Now it gets interesting, Zane Robertson's ex-girlfriend Betty Desalegn (Jama Aden athlete) is busted for Biological Passport

I never doubted that the belief in EPO is widespread. I measure performance with a stopwatch, not the stock market. Assuming high prevalence of EPO in the "west", and high effect of EPO, it is all the more puzzling that "western" times were so slow over the course of two decades, when it was so easy to evade detection. When you showed the nations records, I asked you to compare the magnitudes of the progression (typically less than 1%), to East African changes (up to 3%). If you find a small nation with more than 1%, it will be because of a slow pre-EPO time, and not a fast EPO-era time, a statistical artifact of a small sample size. Some small progression over two decades should be expected, and less than 1% is not so out of family that it requires, or supports, the necessary presence of a game-changing drug. If EPO works for East Africans just like everyone else -- the claim I'm discussing -- then, using "everyone else", the top athletes representing 85% of the global population for the whole period of two decades, as a foundation, EPO can only explain, at best, up to 1% of the performance drops, and ignores what caused the remaining 2% or more gains. We would have to assume EPO works *better* for East Africans, something absurd and counter-intuitive for high altitude natives adapted to perform in low-oxygen environments. Your "birth rate" explanation is a concession that the game-changing drug of EPO didn't change the game for the "west", for two decades. It doesn't matter the reason why the "west" cannot be used to justify the hypothesis that EPO helped the "East Africans".

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

I think that you're just teasing us ⤵for kicks and giggles. Well anyone that works in the Stock market knows that the companies making EPO variants are making a fortune. Yet hardly anyone is failing a dope test for this, and a certain percentage of the drug is going straight into athletic enhancement. So obviously sweet stuff all is being detected.

I have refuted the idea that countries didn’t have runners improve nation records in the 1989-2009 era. Only Britain, Finland and Sweden did not, and Finnish records were likely set by blood dopers. This was quite an achievement considering after birth control was introduced en masse in the late 1960s, western birth rates collapsed which coincidentally materialized itself in late 1980s/early 1990s talent pools.

In the west, we have a small handful (easily fits in Trump's hands) of exceptions under 2:07, like Da Costa and Hall, running 2:06, versus a hundred or so East Africans, running as fast as 2:03. Ryan Hall was faster than previous non-African Americans, and the pre-EPO era world record, but still slow. Even his non-eligible wind-aided 2:04:58 was nearly two minutes behind the winners.

fred wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

You are missing the point. In the context of "EPO works for East Africans, like everybody else", coming up with a list of East Africans running fast doesn't address the point that EPO didn't help "everybody else" run fast.

Remember the argument: EPO works for East Africans, just like it works for everybody else. Yet every time we look at "everybody else", they are not producing the fast times, even when on EPO, just like the East Africans.

(picture of Hall in front of East Africans)

In the meantime, you can attempt to show how much, if at all, EPO impacted top times of elite non-Africans.

mindweak wrote:

when he admits EPO works on elite kenyans i will post with my real name for life

It's not a strawman, but a failed attempt to keep you on-topic. Your claims are always all over the place, and always unable to contradict that EPO-era times from five continents are slow. The examples of Farah, Rupp, and Jager, besides being post-ABP, are still slow. If we think the fast track times of the '90s and '00s were EPO aided, then the slow winning times Farah should be strong evidence that track is now effectively clean. Baumann 's 12:54.70 is also slow, placing him 5th in that race, 13 seconds (1.7%) behind the winner, and today only just making the top-100 best performance. He only broke 13:00 that one time, and was busted (for steroids) years later. Baumann might be a good example in another thread about the impact of steroids in middle distance, or the benefit of pacemaking in a fast race. The case of the women is less obvious, because of the possibility of steroids, and the lack of depth of East Africans for cultural reasons. We know the Russians were making cocktail mouthwash of drugs, and we know that most of the Kenyan busts were for steroids. All this talk about culture, steroids, blood transfusions, and war, is a distraction, and a concession that the game did not change in five continents for two decades, and that EPO-era times for these native inhabitants are slow. In a ventolin-esque way, you are suggesting that we woulda, coulda seen the effects of game-changing EPO, if not for the previous game of steroids and blood transfusions. The example of Paula's 2012 sample is a classic open and shut case of dismissing a sample due to high altitude. This example also contradicts your "opposite recollection" of altitude already built in, since Paula's value was below the altitude threshold of suspicion, and is only flagged as suspicious against a sea-level threshold. I've already shown you that 3 weeks of 2400m can increase off-score for women by up to 14 points from Hgb alone, greatly increasing the chance of a false positive. It's not common to hear about these cases, because they are usually dismissed without making it public, precisely because of fans like you, who refuse to accept an expert determination of a false positive. It should also be noted that the 2012 sample is not yet past the statute of limitations, not subject to pre-ABP "excuses", and was subject to intense scrutiny by the WADA IC, with no special mention of significance. Your insistence that "at least one expert didn't believe the altitude excuse" just simply isn't convincing.

