BREAKING: Kenya is forced to setup anti doping agency in Kenya

prevalence of drugs wrote:

And the european coaches and managers and physicians entered the country to facilitate the display of that talent to the world, for altruistic reasons, or to profit from their success in the sporting world?

There are easier ways to make money.

reader of the forums wrote:

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Luckily countries like the US and A have been topping the tables cleanly for years

Which means the USADA is actually making an effort to catch our drug cheats, which mostly consist of sprinters.

Compare with Jamaica.

Is this lost on you?

We are comparing with Kenya, not Jamaica, who as the other poster listed has a number of recent failed tests

Jamaica has also had a number of recent failures so you have definitely lost me

...and one more thing USADA seems to be making an effort to catch cheats and then reduce their sentences

The Government Task Force recommended an anti doping agency be form and a slew of other changes. The minister for sports was already working with the legislature to draft laws to govern athletics in Kenya. WADA did not force Kenya to do anything

Again a lot of speculation about something that is in the mind of suspicious (or not honest) people, more than in the reality.

1. Somebody says IAAF wants to protect East African Countries, and this is the reason because THERE ARE NO KENYAN AND ETHIOPIAN TOP RUNNER AMONG POSITIVE ATHLETES IN ANTIDOPING TESTS (eccept Kisorio and, in part, Erupe).

What do you think can be more important for the image of Athletics by IAAF, to protect some of the best endurance runners (that the most part of people don't know, because are so many...), or the best sprinters that everybody knows (Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell, for example) ?

Do you suppose more than 150 African runners (because, looking at top 20 in the World only, the "area" we can call "elite", there are more than 150 african runners, male and female, from 800m till Marathon), the most part of them having incomes of 20,000 USD in one year, can have a scientific structure allowing them to avoid the possibility to be caught, while the best sprinters (earning between 500,000 and 1 million dollars per year) have some idiot not able to explain the system for skipping doping ?

2. Many continue to say there are no test out of competition in Kenya and Ethiopia. About Kenya, I explained several times there are no LESS THAN 10 TESTS OUT OF COMPETITION EVERY WEEK, and all the athletes in whereabout are tested, in Kenya and out of competition, MORE TIMES THAN GALEN RUPP (who was the most tested athlete in US). It's more exact to explain that in Kenya THERE ARE NO BLOOD TESTS, only urine tests. But I want to ask you : HOW MANY BLOOD TESTS OUT OF COMPETITION THERE ARE IN US AND IN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES ?

3. The fact to speak about foreigner coaches as responsible for "rampant doping" is a total bullshit. There is some doping in Kenya for athletes of second and third level, and responsible are local pharmacists or doctors who give some pharmac to the athletes (normally WITHOUT manager) asking them 15% of prizes they go to win in DOMESTIC ROAD RACES, where there is no antidoping. The same athletes continue to follow the same system and to use the same pharmacs (pharmacists explain them that are "allowed supplements") when go to compete abroad, running in some small Marathon where there is antidoping, and sometimes discover to be positive. That's the reason because the most part are positive for NANDROLONE, which is in medicines without any label, given directly to the athletes by pharmacists or doctors.

4. It's true that, due to the great number of Kenyan athletes running everywhere, AK is not able to teach them the right behavior about medicines. You must understand Kenya and Ethiopia are very different from US and Europe.

There are a lot of sickness, they need a lot of medicines, and it's not possible to waste pharmacs without any reason, so, when you need some medicine, pharmacists NEVER give the full packet, but only a part of the tablets inside some envelop totally Anonymous : nothing written, not composition, not pharmacological principles and not dosage, explained vocally by the doctor.

This means that 90% of positives take something illegal without knowing, because in the most part of cases also the pharmacists don't know if a common pharmac has some substance that is doping or not.

5. About coaches / managers working with the athletes, I can speak for myself : I never had any interest to know the action of blood doping, because I don't think can help top athletes at their best training regime. Several times I explained my position, of course I can appear as somebody ignoring everything about physiology, or somebody trying to hide the fact he gives doping to his athletes, but this doesn't change the situation and my creed : I BELIEVE IN TRAINING, NOT IN DOPING. Here everybody knows (better, THINKS to know) the effect of doping, BUT NOBODY KNOWS THE EFFECTS OF TRAINING. For this reason, I continue to read a lot of stupidities about doping and the value of performances in endurance events.

