This is how deep is doping in Kenya

Not Meucci wrote:

agip wrote:

blablabla

How can you think Meucci doped if you don't coach him?

well two things here. You could say either

"agip's view is worth exactly the same as Renato's opinion: zero"

or you can say

"Renato is a famous guy, he coaches some of the world's best runners, he claims to know what is going on. You'd think we should be grateful for his posts..but his descriptions of Kenyan athletics seem deeply naive as Kenyan after Kenyan tests positive and it turns out that there is no Kenyan anti-drug organization. Maybe this supposd inside guy is just making stuff up! "

Certainly lrc has more to benefit from figuring out Renato Canova than it has to benefit from figuring out me.

agip wrote:

Not Meucci wrote:

How can you think Meucci doped if you don't coach him?

well two things here. You could say either

"agip's view is worth exactly the same as Renato's opinion: zero"

or you can say

"Renato is a famous guy, he coaches some of the world's best runners, he claims to know what is going on. You'd think we should be grateful for his posts..but his descriptions of Kenyan athletics seem deeply naive as Kenyan after Kenyan tests positive and it turns out that there is no Kenyan anti-drug organization. Maybe this supposd inside guy is just making stuff up! "

Certainly lrc has more to benefit from figuring out Renato Canova than it has to benefit from figuring out me.

Your view is not worth the same as Renato's because he knows Meucci personally.

I appreciate your continuing to post on this website, so that we get the benefit of your knowledge and inside information, though you attract harsh remarks because of your remarks about doping, which are wrong-headed. I like the table you have of world-rankings for Americans and Kenyans, very interesting. If it were not for factors of selection (Kenyans already have to be very good to travel overseas for track meets--although the number going to American colleges allows many more to compete in them), I'd say that the very rankings you give show that Kenyans must be doping--that is, they have less or equal depth to the United States in multiple events, yet have title to most of the distance top tens. Ordinarily, great depth leads to dominance of the elite levels. That dominance is based on great depth in Kenya, I agree, but is very, very likely to be supported by doping as well, because doping is obviously widespread and hardly tested. It also helps to explain why Kenyan athletes go back to Kenya between meets so frequently when it is a very long, expensive trip. It may be possible to run that fast clean but Jeptoo, Mourhit, Saidi-Sief, and numerous others like Ramzi prove that EPO/CERA are effective. Jeptoo in particular improved markedly at an advanced age when taking EPO and the others ran mind-boggling times. I don't think that doping in Kenya is systematic in the sense that Athletics Kenya was doping them--unless we are talking about the sudden skill in non-distance events perhaps. But it was systematic in the sense that bribery and the lack of a doping system, together with the availability of doping, lack of policing, and very high monetary incentives, made it rife. We just have not seen how rife it is yet.

One last point: the East German doping documentary linked on another thread indicates how systemic doping can contribute to far harder work, which in turn contributes to greater results. The belief that it works--and steroids and male hormones made massive bodily changes in women--and heavy monetary incentives lead to athletes working far harder than otherwise, while also supporting that hard work by expanding gains and radically improving recovery. The extraordinary hard work that the East German women were forced to do, while being doped, probably explains in part why they are so unwilling to grant that the Americans should have won the medals instead. Of course, by the early to mid 1980s, many of their American and other competitors were doping, as the West German doping tester showed at the 1983 Pan Am Games, where positives were rife (14 positives) and a dozen American athletes left early.

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/04/sports/sp-1984-olympics4

Mr. Canova,

Thank you for your perspective. Your contribution to the sport is great, but your contribution to this website has been invaluable. Your position against doping is very passionate and definitive. While we have your attention, I'd like to make a few points:

1. First, your analogy against Jeptoo is quite a bit off. You can buy shares of a failing company because of market information. You know and understand the trade-offs between risk and reward in a situation like that. A better analogy is why a hitter like Barry Bonds takes steroids. He's already the best. His reward is very little and his risk is very high.

2. UNLESS to get to that level to begin with you must have PEDS. Then marginal benefit outweighs marginal cost.

3. PED's work. Maybe not on the same level for a higher trained athlete, but its an argument against its physiology (which I admit I lack any formal education). The best body builders in the world see an increase in performance, regardless of ethnicity. The best cyclists in the world see an increase in fitness with PEDS, regardless of ethnicity. The best baseball players in the world hit better and the best golfers play better with the use of amphetamines, regardless of ethnicity. Your argument just doesn't make any sense, it's having your cake and eating it too. How could EPO which increases RBC's not increase fitness? That's like saying an extra 25-50 horsepower doesn't make a car any faster because it's already very fast.

To further my anology, EPO in a Kenyan Olympian is a lot like horse power high performance boats. I grew up designing these and my father is one of the best in the world. A high performance boat may have a max speed of 100MPH at 250HP. An increase to a 2.5 block 280HP will turn this boat into a 105MPH max. However, the most important thing is the driver. An average driver may only be able to get 95 and 98 out of the two set ups, while a world class driver can outrun an average driver with the the lower HP engine. I would liken this to a phenomenal coach getting the most out of a Olympic qualifier. Even if he's an Olympian, he could be a medalist with a little more horse power.

