Kip Keino and six other senior Kenyan officials charged with corruption

yes, he called you a troll, and yes he is an idiot.

I could essentially reproduce the first paragraph of my original post with only a little editing. but I only state now that that Dr. Markku Alén (the Finnish steroid specialist), exercise physiologist Mike Ashenden and other commentators had plenty of time to discuss the aggressiveness of male elephants and other material with the steroid specialists, but somehow all of them concluded that testosterone/anabolic steroids give at best only some benefit to male endurance runners.

Subway Surfers wrote:

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.

A combination of factors (blood doping + androgens + training + access to better equipment etc.) can explain Ramzi's 4 % transformation, but everyone should have some doubts how much changes in these Y-O-Y bests even reflect "transformation" at all and how much only favourable vs. unfavourable conditions between the years and different races.

I don't know where most of these arguments are coming from -- contrary to your depiction, I did not make most of them. For example, I have not talked about drug availability in the 1960s, and would accept that they were widely available and abused. I have assumed nothing for or against 1960s drugs assisting endurance athletes at altitude, and only argued that Keino's altitude performance was naturally plausible, not being that much better than previous mile efforts at lower altitudes. I also argued that drugs from the 1960s are not known to provide the super-recovery from sickness to super-normal performances for male mid-distance athletes at altitude that you suggest occurred with Keino. None of the research provided appears to contradict that. I have asked you repeatedly to provide historical examples, meeting two criteria: 1) 1960s doping and 2) improved mid-distance performance, looking for either a precedent, or a replication of this alleged benefit. This is because you have concluded that 1960s doping most likely allowed Keino to run some 2-3 seconds (~1.4%) faster than you believe was possible naturally. I wouldn't want to deny history, but you seem unable to provide concrete historical examples that compare to what you suggest most likely happened with Keino. On the contrary, the best you could do was provide me examples of athletes who doped and who did not perform unusually well at altitude. If I make any assumptions about the lack of effectiveness, it is supported by the lack of examples. You make many suggestions that steroids and amphetimines will also help these endurance athletes, apparently on the order of 1.4% -- this should only make it easier for you to find and provide examples of improved performance.

Armstronglivs wrote:

You have assumed that drugs would not have assisted athletes at altitude.

...

Denial doesn't change history.

So Keino was found not guilty?

Here's the study on T stimulating erythropoiesis:

Also, Matt has got a good basic overview of EPO & T/steroids and endurance athletes. The testosterone/steroid part starts @ 3:50 in (in a nutshell; improved protein synthesis from muscle breakdown from training and increased erythropoiesis):

"Criminal charges against Kenyan legend Keino set to be dropped after revealed he never received any money" "But, after giving himself up yesterday at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) headquarters and being questioned for more than six hours, it was discovered the honorary International Olympic Committee (IOC) member was never a signatory to any account and neither did he receive any money."https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1071222/criminal-charges-against-kenyan-legend-keino-dropped-after-revealed-he-never-received-any-money

isthreadupdate wrote:

So Keino was found not guilty?

I think that only a fringe minority of people have claimed that athletes (in general) wouldn't benefit from steroids/testosterone, but it is really difficult to find a specialist directly stating that those products enhance male endurance performance significantly even when there are some bits and pieces here-and-there in doping inquiries and reports pointing out that endurance athletes have abused these substances. Whereas one systematic review (Hartgens & Kuipers, 2004) on the matter found some research papers where increased recovery was seen (and some which increased recovery wasn't seen), the authors could only conclude that "research on the recovery rate in humans is too limited to draw definite conclusions yet".

One could make the Semenya argument about the Eastern bloc middle distance women who didn't look like females and who - according to GDR scientists - improved by several seconds after having treated with high doses of Oral-Turinabol (even when there are some methological issues in establishing the exact magnitude). What this has to do with males with already normal male testosterone levels isn't that obvious, but as with rHuEPO, it is unlikely that a large number of endurance athletes would use for decades a product with only placebo effect to back up its efficacy, but everyone's estimate about the magnitude of the benefit is more a guess than anything else.

Not arguing or speculating specifically about Keino or any other athlete, but it seems simply wrong to me to argue that distance athletes of the era would not have used steroids or testosterone. We know for sure that Nurmi was attempting to benefit from T by taking an extract made, if I remember correctly, from goat testicles. He may not have had a name for the substance and we can't prove it had any effect, but he was trying.