Nonsense, you have your own crazy definition of "slow", and fail to recognize obvious facts such as war and famine in certain African countries in the 80s.

Plus, you keep forgetting what you were shown numerous times, for example:

No it does not. You yourself admitted once that the ABP only curbs the doping a bit; you know very well that limited EPO usage (increasing Hct by, say, 10%) is still possible. See again Poistogova and Savinova.

Yes, keep telling yourself that.

Those are facts. Do you want me to prove those facts to you again? Or are you claiming that steroids and blood transfusions did not aid the non-African times of the 80s? Or are you claiming that war and famine have no impact on marathon training?

So, your many examples are actually... Paula? I, and others, have already shown you numerous times that it was not a classic open and shut case of dismissing a sample due to high altitude. For the 127th time: the first expert consulted by IAAF after her violation did not accept altitude as a valid excuse.

And likewise for the 127th time: you are also wrong about the relevance that "Paula's value was below the altitude threshold of suspicion". Paula's value got flagged, despite having "only" a hemoglobin concentration of 16.2 g/dl (lololololol), because it was higher than her individualized altitude threshold. That's how the ABP works: it's adaptive and individualized. That's also why the the first expert consulted by IAAF after her violation of her individualized ABP parameters considered doping as the most likely reason. Plus, what the expert saw, but you failed to mention: she had normal RET-% at that occasion, though after such a jump in Hct should have had much lower ones, like in 2003/5 - see what I mean with "individualized"? Open and shut case... you are almost cute.

Have you now? Even if, that would be irrelevant. The ABP is individualized. Try to keep up.

I really don't mind your constant personal attacks, as they say more about you than me, but please stop lying about me. I do accept an expert determination of a false positive, if it is justified. In Paula's case, as you know, the review is still kept a secret; we only know IAAF's claim about its end result, that the decision was not unanimous, and that Paula wrote on her home page that Saugy said that her 2012 violation might have been caused by altitude. Open and shut case, you wish.

rekrunner wrote:

It's not a strawman, but a failed attempt to keep you on-topic.

Another reminder: the thread is about Zane, his ex, and the ABP. But you have to discuss, at leeennggtthh, as always, your absurd theory that EPO does not work because Africans often beat Europeans and Americans and Asians. And of course, you love using Paula as example to prove your theory...

Ok, positive thinking: 5/10 for the trolling. Way too repetitive, but we can't stop correcting you, again and again and again. I for one will take break now, again.

I don't fail to recognise war and famine -- I just don't see how anything about war or famine in Africa is connected to non-Africans running sub-13, sub-27, sub-60, or sub-2:07, or somehow shows EPO effectiveness for East Africans. War and famine seem better suited to help me make my case, that East African improvement was due to other factors than EPO, like eating regularly and training consistently in times of peace. Steroids in the 80's probably helped the sprinters, field events, and the women. I'm less convinced about steroids of the 80's for endurance events, except again, maybe for the women. Blood transfusions would probably be less effective than EPO, if not at least because of the logistics of handling the blood, versus the convenience of taking EPO.

I never said I had many examples of high altitude false positives. On the contrary, I said we don't have many because false positives are generally not made public. We do know what Ashenden wrote in studies about high altitude, how it changes the thresholds, and the increased risk of false positives. I saw in the UK press, nine out of twelve UK athletes with suspicious values, were explained away. I guess some more likely candidates can be found on the "likely doping" list leaked by the Fancy Bears.

For the 127th time, the first reviewer's doubts, if any, died in the next stage of review, with the verdict "no basis to pursue". It was shut then, with altitude noted as a plausible explanation, and never re-opened. Your non-expert interpretations carry little weight, no matter how many times you repeat it. After review by Ashenden/Parisotto, and then a re-review by the IAAF, UKA, WADA and the WADA IC, even the British press finally let it go, and declared Paula "cleared".

Actually looking at your analysis, the simple evidence suggests EPO helped both East Africans and Westerners.

