Now it gets interesting, Zane Robertson's ex-girlfriend Betty Desalegn (Jama Aden athlete) is busted for Biological Passport

rekrunner wrote:

The ambiguity and vagueness makes PED a poor choice of term, if you really only want to talk about the banned drugs enhancing performance. Your use of "O2-vector doping" is a better term, for EPO-era doping discussions. Still, the way you discuss "high responders to O2-vector doping synergistically combined with GH and androgens", while sounding exceedingly narrow and precise, still leaves answering "which athletes are high responders" and "which drug combinations are synergistic" subject to individual interpretation.

I get a sense that you aren't really reading my answers, as I've repeatedly, exceeding explained what I'm saying and why, in long posts that everyone complains are too long and repetitive. The main trigger for my EPO discussions are rooted in Renato's claims about EPO not working for "top" athletes, and some of the counter-claims, like "we know EPO works for East Africans, because it works on everyone else".

A key tenet of science, is to compare any scientific hypothesis or conclusion to the real world -- do we see confirmation in real world observations? And, more importantly, an often forgotten step, do we see contradictions in real world observations? This makes "EPO works on everyone else" subject to such observational analysis. One way to demonstrate that "it works for everyone else" is to observe the impacts (quantity and quality) on record times, and if they generally apply to "East Africans", "North Africans", and "everyone else".

One key argument that EPO works, and is highly effective, is that the fast times that occurred on the track in the '90s and early '00s, by a few East Africans and North Africans. This makes barriers like sub-3:29, sub-13:00, sub-27:00 interesting. They were barriers for everyone, in pre-EPO times, and, for non-Africans, representing 85% of athletes globally, the EPO-era did not change that. If East Africans ran sub-27:00 in 1993, and eventually brought the record down to 26:17, it becomes difficult to explain Chris Solinsky being the first non-Afican to break 27:00, only after the introduction of the ABP, signalling the end of the EPO-era. In a sporting world where doping prevalence is admittedly more than 57%, where cycling showed us that EPO was universally abused, by all nations, while also largely undetected (1-2% detection rate), and EPO believed to provide up to 6% individual effect (Sumgong improved by 9 minutes) or more (Lombard gained 3 minutes), we have the first non-African only breaking 27:00 in 2010. This is not a single anomaly, but a near universal real world observation for all endurance running events of all time.

The main hurdle in observing "the percentage gain in improvement from the runner's baseline times when the program was initiated", is that we rarely know "the runner's baseline times" or "when the program was initiated", or for that matter, what "the program" was. These values again, are often left subject to individual interpretation. So an athlete like Baumann, becomes a poster-boy for EPO success, even though he was busted for steroids two years after his 5000m record. It requires several assumptions that he "really" started taking EPO more than two years earlier and we are naive to "believe" otherwise. I'm looking for real world observations that do not require "assuming the conclusion".

Renato Canova wrote:

I think we have to divide athletes in two big categories : who looks mainly for money, and not only accepts, but searches, every way for reaching top results (for producing more money), and who wants to test himself, understanding till where can arrive with his own forces and qualities.

In spite of what the most of part of people can suppose, there are many (if not the most part) of top runners who belong to the second category, and who are able to stay at the top (also achieving some WR) without using any type of external aid (and I don't speak of doping only, but of legal supplements too).

We have in every sport some lack of specific education about the effects of different types of doping.

We need to think of severa points :

a) The business of Pharma Companies is the third in the World, and includes not only real medicines for sick people, but also every kind of supplement, because the global market pushes in this direction

b) We live in a "pharmacological society". In every TV (and in every Country), on every newspaper (and in every Country), in common discussions (and in every Country), normal people look for something helping their health, or able to produce a "magic" improvement of their personal qualities, under physical and mental point of view.

c) Underlining the effects of some substance on specific performances, produces the result to increase the market of the same substance, since the big income for the pharma Companies is in the market for amateurs and normal people, not with top athletes representing a very little percentage, but considered TESTIMONIAL of the effects on the performances.

d) On the other side, antidoping is now a flag for all the Olympic Sport. While the economical sources for the "poor" sports (athletics, swimming, wrestling, lifting, etc...), normally depending on the Investments of national Governments, or by the support of private sponsors (Banks, TV...), during the last 10 years, face a great cut year after year, the Antidoping continues to ask more money, moving the focus of sport from the ACTIVITY (that is something positive for every culture) to the CONTROL.

