The emperor has no clothes: Jemima Sumgong has tested positive for EPO!!!

Also if my English is not very good, I think I was clear enough in my post.

You start from a thought I never had : that the athletes we are speaking about, Mouhrit and Ramzi, were not doped.

I clearly accepted this as a FACT.

My point is the QUANTIFICATION of the effect of EPO on their performances.

Since many posters go to see times of Mouhrit (as 13'46") and Ramzi (3'44") as their REAL level before doping, and in this way they go to see how much improvement they had at their "doped" peak (12'49" and 3'29"), GIVING THE MERIT TO THIS BIG IMPROVEMENT TO THEIR DOPING ONLY, I went to explain that their situations changed completely from the period of their first performance, for the reasons I clearly wrote.

The second point, when I say that "However, when we discuss HOW MUCH IMPROVEMENT the assumption of EPO produced, the most part of posters continue to do the same mistake, connecting everything with doping only",

is not difficult to understand that I was speaking about the SPECIFIC SITUATIONS of Mouhrit and Ramzi, and the reasons because their training was very poor. And, because of their poor training, their performances were only 13'46" and 3'44".

Do you think that Armstrong (I'm tired to read ALWAYS the name of Lance as example of the effects of PEDs on every improvement : he had advanced technology, scientists behind his doping program, million dollars to use, so it's like speaking about rockets against bikes, when you want to compare his doping and the doping of African runners...), when was a triathlete only, so his training was not specific and not of top quality, could run near the best he reached after doping ? How much Armstrong changed in his training, when he decided to follow a scientific program of doping ? And, if he could train 2 months only every 6 months (what Mouhrit needed to do), do you think he could have performances similar what he had later ? And, in your opinion, the difference in the performances, in this case, was due to the fact he was not doped, or the fact he could not train because some phisical problem ?

What I say is very easy to understand : nobody can give the EXCLUSIVE MERIT of improvement to any type of doping, if doesn't know the difference in the situations of life, health and motivation.

Is not clear enough what I wrote : " About Ramzi, he had two years without any motivation and with very little training, before the offer to change citizenship becoming Bahraini. When Bahrain decided to look at foreigner athletes for creating their National Team, the first step was to look at runners Arabic speaking, so they went to contact Maroccan of second level. Ramzi, followed by Khalid Boulami, had for the first time a salary, and the opportunity to become a "professional" runner. For that reason, he started training very hard, twice every day, when before had no more than 5 sessions per week " ?

And, in this case, which is the reason of your comment :

Question: If Ramzi was training so very hard and is such a natural talent, why in the world did he use CERA? CERA is a 3rd gen potent EPO that only requires once or twice a month dosing for target Hct levels (btw, a few cyclists also got popped for it in 09). As you know, Ramzi's IC sample from Beijing tested positive in Feb/09 when Roach pharmaceuticals assisted WADA in identifying the molecule. It's clear Ramzi was glowing in Beijing when he won gold. Do you think he could have accomplished his gold winning performance without the use of CERA? If his natural ability and new found training that he discovered years earlier allowed him to accomplish all he has done, then why in the heck would he throw it all away on EPO? His positive test had catastrophic consequences; stripped of his Olympic gold and forever embedded in T&F's Hall of Shame. "If" EPO has a marginal effect on elite athletes, as postulated by some experts here, is Ramzi that stupid for taking it and/or his coach(s)/doping doctor(s) that dumb in advising him to take it?

You real didn't want to understand what I wrote. RAMZI DIDN'T TRAIN VERY HARD, but very softly : I clearly explained he had only 5 session per week, and after went to 13 weekly sessions. All your comment is useless, and not connected with what I wrote.

About your last comment, I can explain you because athletes continue to take EPO : BECAUSE THEY THINK CAN GIVE MORE ADVANTAGES THAN WHAT REALLY CAN GIVE, and they believe in this fact because the DOCTORS OF DOPING overrate the effects, IN ORDER TO HAVE A GOOD REASON FOR ASKING MORE MONEY FOR THEY SERVICES.

casual obsever wrote:

Obviously. The athletes and their coaches continue to notice enhanced performance in training while using EPO, and thusly continue using it despite the low risk of getting detected in OOC tests. They don't listen to the letsrun trolls. In the worst case scenario, the athletes can always escape from the testers, e.g. through the security of an airport or by not hearing the doorbell, and their NADO will treat that as an inadvertently missed test.

