# WADA investigating Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission no testing before London Olympics



## Coolhand (Jul 28, 2002)

> A year after Usain Bolt made history at the London Olympics and declared himself "a living legend," a bombshell dropped largely unnoticed in The Gleaner, the Caribbean's oldest newspaper: A former director of the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission alleged the island didn't drug-test its athletes for entire months before they dazzled at the Summer Games.
> 
> Statistics compiled by former JADCO Executive Director Renee Anne Shirley indicated a near-complete breakdown in the agency's out-of-competition testing from January 2012 to the July opening of the Olympics.
> 
> ...


What is the opposite of shocked?


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## Cableguy (Jun 6, 2010)

Coolhand said:


> What is the opposite of shocked?


I am indifferent and composed


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## spade2you (May 12, 2009)

Coolhand said:


> What is the opposite of shocked?


Everything is irie, mon?


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## bikerjulio (Jan 19, 2010)

Coolhand said:


> What is the opposite of shocked?


This kind of shocked?


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## bbrrxx (Jul 17, 2013)

It's perfectly normal for a 10.00 sprinter to get down to 9.5x in a couple years. Anyone can do that clean.


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## sir duke (Mar 24, 2006)

A few years ago I probably would have got all righteous and indignant and rushed to the defence of Boult as a supreme athlete who got where he did on talent alone. Not now. The Jamaican sports administrators are a joke. I'd still like to think he's clean but with no faith in the island's testing protocols there is a huge question mark over the credibity of their Olympic performances. The sad part is, there is unquestionably enough talent on the island to compete against the best in the world.


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## Coolhand (Jul 28, 2002)

spade2you said:


> Everything is irie, mon?


You Win the thread.


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## Fogdweller (Mar 26, 2004)

Why is everyone so skeptical that a tiny island nation of just over 2.7 million people, a majority who live far below the global poverty level, can't produced the fastest athletes the world has ever seen? 
1-2 in the 100m world record in Bolt and Blake
1-2 in the 200m world record by same
Gold and Silver in both the 100 and 200 in London by same
Gold in 100, silver in the 200 by Shelly-Ann Pryce
Gold in 4x100 men's relay, silver for women
Women's sweep of the podium in Beijing in the 100m, Gold & Silver in London
Sweep of the men's podium in the 200m in London
Veronica Campbell-Brown's positive test
Bar none, the fastest bobsled team ever fielded from the Caribbean

Why can't we all just take sport as face value?


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## bbrrxx (Jul 17, 2013)

I like Michael Johnson's reaction to Bolts WR.. He's wondering why he wasn't on better stuff during his day.

I wonder what kind of stuff Bolt is on? Obviously he's juiced to the max on EPO & Test. The EPO must work wonders for tempo recovery runs. Running 200m repeats must just be a walk in the park for him. The greater recovery must enhances mitochondia and allows for the generation of higher speeds and a fresher nervous system.


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## mpre53 (Oct 25, 2011)

Forget about his 100m record. 19.19 in the 200m is even harder to swallow. That's like two 9.595 100s and around a turn.


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## MG537 (Jul 25, 2006)

mpre53 said:


> Forget about his 100m record. 19.19 in the 200m is even harder to swallow. That's like two 9.595 100s and around a turn.


As opposed to Michael Johnson's 19.32 in Atlanta 1996?
That's like two 9.66 100m sprints back to back.

Can't wait for the Oprah confession in a decade or so. Wonder if he'll be shocked then?


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## mpre53 (Oct 25, 2011)

MG537 said:


> As opposed to Michael Johnson's 19.32 in Atlanta 1996?
> That's like two 9.66 100m sprints back to back.
> 
> Can't wait for the Oprah confession in a decade or so. Wonder if he'll be shocked then?


