OMG, I totally wish Paula Radcliffe gets caught/outted.

It seems that people really don't like her as she is soooo sanctimonious. It really is unbelievable that she took ALL that Britain could offer to support her and further her career. Then moves to Monaco, pays no tax and therefore gives nothing back to Britain. Absolute hypocrite.

What did she actually do? Won a few marathons 😕

Definitely not a sporting hero/heroine.

This thread is Gold.

So many Golden quotes.

So many fantastic (amazing) and fantastic (based in fantasy) comments.

Great stuff.

Agreed

This whole exchange was just too good to be true.

Letsrun at its finest!

Fan-o-Sport wrote:

This thread is Gold.

So many Golden quotes.

So many fantastic (amazing) and fantastic (based in fantasy) comments.

Great stuff.

Well... whenever you see 'OMG' and 'totally' in the same title...

quite a few athletes have been proven guilty without ever having a positive test, mainly cyclists, but primarily - you seriously think Paula Radcliffe can run almost 5 minutes faster shobukova (their PB's), the next fastest female marathoner of all time and still be natty - when shobukova admitted being doped up the whole time? Oh and shobukova was never caught, no chemical proof even after. PR's WR half distance split is 67.30, when her fastest ever half marathon is just under 67 mins? Are you kidding? Lastly, drug testing isn't black and white at all, the IAAF was part of a bribery scandal where the PRESIDENT accepted 300,000 euro from shobukova's team to keep her safe, incidentally, Paula Radcliffe has said the "IAAF is at the forefront of anti doping" - after the scandal btw. These guys are protected. Doping is rife at the elite level, and I understand your innocent until proven guilty ideas, but to not at least have doubt PR is just naive. look up pro cycling in the 90's, these guys were using million dollar doctors on payroll, and cycling (at least until the 2010's had nowhere near the money of something like running. Man United's payroll could cover the entire pro field, all 170+. When elite athletes who train into the ground and are on a dope programme can't get within 5 minutes of your time? Get real

Paula likely doped and got away with it. She's the antihero who rides off to a storybook ending. Many more like her got away too, but weren't quite as fast. There's as much art to dosages and timing as there is to training.

GenericID wrote:

In the end it is naive to think that someone can be at the absolute top of a sport and completely dominate and be clean.

I'd agree with that, except you are forgetting one thing - at the height of her career Paula regularly and VOLUNTARILY had blood drawn and stored under seal. This procedure was witnessed by a lawyer and the blood samples are secured where she has no access to them.

If you believe she's guilty, start a campaign to get the samples retested. Given what we know about Lance's doping regime, the retests can use much more sensitive filters to catch micro-dosing, they can check for designer steroids (thanks to BALCO), etc.

Why not?

I'm sure a lot off dopers are viewed as "good people." And they may indeed be good people, aside from the fact they dope and lie about it. But the Johnson Bros arguments are pretty damn naive and gullible if you ask me. Looks bad on them.

If she was so doped up how come she never won the Olympics?

She never talks about the frozen samples now

Where are they?

The IAAF only started freezing samples in 2005.

They have retested samples from Helsinki 2005 (including Paula's) and Osaka 2007.

the point is that drug testing isn't black and white. the fact is PR destroyed athletes like Shobukhova, the next fastest of all time, by almost 4 minutes, despite Shob being doped up the whole time. By the way, Shobukhova has never had a positive test, none have been found even after her confession. It's sooooo easy to get away with it and if you're someone like PR who has public and corporate backing then...

PR's WR half distance split is 67.30, she's only ever run a HALF MARATHON faster than that ONCE IN HER LIFE where she did a 66.47. And you're telling me she can double that up, are you kidding. Get real, they're all doping, and they all deny, otherwise they'd lose everything, they've learnt from Lance, who was no one after 2013. She's in way too deep and I hope she gets outed, shame that they only started freezing samples etc years after her records - but then again, Shobukhova, Marion Jones, all of the Festina, USPS and Gewiss pro cycling teams (the most dominant teams of all time) were all caught without a single positive test result

Shobukhova was sanctioned with an abnormal blood profile.

Paula ran 65:39.6.

Paula ran 2:15:25 with a 1:06:42 half PB.

- McMillan calculator gives it a 2:20:33.

Mary Keitany ran 2:18:37 with a 1:05:50 half PB.

- McMillan calculator gives it a 2:18:30.

ukathleticscoach wrote:

If she was so doped up how come she never won the Olympics?

because they often test at the olympics

Compare and contrast wrote:

Mary Keitany ran 2:18:37 with a 1:05:50 half PB.

- McMillan calculator gives it a 2:18:30.

Correction:

- McMillan calculator gives it a 2:18:33.

rekrunner wrote:

Shobukhova was sanctioned with an abnormal blood profile.

Correct. Paula had an abnormal blood profile too, actually at least three times her off-scores were suspicious/indicative of likely doping by today's standards.

After the second time (2005) that we know of, she never broke 2:23 again. At the same time, the EPO tests become somewhat reliable... Likely a coincidence, right rekrunner?

The last time (2012), IAAF tasked an unnamed expert with the formal evaluation, whether Paula's excuse for that was plausible.

Said expert said no, triggering the three person panel. Of that, at least one of them (Saugy?!) said yes, that explanation (altitude stay despite normal ret-%*) may be plausible, so she was let off the hook. Or at least that is the official version, for she retired literally directly after that.

Ashenden and Parisotto placed that into the "likely doping" category too.

* If you are interested in the details: we know that Hb goes up after altitude stay, typically 0.5 - 1.0 g/dl in such a case (although much less according to Canova), and ret-% goes down accordingly. From Paula's history, we know that twice she had an Hb of about 15.6 g/dl and ret-% = 0.44 after altitude and "severe dehydration", so the 16.1 and 0.77 is practically not possible for her (should have been around 15.0 and 0.44 without dehydration; or if for a strange reason 16.1 were possible, she should have had ret-%

ukathleticscoach wrote:

If she was so doped up how come she never won the Olympics?

Well, in 2000 she wasn't really doped up, or not as much. Before 2002, she was a bit like Farah pre-2011, e.g. a couple of 4th and 5th places at World Championships. In 2002/3, the crazy times came (2:17 - 2:15), but alas, no Olympics.

In 2004, she couldn't handle the heat. In 2008, she was merely a 2:23:xx marathoner.