More Kenyan Doping

I still think the coach's hypothesis about top high altitude runners is very reasonable. First, he is very honest and say he doesn't have evidence, but so does everyone else. Funny that the extent of EPO effect even in the references being given of athletes in known doping cases don't are just reliable correlations. People use evidence as slow guy, EPO, fast guy, guy caught, slow again. Even with the data out there, can someone tell us how much time you gain for a certain distance? Also, are there similar gains for everyone in society from a 8min mile guy to 4min mile guy, altitude guys, sea-level guys, Himalayas guys, people of any altitude who already have abnormally high RBCs etc. Basically, there are multitudes of situations where data could help this discussion but they must be lacking because noone seems to find them. Saying that mice are helped by EPO doesnt help because it doesn't tell you how these effects are connected to the variables raised in this thread. I would think this is a project that can be done by sports/exercise science guys using some volunteer elite athelete (or amateur avid runners, who have lesser career risks). I am sure someone would fund this. However, others are arguing as if they have conducted these EPO studies with top high altitude athletes. Secondly, he specifically discusses EPO and not "drugs" don't work with top high altitude athletes. These two points beg a biological/physiological approach to tease apart the probability of what he is claiming. I don't have answers but be critical and ask yourself these questions: (1) how does EPO work and how does it aid endurance sports? (2)how does high altitude born/living and training do for endurance sports? (3)Is there an overlap of effects of EPO and high altitude born and training individuals? (4) Do you think a casual runner who regularly runs a mile in 6 min can get to 5 min if on a regimen of EPO? (5) Do you think a 4 min miler elite athlete who is CLEAN would get a minute off and run a mile in 3 minutes (even if the generally live and train at low altitude)? Now this doesn't condone doping but it supports what the coach is saying based on simple logic there must be diminishing returns whatever way you look at it. It also follows many drug/biological interaction observing that effects need not be linear. But people like linear and it makes sense and it is easy to digest, however, biological systems are more complex than we want to think, case and point, if you were a 13.08 5k guy, took EPO and got to 12.55, do you think after this success, you can double your dose and now get to run 12.42, or 12.29 if you triple your dose?? Only a naive person would think these linear relationships exists(even excluding side effects). Does anyone know the upper RBC capacity limit for human beings and how close high altitude guys are to this ceiling compared to sea-level guys?

Now, this doesn't excuse doping nor is it evidence of anything but a very plausible theory. I think we can't also discount that people are saying that there may be other effects of EPO (apart from primarily inducing RBC production) that helps athletes.

Finally massive effect, little effect, or no effect, doesn't matter because it is a banned substance and no one should be using it.

I am surprised that it has taken this long to bring up the points mentioned in your post.

Focusing only on HCt percentages or Hb concentrations in the blood as a sign of being well adapted to high altitude or for running fast is a red herring as these parameters vary far too much among different cases. Antonio has highlighted different Hct values for world class runners around the time that they ran their best performances and if you look at populations resident at high altitude they also vary. Very generally, you have high altitude resident populations in South America with high HCts/Hb, in Asia with medium or slightly elevated HCts/Hb, and populations in Africa with medium HCts/Hb when all compared with sea level populations. So it does not look as though a typical EPO-HCt response is essential to life at high altitude. Furthermore, to my knowledge no animal adapted to high altitude has evolved to have a high HCt value - most often there is a difference in the haemoglobin gene and its protein product to have a higher affinity to oxygen.

So when considering the performance enhancing effects of EPO one has to consider the effects of EPO on other tissues such as muscle or nerve tissue as these most likely gain some protective effects to stressful conditions such as hypoxia. The problem is that HCt is a relatively easy parameter to measure and so there has been a great focus on this when considering performance enhancing effects of EPO which is missing the full picture.

octa gon, i like your post. you are making good points and you avoid sentences that might annoy so.

i can answer some questions.

1. a german scientist (jürgen reul), also marathoner and hobby cyclist, arranged with 50 years a selftest with epo to show the effects. epo helped him to increase his performance about 5%. other experts assert performance enhancements within a wide range: "only" 1 %, but also 7 to 15 %. jürgen reul realized during this epo test also a way better fighting moral, subliminal aggressions and hardly any inhibition thresholds, he had feelings like that there are no limits and he could continue with the hardest training loads.