0.13 is a huge gap in a 200. Same as Bolt lowering the 100 record from 9.69 to 9.58. No other sprinter even shaved almost a full .10 off the 100 record. Jimmy Hines ran the first sub-10 100 in Mexico City in 1968, and since then, it never went down more than .04. Well, there was Ben Johnson blowing a full tenth off it, but that record lasted less than a few hours, when he tilted the piss-o-meter. 

Not saying Johnson was clean, but if you watched him run, his style was made to order for running the turns in the 400 and 200. His 400m record still stands, despite all the advances in doping and detection avoidance over the last 15 years or so. Johnson couldn't contend in the 100 on the straightway, and never really seriously competed in the event. He won his races and set his records running the turns. Hell, I'm not even sure if guys like Hines and Bob Hayes were clean. Hayes ran an ungodly anchor leg on the 4x100 relay in the 1964 Olympics---something like 8.6. Granted, it was a flying start, but it was also on a cinder track. Steroids have been around at least since the 1950s.


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## bbrrxx (Jul 17, 2013)

mpre53 said:


> Forget about his 100m record. 19.19 in the 200m is even harder to swallow. That's like two 9.595 100s and around a turn.





MG537 said:


> As opposed to Michael Johnson's 19.32 in Atlanta 1996?
> That's like two 9.66 100m sprints back to back.
> 
> Can't wait for the Oprah confession in a decade or so. Wonder if he'll be shocked then?


The second 100m is from a running start, so its not broken down like that. First 100m 9.92, Second 100m 9.27 = 19.19 total.


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## mpre53 (Oct 25, 2011)

bbrrxx said:


> The second 100m is from a running start, so its not broken down like that. First 100m 9.92, Second 100m 9.27 = 19.19 total.
> 
> View attachment 288091


Most of the second 100 is also on the straightaway, so you'd expect it to be faster. A 9.92 around the turn is probably an even more impressive---or suspect---feat. Bolt was almost half a second faster around the turn than anyone else in the race. As talented as Johnson was at running the turn, I'll bet that his first 100 split in Atlanta wasn't under 10. He didn't really have an explosive start.

I remember when Tommie Smith was the first guy to break 20 seconds in the Olympic 200, and he was in third place, behind John Carlos and (I think) an East German coming into the straightaway.


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## aclinjury (Sep 12, 2011)

mpre53 said:


> 0.13 is a huge gap in a 200. Same as Bolt lowering the 100 record from 9.69 to 9.58. No other sprinter even shaved almost a full .10 off the 100 record. Jimmy Hines ran the first sub-10 100 in Mexico City in 1968, and since then, it never went down more than .04. Well, there was Ben Johnson blowing a full tenth off it, but that record lasted less than a few hours, when he tilted the piss-o-meter.
> 
> Not saying Johnson was clean, but if you watched him run, his style was made to order for running the turns in the 400 and 200. His 400m record still stands, despite all the advances in doping and detection avoidance over the last 15 years or so. Johnson couldn't contend in the 100 on the straightway, and never really seriously competed in the event. He won his races and set his records running the turns. Hell, I'm not even sure if guys like Hines and Bob Hayes were clean. Hayes ran an ungodly anchor leg on the 4x100 relay in the 1964 Olympics---something like 8.6. Granted, it was a flying start, but it was also on a cinder track. Steroids have been around at least since the 1950s.


You mentioned Johnson's style around the turn. But you didn't mention Bolt's unique stride length? In the 100m, Bolt is slow out of the block, and in in fact he get beat by the Japanese sprinter in the first 30m or so, and it's not until the 2nd half of the 100m that he put down his trademark pull-away from the field.


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## aclinjury (Sep 12, 2011)

Fogdweller said:


> Why is everyone so skeptical that a tiny island nation of just over 2.7 million people, a majority who live far below the global poverty level, can't produced the fastest athletes the world has ever seen?
> 1-2 in the 100m world record in Bolt and Blake
> 1-2 in the 200m world record by same
> Gold and Silver in both the 100 and 200 in London by same
> ...


Cuba, and lots of other Carribean countries, produce great baseball players, despite their extremely poor socio-economic backgrounds.


