Usain Bolt... Bloody 'ell!

I think they should drop testing, let all of em shoot up with as much gear as they want, then watch world records get continually smashed, it would make things a lot more interesting.

one of the great things about athletics is that it allows people with talent and dedication but without much money succeed (unlike many other sports). if you allow drugs, then straight away it becomes about who can afford the best drugs (which are much more expensive than a pair of running spikes).

Plus who gives a shit, they all do gear to one degree or another, all of them, anyone at that level pretty much HAS to if they want to stay competitive.
So please lets stop the pretense, some of them are just better at getting away with it than others, plus they have some of the best chemists in the world working to create stuff that can't be picked up by the testers, advising them on how to cycle their drugs etc etc etc, to normalize hormonal levels in their bloody stream around times they "might" get tested....plus of course, most of the time they know when they are going to be tested.... well in advance.

this is all complete and utter bollocks. i don't even know where to start with it, there's not a single true thing in this paragraph. i am friends with quite a few elite track and field athletes and none of them are on drugs (and yes, they would absolutely tell me if they were). they are naturally gifted and train like motherfuckers, most of them at great physical and financial cost to themselves. your casual ill-informed judgment is offensive, and just fucking wrong! they don't have chemists working for them, they don't know when they're going to be tested (apart from after comps), and often their federations/sports institutes won't even pay for a physio to travel with them, let alone a dodgy doctor!

sure there have been athletes busted for taking illegal substances, but honestly it's nowhere near as prevalent as people think.

Go attend a powerlifting event, and see just how many people in the so called "natural divison" or whatever its called these days, show symptons of steroid and or HGH use, one of the reasons I couldn't be arsed with it in the end, I got close to what I believed were my bodies natural strength limits, I was benching 120kg, squatting around 160kg, and deadlifting 200kg at a bodyweight of over 17 stone, I was taking a lot of supplements, pretty much the strongest stuff you could take without moving onto hormonal things.
I was almost at a point where I would have had to taken gear to move further up from where I was in terms of my level of strength, I came within an inch of doing so, but decided it just wasn't worth the potential long term health problems, I gave up any kind of serious training shortly after, I may well take it up again, but probably never at the same kind of level.

good on you.

i used to be a serious track runner, at state and national level, but i realised that i wasn't good enough to compete at the elite level. it was obvious that there are people better than me. faster, stronger, with better endurance. just better. and it's nothing to do with drugs.

IMHO accusing people that are better than you of being on drugs looks like sour grapes.