in the last 10 or so years is laughable

[wolf359]

BBC are over this like a rash, 'reporting' on it every 5 minis this morning. Oh the sorrow and the pain....

[shammy]

BBC are over this like a rash, 'reporting' on it every 5 minis this morning. Oh the sorrow and the pain....

Making sure Bolt is never implicated of course. Too many people with too much to lose if ever he is proved a cheat.

[Clacton-ammer]

Not quite sure what you are insinuating Whitey....

F'sure Shammy, money always wins eh.

[Patito]

Making sure Bolt is never implicated of course. Too many people with too much to lose if ever he is proved a cheat.

I don't think he's a cheat just a genetic freak.

[Denbighammer]

The five of the six fastest men of all time are proven drug cheats, the odd one out is Usain Bolt.

The only thing that makes me think there is a good chance that he is clean is his physiology. However, the cynic in me notes how important to his sport he is and how totally ruinous a positive test would be.

[White Goodman]

The five of the six fastest men of all time are proven drug cheats, the odd one out is Usain Bolt.

The only thing that makes me think there is a good chance that he is clean is his physiology. However, the cynic in me notes how important to his sport he is and how totally ruinous a positive test would be.

I've considered this as well and on a planet of 7 billion people it's not unfair to believe he could be a complete genetic anomaly.

Then you look at the fact that you raised about his competitors and his times are so far ahead of theirs that it really does stretch belief.

Blake has run close to his 19.19 for the 200m but only Michael Johnson after that has ever been anywhere near it and nobody is anywhere near his 100m record, without him nobody is a great deal faster than where we were with Maurice Greene. I can't see the 100m record going for a long while.

Additionally, it all comes at a time when the Jamaicans have started to dominate all aspects of sprinting without much discernible change in process, why have they never done this before?

Then there is the small fact that loads of them are testing positive

[Patito]

1968, 1972 and 1976, 3 Olympics in a row there were Jamaican medalists in the 100m final (I had to look that up). Apart from that period and the past decade they have no medals. But then apart from Team USA, no one has consistently done well in 100m. After the US and Jamaica, Great Britain is the highest in the overall medal haul for 100m.

[sendô]

It's generally accepted that men of west african/west indian descent are the best sprinters - be they Jamaican, American or British...

[DasNutNock]

It's generally accepted that men of west african/west indian descent are the best sprinters - be they Jamaican, American or British...

But mostly Jamaican these days.

[White Goodman]

It's generally accepted that men of west african/west indian descent are the best sprinters - be they Jamaican, American or British...

If you look at the stats then it's specifically the Caribbean folks of West African descent OR Afro American males that dominate.

West Africans themselves have an indifferent record. Can only really think of one major championship gold medallist in Francis Obikwelu and that was when he was running for Portugal I think.

I've read many theories for this , the worst being that slavery speeded up evolution

[Patito]

I've read many theories for this , the worst being that slavery speeded up evolution

There was a programme(on the BBC IIRC) where Michael Johnson went over to Jamaica to investigate why they were dominating the sprinting world and he came to the above conclusion. (Again IIRC)


On a side note, that Obikwelu was a man mountain!

[DasNutNock]

The slavery bit goes:

1) The weaker slaves died during transit or whilst they were toiling.
2) The strongest, fittest slaves were encouraged to impregnate the women.

Eugenics, basically, and you could argue that is a form of man-modified evolution.

[White Goodman]

Yeah must admit I still think that theory is bull****, they're not the ****ing X Men for ****'s sake

Is that even possible, how come people with really hard lives today aren't producing Supermen after a couple of hundred years.

There must be loads of slavery in India and they are per head the worst Olympic nation by about a million miles

[DasNutNock]

If you wanted to produce lots of basketball players, would you encourage weak short people to breed, or strong tall ones?

[Denbighammer]

Whether he's clean or not it occurred to me that there has never been a major sport as dependant upon one individual as athletics is on Bolt - he is the sport - nobody comes close to him.

When you think of the true sporting giants, they always have contemporaries that shared the box office weight and would attract interest. Boxing had Ali but also Foreman, Frazier, Holmes and co. Basketball had Michael Jordan but also Larry Bird/Magic Johnson etc, Football has Messi and Ronaldo but hundreds of other great stars - athletics has nothing without Bolt, which must be a unique situation?

[DasNutNock]

Perhaps that's because athletics, broadly speaking, is ****ing boring.