I read some time ago one post (maybe your, I don't remember) where the poster said the only way for cleaning the sport is to go back to full amateurialism, cancelling all prizes and advantages for top results.

I disagree : with the current culture, people takes some doping also for beating another athlete (maybe working in the same office), and the final goal is not money, but the satisfaction to be better than somebody else (in Italy, 99.50% of people using doping are not athletes, but are in the gyms for private activity).

It's clear that the only solution is a very deep EDUCATIVE ROAD, and at the base of everything there are two different goals :

a) To teach everybody that the higher satisfaction in any sport is TO IMPROVE YOURSELF, and if you take some external substance for helping yourself, but you have clear that goal, YOU GO TO CHEAT YOURSELF.

b) To make LESS IMPORTANT (looking at the final results) the advantages of doping, because, if we go to exaggerate the effects on the performances, WE BECOME THE BEST TESTIMONIAL FOR DOPING.

c) To reduce the list of substances able to give real advantages, and to create a difference in the period of ban depending on the substance, introducing the concept of DOSAGE and QUANTITY, too. At the moment, the list of substances is so long, including also something NEVER really tested, that people without a pool of specialists working with them are confused, and many positive tests are casual (especially when we find little percentage of steroids, present in the most part of medicines made in Asia, mostly in India, Vietnam and Korea).

High-Octane Dopers wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

...I get a sense that you aren't really reading my answers, as I've repeatedly, exceeding explained what I'm saying and why...

I'm tiresome of reading your answers because this has been debated before ad nuseam on previous threads involving yourself, Canova, Aragon & others. In those debates, I've repeatly shown anecdotal evidence of percentage gains in performance, rapid mprovement in times (irrespective of a very fast PB), and decline in times post-ban with proven O2-vector cases that strongly suggests the athlete benefited from the use of EPO/blood doping (e.g., Ramzi, Mourhit, Garcia, Shobukhova, Bulut...to name a few).

You take a position of rationalization that these athletes never reached their "clean potential" (whatever the hell that is since a lot of these athletes are career dopers to begin with) and that their improvement was chalked off to better training, better nutrition, improved concentration, custom shoes, aerodynamic running shorts/briefs, and all that other stuff ?. The problem is you can't prove any of that as a *primary* factor because of the proven use of O2-vector doping within these cases. The evidence in these cases clearly show an EPO positive or an ABP sanction for hematological anomalies (very high off scores in some cases), improved performances in a relatively short period of time (not all cases of course), and a marked decline in times post-ban for those returning to competition. Since you simply believe 02-vector doping is ineffective for distance running then you'll never acknowledge, or believe, that any performance improvement in these confirmed cases would be from the utilization of EPO or blood manipulation.

So, it's a pointless debate anymore. People will look at the evidence and decide for themselves whether or not EPO/blood doping is effective for distance running...really nothing new there in this debate.

Everyone's looking for an edge wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

You are correct. 3 million is a lot. And "everything else is a guess" also hits the spot.

No doubt that doping and supplements is a big business, for professional athletes, amateur athletes, and gym rats alike -- made bigger by surrounding it with mythology making doping and supplements seem more important than it is, by venturing to guess.

Phrases like "I would venture" and "I would guess" are precisely what I mean when I say a "lot of info is missing", and we need to fill in the gaps with biased speculations, assumptions, and pre-formed conclusions. Much of what we believe is based on a few (sometimes cherry-picked) facts, and "Everything else is a guess." The outcome depends, not on the facts, but on "everything else".

I would venture to suggest, and guess, that supplements are often tainted with testosterone and other hormones as an active ingredient, to give a desired effect, like more muscle mass for body-builders, while advertising it as some kind of all natural, herbal, homeopathic, ancient Chinese secret.

I note here that the photo is not of 3 million doses.

