Well that didn't take long: Asbel Kiprop gives up fight to prove innocence - Says he doesn't have resources to fight IAAF

How do you know this as fact? You would need studies with elites, specifically with 7:40'ish runners as your example, to rule out a possible 4-5% reduction in time, wouldn't you?

Where are you getting that info from? The detection window for IV microdosing is about 18 hrs now with WADA's new testing assay. The detection window for higher than microdoses can be up to 3 days with subcutaneous injections. And 3rd gen CERA (Ramzi's poison back in 08) is well over a week (and athletes are still testing positive for it. Lol).

Ramzi was career doper. How do you know that his improvement wasn't from the result of using high doses of rEPO? He was considered washed up and an also ran in 03. Then he starts training with Boulami and the miracles start occurring. ? His 9 second improvement from 3:39 to 3:30 in 04 was done in a little over one year. Lol.

In 2005, when he won double-gold at Helsinki, his off-scores were an astronomically high 157.8 & 148. Anti-doping expects ruled out blood doping, so the only way to reach those outlandish off-scores would be incredibly high Hgb & RET%. He became WADA's favorite target for the next few years. Then later on came his CERA-fueled Olympic Gold at Beijing. This guy just reeks of dope from the beginning. High dosing and a high responder could have produced that 4% improvement in time. So, I think you can't automatically rule that out. There's a lot of stuff on Ramzi. See the IAAF report.

ex-runner wrote:

If you consider the pathway by which EPO acts then you'd understand that the effect in the marathon would not be as great as in the 5k. Can't be 4% for everything.

The pathway is going to be the same: O2-vector doping increases the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood...nothing new there. In fact, the effect for the marathon could be more than that of the VO2max-dependant events. The recently published meta-analysis on rEPO and endurance exercise suggests that rEPO increases sub-max performance more than VO2max:

"6. Discussion:"

"Furthermore, rHuEpo seems to be able to increase sub maximal more

than maximal aerobic parameters. This evidence is extremely

important when evaluating the capacity of rHuEpo to affect sport performance since the majority of endurance events are performed at

sub maximal intensities, like anaerobic or aerobic threshold, and not at

VO2max. It should be mentioned that such an improvement in aerobic

capacity could reduce recovery time between workouts, so that more

total work could be effectively performed by the athlete."

From the conclusion:

"Evidence coming empirical trials showed a consistent and positive

effects of rHuEpo on VO2max of about 6-8% or 300-400 ml O2/min,

if expressed in absolute terms, when moderate doses of rHuEpo are

administered. In cycling, this improvement may be translated in an

increase of 25-35 watts expressed at maximum aerobic power. Also in

running the improvement of about 6 % in 3 k time trial has been

observed. It appears to be clear at what extent rHuEpo administration

may affect VO2max and sport performance in events performed close

to VO2max; however, even sub-maximal aerobic variables seems to

be improved by rHuEpo administration. These forementioned effects

of rHuEpo appears to be elicited even by microdoses of rHuEpo."

One anecdotal that I found with a confirmed rEPO case is Marathoner Roberto Barbi (who holds the distinction of being the very first athlete banned for an EPO positive when he was tested upon arrival at the 2001 WCs in Edmonton. Lol).

Barbi improved in one (1) year from 2:15.07 in 97 to 2:10.55 in 98 (his PB of 2:10.12 was set in 2000). An improvement of ~3.1%...not "4%" per-se, but close.

What a dope fest. Lol.

I wonder if the insulin mentioned is IGF-1; the "speed peptide" that our good friend aduck so often talks about? ?

Barrel of Laughs wrote:

http://www.elmundo.es/deportes/mas-deporte/2018/06/21/5b2b7a20468aebc47f8b45d1.html

[/quote]

So I'm trying to zoom in on the hoard of drugs and looking for brand names, looking for various epo brands and androgel and the one I noticed was legalon (which sounds like a Lord of the Rings character) ??? It's a liver cleanser, which would only be necessary if you were doing harm to your liver via steriods (like prednisone). Anyone else notice any products?

We have two studies, one on Scottish 11:08 runners, improving 5.7%, and the other on Kenyan 9:00 runners, improving 4.46%.

From these we can already see a reduction of effect for the more talented 9:00 runners.

Like you said, we need the same experiment on 7:40 runners to best characterize any diminishing return.

I thought athletes inject directly in the vein, and not subcutaneously. I’m surprised anyone is taking CERA, after the publicity surrounding Riccardo Ricco and Ramzi busts, where drug maker Roche worked with anti-doping labs to develop a test for it “turning over proprietary compounds, called reagents, that would help officials test for their drug”.

