Old Athletics world records expunged?

[Exit Stage Left]

I might extend this into the world of music. Sergeant Peppers is reckoned to be the best record of 1967, but all this talk of drugs has made me think again. Perhaps 'Val Doonican Rocks, But Gently' should replace it in the charts.

[Jaded]

It's pretty much insoluble.

You need to find a better solvent for that drug then!

[mattc]

My twopennorth, for what it's worth (I struggle with inflation):-  Leave the records as they are, unless it can be proved that someone doped.  Sadly, you can get a good suspicion just by looking at Flo-Jo - but that's not proof.  The steady money is in appearences and most people, I would imagine, watch sport to see who wins, not whether or not they will beat a world record.  It's ages since Usain broke a world record but he's not short of viewers when he runs.  The proposal doesn't even do what I think we would all like to see done, which is restitution for those who were beaten by dopers.  Leave it alone and get on with cleaning up what we have now.

+1

If an event is only interesting when a record is threatened ... well it's probably not a great event.

[Wowbagger]

When did world records start? In athletics, I would imagine that they started with the inaugural Olympic Games.

Referring back to my post about fishing, I have a book in front of me entitled "The Domesday Book of Mammoth Pike" in which the author, Fred Buller (long since deceased - this book dates from 1979) compiled a list of reports of very large pike caught through the ages and rates them according to size and credibility. The fish he rates as probably the World Record pike dates from 11th May 1862 and its credibility is based on a letter to the local paper (he reproduces the letter). The pike was allegedly 90lb 8oz in weight and was 5' 8" in length and caught in Lough Derg. No-one was talking about records of any kind, presumably because it have never occurred to anyone to record such things.

I have cycled alongside Lough Derg and it is a monstrous lake, with the Shannon flowing through it.