Topic: "Clean" 200/245

[Dirk Wilcke]

So what's the direction of inference here? Weight is heavier than done by US lifters -> Guy must be on roids?

I obviously have no idea whether Steiner is clean or not. I am not associated with him, his coaches or anybody else in his circle of influence and even if I was, I would not probably not know. I would not be in the least surprised if he uses restoratives that are not allowed. However, it is usually implied in this forum and others that US lifters are clean. This could be because there is a lot of testing going on in the US, or because Americans are of a higher moral caliber than other athletes. I am assuming the former. In this case, I think it should be allowed to retain the presumption of innocence for other athletes that are being tested a lot. Or is it assumed that US lifters are clean because they are not competitive at the highest level? What numbers are achievable with legal means?

[Danny Nemani]

Not a very positive topic, but good reading.  Kinda throws alot of speculation out there especially if you are not associated with the suspected/ protected lifter being mentioned.

IMO I wouldn't have the slightest clue if anyone was clean or not.  So I couldn't say either way.

[Dirk Wilcke]

arthur chidlovski's site is interesting in evaluating drug use when you take a look at world record progression over the years.

The attached file maps (SHW) snatch world records against the respective year in which they were established. Without conducting any real analysis, I'm not exactly sure what the graph tells me about drug use or any factors for that matter, except that something was going on in the early 70's and that there was an institutional effect in 1993. The only thing I see is a pretty constant and roughly linear time trend (with respect to absolute increments, which seems to make intuitive sense).

Of course, if we add the a priori assumption that weights over, say 200kg, are not feasible without drug use, the picture would tell us that something has been fishy since the late 70's. But I think we are looking at the data to infer something about drug use, not in order to confirm our priors. So what exactly do we learn by looking at the world record progression?

[Walter Bailey]

I'd say its probably zero. But, I believe Shane Hamman could have done it if he had started the sport 4 years earlier

If he could have done it, what's to say that somebody of a similar caliber in another country who did start early didn't already do it?

[Yechang Lee]

Korean lifters may clean, not sure though.

before 90's, when doping test wasn't enough, korea was not so good at weightlifting.


anyway 2 lifters did 445kg over total. one is Sangkyun Jun, and the other is Taehyun Kim.

[Dirk Wilcke]

If we look at the increments (improvements from one record to the next) we can basically identify two structural breaks in the snatch data. One is 1975, where there is an 11kg jump between years and one in 1993, where there is a -16kg jump between years. It is clear, where the 1993 jump comes from.

If we partition the data from 1925 to 1974 (ignoring the first 1919-1924, in which the increases are very large), 1976-1992 and 1994-2008, we have average increases per year of 1,3kg in the first time period. The increases during the "doping" period are 1,6kg per year (given a high absolute level). The increases in recent years are 0,9kg per year. The respective growth rates are 0,9%, 0,8% and 0,5%.

So what we do appear to be seeing is a levelling-off of increases, both in terms of absolute and relative gains. This makes sense I would suppose. Of course, 1976-1992 is certainly identifiable as a special period.

If we look at the period of 1920 to 1974, we see that it took 10 years (starting in 1920) to add 10kg to the world record. Further 10kg increases were generated in (approximately) 17, 4, 10, 3, 7, 3 year intervals. The 17 year hickup is WWII. So there seemed to be quite some action going on in the period of 1960-1974, but I don't know whether this already had to do with drugs. What is interesting is that it took longer to go from 200kg to 210kg during the "doping" period (8 years) of 1975-1992, as it did in the post-1993 period (7 years and that was straight to 213).

I am pretty sure that it would be very difficult to use pre-1974 data to infer an upper bound for drug-free performance. Even if we assume that a non-linear model with some given upper bound makes sense a priori (e.g. because of physical laws), any such bound would most probably be estimated to be well over 210kg given 1919-1974 data. In order to get a lower bound, one would probably have to show that most of the 1920-1974 gains are due to technological factors (e.g. better bars, better lifting technique), so that the actual gains driven by strength/speed improvements have always been quite low (and where already pretty irrelevant in the late 60s). Maybe data on technological factors could be generated by looking at multiple sports.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I am still not sure what I learned about drug use through looking at world record progressions. I am pretty sure it gives no immediately reasonable information on whether 200kg is possible without drugs or not.

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

So what's the direction of inference here? Weight is heavier than done by US lifters -> Guy must be on roids?

I am making no such suggestion.

However, it is usually implied in this forum and others that US lifters are clean. This could be because there is a lot of testing going on in the US, or because Americans are of a higher moral caliber than other athletes. I am assuming the former. In this case, I think it should be allowed to retain the presumption of innocence for other athletes that are being tested a lot. Or is it assumed that US lifters are clean because they are not competitive at the highest level? What numbers are achievable with legal means?

I believe it is impossible to defeat the OOC drug testing system in the USA for long without massive amounts of money that simply isn't available and would give a very bad return on investment anyway. I believe the same is true in a slew of other countries, all also getting pummeled by the nations which embrace cheating or even systematically go about it. So, no, it has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with enforcement.

If he could have done it, what's to say that somebody of a similar caliber in another country who did start early didn't already do it?

I just don't think its happened yet. The supers are the only weight class I expect to progress over time without gene doping and I don't think the evolution has gotten to that point yet. Also, I think the USA is at the forefront of breeding larger and larger people and most of the World has less of them to draw from. Finally, I would say that if there was someone that could have done it clean elsewhere, they were most likely put on drugs before doing so.

[Dirk Wilcke]

Maybe someone with some knowledge of these issues can correct me, but I'm pretty sure that there is little "breeding" of larger individuals going on. People are taller and heavier than they used to be, mainly because nutritional habits have changed.