Kip Keino and six other senior Kenyan officials charged with corruption

casual obsever wrote:

I didn't comment on Keino, just cited (indirectly) Berendonk and Oerter, who also didn't comment on Keino. I am just providing general background here.

As for 1961? That late? That pdf starts with "the first documented doping case" from the 1904 Olympics, a British marathon runner using strychnine (and brandy and egg-white).

Further: "By 1935, however, synthetic testosterone is invented."

...

"The 1950's see many instances of the existence of drug use in Olympic sport."

These statements here, from the 50s, could have been from this decade:

"This kind of unsupervised and rampant use of drugs becomes the norm as the years go on. Authorities are unwilling to punitively sanction drug use in sport"

Same old, same old.

Nice link above.

I've posted this before,

Mexico was the Saudi Arabia of steriods in the 1960s

Lots of 1968 US athletes were on the roids too it seems.

Berendonk says half of all runners were using it.

African runners were chewing an adaptogen called Khat, interesting.

According to Mr Doped to the Max, synthetic testosterone can raise Hct levels as well as strength.

Yeah I saw that, thanks. The drug cheat apologists for sure didn't like it.

casual obsever wrote:

Aragon wrote:

There are two anachonisms in your post. First, there is is no universal "doping" or "drug use" but different methods of which some are invented earlier than the others and some are used later than the others. Correspondingly statements such as "drug use was prevalent" mean nothing as such without further clarification.

Typical strawman discussion of yours. I said no such thing. In fact, I provided a reference that precisely described "different methods of which some are invented earlier than the others and some are used later than the others".

Two? What's the second alleged anachronism? You forgot to mention that, evidently because there was none. Instead you started asking weird questions... yawn.

Go and troll somebody else, rekrunner.

If you link a sentence mentioning that testosterone was invented in 1935 and that drug use wad rampant in 1950's, you leave the impression that the two are connected when the drug use of the 1950's could've been pretty much anything.

The other anachronism is that because modern endurance athletes know how to use T, it means that endurance athletes of the 1930's, 1940's or 1950's also knew that it was beneficial, knew the mechanism and got the dosage right.

If you can't address issues, don't make yourself look like an idiot with your ad homenim - attacks.

Armstronglivs wrote:

If we step aside from the verbal fisticuffs for a moment, what we might acknowledge is that the question of any athlete doping in the 60's (who wasn't caught or didn't subsequently admit to it) is ultimately only a matter for conjecture. Even if suspected, it can't be proven. But we can also acknowledge that if runners had chosen to dope - certainly by the late '60's - there would have been means to do so, even if it wasn't in the proportions of the autologous blood doping of the 70's and EPO's in the 90's.

Okay Armstronglivs...you've got the 70's covered with transfusions and the 90's the start of the EPO-era, so what was going on in the 80's? There were a lot of fast times and big jumps from the 70's, particularly in the middle-distances. Was something new going on with PEDs or could this be considered one, small, clean 10-yr window on the eve of the 90's EPO madness era? ?

Of course athletes of most countries could've obtained steroids relatively easily in the 1960's and it is more likely than not that it wasn't only the shot putters/weightlifters who abused them, but that the practice had spread also to endurance sports.

But still even when there are many proven cases and confessions of endurance athlete steroid use from the 1970's, there is not one proven case from the 1960's and even the speculation that it was widespread among endurance athletes is pretty nonexistent in the literature. It is possible that when the East German doping program started, mid D runners were also taking steroids from c:a 1968 onwards, but it could've been more a trial-and-error type experiment to give steroids to every athlete than based on any pre-existing knowledge about the benefits.

Even the magnitude of benefit is not that clear for men, because females (Semenya) benefit generally more from steroid use and I don't think that Lance attributed his success to testosterone which could be beneficial during intensive cycling season and during the multiweek stages races. It is telling that when one DDR doping doctor listed in 1977 how much athletes had improved significantly during four year steroid use, he listed various disciplines but didn't bother to mention men's middle distance at all whereas women's 800m and 1500m are mentioned.

I think that practically zero experts have given any estimate how steroids improve the perfomance of male endurance runners and I don't know the benefit and neither does anyone else, so it is tempting to select a figure to suit anyone's own narrative. As one interesting anecdote, one Finnish antidoping activist and steroid specialist told in 1985 that whereas every strength athlete and a majority of sprint athletes took steroids, the benefit on endurance athletes was "unlikely even when there does exist some random use". He had revealed earlier (based on interviewes with Finnish sports MDs, athletes and coaches) that a large portion of the 1976, 1980 and 1984 Finnish olympic teams had doped and the Martti Vainio steroid case had taken place only a year earlier. Clearly placebo in his view, which is an opinion just like any other one.