One thing we know about Ramzi is that he was able to increase his training with the move of nationality to Bahrain. “ex-runner” didn’t automatically rule it out, but gave EPO partial credit, as it was one of several known changes.

Looks like there is something new there. Your meta-study said there were many other mechanisms to consider.

In the Scottish study “the authors suggest that while the increased blood O2 transport capacity can entirely explain the improvement in VO2max, it does not explain the increase in time trial performance.”

“Otherwise rHuEpo should have different mechanism that affects positively the sub maximal performance. Unsurprisingly, Boning et al. proposed many other factors that could account for the ergogenic value of rHuEpo.”

The sub-max performance seems to be a linked to a Thomsen study, where cyclists increased time to exhaustion at 80% peak power by 54% from 22 minutes to 33 minutes.

We have to speculate how a 54% increase in TTE at 80% peak cycling power would translate to elite running, or how well a 33 minute experiment represents longer events, like the marathon, where there are other known limiting factors.

I could not find the justification for saying the sub-max performance effect was “larger than expected by the increase in blood carrying capacity”. But they did note:

“Nevertheless, it should be considered the exponential relationship between fraction of vO2max employed and the time to fatigue as possible reason explaining the huge improvement in TTE.”

Some more interesting comments in the conclusions:

“Notwithstanding further research would be warranted to clarify some unclear points.”

“First of all, further studies should evaluate the effects of rHuEpo in top-class athletes.”

I don't think it has much to do with the talent levels of the subject groups. We're talking about measuring an improvement in performance based on an increase of Hct from two different baseline values (altitude natives vs sea level runners) given identical dosing. The Kenyans baseline average Hct was ~46 vs ~42 for the sea level Scots. Though with moderate dosing (50 IU/kg - 4x week for 4 wks) both groups reached a ~50 Hct, but it was only a ~10% increase for the Kenyans vs ~18% for the Scots. What if the dosing was increased for the Kenyans boosting levels to ~18%, to that of the Scots? (46 to 54 for the Kenyans). How about even higher upwards toward 25% over baseline? You might see a much more reduction in time for the Kenyans. My take: lower baseline Hcts can boost at a higher percentage than higher baseline Hcts at a given dosage.

It can be administered either way but IV cuts the half-life down considerably. What are the dopers doing now? Probably IV to reduce glow time. Any word on Kiprop's route of administration?

On CERA: There were a couple of CERA busts at Rio (a steeplechaser & "Brazilian" cyclist. Lol). There were also several busts with Colombian cyclists just this year. I guess the convenience of once a month dosing is still enticing? Lol.

Huh? I don't follow you on this one - he spent most of his training time with Boulami in MOROCCO. Just imagine the dope parties going on over there; Ramzi, Boulami, Mourhit, Koauch, etc. all sitting around the campfire. ?

"Although he was born in Morocco, it was an employment opportunity that lured him to Bahrain in 1998. A friend suggested he join the military, and today he holds the rank of sergeant. The command has given him a certain amount of leeway—he can train and race outside the country up to eight months of the year. Mostly he goes back to Morocco where he trains in the high-altitude training camp in Ifrane. Out of necessity, though, he avoids training when the Moroccan national team is on the track."

Studies with top-class (i.e. elite) athletes? Oh...sure...when is that going to occur? And what are the energy pathways for 02-vector doping? More effect for VO2max-dependent events?

C'mon man!...we can not stop - you are foolishy assuming all *non-African* fastest times are doped! You said in your original thread; "I counted "performers" and not "performances". If an athlete has multiple performances, I count only the best one" and "I collected separate numbers for 1) East Africans, 2) North Africans, and then 3) "everyone else", with special mention of Spanish athletes."

You're taking the top 5 fastest "performers" from "everyone else" and making an idiotic claim that everyone of the five is DOPED! Why don't you LIST THE NAMES of everyone so we can evaluate them for a any connection to doping? e.g., doping positives/ABP sanctions, doping scandals/rings, ties to a doping coach/agent, affliliated with a country with a strong doping culture (e.g., Morocco, Russia, Spain, Kenya).

Very few in your top 5 from the non-African nations will meet that criteria, such as Baumann (positive) & Cacho (Spanish link). That leaves the majority without a shred of evidence that you conclude have to be doping because it's the post-90s and every single Tom, Dick & Harry from 5 continent BS are on the EPO bandwagon. Lol. Then you get on your soapbox and chant: Geez...everyone look...EPO produces very mariginal gains because all the top 5 fastest guys in each event from the non-African nations had to be doping and they weren't running nearly as fast as the doped-up Africans. That's an screwed-up conclusion to reach and hardly scientific.

