Mo Katir suspended for whereabouts failures

Most of the posters here are obvious "charlatan" including some mods (biased for their favorite Nuguse, Kerr and Co)

Let the expert Biscayan lawyer Borja Osés do their work ...

Her defending wasn’t torn apart at all -she had two expert witnesses backing her story, and even others -f.ex professor Jostein Hallen- has claimed that the small detected traces of nandrolone as in Shelby’s samples is a clear danger when it comes to contamination, while also pointing on the Wada system’s lack of credibility compared to our established civil justice system in all democracies).

Shelby was banned because CAS chose some expert witnesses over others. And she was convicted because CAS thought it was un probably that the pig meat in Houlihan’s burrito came from an un castrated boar fed on a higher percentage of soya than ecpected.

I always thought "Thoughtsleader" was ultra-careful to avoid making the same mistakes I make when I discuss my ideas shaped by all time performance data, by saying things like Katir is probably a doper, a little like Newton and Galileo saying from time to time that God created the planets and gravity.

But help me understand your thinking and your logic.

Are we all on the same page here? WADA tells me that "whereabouts failures" are administrative errors and planning errors that do not involve any banned substances per se. Before accusing someone of being a "hard-core doping apologist troll", shouldn't we have to have an athlete who has doped intentionally with some form of banned substance or method?

I see the 2-year default ban more as a punishment, and a deterrent, rather than some sort of proof of judgement of PED use. Suggesting he used PEDs before remains a baseless presumption, and seeing an administrative ban as confirmation of PED use is breaking logic.

But for those who want to "technically" semantically remind us that WADA also calls "whereabouts failures" "doping" by its own custom definition, and assuming he's "the most obvious doper" because "90% here" are not prejudging a Moroccan-Spaniard, but rather analyzing his performance, is there any reason to believe that "WADA doping" in the form of missing tests or failing to update a website makes athletes faster per se, especially when the missed tests were around 2023 timeframe, and the breakthrough performances were in 2021?

Assuming he did take PEDs before, but strategically escaped detection, and assuming you are right that Spain has been state-sponsoring doping since the '80s, why do you believe using PEDs allow such performance breakthroughs in these middle distance events, in a way that clean training cannot? Are there many precedents from Spain since the 1980s? Is it because Cacho ran a little faster than Nick Willis?

I too see a move by Thoughtsleader towards Rekrunner when it comes to the doping theme (although the former also always has been somewhat well balanced). But unlike you I think this is a good development.

I agreed with Thoughtsleader when he in 2023 didn’t see anything suspicious in Katir’s progression. But I also disagreed when he thought Nordås was suspicious…

Saying all this I also disagree with my own prior attitude (that I think some named athletes don’t dope, or that the doping prevalence is low). Now I think basing our views of clean or dirty on indications (no matter how detailed and contextual or balanced) is a very uncertain and flawed method. -We all misjudge the pros and cons, and we all miss crucial details and information (or are misinformed or mislead, f.ex by the athlete).

I think we all has something to learn from Rekrunner -He doesn’t claim named athletes to be clean, neither being dirty. He just says we need proper evidence, and that we must disregard all fluffy indications. Saying that, it is totally OK to use indications and suspicion to target certain athletes with more than average number of tests and investigation. But Wada has a long way to go when it comes to good enough practice (compared to the civil justice system); their testing regime allows athletes to foul the system, and there are also too much danger of false positives…

You have overcomplicated it. CAS went with what the preponderance of the evidence suggested. That included an antidoping expert who submitted that the chance of her excuse being true was "near to zero". CAS ruled she intentionally doped on the balance of probabilities. The balance of probabilities is the basis on which most civil actions are decided - such as the civil court ruling that OJ Simpson caused his wife and her lover's death. That's good enough for most us (except of course OJ and Shelby Houlihan).

The problem with this "no brainer" is the athlete has to produce convincing evidence they didn't miss a test through any fault of their own. Most who are cited for a violation can't.

This is the same kind of argument about whether Donald Trump is a "rapist". He wasn't convicted of that offense but a judge has said the findings of fact in the civil case amount to the same thing - he committed a rape as most people would understand that.

So it is with doping. There is a technical distinction between failing tests and whereabouts failures. But they are both doping violations. An athlete who commits a doping violation cannot, by definition, be a "clean" athlete. That leaves only one alternative. What posters are confusing here is that there are different routes to arrive at the same conclusion. On the evidence and the balance of probability, whether it is a failed test or whereabouts failures, the athlete doped.

This whole thread is intentionally disingenuous. If athletes such as Elliott, Snell, Coe, Bekele, Kipchoge and Ingebrigtsen were convicted of a whereabouts failure their reputations would have been destroyed. We would know they could not be maintained to be "clean" because they had avoided being tested - which is the inference that makes it a violation. Without becoming bogged down in the technicalities of the offence - in the way posters are on this site, as they look for ways of trying to give Katir the benefit of the doubt - we would conclude those athletes named above were dopers, like any others convicted of an antidoping violation. Pedantry about what is a "doper" is often a barrier to the truth (as rekrunner shows time and again).

Baseless presumption? LOL, a classsic rekrunner.

Base 1: an extremely suspicious progression.

Base 2: suspiciously fast performances.

Base 3: 3 missed tests within 12 months.