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## sir duke (Mar 24, 2006)

aclinjury said:


> You mentioned Johnson's style around the turn. But you didn't mention Bolt's unique stride length? In the 100m, Bolt is slow out of the block, and in in fact he get beat by the Japanese sprinter in the first 30m or so, and it's not until the 2nd half of the 100m that he put down his trademark pull-away from the field.


^^This.

What sets Bolt apart from other tall sprinters is the combination of a superior stride length and higher than average cadence for someone of his height. In sprinting that's an unbeatable combination. The effects are amplified over 200 metres because he's spending a greater portion of the race at maximum/cruising speed. That's why the 200 metres has always been his stronger event. Bolt is effectively giving everyone a 2 metre start and still winning by 1 or 2 metres. With his stride length and cadence you can do that. There has never been a sprinter with that deadly combination before. For that reason alone I'd give him the benefit of the doubt.


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## Fireform (Dec 15, 2005)

*WADA investigating Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission no testing before London Ol...*

The Sporting Gene goes into the Caribbean sprinting phenomenon. Bolt may well be juicing, but there's more to it than that.


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## sir duke (Mar 24, 2006)

Fireform said:


> The Sporting Gene goes into the Caribbean sprinting phenomenon. Bolt may well be juicing, but there's more to it than that.


You are right. Jamaica was producing world class sprinters as far back as 1948 when Arthur Wint won gold at the London Olympics (another Jamaican, Herb McKenley, won silver). The Jamaican 4x400 metres relay team set a world record when winning gold at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. When Jim Hines became the first man to run under 10 secs in Mexico he beat a Jamaican, Lenox Miller, who won silver in 10:00. Britons of Jamaican descent have made a disproportionately large contribution to British track and field achievement (although the most prominent, Linford Christie, was later busted for Nandrolene. He finished behind two other dopers, Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis, in the Seoul 100 metres).

Doped or clean, Jamaica has always been a sprint superpower.


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## Local Hero (Jul 8, 2010)

mpre53 said:


> Forget about his 100m record. 19.19 in the 200m is even harder to swallow. That's like two 9.595 100s and around a turn.


It makes sense that the 200m time will be less than double the 100m time. The slowest part of the 100m dash are the first 50-70 meters, when the runner is still accelerating.


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## mpre53 (Oct 25, 2011)

aclinjury said:


> You mentioned Johnson's style around the turn. But you didn't mention Bolt's unique stride length? In the 100m, Bolt is slow out of the block, and in in fact he get beat by the Japanese sprinter in the first 30m or so, and it's not until the 2nd half of the 100m that he put down his trademark pull-away from the field.


Exactly my point. Johnson had a short stride length and ran unusually upright. You didn't even have to know what lane he was running in to spot him. Bolt is much better suited for the straightaways, accelerating out of the turn and blasting the last 70 or so meters in a 200. He reminds me so much more of Tommie Smith, from back in my heyday, than most anyone I've seen since. Which is why a 9.92 in the first 100 of a 200 is kind of, uh, remarkable. Slow starter, running a turn for most of the first 100, and he's still well under 10 seconds for the first 100.

Just for some perspective, 9.92 would have won or tied every "official" (leaving out Ben Johnson's stripped medal in Seoul) Olympic 100 meter final before Atlanta in 1996.


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## mpre53 (Oct 25, 2011)

Local Hero said:


> It makes sense that the 200m time will be less than double the 100m time. The slowest part of the 100m dash are the first 50-70 meters, when the runner is still accelerating.


Pretty much, around 60-70 meters is when a sprinter reaches max acceleration in a 100 meter race. Few can sustain it all the way to the finish, though. Most start to slow down to a degree in the last 10 meters. It's common to see a race decided in the last 10 meters. Not many are won at the start. Bolt is still opening the gap on the field when he hits the finish, when he's running a race that matters, like the Olympics or the Worlds.