As for my statement about population decline, it seems even Alberto agrees. He said that there was a drop off in fast 2 milers coming through the system from high school (presumably potential EPO beneficiaries).

The example of Paula's 2012 sample is a classic open and shut case of dismissing a sample due to high altitude. This example also contradicts your "opposite recollection" of altitude already built in, since Paula's value was below the altitude threshold of suspicion, and is only flagged as suspicious against a sea-level threshold. I've already shown you that 3 weeks of 2400m can increase off-score for women by up to 14 points from Hgb alone, greatly increasing the chance of a false positive. It's not common to hear about these cases, because they are usually dismissed without making it public, precisely because of fans like you, who refuse to accept an expert determination of a false positive. It should also be noted that the 2012 sample is not yet past the statute of limitations, not subject to pre-ABP "excuses", and was subject to intense scrutiny by the WADA IC, with no special mention of significance. Your insistence that "at least one expert didn't believe the altitude excuse" just simply isn't convincing.

[/quote]

I may be wrong on this but although your hemoglobin rises at altitude, your reticulocyte levels (which are subtracted in the off score) also rise to keep a relatively stable score (within reason). Whereas under epo and autologous transfusions the reticulocyte level just plain falls while hemoglobin rises.

Again I could be proven wrong on this.

There are three possibilities. EPO helps East Africans 1) less, 2) the same, or 3) more than sea-level athletes. In my opinion, 1) Should be intuitive, if we think being born and raised from several generations of people at altitude is relevant 2) The worst case, if 1) is wrong 3) Ridiculous, but what you need to believe if you think EPO was THE major factor in the drops in world records in the '90s and '00s and the marathon today In this thread, I'm just following 2) to it's logical conclusion -- if it helps, it helps a little like it did in the West. It explains less than 1% of the progression, and other factors unique to East Africa, like genetics, environment, culture, and professionalism need to be explored to explain the remaining 2%. Throw in war and famine to please casual obsever. Population decline would reduce the depth of talent, but not necessarily the peak of talent. But regardless, if the talent pool stayed level, increased, or dropped to zero, it is ridiculous to say "We know it works for East Africans, because look how well it is working for the West", when things didn't work well for the West, especially in the presence of a powerful game changing scientifically proven 3-6% endurance drug that was untestable for a decade.

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

Actually looking at your analysis, the simple evidence suggests EPO helped both East Africans and Westerners.

As for my statement about population decline, it seems even Alberto agrees. He said that there was a drop off in fast 2 milers coming through the system from high school (presumably potential EPO beneficiaries).

Renato, most of the people talking here have spent extended periods of time in Africa, working and living shoulder to shoulder with athletes...they know their shìt LOL

I may be wrong too, but I guess: - EPO and altitude both stimulate new red blood cell production (RET) triggering a future increase in RBC, then a drop in RET - transfusions add RBC, triggering a future drop in RET - extractions lower RBC, which triggers new RBC production (RET) to restore RBC Because of these complex interactions, it is always possible to fabricate a doping scenario to explain every blood situation, whether doped or not. For 2012, I'm not aware of a before and after point for Paula. 16.2 g/dl is high, while an RET of 0.77% is on the lower side of the normal range of 0.5%-1.5%.

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

I may be wrong on this but although your hemoglobin rises at altitude, your reticulocyte levels (which are subtracted in the off score) also rise to keep a relatively stable score (within reason). Whereas under epo and autologous transfusions the reticulocyte level just plain falls while hemoglobin rises.

Again I could be proven wrong on this.

I would be interested if somebody published on here a list by country as to when Out of Competition (OOC) testing was introduced and actually enforced (the example being Jamaica has only in recent years). This could well clarify and explain many of the things we argue about.

rekrunner wrote:

Baumann 's 12:54.70 is also slow, placing him 5th in that race, 13 seconds (1.7%) behind the winner, and today only just making the top-100 best performance. He only broke 13:00 that one time, and was busted (for steroids) years later. Baumann might be a good example in another thread about the impact of steroids in middle distance, or the benefit of pacemaking in a fast race.

Another classic from rekrunner. Dieter Baumann, with multiple Olympic (including a gold) and other championship medals and a 12 54 5k time was "slow". The spurious argument is that Baumann's 5K PR is only ranked in the top 100 of all time but it blatantly fails to take into consideration the fact that millions of timed 5k races have been run.

Nevertheless I am surprised that you have not gone through great lengths to defend his toothpaste story.

Steroids have been shown to potentiate the effect the EPO:

Why do you think many distance runners were/are being busted for nandrolone? They were given the drug not only for its effects on muscle stength and recovery.

