Wheeler Farm Loops

What you are seeing with Shobukhova is something I would compare to some sort of mafia revenge shoot-out. The Russian national team is a master of doping and cover-up. They will cover up their own. What is significant in this case is that Shobukhova left the team and trained on her own. She was very possibly still dirty and continued to take something after leaving the team, but I would expect had she stayed with the team she would not have been busted by the Russian "anti-doping" (or maybe "pro-doping" is more appropriate) commission. Or it is actually possible that she decided to be clean afterwards, but the doping-control people knew exactly what she had received up to the point of departure and therefore knew how to find something that was still in the system that was banned. In fact, this might very well be a case that the world reads just as another drug bust, but what is really happening is that this is an intimidation tactic against the Russian athletes that started with the system and then try to break away from it - "if you try this, we will destroy you" type of message.

That's a really good point. I don't really know her background (in terms of where she trained or who she was coached by), but I can definitely see that scenario playing out like you said. Sending a message.

I think this is also the first time someone who won WMM races has gotten banned and forced to pay the money back. That message needed to be sent as well.

She's lucky Putin didn't have her disappear.

Rob:

You may very well be not too far away from the truth. Maybe with the correction that perhaps a "renegade" athlete that is politically silent would annoy the president of some federation or committee more than she would the head of the state. But the tactics are still the same - we destroy you using whatever works, if you actually did something wrong, or we can make the world believe you did something wrong, we do it! There is a word in Russian - ликвидировать - which literally translates as "liquidate". Due its Latin origin it sounds like something very legitimate to a Russian, but what it really means is "get rid of". It is the standard KGB/FSB euphemism for "murder".

I suppose since we are talking about cheating by the Russians, I should provide some background. I am not an expert on the matter, but due to my upbringing I know some things. I will go by my memories from the Soviet Union. Some things have changed since, but all in all in the big scheme of things the changes have been superficial, so I believe what I remember still applies to a great extent.

The Soviet Union had a well-organized system for producing world class athletes. It started with your PE class. Teachers kept accurate records of everything everybody did. Coaches, who were very often former Olympians, perused those records, identified talented kids, and invited them to train at a sports school. Once they reached a certain level, they would be invited to be trained by a national team coach, and that is where the drugs would start. For a boy I would roughly guess it started around 8:45 for 3000 meters if reached by the age of 18. My 3000 PR was 9:36, so I never got into that group, but I spent enough time around those who did to have an idea of what was going on.

Once you got into that culture, it was difficult to get out. As a fly-on-the-wall curious 13-year-old eavesdropping on the coaches' conversation I recall hearing of a 13:38 5000 runner who insisted on running clean and was punished in every way possible. A search for his name on Google just now revealed nothing, to learn anything about him would require digging through the archives of the Russian Track and Field magazine.

I also recall my coach performing an informal drug test on one of his former athletes who made it to the national team. The feminine gender of the athlete facilitated the test - he did it by just talking to her. The test came out positive in his mind - her voice was characteristically low, very different from he knew when he coached her. Being around top athletes who often shared training facilities with us I was very familiar with that voice and came to naively believe that it is the inevitable side effect of endurance training on a woman - the price she has to pay to be fast. At one point I believed that distance running made women ugly - until one day I realized it was not the distance running but rather artificial male hormones and anabolic steroids.

I suppose part of the reason for the prevalence of drug cheating in Russia is the cultural heritage of the last 100 years. America, in spite of the winds blowing in various directions, still has its roots in the Bible. Even those who would not say they accept it as the word of God still believe in many of its teachings and at least try to practice them. Russia chopped those roots with a sharp ax 97 years ago and instead started to look for moral roots in literature, philosophy, and ideology. As one of the results, being honest and truthful is not viewed quite the same as you would expect. There are no hard absolute moral ideals, everything is relative. The end justifies the means. An athlete raised in this ideology does not have a strong reason to sacrifice and stand above the culture of drugs unless he somehow finds it within himself to rise above what has has grown up with - a very difficult challenge. Or unless his parents managed to teach him the Biblical values in spite of the environment.

With that in mind, I think it is a mistake to point the accusing finger at the athlete that got busted - even though I would hope he would know better than to cheat and will find the courage to stand firm. The real enemy is the ideological system that has no firm absolute moral values in it. That is what we need to attack.

Really interesting thoughts.

I agree that the system/environment needs to be attacked in a situation like this... especially in order to create a fair playing field... but I don't think the individual should be cut any slack because of a toxic environment. She knew exactly what she was doing, what the potential consequences were, and should be punished accordingly.

Thoughtful and well said Sasha, I especially like your closing statement. As much as I would like to I can't think of anything to add except that I wish more testing could be done at the masters level. Not enough at stake I suppose.

I think what we need to do is find a way to win clean that is superior to cheating. Why are those substances banned in the first place? The answer to that is that they create short term narrow-range benefits at the expense of the long-term overall health. If that is the case, then there must be a win-win - something that gives you both short and long term benefits with the win over the wrong kind of drugs in the short term as well, but I would expect that win-win to be much harder to find. You would need to learn to think a certain way, not just one individual, but the whole community at large.

More testing solution is going to get ridiculous. It is already. I do not think it is right to make an athlete accountable for every chemical found in his body. Nor do I think it is right to ruin somebody's reputation and call him a cheat based solely on a chemical test. Think about what happens if by any chance the test is a false positive. Or if somebody executes revenge by dropping a banned substance into the food of an athlete. Maybe if we added a lie detector test to the chemistry it would be more reasonable, except that a pathological liar can pass the test, and based on some of my experiences with my country natives I do not exclude this possibility.

I bet that lots of professional athletes, particularly in developed countries, have already found this middle ground or something close to it. Unfortunately, what they are doing is still against the rules so they can't tell anyone what they have found.