Skid-VM 1989 - Lahti - 4x5 km

MARJO MATIKAINEN is right.

1989

Yeah, they were, 12 years later. Although I do believe their system along with at least the Russian, Italian and Norwegian systems were full of EPO from early/mid-90's to early 00's, until the tests began to improve. And since then we've seen plenty of Russian, Estonian, Norwegian, Austrian etc. doping violations. The sport hasn't been clean and still isn't, sad but true. But I also believe the new generations might be cleaner than their predecessors. New (social) media platforms, sponsorships, and overall visibility mean bigger consequences for top athletes if they get busted, so the risks are higher. I really hope we're past the poisonous times of the 90's and 00's in this sport. I don't necessarily blame the athletes of those times, enhancing performance by any means possible was just deeply rooted in sporting culture in all sports. Either you use or you lose. Or either you use or you lose your place in the team. Difficult positions for athletes. And I'm sure some were happy to do it, I'm just saying it might have not always been a simple choice for an athlete, if they knew they were receiving forbidden substances.

@@rm_skis Your wrong on one thing tough, there hasn't been plenty of doping cases in the Norwegian team - on the contrary, from the WADA sources there's been ONE single positive test and that was caused by a lip balm that contained too much of a hormone substance that didn't even have performance enhancing properties. The athlete at hand went on to dominate when she returned as well so I would call that a terrible prescription mistake by her medical team. No athletes are tested as much as the Norwegians due to their dominant status in cross country, so I wouldn't call that "plenty" at all. The Russians however, my god now that's a different story! They practically invented PEDs. And the Austrians have had some really obvious and nasty EPO scandals, seems to me like nations like that need PEDs to even get top 5. Same with the Finnish team. I'm from Denmark myself so I have no dog in this fight but gotta be honest and give credit to the Norwegians for being a very clean nation in the context of winter sports. I've followed cross country skiing for 40 years and the sport is close to my heart.

@@Underhills And then there was Sundby's case which also resulted in a sanction. Just a lot of grey area stuff with the asthma medications over the last five years that I wish they would move on from. Johaug's case continues to be too much to buy for me, but I understand many believe it fully. Could I argue in the same way that Kuitunen returned to dominate the sport after being caught from a substance that has no performance enhancing properties? I could, but I wouldn't. Norway is the only country whose best male and best female skier have been sanctioned for some kind of misuse of substances since the Russian scandal. If that happened with any other country, they would be crucified and labeled as untrustworthy as a country. While I definitely don't think there's a doping system at place in Norway, Norway still seems to be so powerful in the sport that it's also easier for them to get a free pass when this stuff happens, also shorter bans than required by the rules. I'm a huge fan of many Norwegian skiers and I don't hate any of them, I simply wish we wouldn't hear about sketchy research projects or 1000% bigger asthma medicine supplies compared to other teams and so on every other year. It gets tiring. Also, there's no doubt in my mind that Norway was very much in the EPO race in the 90's with at least Italy, Finland and Russia. That was how you succeeded in the sport. No judgement, that's just how things worked back then. It's just that when it comes to Norway people often refuse to even think about the possibility that their pure dominance over magnificently doped athletes wasn't because of their genes or better training. I'm Finnish so I can't escape all bias, but I have to say I won't be convinced by anyone claiming that the current Finnish top skiers are on PEDs. If they prove me wrong some day, shame on them, I'll be devastated. Our past is a different story, but I think and hope the trauma helped to bring out a generation that sees these things differently. Advocating for clean sport in the whole of sporting world has come an immensely long way in even the last 10 years. Anyway, hopefully Seefeld brought us one step closer to clean sport.

@@rm_skis Asthma medication is very common in winter sports cause when your out in the cold doing anaerobic activities it has an effect on your lunges and it takes a tole on respiratory system. I know cause I'm asthmatic myself and each time I return from a skiing holiday abroad I feel like shit. Because asthma is very common with winter athletes and especially within the endurance disciplines they have a clear set of rules in the WADA system for usage and dosage. That's not because the medication has PED properties but because they have rules and regulations for ALL medication in order to make things transparent and easy to follow, not because its a PED as such. Almost every cross country team of some size have asthmatic athletes and they place all over the table. You have athletes placing consistently last that consumes the same amount of asthma medication as someone who consistently place top 5. So it's not that big of a deal really. If you look at Norway they have been winning large in almost all winter sport disciplines for over hundred years. It's connected to discipline, knowledge, culture and training systems. When Russia and Italy was dominating cross country skiing the sport was drugged, a good tell sign of that is when the Norwegians are loosing consistently over time, then you know the others a doping. I've been right in that respect for decades. I said it when Muhlegg won for Spain, when the Germans started winning in biathlon and not least when the Russians won heavily on home turf in Sochi. Every single time I've felt something was fishy and every single time I've been right. You have never heard of any Norwegian cross country skier taking EPO but heaps of Russians, Germans and Italians have been caught taking it. They have a very different PED culture in those countries. Since your Finnish I wanna end my post by endorsing the Niskanen siblings. Although the Finnish team have been caught doping heavily with EPO earlier on I both hope and believe that talents such as Iivo Niskanen is all natty. He's one of the best athletes in the classic style discipline and I know for a fact that alot of his competitors agrees on that.

I know all that about asthma, I just find it a gray area when they recommend that healthy athletes use nebulizers and all that stuff even when the athletes don't ask for it. It's unnecessary and I hope they actually learned their lesson after they promised to take a look at their practices after the Sundby case that FIS very oddly decided to cover up until WADA intervened. After all, high use of a nebulizer can act as a masking agent for other drugs and can also have similar effects to steroids. Again, I'm not accusing, I'm just hoping they would get away from these things so there wouldn't be anything to even wonder about. Good night!