But, because I don't believe in the effects of doping, and I have many top runners I know are totally clean, I don't see any reason for thinking that the other top athletes, many of them with very big talent, have to use some PED for achieving their performances.

At the end, I can say that the lack of blood tests in Kenya is used by WADA as excuse for making stronger its position against doping. Kenya has a great image in the Athletic World, and that's the reason because is in the eye of the storm. But the reality is that, apart Kisorio, NEVER there was ONE TOP ATHLETE (Kenyan or Ethiopian) positive for doping, directly or through the biological passport, while in every other Country some of the top local runners was caught for using EPO or something similar.

It's time to finish to think that athletes run fast because of doping. Talent, hard work and right training, at higher possible level, are the only reasons of a success that other Countries are not able to accept.

ukathleticscoach wrote:

We are comparing with Kenya, not Jamaica, who as the other poster listed has a number of recent failed tests

Then compare with kenya, the point still stands.

Jamaica has also had a number of recent failures so you have definitely lost me

1) The "Is this lost on you?" was referring to the first half of my post.

2) And said positives resulted in a joke of a ban due to the complete incompetence of the JADA, who I have no faith in.

...and one more thing USADA seems to be making an effort to catch cheats and then reduce their sentences

I'm sure Lance wishes this were true.

"Nairobi (AFP) - Kenya is to introduce a new licensing system for foreign athletics agents in a bid to stop their fabled distance runners being exposed to doping products.

The move follows recommendations made by a government-sponsored anti-doping task force, which said corrupt sports agents were manipulating some Kenyan athletes into using performance-enhancing drugs.

Kenya was pushed to investigate by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) after 17 of its athletes tested positive between January 2012 and June 2013, some of them for using the blood-boosting drug Erythropoietin (EPO).

Kenyan Sports Minister Hassan Wario said a vetting board independent of Athletics Kenya will be set up to approve a list of agents allowed to operate in the country"

Sounds like a bunch of raycists are trying to keep me and my brothers down! It's just our culture!

It would be easy to force counties to monitor their own doping. WADA tests a few dozen people at the Olympics, and if someone tests positive, their country is banned from the next Olympics. Implement this rule, and counties will take a much greater interest in testing their athletes.

simple solution wrote:

It would be easy to force counties to monitor their own doping. WADA tests a few dozen people at the Olympics, and if someone tests positive, their country is banned from the next Olympics. Implement this rule, and counties will take a much greater interest in testing their athletes.

*countries, not counties.

The following is a partial list of Kenyan athletes receiving drug bans:

1. Delilah Asiago 2. Jynocel Basweti 3. Ambrose Bitok 4. Pam Chepchumba 5. Susan Chepkemei 6. Eliud Chepter 7. Lydia Cheromei 8. Rose Chesire 9. Wilson Erupe 10. Salome Jerono 11. Simon Kemboi 12. Nixon Kiplagat 13. Genoveva Kigen 14. Matthews Kisorio 15. Rael Kiyara 16. Wilson Loyanae 17. Elizabeth Muthuka 18. Charles Nyakundi 19. Janet Ongera 20 Ronald Rutto

Given the many great Kenyan athletes, I'd call that a pretty short list, especially in the sense that some of the positives were "minor" infractions.

But it would be sticking our heads in the sand not to recognize that drugs are a growing problem in Kenya, just as they are in other countries.

Aaaaand here comes Renato CAsanova here to run interference for the dopping Keenyans.

Do you have anything to add in English?

Galen Rupp Number on Fan wrote:

Aaaaand here comes Renato CAsanova here to run interference for the dopping Keenyans.

Whatever, dude. Rosa, Ferrari, Canova...same thing, different name. Dr. Rosa is a cardiologist. What do you think that means? Oh, and he just so happens to be one of the premier marathon trainers on the planet. So, he got bored of being a doctor one day and decided that he wanted to put his athletic training knowledge to good use? Michele Ferrari...hmmmmmm....yep, he's a doctor too. Yeah, and he got bored of his doctor duties to help Lance with his cycling training.

smell the coffee, wrote:

Given the many great Kenyan athletes, I'd call that a pretty short list, especially in the sense that some of the positives were "minor" infractions.