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## Fireform (Dec 15, 2005)

*WADA investigating Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission no testing before London Ol...*



sir duke said:


> Britons of Jamaican descent have made a disproportionately large contribution to British track and field achievement (although the most prominent, Linford Christie, was later busted for Nandrolene. He finished behind two other dopers, Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis, in the Seoul 100 metres).
> 
> Doped or clean, Jamaica has always been a sprint superpower.


Remember that Johnson was born in Jamaica as well.


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## mpre53 (Oct 25, 2011)

sir duke said:


> You are right. Jamaica was producing world class sprinters as far back as 1948 when Arthur Wint won gold at the London Olympics (another Jamaican, Herb McKenley, won silver). The Jamaican 4x400 metres relay team set a world record when winning gold at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. When Jim Hines became the first man to run under 10 secs in Mexico he beat a Jamaican, Lenox Miller, who won silver in 10:00. Britons of Jamaican descent have made a disproportionately large contribution to British track and field achievement (although the most prominent, Linford Christie, was later busted for Nandrolene. He finished behind two other dopers, Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis, in the Seoul 100 metres).
> 
> Doped or clean, Jamaica has always been a sprint superpower.


Little known fact about Lenox Miller is that he anchored the 4 x 110 yard relay team at USC that set a world record for that event in an NCAA championship. A team that included OJ Simpson.


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## sir duke (Mar 24, 2006)

Fireform said:


> Remember that Johnson was born in Jamaica as well.



My name is Johnson and my father is Jamaican. I'm painfully aware of the fact. No relation I might add.
But I do have the sporting gene, 100m, 200m, long and triple jump champion at HS.


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## Fireform (Dec 15, 2005)

*WADA investigating Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission no testing before London Ol...*

There you go!


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## mpre53 (Oct 25, 2011)

sir duke said:


> My name is Johnson and my father is Jamaican. I'm painfully aware of the fact. No relation I might add.
> But I do have the sporting gene, 100m, 200m, long and triple jump champion at HS.


I've always loved the sprints/jumps, but unfortunately, my genes sent me the distance route. 

Kip Keino broke my heart in 1968.


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## sir duke (Mar 24, 2006)

mpre53 said:


> I've always loved the sprints/jumps, but unfortunately, my genes sent me the distance route.
> 
> Kip Keino broke my heart in 1968.


Distance events? Nothing doing. If it's over 200 metres I'm on my bike!


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## mpre53 (Oct 25, 2011)

sir duke said:


> Distance events? Nothing doing. If it's over 200 metres I'm on my bike!


Back in high school, my coach would occasionally throw me into a 400 against slower fields. It was tougher than any 3000 or 5000 I ever ran.


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## sir duke (Mar 24, 2006)

mpre53 said:


> Back in high school, my coach would occasionally throw me into a 400 against slower fields. It was tougher than any 3000 or 5000 I ever ran.


Tried 400 metres, that one lap was murder. 

And the 400 metres hurdles? They call it the 'man-killer'. 
Probably why this guy is my all-time track hero. Did a lot in the fight against doping in athletics too.


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## Hiro11 (Dec 18, 2010)

This story just makes me mad. I remember lots of European / UK press during both Beijing and London saying that the success of the Jamaican team was "breath of fresh air" after those dastardly Yanks had screwed everything up with their doping. Overall, US athletes were depicted in the European press (actually around the world) as being uniquely guilty of doping. 

Since then:

- Powell, Campbell-Brown, Simpson etc all tested positive. 2012 100m silver medalist Blake (a convicted doper in 2009) has disappeared without a trace. As this thread points out, the entire Jamaican team was never tested in the run up to London. This is an absurd state of affairs given the lengths that US athletes put themselves through to remain compliant.

- The ridiculously dominant Kenyan and other East African distance runners have never (ever) been tested out of competition... in history. They spend their time in extremely remote training camps well away from testers. A very persuasive German documentary made last year showed that EPO is rife in these runners. Despite a complaint from WADA over a year ago, exactly zero progress has been made in correcting the issue.