4. Your arguments rely on a rational society. Unfortunately, very few people act rationally. Realism is the human factor that makes us all wonder why stupid decisions are made.

5. Final point. Please understand I mean no disrespect. Your arguments remind me of a parent in denial of their children's bad habits. Very few parents of drug users in high school think their children smoke dope or pop pills. In fact, we've all seen parents OBLIVIOUS to it even when their child comes home stoned, high, or drunk every other night of the week. How is the parent supposed to know what their honor roll student does when he's out on his own? It's not ignorance. It's simply a lack of being able to control every facet of their child's life when they are unsupervised. Many coaches have been blindsided by athletes bad decisions when the writing is on the wall.

Once again, thank you for your contributions. No one that isn't a troll ever convicted you of being associated with doping. I just feel like everything you contribute is based on sound science and analysis except this argument, which is more personal opinion.

Your analogy with the engine of a car doesn't work, if the car is already a Formula One. Of course, if it's possible to add 50 HP the engine becomes powerful, the fact is that these car are already at the limit, and 100 engineers work 12 hours per day in order to find the system for adding 1 HP.

For the human engine, we have the same situation. While using training only it's not possible to reach the same level of muscle power (and it's not a case that, after 1988, there are not new WR in throwing and in all the women events where the muscle power is the most important quality), about the "organic engine" there are opportunities to reach the same, or better, level of performances, without any doping.

An athlete well trained, in altitude and with top specific talent, can increase his total volume of blood till 25%, reducing the level of viscosity. In this situation, if he takes EPO increases the viscosity, and increases the periferal resistance. This means the velocity of the circulation becomes slower, and the ability to remove lactate and the waste we produce with maximal activity decreases.

So, taking EPO can give some advantage for transporting oxygen, but at the same time give disadvantages for remove lactate.

This means we can have some advantage in short distances, when the lactic power is more important, but increasing the duration of the race the disadvantage becomes bigger, because the power of the engine is more important, but the percentage of this power athletes can use becomes the main quality, and this is directly connected with the velocity of blood circulation, which is connected with less viscosity.

So, what I continue to say has physiological basis, and I had the opportunity, in several years in Kenya working with many of the best athletes, to personally control these facts. I had many athletes, some of them not with top talent, able to run between 26'30" and 26'55" in 10000m (8 athletes), or to beat some WR (like Shaheen, Mosop and Florence Kiplagat), completely clean, so I don't see any reason for thinking athletes running slower must be doped, if with similar talent.

I already had some inkling of something changing in the behavior of some Kenyan athlete in 2010, with some area where some local doctor started to abuse of athletes for having economical advantages. I already explained that in 2011, during a local HM in Baringo, Patrick Sang, coach of Eliud Kipchoge, Brimin Kipruto and a lot of other top runners, was approached by an unknown person, asking him if he was a coach (so, of sure this man was not involved in athletics before, because everybody in Kenya knows Patrick who is the best national coach, and that while athlete went on the podium in 3 different Olympic Games), offering some substance "for gaining 2 minutes in HM".

Myself and Patrick informed AK, and the answer was "it's not your problem".

However, I can say that, till 2010, NEVER some athlete asked for any support, and personally I'm sure all the best athletes were clean, because that one was the general mentality.

I'm the first who wants OOC tests in Kenya and Ethiopia, for the opposite reason of what people think : because only in this way it's possible to see how all the records made by Kenyans and Ethiopians are clean, and the human limits are still far from the current WR.

Last thing, for clarifying my position :

1) I never said "EPO doesn't work with Kenyans". Starting from this wrong assertion (that I never did), WADA decided also to do a ridiculous research, using athletes able running 3000m around 10' : this means they didn't understand anything, but also they don't know any type of science, if the research had to have a real scientific value, not only smoke for ignorant people.

2) Instead, I Always said "EPO is useless for top talented runners, having proper training, when born, living and training in altitude". The two things are very different.

3) I never said "Kenyans don't dope". I said "Top Kenyans don't use EPO, because their mentality and because doesn't give any advantage". But of course I never could rule out the possibility of some athletes using PEDs, especially for ignorance, knowing the low level of education of the most part of athletes in the rural areas.

What I said for Kenyans is valid for Ethiopian too.

For this reason, I hope the lab of Nairobi can start to work as soon as possible, because it's very unfair to think that the best in the world are dirty, when I know very well the reality is totally different.

Renato,

If you are not pretending to be ignorant of current PED use and trends, it would really behoove you to do some basic research! You are a doc yet make statements like--

"...Norandrosterone a substance that has very little use..."

Duh, but it's a metabolite of Deca, which NO ONE will say is of very little use!!

The reason they get popped is because Deca can be detected for as long as 18 months.

Getting popped for Furosemide (a masking agent) is another example. If you are taking Furosemide, which alone would do "very little," there's a 100 percent chance you are taking at least one or two anabolic steroids plus EPO.