But Canova admitted that there is no blood testing in East Africa. Without blood testing, you have no chance of catching anyone for EPO and without blood testing the biological passport (which oddly Canova harps on about as not having caught a Kenyan) is useless.

In short, without blood testing OOC there is no chance of anyone coming up positive for anything other than stupid stuff.

No blood testing in a country who's only real sport is the sport which benefits most from methods to increase blood hematocrit, and the only way of having even a small chance of spotting such methods is blood testing.

Odd stuff.

DPL wrote:

Dr. Rosa is a cardiologist. What do you think that means?

Roger Bannister is a doctor.

Tony Sandoval is a doctor.

Dan Lincoln is a doctor.

Chuck Aragon is a doctor.

Thomas Wessinghage is a doctor.

Bob Kempainen is a doctor.

Christine Clark is a doctor.

Mary Cain's father is a doctor.

The fact that the above are medical doctors and are either great middle and long distance runners (or are closely connected to one) means nothing by itself.

Yes. I am starting with the idea that top-level success in sports is reliant on doping, and that the culture of sports, especially track and field, is to dope. This has been shown by the positive-test history of athletes in all eras, the positive test history across disciplines and genders, news-worthy scandals of BALCO, Marion Jones, Dr. Gibson III, MVP track club and others, by analogy with other major sports, as well as the numerous studies (like the IAAF report cited).

Yes. The baseline is that the best performances have been doped. The exceptions are just that: exceptions. I don't believe that they have exceptional behavior, just exceptional regimens and systems.

There are 385.

Knowing that there are none from Kenya, and with relatively fewer athletes from Asia and SAmerica, I think it is safe to guess that those tests happen in US and Europe.

Like another poster said, it is insane to me that the most effective tool (ABP) is not being used in Kenya effectively. How can it be when there are no OOC screenings?

I hope I never implied that doped athletes don't work hard. They show a level of commitment to improvement and competition beyond their clean counterparts. EPO alone does not make you a good runner. Testosterone alone does not make you a good runner. But, they will take you farther.

___

Finally, Kenyan's do have a natural affinity for running. They had success before EPO came around, and clean Kenyans will generally be more talented than clean Euros and US athletes. I am not saying that the whole of Kenyan success is down to doping. I am arguing that we should look at all of their performances with skepticism; that doping is more prevalent than the number of positives tests indicate; that the playing field is not level if they are not being dope-controlled; and finally, that these realities cast a shadow on the most recent string of top tier performances on the roads.

trollism wrote:

smell the coffee, wrote:

Given the many great Kenyan athletes, I'd call that a pretty short list, especially in the sense that some of the positives were "minor" infractions.

But Canova admitted that there is no blood testing in East Africa. Without blood testing, you have no chance of catching anyone for EPO and without blood testing the biological passport (which oddly Canova harps on about as not having caught a Kenyan) is useless.

In short, without blood testing OOC there is no chance of anyone coming up positive for anything other than stupid stuff.

No blood testing in a country who's only real sport is the sport which benefits most from methods to increase blood hematocrit, and the only way of having even a small chance of spotting such methods is blood testing.

Odd stuff.

I'm not a scientist and know next to nothing about testing procedures, but 10 seconds of googling found a description of how urine tests are used to detect EPO.

This article could be irrelevant, I dunno. Anyone know anything?

Step 1 of 4: sample preparation:

The sample preparation consists in concentrating a little more than a tablespoon of urine to reduce it to

roughly one drop. The EPO present in the urine ends up in the drop. So do other proteins.

Step 2 of 4: IEF

IEF stands for isoelectric focusing. The drop of urine concentrate containing EPO is put on a gel.

Electricity is run through it. This spreads out the EPO forms, which all have essentially the same protein

backbone but differ from one another by the sugars attached. The forms spread out on the gel like the

rungs of a ladder. The good news is that the different EPOs—natural or artificial—spread out in different,

characteristic patterns that allow for their identification. The bad news is that they are invisible. Steps 3

and 4 are done to make EPO visible.

What will you lot say after the agency is setup and Kenyan athletes continue to whoop your behinds as it is proved that those who dope are essential nobodies who just aren't good enough?

Clerk wrote:

that the playing field is not level if they are not being dope-controlled;

But they are.