'It doesn't bother me if I was beaten by a Kenyan doper'

rekrunner wrote:

One thing it says is that there are much fewer Irish track athletes than Kenyan athletes, performing at a level that is tested for doping.

For example, looking at all male athletes in the alltime list for the men's 1500m, 5000m and the marathon:

- I can list 26 "elite" Irish athletes by name in one paragraph

- If I did the same for the more than 910 Kenyan elites (not counting exports), I could also put it in one paragraph, but the paragraph would be much longer

If I take these 6 named athletes from Ireland, and scaled it by 910/26, that would be 210 Kenyans.

If there had been testing at anything equivalent to the Irish level fifteen years ago in Kenya, there would easily be 500 Kenyans busted by now.

rekrunner wrote:

Given the high profile busts of the likes of Cathal Lombard, Martin Fagan, Steven Colbert, Marie Davenport, Geraldine Hendricken, Paul Quirke, etc., not to mention the rich history of Irish doping culture in boxing, football (soccer), rugby, horse-racing and jumping, swimming, and cycling, combined with the dismal doping detection rate (0.4%) of an estimated 10-18% by Irish anti-doping, plus the unexplained world class domination of the likes of Sonia O'Sullivan and Catherina McKiernan, in the heyday of the uncontrolled EPO-era, I can understand why Barr would not want to cast any stones and ripple the waters.

Sonia O'Sullivan unexplained world class domination?

lard sandwich wrote:

And by the way, the OP is misleading with the thread title. Nowhere in the article does the athlete say that.

Typical Letsrun.com politics.

YMMV wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

One thing it says is that there are much fewer Irish track athletes than Kenyan athletes, performing at a level that is tested for doping.

For example, looking at all male athletes in the alltime list for the men's 1500m, 5000m and the marathon:

- I can list 26 "elite" Irish athletes by name in one paragraph

- If I did the same for the more than 910 Kenyan elites (not counting exports), I could also put it in one paragraph, but the paragraph would be much longer

If I take these 6 named athletes from Ireland, and scaled it by 910/26, that would be 210 Kenyans.

If there had been testing at anything equivalent to the Irish level fifteen years ago in Kenya, there would easily be 500 Kenyans busted by now.

I can't compete when you make up your own facts and figures.

Testing that catches 0.4% of estimated Irish athletes? (according to the same Irish reporter that wrote about Barr)

Testing that catches 1 Irish athlete out of 1126 tests?

Testing that sophisticated athletes, could stay one step ahead of?

I don't believe the level of testing in Africa was all that different 15 years ago than testing in Ireland.

The latest discrepancy in testing is new, since the introduction of the ABP in 2009 made blood tests official for sanctioning purposes.

Before that, athletes were urine tested, something not subject to the same timing constraints as blood.

Before that, out-of-competition testing (for EPO) wasn't introduced in athletics until around 2003.

Before 2000, testing didn't even exist at all for EPO.

Blah blah blah. You are the king of Dunning-Kruger on a site that might as well be dedicated to the concept.

There was NO, ZERO, NADA blood testing in Kenya until very recently. That, plus bribes and pre-warning, all well-documented, made Kenyan testing a farce until the past few years, when, surprise, bringing testing up to western levels results in doping positives every week. Trying to indict Irish athletics while dismissing the disgraceful situation in East Africa only makes your cranio-RECtal-inverted views even more lacking in any semblance of credibility.

Blah blah blah.

You said 15 years ago -- blood testing didn't matter 15 years ago.

The blood testing only became an issue when the ABP was approved, in 2009, and only then for OOC blood testing.

In any case, there was still more than "ZERO, NADA". It was just rare, like for Russia, due to difficult logistics and timing constraints getting the samples to a WADA lab in time.

I didn't dismiss the East African "situation".

Everyone, including Kenyans, are blood tested in-competition -- also 15 years ago.

Note also that most AAFs (positive doping tests) are, by far, in-competition urine tests, according to WADA reports.

More facts to compare to Kenya's 910 "elite" athletes and Ireland's 26, in the aforementioned alltime lists: number of Russians: 43. Moroccans: 109, Japanese: 138.

Compare these absolute numbers to blood testing "suspicious or at the very least abnormal" rates over 12 years for Kenyans: 11% versus Russia: 30% and Morocco: 24% and Japan: 5%.

More numbers: Number of East African elites: 1389. The rest of the non-African world combined: 1368. North Africans: 190.

And ultimately, you have to wonder if there is any justifiable link to the 400 Hurdles.

rekrunner wrote:

Blah blah blah.

You said 15 years ago -- blood testing didn't matter 15 years ago.

Yup.

YMMV owned.

Spoken like a true delusional loser. "Anyone who beats me is doping so I don't have to work hard. I'm already the best in the world."

rekrunner wrote:

One thing it says is that there are much fewer Irish track athletes than Kenyan athletes, performing at a level that is tested for doping.

