No blood testing in Kenya?

Okay, let me start by saying the following.

According to my information, you don't need a bloodtest to detect EPO, you need urine! The WADA says the following about this:

In June 2003, WADA’s Executive Committee accepted the results of an independent report stating that urine tests alone can be used to detect the presence of recombinant EPO. This report, requested by WADA’s stakeholders and commissioned by the Agency to evaluate the validity of urinary and blood tests for detecting the presence of recombinant EPO, concluded that urinary testing is the only scientifically validated method for direct detection of recombinant EPO.

Second: there is very regular dopingtesting in Kenya. If you stay in a camp, in Kenya, filled with top-athletes, you will see that almost every week several athletes are tested. They are normally tested on urine. However, I talked with the dopingcontrol officials in Kenya and they told me (contrary to what I read here) that since about 1 year they also started taking blood from some athletes. Anyway, about that I'm not sure, but urine is tested very frequently.

So, are Kenyan athletes using doping? Off course some do, the facts show that. But is it that easy to use drugs in Kenya? I don't think so.

You are right, EPO can be detected in urine, but the detection period is shorter than in blood tests, and third generation EPO is difficult to detect in urine. Other forms of blood manipulation are also not detectable in urine. Bottom line, if athletes know that they will not have to undergo blood tests, they can use this knowledge in order to adjust their doping protocol so that they can be certain not to test positive.

I don't believe UK Athletics, UK Anti Doping, or any other national organisation is performing blood tests on their athletes in Kenya, but if you have any information to the contrary, please let me know.

With all the attention that Kenya has recently received, I would actually not be so sure the presently situation will continue. Once it changes, it will be interesting to see if Mo & co suddenly discover that e.g. altitude training in the Bolivian Andes, the Atlas Mountains, or perhaps in Tibet, is much preferable.

There is just as much reason to prohibit athletes to be in Kenya for any length of time. You have nothing there you can't get in Davos or Boulder. And there are many more places with the overhyped altitude, and a track to run on.

Don't go places where there is no proper testing. Not much to ask.

Bigger question why doesn't the NCAA regulate testing for BCS football. Those guys are to the gills.

trollism wrote:

So what you are saying is that Wada go to Iten, they walk past all the doping kenyans and test only Mo and Paula and perhaps some other foreign athletes and ignore all those kenyans, then they go back home again?

No. Wada don't carry out the testing. British athletes are tested by the UK anti-doping agency, so are all athletes from countries with their own trusted system.

Nations without any national system rely on the IAAF to carry out testing out of competition on behalf of WADA. That's why the likes of Kenya and Jamaica have an advantage when it comes to escaping from the testers, particularly as it's not in the best interests of the IAAF to start busting their prize pigs.

Then why have they busted so many American top sprinters?

Obviously you have not seen much in life outside of the UK. You need to get out and see the world a bit.

In your fantasy world, Cacho's run in Barcelona was a one off, ott success. Yet a quick glance at the IAAF results shows that after Barcelona the guy went on to run 3-28.xx (faster than your blood-doped Seb Coe) and to win a handful of medals at European Champs., World Champs., and Olympic Games.

That would account for the substantial rise in AIDS over there.. Kenyans are probably sharing dirty needles, running until the disease catches up to them, then we never hear of them again!

This article leaves too many questions unasked, and doesn't provide the readers with any useful perspective. How serious are these seeds of doubt they are trying to plant?

This is WADA's job and mission. Is anyone at WADA concerned about lack of blood testing for EPO and HGH in Kenya? Has any anti-doping representative anywhere expressed a concern about East African athletes evading EPO detection? It would be way more interesting if Dick Pound, John Lahey, or Travis Tygart had expressed any related concerns with the adequacy of testing failing to catch cheats.

Athletes know what goes on in their sport. In cycling, many cyclists, and former cyclists, were casting doubts about their peers and about their sport for decades, if not longer. How do fellow athletes feel about East Africans dominating in long distance events? Have any vocal anti-doping athletes raised specific concerns about Kenyan athletes possibly evading EPO controls?

When did these concealed doping programs start? Can doping, and weak national doping controls, explain Ethiopian and Kenyan domination for decades? Ethiopia started in 1981 winning World Cross Country. Kenya joined the podium in 1986. These East African athletes have dominated with an amazing depth of talent, in an era that pre-dates EPO. Does anyone suggest that East African doping was so far advanced compared to the rest of the world, that they found a way to destroy the rest of the world, doping secretly, that Western athletes/clubs/coaches with superior financial resources and medical access just couldn't match?

