Kip Keino and six other senior Kenyan officials charged with corruption

Armstronglivs wrote:

You may not have intended to make some of the arguments I have attributed you but to my reading they are necessary inferences from what you have appeared to be saying. You have clarified some of these points - for which I am grateful - and I see that you do at least acknowledge doping had become an issue in the sixties. I am less convinced than you are that Keino's performance in the 1500 at Mexico can be given a satisfactory natural explanation, for reasons I have previously offered. However, I cannot provide examples of research about how ped's might have assisted his recovery from illness, because I am not aware of any research specifically on that subject. We do know, though, that ped's can assist with recovery in an athlete generally.

You are also asking for case examples that would demonstrate a 1.4% performance improvement in male athletes using ped's in the late 60's. I'm not sure why you would require that kind of detail if at the same time you acknowledge ped's were being used/abused in the late 60's. It's like discovering a body at the scene of the crime and asking, how dead is it really? Are you unconvinced the ped's would have assisted distance athletes in the 60's even by such a relatively small degree?

There is also a practical difficulty: to provide you with examples it would have to be of athletes we would know for certainty had doped, and we would also have to know what their "clean" base was as against their boosted performance (and at altitude). With very little testing in the 60's the chances of finding such a helpful example would be very slim - they would have to have been caught and come clean, as it were - and those who weren't caught would have to have chosen to admit their doping and how they went about it. Unlikely. Cheats don't generally choose to be the subject of detailed academic research. I don't know of any research that provides such examples. Estimates of doping advantage consequently tend to remain as speculative estimates.

I do know, however, from my own acquaintance with doping literature that ped's have been estimated to increase an athlete's performance up to a maximum of 20%. That is a staggering amount. (It isn't altogether surprising. Ben Johnson ran 9.79 doped; subsequently forced to run clean he struggled to get below 10.4). So if the gains can be as high as in the region of 20% for some athletes I wouldn't see a 1.4% gain for distance runners in the 60's as unlikely - even in a period when doping was not as advanced or as effective as it is today.

Instead of asking how exactly an athlete doped I follow the analogy of the WADA approach to the bio passport: we may not know how the athlete doped but if their blood values are out of kilter with their own pre-established normal then there is a presumption of doping. Hence, if I see that an athlete's performance is considerably beyond what they have demonstrated in their career - their baseline "normal" - and I don't see that this can easily be explained naturally, then I look for doping. If there is a body, so to speak, I don't need to find the weapon in order to know there was a crime. But there we differ; you prefer to read natural causes.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Aragon wrote:

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.

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.

Armstronglivs wrote:

We know that some athletes have been attempting to gain an edge since the origins of modern competitive sports; we know also that athletes in aerobic sports in the '60's were using stimulants; we know that those stimulants are still banned substances today because they are regarded as performance enhancing; we know that some distance runners in the 60's doped because it was admitted, even though there was no testing till '68; we know elite athletes have used testosterone to boost performance because they believed it worked (and some, like Armstrong, approached their doping with professional rigour); we know that doping was becoming more widespread in the '60's because it was becoming policy in the Eastern Bloc; I know personally that many athletes were doping because they told me, and that it was quite open - even naming some (such as "The Doctor" - a field events exponent who was also a cheerful supplier). Without doubt, a doping environment existed in the '60's but you choose to believe that somehow distance runners remained virginal in an environment where they could see others finding ways to gain an edge; and you also believe that if they took anything it wouldn't have worked anyway - I guess doping only worked for them after Keino retired - even though research has estimated that doping benefits users far in excess of the 1.4% gain that you ascribe to Keino; as I have said, doping today affords gains of up to a maximum of 20%. 1-2% in 1968 cannot be beyond the realms of possibility.

Armstronglivs wrote:

I'm just a bit boggled here that testosterone is being largely dismissed as a performance enhancer. I might put that down to some of the commenters, like rekrunner maybe, being young men in the prime of their physical lives and taking its effects for granted, because they haven't been losing it. Testosterone is what makes young men powerful - and believe me, I know it! I've reached the age when I have much less of it and I'm probably a fraction as strong as I used to be. Young men are like bulls - and us old guys can see it! As we age we lose muscle mass and testosterone is crucial to maintaining and building muscle. And muscle is crucial to athletic performance. Testosterone is like rocket fuel for the machine of the body. (BTW, if you see a masters athlete with serious muscle mass jumping out of his skin you know what he's been doing - or taking.) The bottom line is that at any age the more testosterone you have the more powerful you will be, because of its effects in building muscle and how you are able to use those muscles. Top athletes aren't stupid.