Wait -- what? Besides being wrong, it is beside the point. This "new research" does not address why drugs from the 1960s is even considered a likely explanation for Keino's altitude performance in 1968 in Mexico, let alone the most likely explanation. Even casual obsever admitted as much: "I didn't comment on Keino". I asked for examples of drugs from the 1960s specifically providing that kind of benefit for distance runners at altitude, and repeatedly got examples of drugs from the 1960s, neglecting to link the drug use to any benefit at altitude for distance runners like Keino, and that such examples at altitude would be few if any. In fact, I was told East German drug use was "systemic" and then I was told "I don't remember the East Europeans doing unusually well at these Games in the distance events". The systemic 1960s drugs did NOT seem to provide the benefit at altitude for the East Germans. Demonstrating that drug use was wild in the 1960s, without any corresponding benefit at altitude, only further makes my point.

The wild 60s wrote:

I'm surprised rekrunner isn't better researched in this area, unless he's burying his head in the sand & ignoring history.

Assuming that all this "benefit anybody" / "is hugely powerful"/" "separates men from boys"- material is scientifically true and not just armchair speculation, it should be easy to find statements from scientists (reviews etc) stating that testosterone/anabolics improve performance of male endurance runners significantly. While there is some plausible enhanced recovery - speculation, there are also opinions that there is little if no benefit at all.

About clandestine nature explaining the widespread use in the 1960's not being revealed, you didn't either see Finnish athletes admitting the use of transfusions until 1981, but somehow everyone pretty well knew what was going on in Finland as early as 1971 almost from the day one. The steroid use of Finnish endurance athletes was also heavily speculated in 1972-1973 in the media at that time while everyone denied it, but there is no such a gossip or speculation about the 1960's.

Where there is smoke, there is usually fire, but where there is no smoke, there is usually very little fire at most.

What about the 1950s? The mile dropped from like 4:01 to 3:54 in 4 years. Grandpa must've been on the good stuff.

Yet the East German men were given the drugs nonetheless.

What happens if the gains are around 1%? Still a gain.

It has long been proposed that the gains come from the training recovery aid nature.

THEORY: roids help to strengthen the core and help minimize energy inefficiencies, fresher for longer, we know they aid sprint speed, so a great 'kick.'

I'm not trolling anyone. The master troll here is Coevett, turning an alleged corruption charge which was quickly dropped, into yet another thread accusing Kenyans of winning by doping, drawing all the usual flies.

casual obsever wrote:

Go and troll somebody else, rekrunner.

Subway Surfers wrote:

Yet the East German men were given the drugs nonetheless.

Yes they obviously were given and the GDR doctor didn't find any reason to mention any miraculous transformation associated with steroid use in mid D men.

Subway Surfers wrote:

What happens if the gains are around 1%? Still a gain.

It is possible, but while 1 % is enough incentive to abuse steroids, it is of so low magnitude that as an independent factor it is difficult to distinguish it from any other factors explaining mprovements in anyone's performance or in the seasonal bests of different eras.

Subway Surfers wrote:

It has long been proposed that the gains come from the training recovery aid nature.

THEORY: roids help to strengthen the core and help minimize energy inefficiencies, fresher for longer, we know they aid sprint speed, so a great 'kick.'

All these theories and the literature is and has been available to commentators, but still somebody like Mike Ashenden estimated that blood doping gave some 1-1.5 % benefit at 1500m which was far above the benefit given by steroids and recovery products.

Aragon wrote:

If you ..., you leave the impression...

If you can't address issues, don't make yourself look like an idiot with your ad homenim - attacks.

Issues? You aren't commenting on what I wrote, but argue against what you pretend to think I might have meant. For whatever reason. Ridiculo. Ok, not an ad hominem attack, but a strawman discussion typical for trolls.

This is now the third time within 24 hours I am pointing this out. Next time I'll just ignore your trolling.

Last, I don't see an ad hominem attack from my side. I merely pointed out your "strawman discussion" and "weird questions" asked you to troll someone else. I am not one calling others "idiot".

Aragon wrote:

Subway Surfers wrote:

It has long been proposed that the gains come from the training recovery aid nature.

THEORY: roids help to strengthen the core and help minimize energy inefficiencies, fresher for longer, we know they aid sprint speed, so a great 'kick.'

All these theories and the literature is and has been available to commentators, but still somebody like Mike Ashenden estimated that blood doping gave some 1-1.5 % benefit at 1500m which was far above the benefit given by steroids and recovery products.

Yet you yourself only a week ago ruled out a 9 second transformation of Ramzi (+4%) because you didn't believe that he was solely taking EPO. An observation that I actually agreed with. But if epo didn't account for 100% of this 9 second jump, what's is left can be attributed to andgrogens. But the only person who can tells this is Ramzi but he won't because he'd have to give back his 2005 medals.