I agree with Antillian. Nobody within the sport or anywhere near the sport has accused any of the three 200m medalists from Jamaica of cheating. Yet here, there are people who think it's perfectly acceptable to cast aspersions without a shred of evidence.

Is there no other, more reasonable explanation for the success of these athletes?  

Putting a smiley face emoticon after a particularly obnoxious comment does not make it less obnoxious or more funny.

Drug testing is always more stringent than ever; that doesn't mean anything in itself.

Mortal Games wrote on 08/10/12 at 08:39:30:


Maybe their genetics    allow them to be running medicin cabinets. 

ghenghisclown wrote on 08/18/12 at 12:49:23:


And you think we see that today? There are performance enhancing drugs that are allowed, such as Creatine, not to mention all the countries that doesn't have proper and unannounced tests.

Paulsen, it sounds like you're trying to justify cheating to me...What an astounding course of events on this thread. So far, I've learned that writing down a move before you make it is cheating, and say, altering your blood chemistry to increase your oxygen intake or taking human growth hormone is only cheating because the rules say so. 

I will admit, it's novel to suggest that steroid use isn't really cheating because you still need to train. Since one has to train in order to make appropriate use of the steroids to compete at a professional level, it must not be cheating, because you still have some work left to do (!).  And because, OF COURSE,  since I'm not a professional weight mover like yourself  (in fact I try not to move at all by using telekinesis to supply all my needs) I have no grasp of the fact that I CANNOT take a 150 pound man, give him a steroid protein shake and instantly turn him into Lou Ferrigno. 

Good thing you set me right. 

The edge that an athlete gets, like on the Tour de France, or a situation where you only need an extra "oomph" with everyone being pretty much on the same level, is external. It does not come from you. You can't train that because by definition, you've already hit your ceiling. 

Like when Kasparov invented advanced chess by realizing that only a single clue or line from a program could provide the key to winning games between super GM's are approx. equal strength. 


"And never conflate steroids with computers in chess. You can start lifting weights, do whatever the hell you want, take all the steroids you get your hands on, and you still won't look like Arnold.

Let a 1000 use a computer and he will beat a GM OTB more often than not. The difference is too major to be taken seriously."

I'm not conflating them. To shorten this and make this post less argumentative, I'm simply saying that steroid or chem use can be compared MORE to using a computer than writing down a candidate move on the scoresheet.

If you want a perfect analogy, maybe using a computer should be compared to using a forklift. But who could get away with that??

Robotic arms?? LOL
     

BPaulsen wrote on 08/18/12 at 03:18:58:

This whole concept of "federations that allow steroids" sounds entirely alien to me and I suspect many other Europeans. We think of steroids and many other banned substances as not merely cheating but also a health hazard, and so it's the job of any responsible federation to do what it can to reduce the pressure on athletes to use them. And how can there not be such pressure if they're allowed and many of the winners use them?

There is a real culture difference here, and the ideal of the athlete as somehow self-made, pure and healthy seems to be much weaker in the U.S than in Europe for whatever reason.

Just keep this difference in mind if you find it a bit hard to get your points across 

Eric the Red :


"And it doesn't matter whether you regard it as cheating or not; it's against the rules."

I'm pointing out my opinion on the rule, I'm not suggesting that a TD not follow it when you make a claim against a 12 year old opponent, Eric. Of course it doesn't matter. It's just my opinion.


As for steroids...

Of course steroids is cheating..uh..OF COURSE. It makes you go faster, but in a way that has nothing to with your experiences or training, but originates externally. As in a computer could help during a chess game. I fail to see how writing down a move and then mulling it over makes you play above your rating in a way that's patently unfair...or for that matter in way that can be practically banned. I suppose an opponent could complain about someone writing down multiple moves and erasing them. It's still your brain at work, isn't it??

What am I missing?

It's not a proper analogy in my view, comparing this to steroid use. Steroids to computers or outside help, yeah.

I think this method of writing down one candidate move has more to do with acclimating blitz players and players not used to the clock,playing tournament etc...that it has to do with giving someone a true advantage. 

Errors are part of the game, but creating conditions that breed more errors (like speeding up time controls and enforcing draconian rules) are not. Well, at least they shouldn't be. They are now I guess.

ghenghisclown wrote on 08/16/12 at 18:36:45:


Steroids aren't cheating unless the rules say so. I have a number of friends that use and compete in non-drug tested powerlifting federations, and it isn't a big deal. There isn't some universally recognized standard for what is/isn't cheating in sport, only what any given federation adopts as their standard of competition. I don't use, therefore I compete in drug-tested federations. Different strokes for different folks - people need to get over the ridiculous idea of "purity" in sport.
 
If FIDE allowed the writing of multiple candidate moves, for example, then it wouldn't be cheating. However, they don't, so it is cheating.

People can always create their own federations if they band together. Life goes on.