Kip Keino and six other senior Kenyan officials charged with corruption

rekrunner wrote:

You say not to deny history, but can give no examples from history. We don't know if 1960s doping helps endurance athletes, helps endurance athletes at altitude, and if Keino was one of these athletes attempting to gain an edge. We know the Eastern Bloc doped and didn't perform at altitude. For that matter, with no data, 0% and even minus 2% are also not beyond the realms of possibility, and I have Eastern Bloc data on my side, and you have nothing on your side.

No examples from history? As in no endurance athletes benefiting from the 60s drugs? There are, for example, Beyer, Cierpinski, Baumann, Decker, ... - all established, successful 'roid users.

You don't have the Eastern Bloc data on your side, even when ignoring the women. Again, Beyer, Cierpinski, ... In the 60s, Bolotnikov, Grodotzki, Odlozil, Lindner, Holubnychy, Golubnichy, Smaga, Höhne.

In total in 68, East Germany (appearing for the first time by themselves in the Olympics) beat West Germany with 9 : 5 golds, though a) they just started their doping program, and b) they had only 1/3 of the population.

What kind of drug would generally help endurance athletes, but not "endurance athletes at altitude"? Where is that coming from? Really, that could only be blood doping, and I don't see anyone suggesting that for Keino.

As for Keino, yes, here you are right: there is no evidence, and his Mexico City performance is not that outrageous. On the other hand, motif and opportunity are obvious, as was the doping culture of the 60s. I will refrain from making a guess here because of lack of data.

Subway Surfers wrote:

Interestingly, I had always wondered why from the late 1960s to c1990 Kenyans always seemed to have bigger quadriceps than western distance runners. Then suddenly that all reversed in the mid 1990s with the likes of Kipketer, Kiptanui, Tergat, Komen, Ngeny all being very slim, virtually muscleless. Yet they all came from the same small era of Iten/Eldoret.

This is an interesting viewpoint on steroids use with sprinters vs distance runners:

We are well off the track from the main point of this thread, but I find this history really interesting. It is true that finding definitive cases is difficult the farther back you go. I am personally convinced that we should see doping as part of a longer term continuing, so I would somewhat reject the interpretation that there is "next to no evidence or even gossip linking even the strength athletes to T/steroid use until mid-1950s." Modern steroid isolation, synthesis and experimentation started in 1849 and the first attempts to isolate male hormones . By 1889 the major league baseball player and Hall of Famer Pud Galvin took an isolate of monkey testosterone known as the Brown-Sequard elixir. And we already looked at the case of Nurmi with his rejuven and his rival Otto Peltzer. These were just a few of numerous supplements available over a period of 40+ years. It is true that testosterone was really synthesized in 1931 and steroids in ~1936. And the generally accepted timeline is that these came into sports in the early 50s with Russian weightlifters. There are a few hints of earlier use. It is almost surely right that these early attempts were less likely to be effective than the later synthesized versions, if for no other reason than the ability to take large amounts of the substance. But I personally would view this as an difference of degree, not of kind.

Reasonable words, even when the absent of evidence or even gossip is so nonexistent when contrasted - for instance - to the public Benzedrine (amphetamine) accusations against Roger Bannister after his record run.

If you want a lead to follow, historian John Hoberman has written about testosterone pretty extensively and been quoted favourably by Erkki Vettenniemi, he has also an interesting paper about the Bannister/amphetamine allegations not-too-long time ago.

I don't know what you mean by this. There is evidence of early use in sport (Galvin), there is evidence of endorsement by Nurmi. Both of these were published in major periodicals. The likely conclusion is that there was an absence of gossip because it was not considered untoward or barely so. So people didn't remark on it. There were also earlier examples of stimulant use getting a lot of attention and being banned (though without effective enforcement) in 1928. So it is likely that increased notice of the use of testosterone and/or steroids in the 1950s were due to shifting notions of what was considered sporting. That shift may be due to heightened use of sport for nationalist reasons with the cold war, or the increased effectiveness of synthetic testosterone compared to earlier attempts to isolate from natural resources, or a number of other social conditions. Personally I'd be shocked if steroids were not being used as early as the 1948 games (there is documented use among body-builders earlier than that) and only delayed to that date by the cancellation of two games.

Aragon wrote:

Reasonable words, even when the absent of evidence or even gossip is so nonexistent when contrasted

I should have said Olympic sport here. There is well documented earlier use in sporting contexts.

Early Doping wrote:

It is true that testosterone was really synthesized in 1931 and steroids in ~1936. And the generally accepted timeline is that these came into sports in the early 50s with Russian weightlifters. There are a few hints of earlier use.

Haven't you seen Renato's response, and my response earlier? Living a life at altitude means becoming accustomed to altitude. Keino suffered much less from the altitude, because he was accustomed to it, while sea-level athletes were not.