A very low risk of getting detected.

This from former WADA Director General David Howman and WADA (only 1 in 5 are being caught):

"Who gets caught?"

"The WADA Director General, David Howman, has drawn a distinction between “dopey dopers” who still have traces of banned substances in their system during major competition, and sophisticated cheats who are able to beat the system outside competition."

"While strides have been made in the out-of-competition testing regime, including the introduction of the controversial “whereabouts” policy that requires elite athletes in every sport to make themselves available for spot testing at any time, there are huge concerns about whether they are doing enough to keep up."

"Although sophisticated new methods are being developed to test for EPO and Human Growth Hormone, they are expensive and require refrigerated blood samples to be carried for sometimes thousands of miles to the labs capable of carrying out the tests. WADA is concerned the cost is preventing many countries carrying out as many tests for blood doping as they should be."

"It is feared that of the 258,000 tests conducted annually, as few as 2% include the blood tests that can detect the use of Human Growth Hormone. In 2010 there were just 36 positives – a total WADA regarded as “disappointing”. Across sport, there are fears that one in 10 athletes is attempting to cheat but of those only one in five is being caught."

Dopey Dopers wrote:

A very low risk of getting detected.

This from former WADA Director General David Howman and WADA (only 1 in 5 are being caught):

"Who gets caught?"

"only" 1 in 5? Much less than that, unfortunately. According to data from the University of Tubingen (is the IAAF still blocking the publication?), about 1/3 of the athletes admitted to doping:

"Researchers compiled the information from athletes who competed at the world championships in Daegu, South Korea, four years ago. The results reportedly show that 29-34% of the 1,800 competitors had confessed to using banned performance-enhancing techniques in the previous 12 months."

Dopey Dopers wrote:

[quote]casual obsever wrote:

to test for EPO and Human Growth Hormone, they are expensive and require refrigerated blood samples to be carried for sometimes thousands of miles to the labs capable of carrying out the tests. WADA is concerned the cost is preventing many countries carrying out as many tests for blood doping as they should be."

"It is feared that of the 258,000 tests conducted annually, as few as 2% include the blood tests that can detect the use of Human Growth Hormone. In 2010 there were just 36 positives – a total WADA regarded as “disappointing”. Across sport, there are fears that one in 10 athletes is attempting to cheat but of those only one in five is being caught."

http://blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/category/olympics/page/2/

So we were all led to believe that in 2000 they brought in blood testing to crack down on HGH, but this would indicate that it is still very difficult to detect. Hence world sprint records have continued to fall (for men).

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

So we were all led to believe that in 2000 they brought in blood testing to crack down on HGH, but this would indicate that it is still very difficult to detect. Hence world sprint records have continued to fall (for men).

Now this:

Mechano growth factor (MGF), a variant of the human insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), is completely undetectable and used at Sochi:

No worries though, because PEDs don't work on elite athletes anyway 😁

Endurance Sport Doping wrote:

So, why have elite athletes from all spectrums of endurance sports taken, and continue to take a PED that purportedly has very little effect on their performance? And the doping doctors in this equation? Surely, they have reviewed all the scientific literature on 02-vector doping, as well as the plethora of anecdotal evidence that exists. Why were they advising, and some continue to advise, athletes on 02-vector doping? Both Ferrari & Conconi were obsessed with 02-vector doping. Fuentes ran a blood bank & PED clinic that serviced dozens of athletes. They must have be convinced from the anecdotal evidence that EPO provides a significant benefit with elites. Otherwise, if the risk of getting caught far outweighs any potential benefit, why do athletes continue to use EPO?

Part solution to the problem is how one depends on how one defines the term "very little effect on their performance". For instance, in the latest (2016) yearlist for 5000 meters, the difference between first and 23rd was less than one percent, so financial returns in enhancing performance by only fractions of a percent could elevate future income so much that the risk of getting caught isn't an issue particularly when rEPO is a very cost-effective way to elevate total hemoglobin mass. Even you have emphasized that due to microdosing regime and insensitivity of the ABP program, athletes can easily cheat the system, so even you are claiming that there is actually not that much "risk of getting caught".

