Keira D'amato is Suspicious

Nearly any male should be able to break 3:00 after training for a couple of decades. Tens of thousands of masters runners have run 2:57. You can even add a ton of women to that number.

No American woman has EVER run as fast as she did in the marathon. You can’t compare a Hot Wheels station wagon to a jet.

Armstronglivs wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

Whatever it is about, who has done enough to show that doping can produce a rate of progression, or a peak level of performance, in the marathon that is not possible without doping?

You're really asking who has shown that doping produces superior performances. The jury is out in that one because there is nothing conclusive. If we don't have the data it doesn't exist.

Tell anti-doping that. And the 1 in 2 championship athletes who are using. It obviously helps everyone except marathon runners.

You can find out what I'm really asking by reading my posts, rather than rewriting them.

The answer to the question "who" would be the name of someone(s).

I was told by a masters in sports medicine that "it’s about her rate of progression (sic) than the time".

Who, by name, has reliably observed doped versus natural rates of progression in elite marathon performances?

To summarise your responses, first you said "they are" and "we know", now you say "the jury is out", "there is nothing conclusive" and "we don't have the data".

I can't wait for her to get busted. I remember telling people Lance was a drug cheat for YEARS and people would deny it and get angry. Her day will come. Truth always comes out.

The interesting question would be about parallel cases. There are lots of East African women coming from "nowhere" to strong times within a few years, but they are usually younger and even for them 2:19 would be pretty good. The closest (and then (and now) also suspicious) case might be Salpeter 2017-19 (although she was "only" around 30). I wonder if we have any somewhat similar development/improvement from an American/European runner. Uniqueness is not a strong argument, of course, but it raises doubts.

Is it possible that older women have higher testosterone levels and lower estrogen?

Irony isn't part of your tool-kit so you missed that I was taking the p*ss out of your argument, which is an argument based on wilful naivity; what you don't know or can't see doesn't exist - and you only see with "data". The problem with requiring "data" is that no dopers will agree to supplying it.

ex-runner wrote:

Is it possible that older women have higher testosterone levels and lower estrogen?

It doesn't make a difference to women athletes (unless they dope) as their testosterone levels are naturally only between about 0.5-2.8 nmols. Compare this to men, who have a range from about 8-29 nmols. Older women don't have t-levels outside the norm for women. What is more significant is the reduction in muscle mass and strength (which men also experience as they age) and declining cardio-vascular efficiency, which is why masters athletes become progressively slower and cannot beat open athletes in their prime. So everything should be counting against D'Amato at age 37, compared to a 27 year-old. Her powers are going in the wrong direction.

Jo72 wrote:

The interesting question would be about parallel cases. There are lots of East African women coming from "nowhere" to strong times within a few years, but they are usually younger and even for them 2:19 would be pretty good. The closest (and then (and now) also suspicious) case might be Salpeter 2017-19 (although she was "only" around 30). I wonder if we have any somewhat similar development/improvement from an American/European runner. Uniqueness is not a strong argument, of course, but it raises doubts.

Uniqueness is actually an interesting indicator, for the reason that we have had generations of elite performances to draw upon for comparison. When someone strays too far from the norm for even the very best there are justifiable questions about how this was achieved - particularly when that athlete did not previously show the potential of the very best.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Irony isn't part of your tool-kit so you missed that I was taking the p*ss out of your argument, which is an argument based on wilful naivity; what you don't know or can't see doesn't exist - and you only see with "data". The problem with requiring "data" is that no dopers will agree to supplying it.

Whatever it was, that was not my argument.

You can answer "who has done enough to show" without "data" if you prefer.

If irony is the best, or only, response, then I have to conclude that "who" is "no one".

Seeing a lot of tortured logic in here.

"She was a 3:49 runner" - she ran a 16:05 5k in 2008. Clearly capable of something in the 2:30s, so none of the jump before that is shocking.

"She only ran 2:34 at the trials" -- hard course, running for place. Not a straightforward indicator.

"70 min HM only equates to 2:30" - wrong, more like 2:26. Linear rules only work in a narrow band.

"70 min HM to 2:19 in 19 months isn't crazy" -- WTF??? How many people can better than double their half in less than 2 years? This is the post that made me think she's on something.