- Over 105 elite Russian athletes (swimmers, runners, T&F etc) have tested positive in the past 12 months.

...etc.

Most of these stories have received a tiny fraction of the press that US athlete's positive tests were given. The double standard drives me crazy.


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## sir duke (Mar 24, 2006)

Hiro11 said:


> This story just makes me mad. I remember lots of European / UK press during both Beijing and London saying that the success of the Jamaican team was "breath of fresh air" after those dastardly Yanks had screwed everything up with their doping. Overall, US athletes were depicted in the European press (actually around the world) as being uniquely guilty of doping.
> 
> Since then:
> 
> ...


Before you get too righteously indignant, remember that the U.S. Olympic committee looked the other way when Carl Lewis failed tests before the Olympic trails in 1988. They weren't too compliant when it came to their star performer. 
The US O.C. were fine about allowing Justin Gatlin to compete in London when his 4 year doping ban was up. The British Olympic Committee went to court to keep Dwain Chambers, a confirmed doper, out of their Olympic squad for London. CAS decided in his favour so he ran in London.
Jamaicans can cheat with the best, and I'd agree that Jamaica and the East African nations have a farcical attitude to drug testing that lags way beyond what *richer nations* have achieved. Then again, poverty, civil war, terrorism and endemic drug and gun crime issues tend to push sports administration somewhat further down the list of pressing issues. What's America's excuse?


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## Hiro11 (Dec 18, 2010)

I never implied that the US hasn't had its share of doping issues. It certainly has. What bugs me is what I perceive to be a disproportionate amount of coverage and blame placed on US doping woes when many, many other competitive countries either:
A. don't have programs anywhere near the comprehensiveness, intrusiveness or robustness of the US programs
-or-
B. experience positive tests in their athletes that are subsequently buried or underreported. When Kenyan athletes take eight of the top ten places in an elite marathon, no one bats an eye. Note that this is a relatively recent phenomenon in elite marathoning. If US athletes had a similar result, suspicions would be flaring.

It's the double standard that bothers me. Cycling is more than a little guilty of the same thing, giving us the ridiculous image of Jan Ullrich chastising Armstrong.



sir duke said:


> Before you get too righteously indignant, remember that the U.S. Olympic committee looked the other way when Carl Lewis failed tests before the Olympic trails in 1988.


This is a red herring. Lewis tested positive for cold medicine, not EPO or steroids. Also, he tested at a level that's now permissable. People trying to bash the US always bring up Lewis' "positive test" without mentioning these two highly relevant facts.


> They weren't too compliant when it came to their star performer.
> The US O.C. were fine about allowing Justin Gatlin to compete in London when his 4 year doping ban was up. The British Olympic Committee went to court to keep Dwain Chambers, a confirmed doper, out of their Olympic squad for London.


How countries handle athletes who have completed their ban has no bearing on the intial doping detections or controls. This is irrelevant to the current discussion. 



> Jamaicans can cheat with the best, and I'd agree that Jamaica and the East African nations have a farcical attitude to drug testing that lags way beyond what *richer nations* have achieved. Then again, poverty, civil war, terrorism and endemic drug and gun crime issues tend to push sports administration somewhat further down the list of pressing issues. What's America's excuse?


This is no excuse. In an ideal world, the country an athlete resides in should have no bearing whatsoever on the anti-doping regime they are subjected to. That is what we should be striving for. Anything less is a double standard. 

Also, the way you paint the picture is misleading as well. In the case of Jamaica, these are international-traveling, highly compensated athletes with a well-funded local commission. In the case of East African athletes (again, well compensated super-stars by local standards, some by any standard) the ability to sequester themselves in extremely remote camps helps enormously in training consistency and focus, let alone eases doping. It's an unfair advantage. In either case, WADA would be more than willing to pitch in share control responsibility. In fact they have been trying to do so for years without success. If you want to argue that all doping controls should be handled by a centralized, standardized third party, you'll get no argument from me.