As I have stated elsewhere, athletes use their financial resources to supplements such as antioxidants, colostrums, fancy amino acid derivatives and even larger fortunes to high altitude simulating equipment even when the effects are far from unproven. None other than Greg LeMond has stated that in the 1980s there was a huge overconsumption of antioxidants in the cycling community and now it is the consensus view that it is actually detrimental for the adaptation process to training.

As you seem to like to refer to Lance Armstrong, he and the USPS used the fancy product called Actovegin for a brief time around 1999-2000 and seem to have dropped it after the Tour de France waste scandal of 2000 even when some of his rivals continued to use it (as well as a variety of other drugs not apparently used by the USPS) under the guidance of Eufemiano Fuentes. The USPS didn't fall behind other teams during the following Tours, so most likely the effect of Actovegin as well as a large part of the Spanish arsenal was next to nothing.

This is not to claim that the so-called O2 vector doping is useless particularly during the latter half of the multi-week cycling races when total hemoglobin mass may fall due to over-exhaustion, insufficient recovery and androgen depletion. On the other hand, not all of the clients of Fuentes were top elite level cyclists (I have recollection that whistleblower Jesús Manzano's Vo2MAX was around high 60s in the Puerto material) and if the annual price to access Fuentes's high-glycerol freezer was 50000 euros, the Spaniard had incentives to overstate its effect. As Tyler Hamilton stated in his memoirs, "Ufe always knew how to sell".

"Coach", you've lost all credibility. Years ago, on this board and almost in passing, you alluded to blood testing and blood values. Why blood test? Do you still blood test athletes?

Me thinks thou dost protest too much.

Enjoy the glory you experienced vicariously. Rationalize as you will. Anyone still reading anything you write is a fool.

Don't ask idiotic questions.

Why doctors ask for some blood tests, everytime a patient presents some problem ?

Do you think that, when we speak about coaching at top level, is it not important to test the blood values in order to know the "natural range" of the athletes, therefore it's possible, using investigations of routine every 1 or 2 months, to check the situation of the athletes, also looking at their future shape ?

For example, if an athlete has high level of Iron, but low level of Ferritin, we can say the athlete can be in good shape at the moment, but inevitably is going to a fall of shape in the next period.

In this case, what is the first action of a coach ? To change training, giving a period of 2 - 3 weeks without workouts of intensity in lactic area, and changing the diet (for example, eating more raw meat and crustaceans, which can enhance the level of Iron).

You are really mentally sick, relating every action with doping.

Between the naïve athletic vision of young athletes competing for fun in their high school, and the "great scientific vision" of the top athletes doped, there is the reality of the most part of athletes at top level, who have a coach able to control the situation, using the knowledge of medicine, physiology and psychology in polite way, for helping the athletes to reach their best without shortcuts and respecting all the values of loyalty, primary with themselves.

Aragon wrote:

As you seem to like to refer to Lance Armstrong, he and the USPS used the fancy product called Actovegin for a brief time around 1999-2000 and seem to have dropped it after the Tour de France waste scandal of 2000 even when some of his rivals continued to use it (as well as a variety of other drugs not apparently used by the USPS) under the guidance of Eufemiano Fuentes. The USPS didn't fall behind other teams during the following Tours, so most likely the effect of Actovegin as well as a large part of the Spanish arsenal was next to nothing.

Actovegin was worthless and had nothing to do with LA's rise from a non-GT contender to a multi-Tour Champion. He never even bothers to bring up Actovegin in the CU presentation, nor in any other interviews for that fact. LA is the profound example of what kind of results you get with a high response to the high-octane coctail of 02-vector doping & HGH. He clearly says that he received a 10% increase in performance from his high-octane program. Factor in the restructuring of his training stimulus significantly improved with the PEDs, his uncanny luck in avoiding crashes & staying out of trouble, and you got yourself a 7-time Tour champ. Nothing short of incredible with hormonal doping & a high responder. Check out his presention @ the very beginning and @ 3:15:

I'm not so sure actovegin is useless, personally I suspect there needs to be testing in a more sophisticated way to clarify this matter. There is evidence that it speeds up recovery of injuries like for example serious hamstring strains. This may hint that it helps enhance the body's ability to utilize androgel, hgh or testosterone-like substances for strength gains. There are some reports actovegin is a circulation enhancer.