Armstronglivs wrote:

I'm not going to get very far in persuading rekrunner that distance runners could have benefited from ped's in the late '60's, so I'll give that a rest and change tack.

Rekrunner, you strike me as a guy who is pretty knowledgeable about elite running, so I might draw to your attention some other features that seem a little odd about Keino's 1500 at Mexico. You say that Keino's performance was not outside his ballpark best at sea level - true, though we are talking altitude here - but something else that seems anomalous is the performance of the rest of the field.

In a championship race, and a final especially, the margins of ability between the competitors are usually quite close. It explains why many races are now decided in fractions of a second amongst the place-getters. Keino's race was run off a very fast - near world record - pace. It didn't come down to a late kick. In such races, the whole field is usually dragged along; many of the runners will likely pb. A good example of that was Rudisha's wr race at London in 2012, where most of the field set pb's and almost all went under 1.43. Another example was Filbert Bayi's wr 1500 performance at Christchurch in '74, where the first four runners went under the previous world record. (Interestingly one of them was Jipcho, who set the pace for Keino at Mexico.) I can give plenty of other examples. Fast races by closely matched elites typically produce fast performances by everybody (except the injured or ill).

Yet at Mexico, none of the other runners in the race recorded a fast time or anywhere near their personal best. Jipcho - who ran below 3.33 at sea level in Christchurch - finished in 3.51 at Mexico. Everybody, bar Keino, ran far slower than their best. Another runner in that race was the Czech, Odlozil, the silver medallist four years earlier. He ran 9 seconds slower(!) at Mexico off a much faster pace than at Tokyo. His performance was typical of most of the field, who simply died at Mexico (some almost literally). Why is that? The only conclusion I can arrive at is that altitude greatly affected all the competitors - except Keino. But here's an interesting thing - Jipcho is Kenyan and altitude-trained. He finished in 3.51 - clearly affected by altitude. And this is a guy who ran later ran 1500 far faster than Keino ever did. He might not have arrived at that level at Mexico - but to be that bad!

So here's my point: how credible can it be that in a fast championship race everybody was way off their best and finished in slow times - except for the winner, who ran a career-best mark? Everybody, including another talented altitude-trained Kenyan athlete, was clearly affected by altitude - except for the winner. And he had been affected in his previous races. In every respect, I don't think I have ever seen a race like it.

Armstronglivs wrote:

We know that some athletes have been attempting to gain an edge since the origins of modern competitive sports; we know also that athletes in aerobic sports in the '60's were using stimulants; we know that those stimulants are still banned substances today because they are regarded as performance enhancing; we know that some distance runners in the 60's doped because it was admitted, even though there was no testing till '68; we know elite athletes have used testosterone to boost performance because they believed it worked (and some, like Armstrong, approached their doping with professional rigour); we know that doping was becoming more widespread in the '60's because it was becoming policy in the Eastern Bloc; I know personally that many athletes were doping because they told me, and that it was quite open - even naming some (such as "The Doctor" - a field events exponent who was also a cheerful supplier). Without doubt, a doping environment existed in the '60's but you choose to believe that somehow distance runners remained virginal in an environment where they could see others finding ways to gain an edge; and you also believe that if they took anything it wouldn't have worked anyway - I guess doping only worked for them after Keino retired - even though research has estimated that doping benefits users far in excess of the 1.4% gain that you ascribe to Keino; as I have said, doping today affords gains of up to a maximum of 20%. 1-2% in 1968 cannot be beyond the realms of possibility.

With regard to Keino you prefer to believe that there is nothing particularly unusual about his performance at Mexico, even though you concede no other 1500/distance runner that we are aware of has recorded a personal best at Mexico's altitude or its equivalent, and despite the fact Keino was also coming off injury and prior events where he had struggled - with the altitude, among other things. There have been many altitude-trained athletes over the years since Keino and none has replicated his altitude feat. That Keino may have been capable of his Mexico time at sea-level is possible and is not at issue - even though he never achieved an equivalent performance at sea level - but everything we know about altitude indicates that in aerobic events (like the 1500) there will be a fall-off in performance. We saw that with every other runner in the Mexico final - Ryun included, of course. Yet with Keino we see the reverse. Interestingly, I am not aware he got anywhere near that time running back in his native Kenya at altitude. But nothing to see here.