Dopers Tarnish The Sport For All Of Us

The only real solution, as far as I'm concerned is jail time for the offenders, and not ever a chance to race international competitions again.

Some skiers never got a fair chance

Last week I translated an article about <Norwegian National Team skier Anders Aukland taking second in the Norwegian running Championship. It made me reflect (once again) on the fact that I have seen some US Cross Country skiers over the past decade that also could run fast. They trained hard, made good progress, skied technically well, had a high Max VO2, but came up short in World Cup racing. Today we know to a big degree why — they were up against dopers and never had a chance. Up to 80% of their competitors might have used blood doping or other performance enhancing methods. In my opinion some of our skiers had what it took, did the right training but they were cheated out of ever skiing in the top ten — cheated by racers and coaches with no morals and entire nations with no regards for “fair play” or “may the best athlete win”. In their opinion everything goes as long as you don’t get caught.  

Running and skiing fast has often been going “hand in hand” in Norway. I’m not sure how fast today’s Norwegian National team skiers are running, but back in the nineties the team used to do a 3000 meter running test (on the track) once or twice per season. I remember hearing from then Norwegian Head Coach, Inge Braaten the different skier’s running times. Skiers like Mikkelsplass, Daehlie and Ulvang were running around 8:30 give or take a few seconds. The tallest and heaviest person on the team ran in 9:10. A young skier named Anders Aukland had just been named to one of the teams (not sure which one) — he had posted times under 8 minutes!

Having been involved in skiing and racing in theUS since the mid eighties I can recall several former US National team skiers with good on the track/flat running skills. On the men's side: Audun Endestad, Todd Boonstra, Joe Galanes, Jim Galanes, Ben Husaby, John Aalberg and Justin Wadsworth all could run 8:45 or better. For women: Nancy Fiddler, Nina Kempel, Dorcas Wonsavage and Leslie Thompson were all fast runners. This group and the rest of many Canadian and US skiers that participated in World Cup racing, all trained hard and occasionally captured top-20 results in fields of 70-120 World Cup skiers from all nations. They gave it their all but never made the podium. From what we know today they raced against a field where up to 50-80% of the skiers were cheating — doping.

I think that the above mentioned skiers were all better that their results indicated. They could also have skied and developed to the next level, the top. But confidence, support and patience wore down when they were up against pills, injections and transfusions.

We suspected, and often wondered how we could train hard all summer and fall, make progress in everything from strength, endurance, technique and speed and then find that that while we had made a 30 second improvement — competitors had made an unbelievable 2 minutes (or more) improvement!

September 2001:  Training, athletes and September 11th

By Torbjorn Karlsen

 Yes, the training was done this month — intervals, distance, biking and running — but it was a struggle. I was deeply saddened and emotionally drained by the events of September 11th. I ran in theUtah mountains and I guess that lends itself to moments of peaceful reflection. I found myself unconsciously going from a hard effort run to a walk, and even stopping as I would think things like: How can people commit such acts of evilness? How do I explain this to my kids? What world are we raising our children to live in? What will life be like for survivors of the attack? What will life be like for families that lost a loved one? And the real issue I struggled with: What is the point of running at times like this… or helping someone to improve their ski technique? How can I worry about things like that when the big picture is so much more significant?

For me, as well as for all of you, the September 11th terrorist attack has made an ever-lasting impact. The “why” of the events is impossible to answer or explain and I realize that for now, I need to remind myself to simply move on.

Ralph, a veteran of World War Two recently shared with the readers of the local Park Record a letter received from friends in Norway. Very nice and thoughtful words with a closing sentence: “Life has to go on. We owe it that much” That’s how we honor those lost (- Teri Orr, Park Record 9/26/01).

I also had several athletes that I’m coaching in town this month and it was harder than ever to focus on things like rest heart rates, lactate levels, technique and training hours. I’m sure that every coach and athlete in this country and world wide must have struggled with their own doubt and disbelief.

I have also been reflecting on all those athletes that cheat to achieve results. I hope they finally wake up and use this event as a turning point in their career — to become clean of EPO or steroids or whatever they are using to win and to bask in the glory of stolen fame.

Now that the world has changed, athletes and coaches can contribute by making sure something good comes out of this tragedy. I think everyone should start with cleaning up their own sport. A commitment should be made to ensure Olympic and pro sports are free of cheats and drugs. If someone is planning to compete at the 2002 Olympic Games then they should come clean now or don’t come at all. Winning athletes have the capacity to win without doping. The playing field would be even if cheating stopped now. It’s that simple.

Synonyms for terror are: fear, horror and panic. That is what terrorists want to create. What a miserable, low, lousy life that must be. We know, hard as it is, that life must go on. To stop life is to hand the terrorists what they want. Sport and training is very important to you or you wouldn’t have read this far. We all must participate, finish, ski faster than last year and still desire to beat someone that we couldn’t beat last year. That may seem small in the big scheme of things, but that is what life is all about — achieving your best, being nice to your neighbor and enjoying the freedoms we all have come to enjoy. So let’s move on and prove that terrorists can’t scare us into stopping what we like to do. We are just plain — not stoppable.

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