The other thing that's screwed up with your analysis is you also assume that all the top 5 performers from pre-90s were clean! Lol. How did you come to that conclusion? Again, why don't you list the names? I see one name there that's highly suspicious of doping - Aouita. Coevett has pointed out some suspicions on him and plus he's from a country with a strong doping culture - who would have thought. And his times in the 15, 3000 & 5000 skew your analysis big time. His 15 is fastest (3:29.46). His 3000 (7:29.45) is fastest - 3 secs better than #2 Rono (7:32.10). His 5000 is fastest (12:58.39) - 2 secs faster than #2 Moorcraft (13:00.41). Take those times of Aouita's out and your top 5 average drops down - unless you want to compare Aouita's suspected doped times of one era with doped times of another era.

So many flaws in your analysis!

Too many assumptions!

Bad analysis!

There are several problems with your criticism of me. I actually did not make any of those assumptions. I did not "foolishly assume all *non-African* fastest times are doped". I don't even assume Baumann's best performance is doped. I did not "make an idiotic claim that everyone of the five is DOPED!" I did not "also assume that all the top 5 performers from pre-90s were clean!" I did assume they did not dope with EPO. In the quote you provide, there is nothing in there about doping assumptions. If you want the names of the top-5, you can find them at alltime-athletics website. Having said that, there are reasons to think that some of the non-Africans doped, starting with this idea of strong doping culture: If we want to talk about doping cultures of countries, and look at cycling, then we see that doping culture is thriving in US, UK, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, etc. If we look at track, how often does Spain come up as one of the top doping nations? If we look at abnormal values of leaked blood results, we find in order, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Greece, Morocco, Bulgaria, Bahrain, Belarus, Slovenia, Romania, and Brazil, before we get to Kenya and then six more countries, including Spain, before getting to Ethiopia. There are also recent surveys that found doping prevalence at least 29%, or as much as 57% or more, values that suggest doping occurred outside of East and North Africa.

Quit trying to deflect from your agenda!...you FOOLISHLY ASSUMED all of your top 5 performers from your *non-African* nations (that you refuse to name the top 5 performers!) were doping!...Period! You're casting aspersions on some of those athletes without a shred of evidence! I laid out the criteria you should have used - another one I could add is appearing on the FB hacked document as "suspicious"/"likely doping."

And so you assume the top-5 performers from pre-90s did not use EPO? Dumb!...what about blood doping? Blood doping & EPO achieve the SAME results! - that's why physiologists call it 02-vector doping! Was there blood doping going on in the 70s & 80s? I pointed out Aouita posting the fastest times in the 15, 3000 & 5000 from your pre-90s list. He also had the #4 time in the 10,000. Do you know what country he's from? Any idea? Are you aware of the suspicious aspects of him pointed out by Coevett & others? Throw out his times for suspicion of doping, and you got a different ballgame on your pre-90s control group!

And you can't assume because there's a doping culture in cycling that there's a doping culture with EVERY freaking country with athletics. And in the past when posters would point out the significant benefits that riders were getting from EPO, or how EPO studies with non-elites cyclists or testing on an exercise bike showed significant improvement in aerobic capicity, you said the results wouldn't apply to runners because the testing was done with cyclists! But you now say a doping culture in cycling applies to every country in athletics? Double standards! Lol.

And those leaked abnormal blood values? FFS, look at the top countries! Russia! Ukraine! Turkey! Belarus!....MOROCCO!!! Countries with a STRONG DOPING CULTURE! Even look at Bahrain - they've had several positives from transplanted Moroccans, Turks, Ethiopians, Lol. And Spain? Please...doping ring haven! Now I don't see the U.S., GB, Germany, France, Canada, Australia, the Scandinavian countries, etc., high up on the list. But according to your Grand Logic these are doping countries because of the other PROVEN doping culture countries & pro-cycling!

So many flaws in your analysis!

Too many assumptions!

Bad analysis!

Doped to the Max wrote:

ex-runner wrote:

The benefits that a 9 minute runner sees will be more than what a 7:40 runner sees. That must be accepted as a reasonable conclusion. If a 9 minute runner sees 4-5% reduction in time, then a 7:40 runner will not also see 4-5% reduction in time.

How do you know this as fact? You would need studies with elites, specifically with 7:40'ish runners as your example, to rule out a possible 4-5% reduction in time, wouldn't you?

I don't know it for a fact, but athletics as a sport sees diminishing returns in all metrics. Increased mileage, speedwork, strength work, nutrition: all have diminishing returns.