You can be ALL of those busted were taking EPO along with the substances they got popped for.

Also, most were probably taking a medicine cabinet of other substances as well. Once you cross the line and are taking a PED, only a fool would limit himself to ONE PED.

Sheesh.

I mean we are talking about a Cardiologist and supposedly a training/doping guru of some renown here, and he consistently displays less knowledge of PEDS than your average Crossfitter?

I for one, am not buying it.

Renato, if you were going to dope, how would you do it? Give us an idea of an effective routine so we can compare it to "sprinter's" routine that Victor Conte made public.

Renato--

Julia Mombi Muraga left Japan several years before she tested positive. She hasn't run there since 2012.

Yes, the EPO would increase the viscosity, but you can take another drug, to decrease the viscosity.

2:15:25 Radcliffe, Paula GBR London 1 4/13/03

2 2:17:18 Radcliffe, Paula GBR Chicago 1 10/13/02

3 2:17:42 Radcliffe, Paula GBR London 1 4/17/05

4 2:18:20 Shobukhova, Liliya RUS Chicago 1 10/9/11

5 2:18:37 Keitany, Mary KEN London 1 4/22/12

6 2:18:47 N'dereba, Catherine KEN Chicago 1 10/7/01

7 2:18:56 Radcliffe, Paula GBR London 1 4/14/02

8 2:18:57 Jeptoo, Rita Sitienei KEN Boston 1 4/21/14

9 2:18:58 Gelana, Tiki ETH Rotterdam 1 4/15/12

Shobukhova admitted to doping, and Radcliffe has abnormalities in her profile and contradictions in her written words concerning blood values.

Renato, you say that EPO doesn't help the elite female marathoners, but it appears that it does.

Renato Canova wrote:

looking at the level of the athletes : among 10 men positive, 8 are not in top 500 in the World, and 5 of them not in top 1000.

Among 8 women, 5 are not in top 200 in the World, and only one is in the top 50 (Rita Jeptoo)

.

Ok, well then it's already been shown, repeatedly, the federations favor some athletes over others such that the favored athletes never test positive.

Again, the IAAF hits their anti-doping numbers sanctioning athletes that do not damage the IAAF brand. Jeptoo being the admitted outlier here.

Interesting to look back at the women's throwing records, since Renato mentioned them. The hammer is all recent because that is a recent event for the women apparently, but in the shot, the only ones not from the 1970s and 1980s Eastern Europe, going down 1.3m from the world record, are these cases of dopers (two Chinese total from the 1990s: the Chinese woman is listed as doping on the first site), plus one other Chinese Huang Zhihong, who won or medaled a bunch of times in the early 1990s as was very likely doping as well:

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sui_Xinmei

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larisa_Peleshenko

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vita_Pavlysh

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/other-sports/9895795/Drug-cheat-Nadzeya-Ostapchuk-escapes-life-ban

Why pretend "this is how deep is doping in Kenya"? That's not a list of who is doping - that a list of dopers who got caught.

That's the tip of the ice-berg.

You know that better than I.

Jeptoo sure found a way to overcome the peripheral resistance of EPO. She must have been in WR shape without that hindrance.

Deer Renato:

I started a thread a few weeks ago asking you about Imane Merga, but it got lost in the shuffle and you never replied :(

How is Imane doing? Is his training going well?

Has he recovered from that injury he had a year or so ago? Wasn't it a bone spur? I hope he received good treatment in Italy when he traveled there.

Imane is my favorite non-American runner. I really like his form and tactics. I think more runners could benefit from his balance of elegance and aggression in racing.

I hope you are doing well and are happy.

Love,

redux

Not Meucci wrote:

Your view is not worth the same as Renato's because he knows Meucci personally.

Did Canova give Meucci the infamous optical test?

In case you hadn't heard of it, "I looked him in the eyes and asked him if he was doping..."

It's an incredibly effective test.

I do not know how to respond to Mr. Canova.

I have gotten to the point where i just dont find him credible.

People who erect huge neon blinking signs pointing at others usually are trying to distract .

Viscosity b.s of urs only happen, very high hct ,rarer blood condit., bagging blood incorrectly.

Balance kept otherwise

That the Canova doth protestest waaaayyy too much.

Old Man Winter wrote:

Thanks for posting, Renato. Just one question though: how can we conclude from this data set that the majority of top athletes don't dope, from the point of view that many of them are protected, and WADA only bans a few of them as "fall guys" to make it seem like the other top athletes are clean?

Not to mention that Renato wasted a lot of time jerking himself a research soda -- due the the sparsity of out of season testing in Kenya.

Let's see, poor and corrupt country culture -- there has been thousands more Kenyans doping than ever caught, thousands. Bet on it.

Coe is right, the majority of the countries in the world run on corruption. Due to poverty, but they have entrenched cultures of corruption. Grease the hands with cash and things get done or not done.

Time to stop trying to defend and protect Kenyans, coach -- it is possible more Kenyans have doped than Russians. Top performer wise.