I feel like I've done this post before, but people come and go from threads like these not realizing they shouldn't post without some background info.
Off-scores are not a unit of anything. There is no legal threshold between doping and not doping that can be seen in off-scores.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COkLrVEUsAAQfxF.png
That chart shows how off scores are determined. The egregious off-scores are the possible combinations of ret% and Hgb which could only be obtained through doping.
Combinations with very low ret%, for example, could only be obtained when the body has stopped making new red blood cells, indicating a transfusion. Or, a combinations with a very high ret% could only have been obtained through exogenous EPO causing the body to create huge numbers of new blood cells beyond normal. Same thing with high Hgb; it could only be obtained through doping.
There is a different chart for altitude, because some of the middle values of ret% and Hgb% have been agreed to be obtained naturally, at altitude.
And finally, the 1-1000/1-10,000 thing can be a distraction if you don't know what you're looking at. Those odds represent the certainty that a certain off-score is due to doping. These are most useful in the legal context of results management and sanctions, where there is a concern over false positives. It is not a tool with which to view off scores. It is not a filter through which to decide doping or not, it is a legal heuristic. Deciding that 1-1000 means the athlete is okay but 1-10000 the athlete doped is purely arbitrary, but done in order to translate the science into practicable legal terms.
So I will take a deeper look at what the Daily Mail says, but lets review where we stand so far, knowing only the three data points, and some background info from Paula.
To summarize my post from the third page of this thrad:
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&id=6740196&thread=6739631#6740196
-Pre-race, her off score was 82
-We know from her statements that before that race, she had an Hgb of 12 (from her autobiography:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COmn9jqUkAAROV5.jpg:large
)
- Inferring from the chart, her ret% was about 0.4%
-Paula's Vilamoura Half Marathon post-race blood test is one of the high off scores (114.9). Looking at the chart, that off-score was produced by a ret%0.4 and Hgb of 15.3 g/dL, (Off-score = 115.0).
So we're left wondering whether the conditions that changed her hgb concentration from 12 to 15.3 are possible clean? (Her ret% wouldn't have changed, even with a transfusion, as the body reacts slowly in making that adjustment)
She says that she became dehydrated. That is a normal reaction to hot weather racing, and a normal cause for hgb concentration to increase.
Here's what should be expected though. In a study of hot-weather running, on average, a 4% loss in body mass (water) is 1.6 g/dl of increased hgb concentration. The extreme in the study was 2.2 g/dl. According to the off-score and an assumed unchanged ret%, Paula's changed by 3.3 g/dl. (An elite can expect to lose 2-3 L of water typically, even 5L)
-She said in a statement that her Hgb increased by 2.8 g/dl.
-Even that represents a huge loss in plasma volume (The volume change to get from a concentration of 12 to 14.8 means that her post race volume is 81% of what she started with).
So we're left with Paula being in dire medical straits. But she still won the race, and by the largest winning margin, ever. Her assertion that her off-score was produced by the level of dehydration shown by the numbers is not comparable with the performance she put up that day. She could not have performed as well as she did, while dehydration causes her hgb to change so drastically.
So where did the extra hgb come from, if not by changed concentrations? I wager a transfusion.
This post got long, so I'll post a part two later.