For drugs to not see diminishing returns would imply that there is no cap on human performance. Something which is simply not true. A man cannot dope and run the 3000m in 5 minutes or 3 minutes. Therefore a human must be approaching some physical limit (think absolute muscle power limitations and bone strength) which means as he approaches it, by any means, he will see less and less improvement from any form of performance enhancement, including training.

Hell, there is a hard limit to the amount of red blood cells you can have, whether you take infinite EPO. You'll die before you reach that number anyway.

Here you go rekrunner:

https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1066601/spanish-police-arrest-six-athletes-involved

-in-drug-trafficking-operation

Spain is the host country once again for a doping ring. The doping organization was separated into two groups, with a Moroccan branch & an Ethiopian branch.

There's three countries right there with a culture of doping. And things are getting so insane with Morroco, one may conclude that doping is the normal preparation for a professional Morrocan runner. Lol.

The report also indicated that T, GH, Insulin and "elements for the practice of autotransfusions" were confiscated.

So, you see is not only about EPO but old-fashioned blood doping has proliferated since the implementation of the ABP & better testing for EPO (except in Kiprop's case. Lol).

Doped to the Max wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

One thing we know about Ramzi is that he was able to increase his training with the move of nationality to Bahrain.

Huh? I don't follow you on this one - he spent most of his training time with Boulami in MOROCCO. Just imagine the dope parties going on over there; Ramzi, Boulami, Mourhit, Koauch, etc. all sitting around the campfire. ?

http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/37/3/190

The positive feedback loop would only exist because of the CERA. That's how he trained harder.

Just imagine how large Ramzi's hemoglobin mass was?

As for those campfires in Ifrane? The secret is in the 'marshmallows,' but you need a thin metallic stick to roast them just perfectly, the thinner the better, heck a needle will do.

It seems there are still many flaws in your analysis of my analysis. I don't have any agenda beyond trying to make sense of observations, and in some cases, a lack of observations, notable by its absence. I did not "FOOLISHLY ASSUME all of your top 5 performers from your *non-African* nations were doping". That does not become true by repeating it or CAPITALIZING it. I only assumed doping prevalence according to published data. Contrary to your misunderstanding of my assumptions, I actually believe MOST of the top-5 in ALL groups were CLEAN, when they ran their best, or they can achieve similar performances CLEAN, except for women in events requiring strength. I'm on record suggesting that Baumann set his fastest time CLEAN, without EPO, as well as Cacho and El G, citing a lack of REAL evidence to the contrary. Your laid out criteria, even adding the Fancy Bears leaked documents, is useless as I did not cast these aspersions, with or without shreds of evidence. As a side note, your laid out criteria is everything you accuse me of: assumptions casting aspersions on athletes without a real shred of evidence. Others here have claimed that the doping culture is ingrained into the national morality. That's what makes the cycling examples relevant. You cannot say all non-Africans have high morals by virtue of their nationality. It is not a double standard to say that there exists a common underlying reason that cyclists and runners will dope, and yet expect that doping will have a different performance effect on different sports with different physiological demands. Regarding names, there are no secrets. You have access to everything you need. If you want to do some kind of doping analysis, this is not my burden. The pre-1990s data includes lots of non-Africans (GBR, POR, ITA, MEX, JPN). There is an inconsistency in presuming that pre-1990s, including many non-Africans, are dirty, while post-1990 non-Africans are clean. Since I was looking for evidence of a game change, during the EPO-era, I used the best of 1990, dirty or clean, as a benchmark for post-1990 performances, dirty or clean. I view your claim that "Blood doping & EPO achieve the SAME results!" as a concession that EPO is not better than blood doping. This claim separates you from others who claim that EPO changed the game. It agrees with my claim that the effects of EPO are over-estimated. I would go further and add that legal "hi-lo altitude training" "achieves the SAME results!" as blood transfusions. I think we all agree, that Russia is by far the biggest nation busted for doping. Let's look at Russia's history of producing quality performances relative to 1990: - 0 men over 6 distance running events: 1500m, 3000m, 3000m steeple, 5000m, 10000m and marathon - 0 women in 1500m (while Russian women were 1st and 3rd pre-1990) - 12 women in 3000m, 5000m, 10000m and marathon I think we all agree that Spain tried really hard to dope with EPO. They should be a showcase of the possibilities of EPO. Here are their results: - 1 man in 1500m, 10000m and the marathon - 3 men in 3000m - 0 men in 5000m - 3 women in 5000m - 1 women in 10000m (duplicate) - 0 women in 1500m, 3000m, and marathon In total 6 men and 3 women were able to produce quality performances, relative to 1990. As a nation compared to other non-African nations, compared to pre-1990, I was specifically looking for Spain to stand out from the rest. It was difficult for me to determine any significant difference. For the men, maybe 3000m, with 3 out of 12 runners, with only Isaac Viciosa in the top-5. For the women, maybe the 5000m, with 3 out of 36, but no women in the top 5. Marta Dominguez was 18th out of 23 in the 10000m. Looking at these other nations, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Bahrain, Belarus, Slovenia, Romania, and Brazil, and you will find that despite STRONG evidence of abnormal blood values, their performance at the top does not correlate very well with their high blood values. A few of them had women producing quality times. Outside of Brazil, with 2 runners in the marathon, none of these countries had men that produced quality times. So for all these non-African countries with a higher prevalence of abnormal blood values, or known history of EPO abuse (Spain), I'm not seeing a big impact post-1990, when compared against all non-Africans relative to 1990.

