Running Mania

Liliya Shobukhova loses Chicago and London Marathon titles:

http://runningmagazine.ca/liliya-shobuk ... on-titles/

Sweet… this means that I only got chicked 10 times in Chicago in 2009.

It sucks to see so much doping in marathoning (and the rest of track and field), but it's out there and good that it's being exposed.

Rob Watson was pretty vocal on his latest podcast about how dirty some athletes are; I don't doubt he'll talk about this one in the next podcast. (He's also training for Chicago.)

Where there is money and/or prestige many people will cheat. There will always be cheaters. Take away the prize money and you at least take away one, and probably the bigger(est) reason to cheat.

I like what the Olympics are doing (at least I think they are doing) by keeping the athletes' blood samples so they can test them years later when they have new tests. Athletes will know that even if they can beat today's tests, they will probably fail the tests 5-10 years down the road and lose their medals.

drghfx wrote:Where there is money and/or prestige many people will cheat. There will always be cheaters. Take away the prize money and you at least take away one, and probably the bigger(est) reason to cheat.

I like what the Olympics are doing (at least I think they are doing) by keeping the athletes' blood samples so they can test them years later when they have new tests. Athletes will know that even if they can beat today's tests, they will probably fail the tests 5-10 years down the road and lose their medals.

This is not just in the Olympics- it's up to the individual governing organization of the sport, and international athletics has been doing this for some years. And they have added the "blood passport" system as well- this is how she was caught.

Now they should go ahead with the proposed idea of holding off on prize money for a certain amount of time. It could be a problem getting her prize money back.

Andy posted this link on his FB page.

http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/athletics/33824471

I hope they catch every cheater!

Sadly it feels like we are on the edge of an avalanche of these stories in long distance running given the better testing methods, blood passport etc... Perhaps Putin can pay back the cash.