What about Kenyans not based in Kenya? Sammy Wanjiru was based in Japan. Was he shielded by his federation's lack of Kenyan blood testing in Iten? Many people like to accuse Lagat, because of his failed "A Sample". How could Lagat benefit, living in the US, while other US athletes couldn't? Was the Kenyan federation somehow shielding their ex-athlete who switched allegiance to the US? Was the US federation protecting him, at the expense of their own US athletes?

Unless more answers are revealed, I simply don't see any parallels to cycling, and the very idea that wide scale East African dominance is explained by equally wide scale doping is less credible than the genetic/environmental explanations it seeks to discount.

It would be foolish to think that the success of East African runners is mainly due to PEDs. But the marathon times (just one performance indicator) have dropped considerably since the pre-EPO era, and this increase in performance is consistent with being assisted by PEDs.

Once PED use starts to be widespread* in a sport, provided that PEDs are effective, you have to be suspicious of any world-class performance. We know that's been the case in cycling and in sprinting, and there is mounting evidence that it's also the case in distance running.

*by widespread, I mean prevalent enough that the expected performance gain (for top athletes) is greater than the intrinsic variation in ability among the top athletes who use PEDs, so that it becomes extremely unlikely that the best clean athletes beat the best doped athletes.

In professional cycling or sprinting, the number of clean athletes is actually smaller than the number of doped athletes, so as long as there is any positive effect of PEDs, the best performers are more likely doped than not (and we have a stable equilibrium, which imho is the reason why it's so hard to rid these sports of doping).

We don't know what the numbers are for marathon running, but it looks exceedingly likely that the conditions for "runaway doping" have been met for some time - unless Canova is right and PEDs don't work for the best athletes.

When you look at the context, it's foolish to think PEDs play a significant role at all. If it did, then other nations' times would also drop.First, why do you say marathon times have dropped considerably? Between 1967 and 1988, it dropped almost 3 minutes in 20 years. Between 1988 and 2008, it dropped almost 3 minutes in 20 years. What makes this last drop in times "considerable"? Between 1947 and 1967, it dropped 16 minutes in 20 years. The drops in time are also consistent with races with paid pacemakers on fast flat courses, competed by many poor, yet inherently talented highland runners, with national role models, looking for a way to escape poverty.If it were so easy to drop marathon times with PEDs, why aren't more nations doing it? Why are there so few non-East Africans with sub-2:07 performances? EPO, and every other drug, is available worldwide, not just East Africa. In the cycling, doping was not confined to one geographical region, but practiced on a world-wide scale. Every participating nation benefited from doping (notably not Africans though). So we know that westerners are responders to PEDs. And we found out that it's not all that hard to escape from the testers even in nations who do blood testing for EPO and HGH. What is it about long-distance running that prevents the rest of the western world from the huge benefits of doping, and dropping their own marathon times considerably? Their national federations blood testing for EPO? Did their nations' cyclists use up the doping budget?You are making a lot of statistical references about expected performances, and conditions for "runaway doping" being exceedingly likely. Why is a drop from 2:07 to 2:04 in 20 years unexpected? Where is this mounting evidence in distance running? All I see is mounting speculation.

No way out wrote:

Obviously you have not seen much in life outside of the UK. You need to get out and see the world a bit.

In your fantasy world, Cacho's run in Barcelona was a one off, ott success. Yet a quick glance at the IAAF results shows that after Barcelona the guy went on to run 3-28.xx (faster than your blood-doped Seb Coe) and to win a handful of medals at European Champs., World Champs., and Olympic Games.

Clearly I've seen and studied more than you!

Cacho never broke 3:32 prior to 92 and continued to run no faster than 3:32 for 5 years after, until 97, the height of EPO use, when out of the blue he runs a 3:28.95.

The thing about Cacho is that he rarely won races on the circuit or in Champs throughout his career, and he certainly wasn't 3:28 material based on what he had done before. Moreover, it wasn't so much the fact he won in Barcelona (home ground) but rather the way he won it. His last 400 was 50.5, and the 200m from 1200 to 1400 was 24.5!! That is faster than anything produced in a championship 1500 by the likes of Morceli or any of the greats, including those who were likely on EPO in the late 90's/early 00'. Indeed, it makes Makhloufi's corresponding 200 burst of 25.3 in London (of which so many use as evidence to claim "Foul") as a jog in the park.