2. altitude training is very complicated to discuss. though it´s very trendy, a lot has to be done (research). a quite new research study from carsten lundby (university of zürich) shows:

- effects of high altitude training (=h.a.t.) are individual, for some athletes it means a performance increase, for others a huge downfall, for some there´s absolutely no effect

- well trained athletes with a natural high erythrocyte level do not need h.a.t. (!)

- there seems to be a placebo effect of h.a.t.

read this brief article, very interesting:

http://sweatscience.com/a-reality-check-for-altitude-tents-and-houses/

for detailed informations what living in h.a. means:

http://www.altitudeclinic.com/Copenhagen/Dissertation10b.pdf

Interesting, but this does not apply to top-tier Kenyans

born at altitude.

Norwegian CC skiers have vast experience with altitude

training. Most benefit, but a few quit due to no/negative

effects.

VoR wrote:

You'd have transport two groups of runners to secret locations. One of them being at altitude and the other not. Then compare their respective improvements while doing the same training.

And all the while you'd have to make sure none of the subjects knew what altitude they were training at. (This is the hard part.)

that´s what lundby did:

You're understanding of EPO and how it works is quite minimal, and I don't know mean that to come across in a rude manner, but you can't expect to understand it by reading a message board and throwing out silly questions. Searching through the studies at Pubmed will give you a much better idea, if you have the patience.

There have been plenty of tests on humans and how it effects athletic performance. Most of the studies are fairly short term, lasting approximately 30 days or so. You need to understand that human studies have to be ethical, unless we are talking about a state-sponsored old school regime that just wants to dominate in the olympics...or on the battlefield. This is why you will never see university studies published in journals done on top athletes, it's unethical to be giving them drugs if they are competing. You just can't do that.

An analogy of sorts to RENATO'S hypothesis of EPO not helping those native to and still living at altitude: If you have a theoretical man with a testosterone level of 600 (a bit high, but well within normal range, for an endurance athlete) and give him 60mg of testosterone a week you will still end up with a testosterone level of 600, yet you will stunt his bodies ability to make testosterone on it's own, and will likely throw off a host of other hormones circulating in the body, such as DHEA, etc. If you don't know what you are doing, and instead take 30mg of testosterone a week, you'll still shut the bodies natural testosterone down, but now be left with a level of only 300 in the body, which is too low for this athlete. And supplementing even more testosterone is likely to only give you weight gain and a host of other issues a runner doesn't want, therefore, testosterone supplementation is not beneficial for the typical male runner who already has normal testosterone levels.

Sprintgeezer

You migt undertand this. Even mariion Jones took EPO. Why fo doesn+t work for sprinters ? Cells regeneration.

"your" not "you're"="you are"

I understand your testosterone metaphor. However that got not way of practical application. How do you know that one runners got his top performance limit ? How do you know from 2 runners who is closer to his high top ultimate performance related to each individual talent and related to the training he does ?

Do you know it by race, nationality, level of training, physiology tests, or performance result ? By the way. Are you able to let me know from 2 runners, one of 2:06 marathon and another of 2:08 who is closer to his upper performance limit ?

Related to your testosterone metaphor from this kenyan runners Pamela Chepchumba, Mathew Kisorio, Wilson Loyanae all EPO positive who is the one of testosterone example of 500, 480, 450 whatsoever ? Who is the one of your "norml" testosterone example, and the one with high and the one with low ?

Who is/are the one(s) that were at his top performance limit and who didn´t ?

You simply don´t know at all.

This is the part of Renato Canova speculation and you follow that some tricky argument. I understand that when we are a poor runner with lack of top talent he can get easily to a large margin of enhance performance larger margin of enhance that the world top class runner, or simply larger that the best talent. I understand that the runner of 2:40 in the marathon might progress with or without EPO to 2:20 (by the way 20 minutes faster) as the 2:10 runner can´t. However from 2 runners, one of 2:08 and another of 2:06 who is the one that reached his limit and the one that doesn´t. Who is the one with best training ?

