How does Shelby’s positive test shape your view of BTC?

You have a habit of starting with "we know", but then mix up knowledge with your own message.

You proceed to say, we know about cycling, swimmers, sprints, baseball -- but apparently "we" have no such knowledge of distance runners. That is why these unrelated sports feature so often in these doping/running performance discussions.

In cycling, Tyler Hamilton told us clean cyclists could win one day events. Most running is a one-day event.

You said running is no different than cycling, but there are huge differences. In cycling, journalists had no problem producing top-10 lists with 6 or 7 out of 10 busted, confessed, or associated with a doping team. In running, no one has produced or can produce these lists, except for male sprinters in 100m.

We have more than enough. There have been enough doping busts and there is no reason to believe that distance running is some great exception among endurance sports or sports in general. Blood doping was legal in the sport until around 1986. And you tend to argue that doping is not effective even when athletes do get caught, so no evidence would pierce the wall of deniability you operate behind.

Maybe the perennial defenders in the Shelby threads are doped members of BTC who have convinced themselves that they are not cheating. They're just being "more professional".

I suppose we shouldn't really care about the corruption that has occurred in sport world-wide, especially when there are so many fans prepared to overlook it. I suppose you don't follow the war in Ukraine either - because that, too, would be "jaded".

But gifted athletes don't dope, right? You're a daydreamer.

The Jamaican whistleblower Ann Shirley has said doping is present at elite levels in all countries and in all sports, and often with the collusion of sports governance bodies. That is someone who has investigated doping. Yet you somehow think your favorite sport will largely be exempt from the practice or that where it is practiced it does not contribute to performance levels.

Never said that: why lie?

Or maybe they have read the rules and the decision.

Where are the links to her published investigations so they can be checked?

She was an employee of a Nado and not a researcher. Thus not independent.

Do you mean Renee Anne Shirley?

Yes, doping is present, and sports governance body collusion exists.

What did she investigate exactly? Can you be specific? Is there a report with data? If not, how can I trust your representations and conclusions (when you don't even remember her name -- it is not the first time).

What does she tell is about the relation between doping, and enhancing elite distance running performance among top athletes? How many elite athletes has she coached and what is her performance background?

Isn't Jamaica primarily a sprinting nation?

Apparently you don't have enough to prevent you from using cycling, swimming, baseball, and sprinting as examples, instead of distance running.

I think we know enough to say that the belief in doping enhancing performance is both wide and deep. This belief may be partly justified, depending on the dope, the athlete, and the event, but we don't know to what extent.

If we had seen Kenyan-esque performance improvements in Russia, or in Spain, or in Italy, or in the USA, or anywhere else outside of small pockets of the high plains of East Africa, and a few dozen North Africans, this would pierce my wall of deniability.

The source of all my skepticism is the general lack of progress (low quantity and low quality) for multiple decades worldwide outside of North and East Africans.

We have had doping busts in distance running before. What we have not had is the type of major scandals or investigations that really shine a light on it. Kenya has had more than its share of doping busts and suspensions.

I am not very impressed with the whole East African natural superiority argument. China made a mockery of that in five minutes. When runners are smashing times produced by an industrial scale, state sponsored doping program, to pretend it is clean is sheer credulity. And we have seen national clusters of elite performers in other sports, such as Spain, the US and the Britain in cycling in successive waves with doping being the common denominator. It is much more likely that there is an entrenched doping culture in the areas you mention as opposed to having some natural ability to run faster than doping times.

Where are the doping convictions in British cycling ?

She tested positive for a banned substance....and received said ban. What am I missing here.

Didn't the world renowned doping investigator Seppelt shine the light on Kenya at least a half-dozen times? Isn't he competent?

I don't ever say East Africans are naturally superior. I'm convinced if a sufficient quantity of non-Africans were born and raised their whole lives at 2400m altitude, and grew up naturally to an adult weight of 110 pounds on a scarce diet of ugali, without video games and internet, as a whole they would be much faster than growing up in a first world country at sea-level. Look for example how well the Robertson twins did shortly after deciding on a permanent move to a simple life at altitude.

I'm not impressed by an argument that so frequently appeals to cycling and other sports to try to make a case about endurance running performance.

If you want to depend so much on cycling, and insist that running is the same as cycling -- we know that EPO was used worldwide, and undetectable, until 2000, when the first test became available, and that blood doping was still used extensively in cycling, until around 2007 when they adopted the ABP, and even then, this just curbed the usage, as cyclists switched to micro-dosing.

If EPO is the endurance equivalent of Asterix's potion, that makes cyclists and the East Africans so unnaturally fast, is it credulous to expect evidence of similar advances worldwide among Africans and non-Africans alike, in the '90s, when cyclists were popping it like candy, and testing was non-existent, and still in the 2000's up until 2009, when the ABP was introduced, and even then so? We saw worldwide examples of massive improvements with shoes, but somehow not with EPO.

Everyone wants to fault me for not believing in a powerful magic endurance potion, but it seems that no one from the 90% of the world believed in it enough to take it and take on the East Africans, for nearly three decades. Or alternatively, before EPO, all the best non-Africans were already blood doping, and already achieved their maximum ability -- making the "East Africans are naturally superior" argument that doesn't impress you.

This doesn't seem to be enough for some fans of the sport. Some want to believe that a presumption of intent in the artifical context of WADA sanctions is conclusive of intent in the real world. Some want to believe that she intentionally cheated with exogenous nandrolone. Some want to believe that others in BTC are cheating. Some want to believe that others in BTC know Shelby cheated, and they supported it and attempted to cover it up. Some want to believe that Nike was involved.

What we can say for sure is that the presence of a small quantity of nandrolone, without being able to prove the source, under the rules since 2015, will directly result in a 4-year ban.

David Millar?

Quite a bit.
I suggest you study the rules and the decision.

Not from the period of success.