Yes, you can just see the argument from rekrunner to this will be something like- but those studies were only done in sick patients not in healthy athletes and until a study is done in world record holder athletes then you do not know. Basically asking for the impossible unless EPO and steroids were made legal in track and field. You can take that argument to the more extreme and say that you cannot know that EPO or steroids will work in any single given person unless you give them to that person (be they an Olympic champion or a Joe jogger) and carefully monitor the changes in their performance and their training. This is almost getting into the same category of thinking of flat earthers who argue that because you cannot actually see with your own eyes that the world is round then therefore ....

I can't understand what you mean by "constant personal attacks". I usually go out of my way to attack what you write, supporting my position with facts, and not you personally. In order to stop lying, I have to start. Sorry in advance for this lengthy paragraph -- I could actually make it much longer. Since you accused me of lying, I want to show to what extent you do NOT accept expert determinations, even when they are justified. Sticking with Paula's three "suspicious" points -- they were extensively justified, and yet, you refuse to accept the conclusions extensively supported by the ABP science, even when it was written by Ashenden. Instead you dismiss a great deal of scientific findings, and refute them with your own "non-expert" conclusions from non-consequential details like 30 C (when science shows 23 C after six minutes is enough), and 30 minutes versus 90 minutes (when science shows that at least 2 hours is required). You dismiss Saugy's expert conclusions, not on the merits, but on some collection of innuendo, attacking his character and integrity. His conclusions of "confounding factors" still stands. After making these kinds of arguments, you consider it "debunked", when the reality is different, because your arguments would receive a failing grade in any first year exercise physiology class. You take all of the benefits from the doubt about things we don't know (e.g. we don't know all of her blood values, so others might still be suspicious; or we don't know the individual votes of 3 panelists, or if one was Saugy), fabricating new doubt that didn't exist, and pretending this is a basis when it is not. Then when all experts from IAAF, UKA/UKAD, WADA, and WADA IC don't confirm your conclusions, you double down and extend the scope of the conspiracy, rather than accept what has been justified and accepted based on the science. You demonstrate perfectly why it is a mistake to leak internal intermediate documents to the public, and why it would be a mistake to make raw blood values without context, and the ability to interpret that context in perspective, and the will to interpret it objectively, available to the public in the name of transparency. You treat an incomplete, intermediate status, which eventually gets dismissed for plausible non-doping reasons, as a kind of scarlet letter scarring the athlete for life, and the routine dismissal as some kind of cover-up. Now for some fact checking. If I look at Paula's website, (Statement Sep 2015) she says (not Saugy) all three cases followed a prolonged period of altitude training. Saugy only commented on the 2001-2008 values, commenting on technologies used, the race conditions, and the existence of confounding factors, and NOT commenting on altitude as a potential cause. This is indicative of the kind of fact checking that is required for your "representations" of the facts. Actually "pop pop" took it off topic, making a statement about Renato, EPO and all elites. Maybe he was trolling me? I was directly responding to "pop pop" -- someone who should know better -- who misrepresented what Renato says about EPO and elites. I didn't argue *here* that EPO doesn't work, but that if it works for East Africans, *just like* the rest, it is important to understand how it *has worked* for the rest, using a relevant example today, of the half-marathon by the non-African Moen, making letsrun WTW highlights, while if he were African-born, would get much less attention. The performance differences and progressions between the East Africans and the best of the West, is not "my theory", but observable, historical, measured fact. You are the one who brought Paula into the conversation, three times in one post. You can correct me with facts, and sometimes you have, in the past. But you cannot correct me with distorted misstatements like "Paula wrote on her home page that Saugy said that her 2012 violation ...."

Not only androgens, but the synergistic effects of EPO & HGH. In the EPO era of cycling (both pre & post Hct upper limit rule) the standard combination was O2-vector doping (i.e., EPO/blood transfusions), HGH & T. From Reis to Pantani to Armstrong, EPO & blood transfusions were always used in combination with HGH & T. Riders have revealed that 02-vector doping seemed to be boosted with the addition of HGH & T.

I don't why this strategy wouldn't be used in distance running circles as well as other endurance sports. In the EPO era, you have numerous distance runners testing positive for both EPO and androgens separately. I don't think a runner testing positive for EPO would rule out the use of androgens & vice versa.