Of course a human can't run 3000m in 5 or 3 mins or run marathon in hour, or run the 100 in 6 secs - you're being eccentric in your example. But some dopers who are high-responders can improve dramatically with 02-vector doping. Here's the case with Cathal Lombard: 3 min improvement in the 10k over 18 months on rocket fuel (30:33 -27:33/~9.8 % improvement!?). His 5k improvement is near the same over 24 months (14:38 - 13:19/~9%). One of the few that actually admitted to doping without any of the stupid, worn out excuses.

Of course, it's called Polycythemia, which is a medical emergency. Ever heard of marathoner Liliya Shobukhova? She was sanctioned several years back for hematological anomalies reference an off-score of 153, in which anti-doping experts said her values were so high that they should be considered a medical emergency. The time period of the anomalies is when she won Chicago and ran the 2nd fastest marathon ever only behind Paula's WR (you can pull up the McLaren report for details).

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

Doped to the Max wrote:

Huh? I don't follow you on this one - he spent most of his training time with Boulami in MOROCCO. Just imagine the dope parties going on over there; Ramzi, Boulami, Mourhit, Koauch, etc. all sitting around the campfire. ?

http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/37/3/190

The positive feedback loop would only exist because of the CERA. That's how he trained harder.

Just imagine how large Ramzi's hemoglobin mass was?

As for those campfires in Ifrane? The secret is in the 'marshmallows,' but you need a thin metallic stick to roast them just perfectly, the thinner the better, heck a needle will do.

Too funny. ?

This was interesting reading from the article especially given that it was 2004 at the time:

""Speaking from northern Italy, where he had been training for the Olympics, Lombard added: "I don't want doping in sport, but it has certainly reached epidemic proportions. My eyes were really opened from conversations I had with people on the professional scene.

"I looked at some of the times being consistently run and I asked myself if this was possible naturally. The only logical conclusion I could reach was that, in a lot of cases, the answer was definitely 'no'.

"I realise now that most of the people I'm speaking about on the professional scene are operating on a very sophisticated basis, with proper medical back-up and advice on how not to get caught. In comparison I was merely dabbling and made no attempt to cover it up.

"It is happening across all professional sports in the world, I think. But I acted independently. There was nobody else involved and that's what caught me out at the end of the day. It was my sixth out-of-competition test this year. I had five others in 2002 and all were clear.""

rekrunner wrote:

I think we all agree, that Russia is by far the biggest nation busted for doping. Let's look at Russia's history of producing quality performances relative to 1990:

I think we all agree that Spain tried really hard to dope with EPO. They should be a showcase of the possibilities of EPO. Here are their results:

Yeah yeah we know your argument by now, you think EPO does not work because no one is running sub 12 minutes for 5k or sub 25 mins for 10k etc ...

red the threads wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

I think we all agree, that Russia is by far the biggest nation busted for doping. Let's look at Russia's history of producing quality performances relative to 1990:

I think we all agree that Spain tried really hard to dope with EPO. They should be a showcase of the possibilities of EPO. Here are their results:

Yeah yeah we know your argument by now, you think EPO does not work because no one is running sub 12 minutes for 5k or sub 25 mins for 10k etc ...

+1

I think I never said that either. What's so hard to understand about "diminishing returns"?

red the threads wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

I think we all agree, that Russia is by far the biggest nation busted for doping. Let's look at Russia's history of producing quality performances relative to 1990:

I think we all agree that Spain tried really hard to dope with EPO. They should be a showcase of the possibilities of EPO. Here are their results:

Yeah yeah we know your argument by now, you think EPO does not work because no one is running sub 12 minutes for 5k or sub 25 mins for 10k etc ...