Yeah...rekrunner "everything else is a guess" - nothing to see hear. Besides, if any EPO was in the cache it would be completely useless, as you have convinced us all, that EPO is, and has always been, ineffective for elite distance runners. ? ?? Meanwhile, Espana can't keep out of the doping spotlight with another recent drug probe: 2016 European 5000 champ llias Fifa arrested & question in a doping raid:

http://m.france24.com/en/20171025-european-5000m-champion-ilias-fifa-arrested-doping-raidhttp://www.eurosport.com/athletics/euro-5000m-champ-ilias-fifa-temporarily-released-after-doping-arrest_sto6383427/story.shtml

rekrunner wrote:

One key argument that EPO works, and is highly effective, is that the fast times that occurred on the track in the '90s and early '00s, by a few East Africans and North Africans. This makes barriers like sub-3:29, sub-13:00, sub-27:00 interesting. They were barriers for everyone, in pre-EPO times, and, for non-Africans, representing 85% of athletes globally, the EPO-era did not change that. If East Africans ran sub-27:00 in 1993, and eventually brought the record down to 26:17, it becomes difficult to explain Chris Solinsky being the first non-Afican to break 27:00, only after the introduction of the ABP, signalling the end of the EPO-era. In a sporting world where doping prevalence is admittedly more than 57%, where cycling showed us that EPO was universally abused, by all nations, while also largely undetected (1-2% detection rate), and EPO believed to provide up to 6% individual effect (Sumgong improved by 9 minutes) or more (Lombard gained 3 minutes), we have the first non-African only breaking 27:00 in 2010. This is not a single anomaly, but a near universal real world observation for all endurance running events of all time.

Who can ya trust? wrote:

casual obsever wrote:

Beautiful, isn't it.

As I keep saying: we need more countries to pursue dopers as the criminals they are. Police involvements, raids, questioning under oath,...

Just imagine Paula in court with all her varying statements/contradictions, or more recently, Ritz, Tara, Rupp, Farah, Salazar.

Of course Lord Coe and the drug cheat apologists here are strongly opposed to that.

Doesn't Nike run the show with Salazar & Co? I can't imagine a billion dollar juggernaut invested so heavily in American distance running would allow any tarnishment of the success achieved over the years. We've now seen a peak behind the curtain with the Fancy Bear's hacked WADA document a few months ago. Two of America's most high-profile and successful runners over the years are classified as "likely doping" with a 3 & 5 star priority rating. With all the corruption going on these days (imagine that), I wonder if Nike has any say in the matter? ?

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2017/07/say-aint-fancy-bears-hack-reveal-many-track-fields-biggest-stars-likely-doping-see-latest-fancy-bears-documents/

Passport Era Doping wrote:

I don’t think the EPO-era ever ended with the ABP.

Ashenden wrote:

Retrospective analyses of databanks have revealed some of the cat-and-mouse nuances of the interplay between blood monitoring and athlete's responses. In the years immediately after the introduction of an enlarged blood testing programme by the International Ski Federation (FIS), the unexpected high mean [Hb] values encountered in 1997–1999 (i.e., 16.2 g/dL) declined closer to normal values (14.8 g/dL). However, in subsequent years, the [Hb] began to creep upwards again whilst reticulocyte levels fell, which the authors cautioned was likely a sign that skiers had adopted new strategies to manipulate their blood values (Morkeberg et al. 2009b). It is disconcerting to note that cycling, which also introduced blood monitoring during this period, reported a similar 'evolution' in blood values (Zorzoli 2005).

rekrunner wrote:

I'm assuming what? Where does that come from?

If EPO is the primary reason for the amazing elite East African performances of the '90s and '00s, and the amazing depth of elite East Africans, plus a few North Africans, then we'd have to conclude that, even now, the EPO-era hasn't really yet arrived in the West, or at best, it arrived on a much smaller scale to a select few -- for example Spain who managed to set a few indoor European records, Chinese and Russian women, assuming they didn't take steroids, and the single outlier of Paula, who set the bar so high, that it was "mentally off putting, you would pre race instantly concede defeat."

Exaggerating the effects of EPO leads to many paradoxes. For example: the larger the effect (up to 6%), the larger the abuse (57% means lots of non-Africans), and the larger the failure of ABP to detect large abuses (Ashenden "proved" 10-20% increase in Hgb raises no flags in the ABP), -- the harder it becomes to explain non-African performances for decades.

Real world observations are better explained, with at least a diminishing returns model suggesting a small effect (if any) from EPO, even synergistically combined with other doping, for elite runners, and recognizing more significant factors unique to East Africans, and to a lesser extent North Africans, and for the women, recognizing the proven effect of steroids and male hormones, combined with a lack of depth of talent and maturity of the events.

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

You are assuming that EPO arrived in Western running and East Africa at the same time. We have no evidence of this.