Federico Rosa in 2015:

http://www.nation.co.ke/sports/athletics/Gabriele-Rosa-Athletes-Blood-Testing-EPO-Rita-Jeptoo/-/1100/2603974/-/op85t3/-/index.html

Gabriele and Federico Rosa in 2017:

"In addition, from that time on, we began to carry out blood tests on athletes to monitor any changes in blood values that are the basis of the biological passport, or any abnormal values. In the first year of this activity, we fired 2 athletes who had non-conforming blood tests and removed one who refused to undergo controls, informing IAAF, AK, teammates, managers and organizers about our decision and our doubts."

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2017/05/agents-federico-gabriele-rosa-answer-questions-doping-kenya-jemima-sumgongs-positive-test/

Who were the other Rosa athletes with abnormal blood test results?

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2017/04/trip-possible-doping-camp-kenya-saw-spent-day-olympic-champion-jemima-sumgong/

wejo:

"Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, fool me three times… I feel stupid and angry."

In conclusion:

1) wejo-rojo is stupid.

(This is not a big surprise.)

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

I'm not so sure actovegin is useless, personally I suspect there needs to be testing in a more sophisticated way to clarify this matter. There is evidence that it speeds up recovery of injuries like for example serious hamstring strains. This may hint that it helps enhance the body's ability to utilize androgel, hgh or testosterone-like substances for strength gains. There are some reports actovegin is a circulation enhancer.

It could be part of the arsenal of dope that some athletes are using. The synergistic effects of the cocktail of drugs may be the miracle improvement some athletes have experienced. The combo of some of these drugs (e.g., EPO, HGH. T, cortisone, tramadol) has never been studied on either human nor animal models.

So, for some athletes it's full-throttle doping. Giro d'Italia winner Danilo Di Luca confessed to using a EPO/HGH/T/cortisone combo during his career. Interestingly, he says: "Doping improves your performance between 5 and 7 percent, and maybe 10 to 12 percent when you are in a peak shape." Straight from the horse's mouth 😁

Di Luca, "“Doping is not addictive, but it is an instrument of power: Who wins brings in the money to himself, to the team and the sponsors.”

“I could not have not doped.”

He indicated he used some form of doping his entire career: “But I only started the serious stuff in 2001.”

His 2013 Giro preparation: “It included doping and non-doping substances: vitamins, amino acids, supplements, protein, EPO, cortisone, hormones of various types, corticosteroids, testosterone.” (Sounds like a guy who lives in Oregon)

He used 500 units of EPO on April 28, 2013: “Fifteen years ago, before the hematocrit controls, some would do up to 4,000 units per day. Madness.” The testers came the next morning and he began the Giro on May 4. On a snowed-out stage three weeks in, the test result came out. It was his third EPO positive, and he was finished with cycling for good.

The biological passport came about in 2008, in Di Luca’s time: “It saved our lives. It stopped us all killing ourselves.”

Di Luca would inject everywhere: “Put the tourniquet and inject yourself, like a junkie. If you miss the vein, try again with the other arm. Even under the skin in the belly, the legs … It’s part of the job. If you get caught, then you timed it wrong, because everyone knows how many hours must pass before you won’t show positive. ”

The new anti-doping test for EPO brought about micro-dosing and brought back the blood transfusions: “It was complicated. You need the bags, sterilized and suited for blood. Only the hospital has them. Then there’s the problem of where you keep them. I know some cyclists who gave them to a masseur, a wife or a girlfriend." Sheryl Crow anyone?

On the eve of the 1999 Giro di Lombardia, he had a one-night stand: “Cyclists are known for being vigorous service providers, it’s all the testosterone they produce and devour. [The sex] took all my strength and softened my legs, and the next day I have 260 kilometers to race. I took some drugs to help stimulate the production of testosterone. I was strong, I was at front the whole race.” He finished second to Mirko Celestino that day.

