Womens world athletics marks showed a remarkable decrease in 70's and 80's due to systematic doping adopted by eastern europe block and Soviet union. US was also not averse to it as the case of Flojo shows. It is no surprise that records set by these superwoman will take decades to top with normal drug-less increase in performance over the years. Any of these spurts in performance should be viewed with suspicion, that is an elementary rule of athletics post 1988.
In mens records, apart from Bubkas, athletes have come centimeters or milliseconds close to overhauling these untouchable records, as the world leading performance figures show. So in 5 years many of these untouchable records will fall.
Re: Beamon's record was broken by lewis first
by Unmai Vilambi on Jul 06, 2011 08:10 PM
I agree Rediff makes terrible mistakes often. But you are wrong on this one: Carl Lewis did just past Bob Beamon's mark, but it was wind-aided, and hence is not accepted as a record. Besides, in competitions, the final standing best mark is the one considered a record. As Mike Powell bettered Carl's mark in the same meet, Powell is credited with breaking Beamon's record. Not Carl. It is strange, but that is how it works.
inspite of using these drugs they are not capable of getting one gold medal in olympics or in asian games. then whats the use in using those banned substances
There have been lots of conspiracy therories around russians using Steroids and banned substances during cold war era to show US low. Surprisingly most of those records are from same era and mostly by Russians.
Re: All in 80's by russians
by Venugopalan on Jul 06, 2011 04:23 PM
esp. the east europeans, germany, hungary, polish athelitics, gymnastics and swimmers were using too much steroids...so much that the women swimmers look like men...later so many were disqualified and tests become very strict..
Re: All in 80's by russians
by Gopal on Jul 06, 2011 04:01 PM
Yep - Russians or East Germans (remember, how many medals they used to get in Olympics prior to the unification)
Re: Re: All in 80's by russians
by faisal khan on Jul 06, 2011 08:51 PM
not only USSR and Est european athletes but also american athgletes have also used steroids at one point or another but have been allowed to go scot free remember marion jones. the fact is that drugs are still ruling the roost in athgletics and most of the above mentioned records have been made while being on drugs. BALCO laboratories of US specifically designed these designer drugs as testified by Marion Jones,Dwain Chambers, Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery, Raymond J. Smith, Zhanna Block and Kelli White, middle-distance runner Regina Jacobs.