Athletes always seek an edge.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Lance Armstrong tested for about 7 times the normal male level of testosterone. You don't think he would have taken it if he didn't think it gave him benefits? 7 Yellow Jerseys says I agree with him.

Allegations about someone's T-level with no source whatsoever shouldn't be addressed at all even if I can recall Armstrong's T/E-ratio being something like 7:1-ish in some tests. Most dopers dope because they (or their coaches, doctors or physiologists) assume that doping benefits them or it is mandatory to keep their contract and so did Armstrong. Perhaps he found the substance beneficial because he continued to took T until 2005 if not later.

If you are going to go through one-by-one every doper listed everywhere and ask my opinion on whether they benefited (or could've benefited) from abuse of T or naturally high T, you are waisting everyone's time.

As there is something mythological powers associated in drinking animal blood, there might be something similar powers associated with testicles of animals (even without any testosterone theories) and in 1931 Paavo Nurmi indeed advertised a product called Rejuven made of testicles of goat. Finnish historian Erkki Vettenniemi has pretty extensively debunked the episode in one of his essays writing in the abstract the following:

Vettenniemi is no whitewasher of the Finnish sports world but has speculated (for instance) that the head coach of the Finnish cross country skiing team of 1938-1968 brought methamphetamine (sold under the brand name Pervitin) into the Finnish sports world from Nazi Germany after being head coach of the German team in the 1930's and returning to Finland in 1938. Roughly a year ago he wrote in a book that the Finnish anti-doping researchers who investigated the possibility to develop a test to detect the abuse of rHuEPO and autotransfusions for the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 1989 provided the Finnish teams with the very difficult-to-obtain hormone (obtained for the development process) while simultaneously convincing the foreign teams that all blood doping could be detected and scared them to ski on bread and water alone.

The Finns, particularly women, won medal-after-medal being the most successful nation of the 1989 games.

rekrunner wrote:

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.

Really, using covette's flaws as an excuse to stick to your head in the sand now? There are arguments on every thread like this that just send you home devastated but you will find some weakness to fool yourself that you are all patched up. Lame game.

casual obsever wrote:

Go and troll somebody else, rekrunner.

I did not indicate that I considered Nurmi a doper (such terms are often anachronistic and I believe only stimulants were explicitly banned, and then only after 1928 and then with no enforcement mechanism).

I have no idea if the rejuven worked or not. The reports indicate that it included testosterone and the ad itself indicates that at least one of the mechanisms of action was that it allowed recovery from a heavier training load. I don't even know the validity of the claim that it included testosterone, as the claim appears to be from the 1990s and I would be surprised if there was actual testing on it or even if any survived for testing into the 1990s. I'm sure they did not do double blind testing with two similar groups of athletes.

I also have no idea if Nurmi actually took the rejuven or not. It would be nearly impossible to adjudicate such a claim definitively at almost 100 years remove. It is relevant that there was at least some controversy about what was within the bounds of sportsmanlike behavior in taking stimulants and other substances and Nurmi would have great incentive to say that he did not actually take it.

I am not sure I can access the same Vettenniemi article or book you are referring to. This article does provide a good background although not addressing the rejuven controversy specifically.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Erkki_Vettenniemi/publication/236722486_Runners_Rumors_and_Reams_of_Representations_An_Inquiry_into_Drug_Use_by_Athletes_in_the_1920s/links/56b0704608ae8e37214e5c95/Runners-Rumors-and-Reams-of-Representations-An-Inquiry-into-Drug-Use-by-Athletes-in-the-1920s.pdf

Vettenniemi does not think we can every fully answer questions about Nurmi's use of substances.

Anyway, focusing too much on these specifics would be to distract from my main point. If there was testosterone around, whether derived from goat testicles or synthesized in a laboratory, it seems a very poor assumption to think that distance runners would not try it.

??? What arguments of substance are there about Keino in 1968? I don't ever think I was "sent home devastated" in any of these threads.

Lurker wrote:

Really, using covette's flaws as an excuse to stick to your head in the sand now? There are arguments on every thread like this that just send you home devastated but you will find some weakness to fool yourself that you are all patched up. Lame game.

Two people who would disagree with you is Lance, calling "testosterone" a low-octane drug, and Ferrari, who called it a placebo.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Lance Armstrong tested for about 7 times the normal male level of testosterone. You don't think he would have taken it if he didn't think it gave him benefits? 7 Yellow Jerseys says I agree with him.