The Giro has its temptations as well: “It’s full of girls: those from the caravan, the village, the podium girls. And the cyclists are full of testosterone, even if they are tired. They always want to screw. A caravan girl gave me her number. That night, we were in the same hotel. After dinner, I passed by her room and betrayed [my wife] Valentina.”

Valentina left him in the 2011 Giro: “I’m sorry she left, but I don’t suffer. Bike riding is suffering, the rest just a pity.” What a naughty boy.

Incompetent IAAF wrote:

He used 500 units of EPO on April 28, 2013:

...

The biological passport came about in 2008, in Di Luca’s time: “It saved our lives. It stopped us all killing ourselves.”

...

The new anti-doping test for EPO brought about micro-dosing

"microdosing"? Yeah right. Somewhat restricted doping would be a more honest expression.

Incompetent IAAF wrote:

The testers came the next morning

Also, what an idiot. Couldn't he have overheard the doorbell?

Lance has clearly said many things pre- and post-Oprah, of which some are true and some aren't. I find several reasons not to make any conclusions to any direction about his reference to the "10 % increase".

1) First of all, there is not a single clue what Lance or di Luca actually mean by the reference to "performance". UCI chief Hein Verbruggen put it even better in 2001 and claimed that rEPO elevated "performance" by 20 %, once again neglecting to provide any definition what the hell he was talking about..

2) When an athlete is busted, it is really tempting to play the victim card and claim that it was impossible to compete clean particularly in the milieu where doping use has been extremely prevalent in the past. This even may have been the case, but is still easier to emphasize the point by overstating the magical effects of the drug. If one tries to opposite by claiming that the PED has only a miniscule effect, he is considered either a liar or a lazy.

3) Lance's structuring of the sentence is not totally clear, but if I am following correctly, he assumes that also his rivals in the 1993 UCI Road Championships were only on "low-octane" doping. First of all, this is unlikely, as there is solid evidence that cyclists were taking rEPO already in 1993 and even up to some three years earlier. Secondly, the whole idea that any clean athlete could beat a group of rivals using a drug giving something like 10 percent advantage in direct speed or FTP is also not fully convincing even when one takes into account draft effect and team strategy. Still even cyclist Tyler Hamilton vouched for the idea in his memoirs writing the following:

Interestingly, by your own admission that Actovegin is "worthless", you implicitly admit that it is possible that a bulk of one generation of riders can succumb to use a worthless drug and still think that it gave them a boost when it was all a placebo effect.

They may be talking about climbing & TT's. Both are the primary components of success in a GT. Keep in mind that LA improved exponentially in both of these areas. Some of his TT improvement could have been helped by advancement in his equipment, as well as the time he spent in the wind tunnel. On the flip side, his improvement in climbing was out of this world. He essentially went from a non-climber to one of best climbers in the history of the sport - mind boggling when you consider the power of 02-vector doping with a high-responder. Also, FWIW, LeMond doesn't think LA would be any better than 30th place at the Tour clean:

I would disagree. On the contrary, it's usually the other way around with most athletes caught. For example, Ullrich has said "the main factors contributing towards his success in cycling were pure talent, effort, team spirit and the will to win." He says he only blood doped and did nothing else with Operation Puerto, and further denies any doping earlier in his career when he won the Tour (1996) with Telekom. However, Team Telekom has been implicated in systematic EPO-doping starting in early 1995.

And Alenjedro Valverde doesn't want to talk one bit about his adventures with Puerto. He says he was good before the ban and even better after, and that "nobody doubts" his performances anymore. Okay Piti...whatever you say:

If we're viewing the same video from the CU presentation that I posted, I think you misunderstood what he's conveying. He says his 93 WC win was "EPO free," though "low-octane" doping was involved (unfortunately, he doesn't elaborate as to what "low-octane" substance(s) he was using). He then says the following year while wearing the rainbow jersey, he was getting his "ass kicked" by the EPO users, which therefore influenced his decision to go high-octane (not a good thing to get your "ass kicked" while wearing the rainbow jersey 😁).