Another your silly idea is that we can´t know about scientific EPO effect becuse it wasn´t been done studies about the EPO effect on world top class runners. You know, as Renato Canova knows very well, that as long as the EPO is illegal that will not be done, because no one real world top class runner want´s to participate in that kind of scientific study. Therefore this is a inappropriate argument. However when in the science we got no opportunity or no way to test, we got other tools or other skill to knowledge. It´s just to see what did the guys that were caught with EPO. Among the long list of middle and long distance runners that were caught wit EPO we might take some interesting conclusions. The main one is that mostly did some progress with EPO take, but mostly important they were able to compete in dated competitions that were important for them, and get results they wouldn´t be with the kind of training they did. This is another aspect to fix. Most of the caught with EPO, they took, not to his al time best chrono. They wanted to do right at an scheduled dated run and also they take EPO to resist to the hard training that is necessary to do for that run(s). Of course that if the performance enhances the runner got best chance to get a best result.

Read what Mathew Kisorio said to the press. I took EPO because “he didn´t run up to his I didn't run up to my standard during this year's Boston marathon”. This is the main reaosn why EPO is used. Not just to perfromnce enhance, but to permit to be in good shape at some dated competition, some of them don´t require his best shape comdition ever.

I didn't run up to my standard during this year's Boston marathon. "To get my power of endurance up, he [a doctor] told me they will take care of it - Mathew Kisorio

It´s not his PB that he wanted. It´s a good classification in on emarathon to make some money.

Octa Gon

I didn´t coach kenyan runners and I don´t know the Kenyan reaction to EPO usage and also don´t know what are the blood values of a Kenyan runners whatsoever, But I trust in what Renato says about the blood of the Kenyans and others he did test - without EPO supposedly . Therefore i don´t know what´s going on about Kenyans. What i know is some runners that were caught with EPO. We got many of them. Some of them I know that in detail.

All of the athletes that took EPO I know their runner profile they did enhance their shape condition by EPO done and a few of them were/are world top class runners.

From all that I know that did EPO, some of them lived and/or trained in altitude. Some of them I got access to their drug test values absolutely . All they runner i know (with or without EPO take) they present high blood values, what is very different to what are the blood values of hematocrit, hemoglobin, etc to that Renato mention.

Also I know about some world top class runners (at the marathon for example) that while they weren´t caught with EPO, however their best performances at a world class level of competition they were done with very high blood tests right before that competitions.

Then I ask myself “how the hell, some work well with high blood values and some (the ones that Renato says) they work well with low levels (related to the others that got high values on the blood tests). Is that ther´s many (different) ways to kill the cat that got near the same result, the same effect ?

Another aspect that troubles me is that as far as I read from Renato he always did defend that Kenyans aren´t basically different from other runners but very similar. They got near the same AND, the same genetic, the physiology reaction (out of individualization of course). If there are differences that is minimal. Is about altitude living, sports, culture way of life, culture, training motivation. And I guess that some people that I know are so well coached as the Kenyans they do, we can´t pretend that all the Kenyans are best coached or that Renato Canova or the other coaches that do coach Kenyan are just the ones with rich training. But by the instance, how the hell one European, one Moroccan, born, live and train in altitude as the Kenyan, they got different physiologic parameters that the Kenyans ?

My conclusion is this one. Or the Kenyans (and some other) do different genes that able him to run best with low hematocrit that a non-kenyan or why the other runners ar at his best shape condition after hard training with high hematocrit and did their best runs with high hematocrit and the Kenyans they don´t ? It´s that truie that we all got the same physiology independently from different way of living, talent, different training ?

Antonio Cabral, I'm actually in line with your thinking. I put the testosterone metaphor ou there as a way of me trying to understand how what Renato is saying MIGHT be possible. I've read plenty of hematology journals and have never seen a report of epo not enhancing oxygen utilization.

'But by the instance, how the hell one European, one Moroccan, born, live and train in altitude as the Kenyan, they got different physiologic parameters that the Kenyans ? '

I agree with most of what you said but only the Kenyan runner is born at altitude.

If there are diminishing returns on EPO use, than there has to be a point where it stops working, correct?

No. Not correct.

How so? At least in regards to EPO use. People have died from taking too much right? So that seems like a point it doesn't work. I'm not referring to sprintgeezers psychoactive effects, just physiological improvement.

First of all, some basic maths: [b[diminishing returns do not imply returns that converge to zero. They may converge to zero, they may converge towards a finite positive value, or they may even become negative.