Olympic and championship medals don't necessarily go to runners with the faster PBs, as we have seen from the likes of Meb, Rupp, Farah, Centrowitz, and Stephen Kiprotich. In a discussion about performance, medal wins with slow times are a distraction. Slow is relative to the context. If I ran 15:00, of course, I would call that fast, even though it would not have won my state high school championship. Dieter Baumann was closer to Moorcraft's 1982 record (6 seconds) then he was to the race winner (13 seconds) in Zurich 1997, placing 5th, well off the podium, and essentially a non-factor in the race. For an EPO impact discussion, assuming, as some do here, and you imply, that Baumann, in the best non-African 5000m performance of all time, was already benefitting from taking EPO and steroids, a 13 second gap (1.7%) is huge. The record has since dropped another 4.5 seconds. I don't go into Baumann too much, because I only link him to steroids, and my interest is in performance since the EPO-era. There bizarre circumstances surrounding steroids in his toothpaste, and potential sabotage, have been discussed extensively elsewhere. Wikipedia has a nice brief paragraph on it. The existence of this study might explain the psychology of why there is a belief. But belief is not reality. The reality is Baumann was not found with EPO, and he was found with nandrolone two years later. To go beyond that requires speculation and assumption. Assuming the worst case argument, that he was benefitting from both EPO and nandrolone in 1997, and he is a representative best example, then we must look to other factors to help explain why 44 Africans have run up to 17.35 seconds faster then the best non-African of all time, or why so many first world nations, with access to better resources, have gotten doping so wrong, unlike their compatriots in other sports like cycling. Flat earth can be easily denied by things we can see, and observations we can measure. Ancient Greeks did this nearly 2500 years ago, by planting sticks in the ground, and observing the stars. This is what I ask for "at the top" -- evidence of something we can see and measure.

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

I may be wrong on this but although your hemoglobin rises at altitude, your reticulocyte levels (which are subtracted in the off score) also rise to keep a relatively stable score (within reason). Whereas under epo and autologous transfusions the reticulocyte level just plain falls while hemoglobin rises.

It's the opposite for the reticulocytes (hemoglobin *may* go up in all of those scenarios). So in order to stay within your own individualized thresholds, a cheat would

a) go to altitude to raise your threshold, raise Hb a bit, lower RET-% a lot;

b) at altitude add EPO, raising Hb and RET-%. Pre-comp only.

(Note that some values discussed there were extrapolated, and later corrected, e.g. the 23% Hb increase after the half marathon in the low 70s was corrected to 30% once the real numbers came out. )

Tempting, isn't it? Now look at the numbers we know from Paula.

Close to competition, where one wouldn't use EPO anymore, her post-altitude values were Hb's of 12 and 13-something, and RET-% = 0.4.

The rather low Hb values are corroborated by Canova's observation that well-trained athletes with altitude experience see next to no change in Hb concentration but better oxygen transport (he calls that higher O2 affinity, which - sorry - is scientifically wrong however).

The low RET-% are the classic response to extended altitude.

Now the one time we know of Paula was pre-comp, her altitude values were 16.2 g/dl and 0.8%. She was 400 m higher or so, which may explain a higher Hb by maybe 0.5 g/dl or even 1 g/dl (but not 3 - 4 g/dl!), but then the RET-% should have been lower than before, not doubled. That's when she was flagged for the third time.

Unfortunately, thanks to Paula's and the IAAF's anti-transparency stance, we will likely never see the ruling in the end, but we do know that it was not an unanimous decision of the three experts (like in the case of EPO cheat Savinova as discussed in the recent "likely doping" thread). We don't know whether it was 1 : 2 or 2 : 1, as the IAAF wouldn't comment.

So in summary, 1 or 2 of the three final reviewers judged that those values might have been caused naturally (in dubio pro reo), and that 1 or 2 were convinced that it was doping. Since an unanimous ruling is required for a ban as per the IAAF's chosen guidelines, she was not punished.

Those are the facts according to the IAAF and Ross Tucker. Make of that what you want.

Where are you coming from on "first world nations" getting "doping so wrong?" ? I've pointed this out to you before on this same old ad nuseam debate where you refused to look at the evidence that EPO has benefitted "first world nations" with fast times. Research "Operation Galgo," which unlike Puerto, was specific to athletics. In the few names that were disclosed you have a 3:30 guy, a 13:02 guy & a steeplechase WC (many others under investigation weren't disclosed). You may think that's pack fodder, but what we don't know is the percentage improvement they received from baseline peak clean times. And if it's a significant increase, then they've put themselves in a much higher level of competition that they normally wouldn't have been in. That's how PEDs generally work; they "enhance your performance"...nothing new there. ?