chrisobee

On form Rashid was clearly the form pick. Monty has not improved at all, in fact he is worse than when he first came into the team.

York 1.45 Peak District ew 4.05 Pintura- trained by Micky Channon 4.40 Full Speed ew 1x ew treble 3 x ew doubles

In truth at the level we would compete then unless you really were stupid enough to risk your health then nothing would make any significant difference I'd suggest. By that I mean you would need to take a banned substance to have any chance of a significant gain and even then it is not certain Of course at the very highest level and particularly in sprints medals are determined by hundreths of a second so I guess that in many ways explains the temptation to cheat. From a personal perspective I really don't think you can achieve anything unless you put in the training but also a great support group and a good coach in particular clearly helps a lot. I have run a couple of marathons way back in the 80's, both were in Southampton. My own training was purely self motivated and planned though it is fair to say I did have a good knowledge of training for sports, in particular football and to some extent Athletics. I was lucky that when I ran my PB of 3 hrs 15 for the marathon in 1982 everything pretty much went to plan, I avoided injury despite running 70-80 miles a week in training as well as gaining a great deal of fitness by doing something I loved which was dancing and it was the Ska era and fair to say I used to sweat buckets on the dance floor !! Then the morning of the race, I think it was early May, the weather was perfect. I ran totally to my own plan and it was over 2 laps around Shirley, Lordswood, The Town Centre and finishing on the Common. I ran pretty much equal times for both laps and felt great the whole way and probably could have gone around again ! I ran again the following year but did have a few illneses as opposed to injury which meant my training was far less and I struggled round in about 3 hours 45 minutes. Strange in many ways I should ever run a a marathon as at school I only ever did the 100 and 200 yards as it was then ! So for me anyway it's about self motivation and that is something which really impressed me with Jessica Ennis where she was motivated to the point of running eyeballs out in the 800 metres rather than running a la Daley Thompson and using it as a few extra victory laps. Then to still find a bit more in the home straight to win the race showed for me that she was not just content to win but to win by as far as she could, that is a great trait for any athlete. By the way I hate pasta Robsk !

LOL I believe it is him and he can travel through time!

Agreed, he had great natural ability anyway. Sub 10.00 was always within his range even without drugs.

A large part of the problem is that the use of banned substances is huge and many are either found in natural form and/or may be prescribed for medical conditions such as asthma. Linford Christie is an interesting athlete to look at. In Seoul in 1988 he was found to have excess levels of pseudoephedrine which can be found in many over the counter substances such as antihistamines and even in combination with Paracetemol and Ibuprofen. Christie escaped a ban/disqualification as he was given the "benefit of the doubt" by a panel but only by 1 vote. Interestingly though he was tested positive during the 200 metres and not the 100 metres in which he won silver after Ben Johnson was disqualified. It later emerged also that Carl Lewis failed a drugs test in the USA as did many American athletes in the build up to Seoul but the Americans chose not to disclose the results. It was revealed that Lewis tested positive three times before the 1988 Olympics for pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, and phenylpropanolamine, banned stimulants and bronchiodilators also found in cold medication, and had been banned from the Seoul Olympics and from competition for six months. The USOC accepted his claim of inadvertent use and overturned the decision. Fellow Santa Monica Track Club teammates Joe DeLoach and Floyd Heard were also found to have the same banned stimulants in their systems, and were cleared to compete for the same reason Christie was banned in 1999 though by this time he had all but retired for testing positive for nandralone. This substance is also found in some supplements and even avocados! UK Athletics actually cleared him but it was the IAAF who gave him a 2 year ban. Personally I felt at the time it was pointless him taking drugs to cheat as since I mentioned he had pretty much retired though of course it's often the case that people will form their opinions based on what they feel about a person. I'm not sure what substances you particularlty have in mind though caffeine is an obvious one as I believe it is now allowed in competition whereas I'm pretty sure that it was previously on the banned list. Apart from the obvious ones such as steroids and ampthetamines there are a whole host of banned substances. The use of drugs to enhance performance is considered unethical by most international sports organizations and especially the International Olympic Committee, although ethicists have argued that it is little different from the use of new materials in the construction of suits and sporting equipment, which similarly aid performance and can give competitors advantage over others. The reasons for the ban are mainly the alleged health threat of performance-enhancing drugs, the equality of opportunity for athletes and the supposedly exemplary effect of "clean" ("doping-free") sports in the public. So it is clearly a very complex area and I doubt it will ever be possible to absolutely be sure every athlete is clean though many are caught. I mentioned that the Olympic champions in the 10,000 metres for women was later disqualified, just watching now and 2 medal winners in the 2008 Olympics men's hammer throwing were also disqualified so on the one hand you have what might be termed a positive in that most drugs cheats are caught, the negative of course is that people become disillusioned with not knowing if a great performance is aided by drug cheating. However, I think most people who follow athletics would accept Usain Bolt ( and indeed Jessica Ennis) are clean athletes and historically most of the great athletes aside from those who did test positive at some stage were playing "by the rules" though when you discover an athlete of the calibre of Carl Lewis arguably should never have even taken part in the 1988 Olympics even that perception can be clouded somewhat.