Redonculous Maximus wrote:

......Key takeaways:

- weight loss is a big factor (I lost 10 lbs for my Valencia marathon)

- the shoes

- a lot of people train really stupid for marathons (like me) when they’re not professionally coached

- not saying she’s innocent… any 2:19 women’s marathoner is suspect… but big improvement when you go from stupid training and bad dieting wearing bad shoes to smart training, good dieting and super shoes.

Is there any reason to think that when she ran her first couple of marathons she was training really stupidly or eating poorly or wearing really bad shoes? I'm sure she wasn't training ideally at first, but since she had been an NCAA XC All-American, I doubt she was doing anything too stupid. I imagine that many of the gains in your case came from going from stupid training/diet/etc. to pretty good training/diet/etc. - which I assume was her starting point - and not from going from pretty good to better. Plus, her gains were far more dramatic than yours.

P.S. Congrats on your improvement anyway - still impressive by mortal standards.

Stupidly isn't the right word. She just wasn't really "training". She was just enjoying running as more of a social and holistic experience. She said she'd typically meet up with neighborhood friends or a local run group to go out for a jog with them or even a walk back in those days.

She ran a 70 minute HM two years before her 2:19, not 19 months before; so, it was actually two years, and not less than that. If you can't get the basic facts right, your conclusions won't be much better.

19 JAN 2020 Aramco Houston Half Marathon, Houston, TX 1:10:01

So if she kept up her training and didn’t take ten years off, what would she have run in her athletic prime? 2:16-2:17? And say she then took some took EPO and visited the Portland burrito track, what then? 2:13?

I imagine she’ll get tested a lot more so we will see if she continues her rapid improvement. That will tell a lot,

Jogger Hobby wrote:

I can't wait for her to get busted. I remember telling people Lance was a drug cheat for YEARS and people would deny it and get angry. Her day will come. Truth always comes out.

Lot of anger there. Let me get this straight - because a professional cyclist who made millions got busted, that means a female who makes next to no money as a runner is automatically a doper? That's tortured logic even for these boards.

You have posters on this board who still say that many retired runners who never had a bad test are dopers. So evidently, the truth doesn't always come out.

You should graph this data:

Date points

2/24/07 1085

4/13/19 1055

4/25/19 1049

6/8/19 1041

7/4/19 1041

9/15/19 1058

9/29/19 1085

1/19/20 1129

2/29/20 1090

7/18/20 1110

11/14/20 1148

11/24/20 1165

12/20/20 1203

2/27/21 1124

10/10/21 1149

12/5/21 1197

1/16/22 1242

(Though you can leave off the 2007 data point.)

come on bro wrote:

So if she kept up her training and didn’t take ten years off, what would she have run in her athletic prime? 2:16-2:17? And say she then took some took EPO and visited the Portland burrito track, what then? 2:13?

I imagine she’ll get tested a lot more so we will see if she continues her rapid improvement. That will tell a lot,

Yes, if she started when she was 20 and kept it up and decided to start a healthy diet of epo and steroids, she might be a sub 2:10 marathoner.

rekrunner wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

Irony isn't part of your tool-kit so you missed that I was taking the p*ss out of your argument, which is an argument based on wilful naivity; what you don't know or can't see doesn't exist - and you only see with "data". The problem with requiring "data" is that no dopers will agree to supplying it.

Whatever it was, that was not my argument.

You can answer "who has done enough to show" without "data" if you prefer.

If irony is the best, or only, response, then I have to conclude that "who" is "no one".

Hi me again. Some folks have said you have to take in the conditions of races too. And yes, I agree which is why I didn’t bring up Boston or the trails. Those are assumed to be slow.

Marathon runners typically get slower as they age. We know the peak is in the mid-30s with a slow rate of degression. So for her jump, that ten minute drop from late 2019 to 2020 during a period of no doping checks is surprising to me.

So again why is she having small improvements now again as we expect to happen with training. Big jumps happen at the beginning of training not like now.

Other folks have asked about clean athletes. What I would expect to see is increasing improvements with small jumps.

I would only ask that folks look at the times and try to explain them, same with rojo and wejo. Look critically at her training. Most times folks just try to hide in plain sight which I could suspect with her performance improvements.

And again compare this with Sara hall. Someone who has been grinding away for years. That’s the type of training to be used as a baseline