In a follow-up post to Subway Surfer, I mentioned that it might be used as part of the arsenal with the high-octane PEDs (i.e., rHuEPO & rHGH). What say you: Do you think it's effective? What does the science say? Historically, very few athletes ever mention using it, as the attention is always focused on their usuage of "rocket fuel."

Cycling is in the Air wrote:

I would disagree. On the contrary, it's usually the other way around with most athletes caught. For example, Ullrich has said "the main factors contributing towards his success in cycling were pure talent, effort, team spirit and the will to win."

Right, and Zabel claimed ("admitted", lol) that he only doped once, and stopped right away because it didn't help. I am still laughing.

This is a matter of subjective reading of the material but I still disagree, because many dopers do play the victim card and it gives a rationale to overstate the benefits. My reading is that Valverde nor Zabel aren't confessing pretty much anything and Ulrich doesn't downplay the benefits of doping, but assumes that because everyone was using more or less the same arsenal, it was a level playing field. It would even be a logical fallacy to claim that PEDs would barely help and in the next sentence claim that "All I wanted was everyone to have the same chances of winning".

Where I got the idea first place is by reading through the confessions, where you can easily find the following type of sentences:

"[Bo] Hamburger, a former Tour de France stage winner, also said doping was so widespread within the sport at the time that it was impossible for clean riders to keep up."

"Commenting on the pervasiveness of doping in cycling, [Jörg Jaksche] added, "It's perverse, but the doping system is just, because everyone dopes. Cycling without doping is only just when really no one is doping any longer... The logic is you adjust your performance level to the rest, because everyone is doing it."

I am pretty aware that Armstrong succumbed to rEPO use only in 1995. My point was exactly that even when one takes into the account team strategies, wind resistance etc., anyone on "low octane" wouldn't too obviously win a group of rEPO dopers gaining ~10 % of speed/Watts , particularly not in a solo attack. And when there is some fragmentary evidence of rEPO use as early as 1990, by 1993 it was prevalent, so possible even a majority of Armstrong's rivals were on "high-octane" doping in the 1993 World Championships and still the Texan won.

There is no context, so by "10 %" he might've been referring to pretty much anything. My reading is that 10 % is a nice and round figure and ten times more than 1 %, and he just wanted to give some subjective opinion of the magnitude.

I think that even you are aware that LeMond isn't particularly an impartial witness on Lance's natural capabilities. On the other hand, Lance's teammate Phil Anderson is in friendly terms with the Texan and wasn't particularly impressed of his TT and climbing capabilities. Interestingly even when Lance's another Motorola teammate Stephen Swart provided David Walsh with information against him and even testified against Lance in the SCA-arbitration hearings, he still considered Armstrong a champion quality cyclist. Very contradictory material.

The key testimony what I do find hard to circumvent is that even when Michele Ferrari was really selective about his clients, he could still see a huge talent in the Texan since the first tests with him in 1995. I think that scientific training and the possible body restructuring can explain most of the success in both climbing and in TTs. One could argue how much of the success of the scientific training was PED-related, I think it is fair to say that Ferrari has above-average knowledge about cycling training than just telling his clients to keep their hematocrit high. Even when there is some debate about the magnitude of the post-cancer body reshaping and weight loss, even Tyler Hamilton tells in his memoirs that Lance was significantly less bulkier when he entered the USPS in 1997 than he had been before.

Last word on Actovegin. There is still no conclusive evidence whether Actovegin enhances performance, but based in the USADA material, there is no reference of it having been used by the USPS after 2000 whereas some clients of Fuentes used it and still couldn't dethrone the Texan. The point is and was that it was one another substance that was promoted by doctors and used by cyclists that had most likely almost no benefit. The reference (as with antioxidants) was to the culture of taking all kind of products that would barely help "just in case". It remains to be solved how much of the magical effects of rEPO is actually placebo, but I was stunned when 62 % of the rEPO subjects of the (unpublished) Dutch study thought they were getting saline via needle.

Aragon wrote:

It remains to be solved how much of the magical effects of rEPO is actually placebo, but I was stunned when 62 % of the rEPO subjects of the (unpublished) Dutch study thought they were getting saline via needle.

That's not really surprising. You can't "feel" the effects of EPO. It only reflects in your long-term results.