We will in 2/3 seasons

Just announced, no Hants players selected : England one-day squad for NatWest Series and Champions Trophy Andrew Strauss (captain, Middlesex) James Anderson (Lancashire) Ravi Bopara (Essex) Tim Bresnan (Yorkshire) Stuart Broad (Nottinghamshire) Paul Collingwood (Durham) Joe Denly (Kent) Andrew Flintoff (Lancashire) Eoin Morgan (Middlesex) Matt Prior (Sussex) Adil Rashid (Yorkshire) Owais Shah (Middlesex) Ryan Sidebottom (Nottinghamshire) Graeme Swann (Nottinghamshire) Luke Wright (Sussex) England squad for one-day international v Ireland in Belfast Paul Collingwood (captain, Durham) James Anderson (Lancashire) Ravi Bopara (Essex) Tim Bresnan (Yorkshire) Stuart Broad (Nottinghamshire) Joe Denly (Kent) Andrew Flintoff (Lancashire) Eoin Morgan (Middlesex) Matt Prior (Sussex) Adil Rashid (Yorkshire) Owais Shah (Middlesex) Ryan Sidebottom (Nottinghamshire) Graeme Swann (Nottinghamshire) Luke Wright (Sussex) England squad for NatWest Twenty20 internationals v Australia at Old Trafford Paul Collingwood (captain, Durham) James Anderson (Lancashire) Ravi Bopara (Essex) Tim Bresnan (Yorkshire) Stuart Broad (Nottinghamshire) Joe Denly (Kent) Andrew Flintoff (Lancashire) Eoin Morgan (Middlesex) Matt Prior (Sussex) Adil Rashid (Yorkshire) Owais Shah (Middlesex) Ryan Sidebottom (Nottinghamshire) Graeme Swann (Nottinghamshire) Jonathan Trott (Warwickshire) Luke Wright (Sussex)

Lol, please don't start that again !

Good article in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/aug/17/ajantha-mendis-hampshire

Ok, he looks pretty good, "The Mystery Spinner !".

HTBH and say I'll have to google him, not a clue who he is !

The lovely Lisa goes in the 1500, the 1st round is tomorrow lunchtime.

Yes, Denise Lewis had to do the same thing in her career, they do make these heptathletes tough.It's nice to see the GB girls are invariably far less shall we say muscular than many of the others and certainly fit in every sense though of course I only really concentrate on their athletics ability

Yes, 10.00 is generally the benchmark which an athlete aspires to and puts them truly into world class. Bolt certainly has taken it to another level and could well go sub 9.5 though at the moment I'm looking forward to seeing what he does in the 200. That said he is an exception and anyone who can run sub 10 secs is certainly no mean athlete!

Indeed, even the great Jessie Owens never ran the 400 metres seriously, it's generally a case that an athlete will run 100/200 or 200/400 as Michael Johnson did though John Regis amongst others did run the 100 and 200 metres and ran some storming 400 metre relay legs but that's a lot different to running an individual 400 metres. Johnson never ran sub 10 for the 100 and has a PB of 10.09.It would be very hard for Bolt to run sub 44 for the 400 metres, Johnson's WR is 43.18 achieved at the 1999 World Championship. However, Bolt is the most dominant sprinter since Johnson and it with natural progression it would be foolish to say he won't run a WR 400 metre time if he puts his mind to it though the training for 400 metres would almost certainly reduce his basic speed even if it were only by 0.1-0.2 for the 100. I certainly can see him going sub 9.4 but probably 9.3 would be the very limit even for him.

As above it's not going to happen in most of our lifetimes.

Great, great, very great Grandson maybe!

Even for Bolt I cannot see him running 9.0 even with a gale force wind behind him ( which would not count for record purposes anyway) though 9.3-9.4 is not out of the question.

Windsor 8.05 Speed Dating/Shared Moment Reverse Forecast.

TBH being in Portsmouth is like being on a different planet never mind in a different country.

That as well as a Grand slam title I guess though you could hardly say someone like Bjorn Borg had charisma and as above more recently Sampras and Federer. Not everyone can be a McEnroe or a Connors and though the British seem to love gallant failures ( Tim Henman for example) for the athlete in any sport it's clearly better to be a "boring" winner than a loser with charisma In fact I'd say it's the mixture of personalities in all sports really that enables those with charisma to stand out.

I think you can compete on a motorbike in say Speedway TBH !

In Athletics the IAAF are the governing body. Clearly they have certain criteria for cheating and penalties. Clearly the major issue is drug cheating and it would be good if every country was made to follow the same guidelines for out of season testing etc;. However, it is fair to say drug testing is more stringent in some countries than others. In the UK the rules are pretty strict as evidenced by the 2 year ban for Christine Ohorogou for missing 3 drug tests. In addition the British Olympic Association deny any one caught taking drugs the opportunity to compete in any future Olympics so Dwain Chambers will never compete in the Olympics again though this is not applied in other countries. The Jamaicans have been criticised in the past for being too lax on drug testing though fair to say they have tightened their testing system. I do believe that overall the drug testing procedures are much stricter now than in the past though that's not surprising when high profile athletes are caught, eg Ben Johnson, Dwain Chambers, Linford Christie. However, drug cheats are still out there. I'm not sure what event it was yesterday, one of the woman's long distance events I think. The silver medallist from last year's Olympics has now been promoted to the gold medal spot after the winner failed a drugs test. The sad thing is that though she'll now receive the gold medal she deserves she was denied the chance to receive it at the Olympics themselves.

Yep, his only problem might be complacency, the amount of natural talent he has is ridiculous and unfair to everyone else! As I mentioned on the sporting forum I would love to see him really push himself and go for the 400 metre world record. Michael Johnson took that onto a different level and I think Bolt could be the man to break that record if he sets his mind to it. However, he might decide it is too far for him !