For example, looking at all male athletes in the alltime list for the men's 1500m, 5000m and the marathon:

- I can list 26 "elite" Irish athletes by name in one paragraph

- If I did the same for the more than 910 Kenyan elites (not counting exports), I could also put it in one paragraph, but the paragraph would be much longer

If I take these 6 named athletes from Ireland, and scaled it by 910/26, that would be 210 Kenyans.

How many of those 26 elite Irish runners have tested positive?

There are 50 Kenyans currently serving suspensions or bans. I think it's something like over 150 failed doping tests now in the last couple of decades.

The number of busts going up it seems exponentionally just as anti-doping measures rise to minimal standards in Kenya, the well documented availability of EPO in Kenya, and the outrageous and endemic corruption in Kenyan athletics from the tea money testers to the manager of the Rio team banned for 10 years, all suggest the reason why there is such a large Kenyan 'elite', is because doping with a drug that improves 3000m performance by 5% (or 7 seconds and more) is habitual and universal in Kenya.

You're nothing more than a pseudo intellectual version of El K.

4 out of 7 of Kenyan semi-finalists/finalists in the men's 400/800/1500 and 5000 in London 2017 now busted.

3 out of 9 Kenyans to break 1:45 in 2017 busted, and two of the others the training partners of two of the busted athletes.

Stop pretending it's a small percentage of a massive elite. It's a big percentage of an elite that's only massive because they're likely nearly all doped to the gills.

BTW., why is Sonia O'Sullivan's 'mysterious dominance in the EPO era' mysterious when according to you EPO doesn't work?

But Paula's WR in the EPO era isn't mysterious?

*5% improvement in an elite 3000m time of 7:30 would be about 33 seconds of course.

https://www.runnersworld.com/races-places/a20845413/study-kenyans-get-performance-boost-from-epo/

Hey look, the cowardly liar came back to spew more nonsense.

Coevett wrote:

*5% improvement in an elite 3000m time of 7:30 would be about 33 seconds of course.

Not even capable of elementary math.

It looks like the busts in Kenya peaked in 2017 and have declined in 2018 and 2019.

EPO is available everywhere.

Nothing suggests Kenyan doping for 400m Hurdles.

If EPO is worth 5% for these elite level performances, why are Russian elite numbers only marginally higher than Ireland, while Japan elite numbers rival Russia and Moscow combined?

High altitude also stimulates EPO production -- maybe that 5% already comes naturally from a lifetime at altitude.

We see that many of the same allegations you make for Kenyans can be made for Ireland, with the same basis, once you scale the numbers proportionally for the athlete population. I guess that went over your head.

I guess you mean 20 seconds. I'm familiar with this study. These Kenyans, ran 3K at about their marathon pace, and then on EPO, ran 3K at about half-marathon pace, with some as fast as 10K pace.

Coevett wrote:

*5% improvement in an elite 3000m time of 7:30 would be about 33 seconds of course.

spade detector wrote:

Coevett wrote:

*5% improvement in an elite 3000m time of 7:30 would be about 33 seconds of course.

Not even capable of elementary math.

Hi Observski!

No. 5% was the average. Obviously the better responders end up being the elites.

So 7% would take an 8:03 runner to7:30, or 33 seconds improvement for a '7:30' runner.

Coevett wrote:

spade detector wrote:

Not even capable of elementary math.

Hi Observski!

No. 5% was the average. Obviously the better responders end up being the elites.

So 7% would take an 8:03 runner to7:30, or 33 seconds improvement for a '7:30' runner.

So you’re incapable of elementary reading in addition to elementary math. Shocker.

No, he has good reason to suspect that Boniface was doping, namely, that he hadn't done anything before and hasn't done anything since, and that 138 Kenyans have been caught doping over the past fifteen years in a country where limited testing was done and corruption is endemic, while incentives are great. As for him, if he's 28, he was maybe 24-25 in Rio, and on a very fast track, so no surprise really to drop some time. Barr was actually pretty good already in 2015:

In April 2015, Barr was named the European Athlete of the Month for, in part, being part of a national relay record and having a world-best time in the 400 metre hurdles.[11]

Coevett wrote:

spade detector wrote:

Not even capable of elementary math.

Hi Observski!

No. 5% was the average. Obviously the better responders end up being the elites.

So 7% would take an 8:03 runner to7:30, or 33 seconds improvement for a '7:30' runner.

Yikes.

Where did 7% come from? You said 5% earlier.

In the study itself, we see from the RPE measures that the Kenyans didn't try to run fast, unlike the Scots.

The Kenyans were 8:00 potential runners who ran 9:00 with EPO, and 9:20 without.

Even then, the slower Scots improved more, relative to their baseline trial.

This study show nothing about how an 8:00 runner would improve after taking EPO.