Breaking logic? On the contrary, suggesting that a highly paid pro with an agent, a coach, a nutritionist, a masseur, and the backing of their national federation, does not care enough about his job to risk a 2 year ban for going shopping during his self-selected 60 minutes, or for not updating or getting his whereabouts updated when flying to their training camp, 3x within 12 months!, defies logic and is grasping at straws. In other words, a classic rekrunner.

Oh hahahaha, you are one of those...

We hear about the athletes who are cited for whereabouts violations. We also see it reported if there is a successful appeal. It is extremely rare.

But you avoid my question. 3 missed tests in the prescribed period, that cannot be shown to have a justifiable excuse, leads to a conclusion an athlete is a doper. Or an idiot. So which is Katir?

This "problem" is exactly the same for both clean and doped athletes.

If clean athletes can succeed to appeal before 3 missed tests, so can doped athletes.

We won't hear about the dopers and the clean athletes with 1 or 2 misses, who succeed to appeal one of them before the 3rd one. Both clean athletes and doped athletes could miss three tests per year, for 20 years in a row, and if they managed to have an evidentiary alibi 1 time each year, we would never know about it. We simply cannot answer "How often do clean athletes miss three tests that they cannot show at least one had justifiable cause?" nor its parallel unasked "How often do doped athletes miss three tests that they cannot show at least one had justifiable cause?".

You avoided my questions too.

When you use the term "doper" are you using WADA's expanded definition that includes whereabouts violations? If so, the whereabouts violation would make him a doper, regardless of the use of any banned substance or method.

Furthermore your false dichotomy either/or question excludes other alternatives. Without any details, we don't yet know if all the missed tests are reasonably Katir's fault, rather than partly the tester's or even a software issue with ADAMs. I've seen other cases where the tester knocked on the wrong door, or waited outside while the athlete was inside the whole time. So we have to wait and see before jumping to baseless conclusions. It could be that he is both a doper and an idiot, or it could be he is not a doper, and a victim of a process for unannounced testing that is prone to errors at several levels, or any combination in between.

Although you labled them with the word "Base", your Base 1 and 2 are themselves a product of baseless presumptions. There is no basis to suspect that progressions and fast performances are more likely the result of some allegedly performance enhancing drug, rather than clean training.

Indeed, most runners who continue training experience some kind of massive breakthrough, at all levels of talent, as a result of changing training and coaching, or just out of perserverance and injury avoidance. Our own "wejo" had his breakthrough after competing at university, with nearly Lombard-esque improvements in the 10K, by increasing mileage and slowing down (see "Why I Sucked In College").

Base 3 similarly sheds no light as to whether an alleged PED was used, say 2 years earlier. Katir will become a "doper" under the technicality that WADA defines whereabouts failures as doping, but this one alternative out of 11 doesn't automatically trigger any of the other 10 alternatives.

I did not suggest any of that other stuff, and don't see how the risk of shopping, or failing to update whereabouts, changes whether the athlete is clean or doped.

No, I’m not one of those -I don’t say Shelby is innocent (I frankly don’t know). But I am frustrated over the lack of argumentation from CAS when it comes to why Houlihan would ingest nandrolone in her situation at the time (frequently being tested / very little evidence of ingested nandrolone having any performance benefits at all, and so on).

IMO the “zero” chance of un castrated boar fed on high soya diet in the American food chain was the main reason for Shelby’s conviction. If this is correct or not I don’t know -I’m to old to believe in a World without exceptions… (A better argumentation from CAS would maybe have taken away my doubts here).

His rivals are also dopers,whether they shun him or not.

As usual, you exaggerate and turn to personal attacks. I’ve always been mindful of the possibility that Katir was doping. You said the guy was going to disappear as soon as he started getting tested regularly in 2021. Which he didn’t, and in fact he improved. I said there were a lot of reasons including doping for improvement. I go with innocent until proven guilty unlike you picking and choosing athletes by your own worldview. I’m happy with his suspension as I am with any just suspension, though of course a ban for a substance is more satisfying. So you can stop smearing and distorting what I said. I am no Katir fan, especially now, but I didn’t like how he earned his medal in Oregon which was a pretty brazen illegal pass of Cheruiyot. I didn’t like Nordas unnecessarily cutting off McSweyn last year either, so I am consistent with these things. That is the difference between us, you pick and choose who you want to be dirty and who you assume to be clean.

I don't buy the idea that Nordas is a cheater. Its the game of the weak people.

Until there is something substantial is found everyone has just to shut it.

Just think at the common sense:

Is Katir is that clever he has micro-dosed all this time and in the same time enough stupid to let three AIU tests not filed?

Well there is only two explanations: an administrative neglect or as someone said before a setup against him.

Suspicion is not belief.
We know the tests can be beaten, and micro-dosing has been widely theorized as a way to do it. We also know athletes (eg Okagbare) have intentionally missed tests when they were paranoid about being caught. In general, it is dumb to miss a third test unless you are absolutely sure you are busted. But if you are looking at a ban of 2 (with chance to appeal) vs 4 it is preferable. And Katir not contesting these missed tests aggressively at the time seems a blunder OR sign of guilt on his side. Also in other cases we’ve seen the AIU aggressively try to catch someone with suspicious values in their eyes (Norah Jeruto). With the alleged exorbitant number of tests, were they doing the same here?