The fact that people may have died from taking too much EPO does not mean that a correct dose does not help the best athletes (or that they would need to take an exorbitant dose to see any benefit). Humans are quite good distance runners, but they are by no means perfect. It would be foolish to think that even the best distance runner could not benefit from performance enhancement. A gain in performance at the top level actually has increasing returns when it comes to prize money, etc - that's why doping is more prevalent among professional athletes than among amateur athletes, even though the latter could perhaps benefit more percentage wise.

Sprintgeezer

I try to resume all your questions with quickly condensed reply, and without the goes to the physiology and sports science territory, the way everybody will understand and that HRE will continue to say "excellent post" Antonio. And yes, i promise not to debate Lydiard this time, that HRE could joke with me.

My answer to all your questions. I go by facts not by theories.

1/ACTUALLY WE GOT A GREAT HISTORIC ABOUT EPO CAUGHT IN DISTANCE RUNNERS, due to POSITIVE TESTS tests or just CONFESSION.

1/ the number of runners that were caught with EPO, while they do fantastic performances during the period of EPO take (and also more moderrn oxygen boost substances including blood doping) ARE SO MANY AT ANY LEVEL OF RUNNER CATEGORY and at ever level of competition, from local runs, to national runs, meetings, to world championship and olympics THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE THAT EPO DID HELP THEM, or during the run or help them to train more or better or just better recovery, somehow EPO DID HELP THEM TO PERFORMANCE BOOST. This is a fact and anyone that denies it is "deef and blind" to the drug and oxygen booster substances.

2/this said, ther´s always one part of the problem that Renato might be right. When he says that drug EPO namely) might have different effect in different individuals. This is similar to every kind od medicine substance, from one tea, to one vitamin, to EPO, and he is right when he says that all depends of the percent/dosage of the substance.

3/therefore, MY CONCLUSION. To take EPO is not a "sine qua non" condition to best performances, and also to take EPO DOESN`T GUARANTEE world records, wins, pbs, rich performances, since competition depends upon several factors - intrinsic and extrinsic and ther´s no drug that might replace poor training, or the run failure.

4/It´s Renato Canova that says that the kenyans got the same genetics and the same NDA (or ADN in english ?) that almost every other world population. therefore, if we take for granted what he says, EPO would work exactly the same as any other population. If it works or others, even for moroccans, will work or eats africans, if doesn´t work for kenyans would not work for Europeans, Americans or Asians in the condition that all did the same training.

I repeat, there were so many runners caught with EPO or that did confess that took EPO that it would be a fantasy to say that doesn´t work on top class runners. IT DID WORK ON THOSE WE KNOW.

Finnaly and one more time, once again. This debate is just pure theory and in part a wast of time. I prefer to debate learn and get some knowledge about distance training approach that doesn´t include doping. It´s illegal POINT.

ps- EPO works for cycling as well, this is an evidence since so many world top class cyclists did take EPO. The problem is that doesn´t work for boost performance directly , and at this point Renato says, or boost performance, it works by other kind of reasons. I will post why it works.

Just because there are many drug believers, and some people use drugs, does not mean that they work.

Having a drug free system and eating cherries every day is much more beneficial.

More Kenyan Doping?, who knows but President of the IAAF, Lamine Diack doesn't think there's a problem:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/may/31/athletics-doping-kenya-denial?INTCMP=SRCH

Tipoftheiceberg wrote:

http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/sports/2013/03/20/stanchart-champ-in-further-ak-dope-bans/

Got a feeling there are lots more to come. EPO doesn't work (bs) - 10 minute improvement in Nairobi.

+1

Coevett wrote:

I hope the mods don't delete this thread under their new 'no Kenyan doping discussion' rule. I believe this is the very first thread in which Canova claims that EPO doesn't work on Kenyans. It ought to be archived as a piece of LetsRun history.

Where does he say it?

Renato Canova wrote:

I continue to say that all the best Kenyan athletes are completely clean (my athletes of sure), and the evidence is that all the athletes under doping were unknown runners, in many cases very weak, with the only ecception of Mathew Kisorio and of Erupe. I also explained that Kisorio (who also took steroids) ran all his PB BEFORE starting to get some doping, so the fact he can be positive can only support what I say : EPO DOESN'T HELP TOP KENYAN ATHLETES.