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## sir duke (Mar 24, 2006)

Hiro11 said:


> I never implied that the US hasn't had its share of doping issues. It certainly has. What bugs me is what I perceive to be a disproportionate amount of coverage and blame placed on US doping woes when many, many other competitive countries either:
> A. don't have programs anywhere near the comprehensiveness, intrusiveness or robustness of the US programs
> -or-
> B. experience positive tests in their athletes that are subsequently buried or underreported. When Kenyan athletes take eight of the top ten places in an elite marathon, no one bats an eye. Note that this is a relatively recent phenomenon in elite marathoning. If US athletes had a similar result, suspicions would be flaring.
> ...



Despite your wishful thinking the Lewis case is emphatically _not_ a red herring. Lewis never once turned down an opportunity to point the finger at his dirty opponents, all the while knowing that he had failed 2 dope tests that the USOC were bound to censure him for. So Lewis walks because subsequently IOC changes the threshold for a positive? Nice try. 'Oh, it was only cold medicine'. How many sprinters fell back on that when they were busted? If it's on the list, it's on the list. Lewis took the high ground, said nothing about his own issues with testing and let the blame fall where he knew it would. He's a hypocrite. You can't whine about the media traducing your athletes when your athletes use the media to traduce others. 

I'd be quite happy for doping controls to be centralised. Would you then be happy to watch an Olympics with very few Americans, Jamaicans, Russians, Kenyans, Ethiopians, Nigerians, Turks, Aussies, Chinese, Bulgarian, Spanish etc involved? That's a very likely outcome. But who will pay for that as a sporting spectacle? David and Goliath has always been part of that spectacle. The reality is we now are dealing with Goliath v Goliath at least as far as many track events are concerned. I think a part of your annoyance with the media portrayal of the big bad U.S. of A. is that _you_ are aware of this change in the power balance but the European media has yet to catch on.


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## bigwaves (Feb 2, 2003)

Didn't know that you could race beach cruisers.


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## atpjunkie (Mar 23, 2002)

bbrrxx said:


> It's perfectly normal for a 10.00 sprinter to get down to 9.5x in a couple years. Anyone can do that clean.


just like Flo Jo and that worked out great


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## atpjunkie (Mar 23, 2002)

Fireform said:


> The Sporting Gene goes into the Caribbean sprinting phenomenon. Bolt may well be juicing, but there's more to it than that.


I'm assuming 'sporting gene' is a post modern phrase to refer to the selective breeding and horrid living conditions of slaves in the new world.


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## Dwayne Barry (Feb 16, 2003)

atpjunkie said:


> I'm assuming 'sporting gene' is a post modern phrase to refer to the selective breeding and horrid living conditions of slaves in the new world.


Or simply the opportunity combined with some genetic predisposition. I believe some ridiculously larger percentage of the top all-time 100m dash times are held by people from west Africa or their descendents in the new world.


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## Fireform (Dec 15, 2005)

atpjunkie said:


> I'm assuming 'sporting gene' is a post modern phrase to refer to the selective breeding and horrid living conditions of slaves in the new world.


The Sporting Gene is the title of a book. I have read it, evidently you have not. 

Google is your friend.


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## atpjunkie (Mar 23, 2002)

Fireform said:


> The Sporting Gene is the title of a book. I have read it, evidently you have not.
> 
> Google is your friend.


caught this as I was leaving for work. I'll look it up. 
I found the "Sports Gene" Book, is that the one?


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## Fireform (Dec 15, 2005)

*WADA investigating Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission no testing before London Ol...*



atpjunkie said:


> caught this as I was leaving for work. I'll look it up.
> I found the "Sports Gene" Book, is that the one?


That's the one, by David Epstein. It's an excellent read. I don't think genetics explains everything, but where the subjects of this thread are concerned they are definitely in play.


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