Armstronglivs wrote:

I haven't seen a response yet as to why every runner in the 1500 final at Mexico was way off their best, except for Keino - something that appears without parallel in a modern championship race that was run off a virtual world-record pace. Is altitude the only explanation being offered for this? If some here do not see anything questionable in the nature of Keino's performance (which I would see as bring probably worth another 2 or 3 seconds at sea-level) I would be interested to hear that if not his 3.34.9 pb at altitude what would arouse suspicion? What would the time be, and why?

While today there is some fuss about these early "juicers", are you aware of any evidence that the alleged mechanism of these products was to elevate T level to supranormal levels and did the athletes (allegedly) taking these product have this in mind? Even when Nurmi vouched for one product, they can have been sold/developed as aphrodisiacs/for impotence or for some other purpose than as performance enhancer in sports sense (T was also heavily also marketed for these "other" purposes).

I don't know if it is established when testosterone was first used in sports context, but the alleged 1954 episode about the Russian weightlifters informing their American colleagues about their testosterone use didn't take place that much after the 1948 games and I can recall it being mentioned somewhere that it was the American doctor himself who administered T to his athletes.

Regardless of how much steroid speculation and accusations the should've been voiced publicly, one could except some gossip about endurance athletes and while there is this later speculation (and some revelations) about the weightlifters and bodybuilders etc., there is very little anything from the endurance world. None of the XC-skier admitting later voluntarily their metamphetamine use has mentioned that these products even existed as late as mid-1960's and when the Finnish XC-kier Eero Mäntyranta made his comeback in 1971-1972, he actually was quite enthusiastic in the media that there existed then these new hormones to support his training program, he even later opposed the hormone ban and saw the products as therapeutic.

rekrunner wrote:

We don't know if 1960s doping helps endurance athletes

There was a series of publications from 1959 on from Smith and Beecher, comparing (among other things) amphetamine vs. placebo pills for runners, swimmers, and weight lifters.

First one was JAMA 170, 542, 1959:

With amphetamines instead of placebo, the track runners were better by 2 - 3%, measured over 600 yd, 1000 yd, and 1 mile.

The marathon group improved by 1%, measured over 4.5 - 12.7 miles.

casual obsever wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

We don't know if 1960s doping helps endurance athletes

There was a series of publications from 1959 on from Smith and Beecher, comparing (among other things) amphetamine vs. placebo pills for runners, swimmers, and weight lifters.

First one was JAMA 170, 542, 1959:

With amphetamines instead of placebo, the track runners were better by 2 - 3%, measured over 600 yd, 1000 yd, and 1 mile.

The marathon group improved by 1%, measured over 4.5 - 12.7 miles.

Interesting, maybe what Wigins has been arguing for all these years is true after all. But I would say amphetamines appear from this data too work in the opposite way to epo, the longer the event the greater the gains from epo. Definitely a good advantage to be obtained for the middle-distances.

Wigins used to talk about 2% iirc, but I've never seen him providing any data for that - maybe this 1959 study was his source?

Subway Surfers wrote:

casual obsever wrote:

There was a series of publications from 1959 on from Smith and Beecher, comparing (among other things) amphetamine vs. placebo pills for runners, swimmers, and weight lifters.

First one was JAMA 170, 542, 1959:

With amphetamines instead of placebo, the track runners were better by 2 - 3%, measured over 600 yd, 1000 yd, and 1 mile.

The marathon group improved by 1%, measured over 4.5 - 12.7 miles.

Interesting, maybe what Wigins has been arguing for all these years is true after all. But I would say amphetamines appear from this data too work in the opposite way to epo, the longer the event the greater the gains from epo. Definitely a good advantage to be obtained for the middle-distances.

Wasn't it that Calculo (?) fellow that postulated that the combination of androgens & EPO was the most effective for the middle-distances?

There must be an answer wrote:

Subway Surfers wrote:

Interesting, maybe what Wigins has been arguing for all these years is true after all. But I would say amphetamines appear from this data too work in the opposite way to epo, the longer the event the greater the gains from epo. Definitely a good advantage to be obtained for the middle-distances.

Wasn't it that Calculo (?) fellow that postulated that the combination of androgens & EPO was the most effective for the middle-distances?

I'm not sure that interested him much, I always thought that he was only interested in drafting and counter factual rewriting of history to benefit Jim Ryun and his Kenyans (1968 must have been a real conundrum for him). Though he did call the Moroccan that was busted recently Ramzi the second. BTW was he banned?

There must be an answer wrote:

Wasn't it that Calculo (?) fellow that postulated that the combination of androgens & EPO was the most effective for the middle-distances?

Doubt it. That wasn't his style, as Subway also alluded to.

It is true though that the 1500 m runners had the most suspicious blood values in the infamous Seppelt leak, with the marathon runners being the least suspicious.

Well, one factor in that 1500 was that Keino had a great pacer in Jipcho. The lack of such pacing has held back a lot of runners from fast times in championships. Keino's race was surely equivalent for him to 3:29 or 3:30.