jacksprat wrote:
Why are so many athletes taking EPO if it has little to no effect? Is it the world's best placebo? I think not. Maybe the athletes and their advisers know more than a nameless nobody in a chat room.
Are so many athletes taking EPO? Various studies conducted by the IAAF on entire athlete populations estimate "blood doping" in a range from 14% to 22%, suggesting that as many as 78%-86% are not.
Does EPO work for the marathon? Unofficial (non-IAAF) analysis and reporting shows that only 1 in 9 medals won in Olympic and World Championship marathons over a 12 year period of 2001-2012, were won by athletes unofficially considered "suspicious" of blood doping. This suggests 8 in 9 medals were won by non-suspicious athletes.
The answer to your question is that some (1 out of 5 to 7) of these athletes are taking EPO because there is a strong and wide and deep belief that EPO is a powerful endurance drug that will take athletes to another level of performance. The belief in EPO was made famous/infamous by cycling in the '90s, among athletes and among no-name fans alike.
I've never heard what the athletes and their advisors actually know from the mouths of the athletes and advisors -- only hearsay from nameless nobodies in chat rooms.
But everyone should already know that the very best athletes from more than 90% of the world population struggled to surpass the pre-EPO performances of the '80s, across the board from 800m to the marathon, over the next three decades of the EPO-era.
This is written knowledge from recorded history, not requiring any speculation.