Nothing at the top is achieved or achievable without it.
You’re very much mistaken. Clean athletes still managed to win the 1980s when the situation with drugs was especially bleak and it’s a far better state today.
What does "works" mean? If "works" means increasing red blood cells and hematocrit, then we do know that, but do we "know" that improves elite endurance performance? (Remember: speculation/hypothesis/belief/rumor/myth is not knowledge).
Ruxton doesn't answer awkward questions 🤔
I am happy to point you to the clinical trials.
But no, I am not going to get into a "is the earth really round?" debate with you guys.
Nobody (besides you two) in the world cycling or running doubts that EPO "works" and even if half the cyclists in the Tour de France circa 1999 were too dumb to explain how it works, it still did.
I can't explain how my cellphone works either, but I know it does. Science is like that, the proof is in the pudding.
Or look at the results of the Tour de France from the 1990s. Or listen to interviews with people who took EPO and T. Tyler Hamilton can tell you what it feels like when you can ride so hard that the peleton can't keep up. Drugs work. We know they work because we see them in medicine every day. If they work in medicine, why wouldn't they work in sport?
Athletes have attempted to glean the ergogenic benefits of recombinant human erythropoietin (rHuEPO) since it became available in the 1980s. However, there is limited consensus in the literature regarding its true performance...
Observation is the cornerstone of the "Scientific Method"; a scientically-reasoned conclusion may be reached merely by obeservation. Thence:
Terms of Reference: The likelihood of transient external stimulants boosting Subject's athletic performance.
Experiment: Subject is timed over marathon "test distance" to create a result "sample". Locate sample on statistical distribution of expected results for the Subject's (female) class.
Observation: Average velocity of Subject over test distance unreasonably exceeds known (and even boosted) performances of the past. This sample is therefore considered a rogue outlier and is to be discarded from the sample set.
rojo and wejo seem to refuse to consider that there is any possibility that Paula Radcliff's absurd 2:15.25 time from 2003 was added by pharmaceuticals, but they cast shade on Chepgentich and refuse to honor her with a blackpage.
This is a very good point. Give Ruth her black page!
rojo and wejo seem to refuse to consider that there is any possibility that Paula Radcliff's absurd 2:15.25 time from 2003 was added by pharmaceuticals, but they cast shade on Chepgentich and refuse to honor her with a blackpage.
This is a very good point. Give Ruth her black page!
Nothing at the top is achieved or achievable without it.
You’re very much mistaken. Clean athletes still managed to win the 1980s when the situation with drugs was especially bleak and it’s a far better state today.
You don't know they were clean. Was Kratochvilova clean? Or Flojo? Ben Johnson? Nor do you know that doping is in a "better state" today. I'm sure it is - but not the way you meant. It will be immeasurably more sophisticated - and ahead of antidoping.
If there are 15 pages debating the validity of this latest record then there is no debate. There can be no credibility for any such performance that provokes that degree of scepticism as well as a corresponding desperation in defence. What is as regular as clockwork now are threads questioning one elite or world-record performance or progression after another. Only fans cannot see what is glaringly obvious. The sport is all about doping. Nothing at the top is achieved or achievable without it. We can thank this interchangeable Kenyan for proving that point yet again. She has just ripped 2 minutes off a former mark that provoked the same kind of astonishment. Look for another 2 minutes to be carved off in the near future. And there will still be those arguing it's clean - because they want to believe it so and the dopers aren't being caught.
Personally this performance actually gives me greater confidence that some of the women running 2.14/2.15 might possibly be doing it clean.
If everyone at the top is doping why is she still such an outlier? It's not like anything she has done before suggests she is on a different level to her competitors.
Doping doesn't produce a level playing field. Some respond more than others and they don't all use the same drugs according to a common prescription. It is an arms race in which athletes look to gain advantage.
Doping isn't new to the sport. None of the top performances at the top level for the last several decades can be assumed to have been clean. That applies to the 2:14 performances you refer to.
Nothing at the top is achieved or achievable without it.
You’re very much mistaken. Clean athletes still managed to win the 1980s when the situation with drugs was especially bleak and it’s a far better state today.
It is you that is very much mistaken. "Professionalisation" began in the 70s with svengalis like UK Athletics' Andy Norman who pushed dirty sports.
You’re very much mistaken. Clean athletes still managed to win the 1980s when the situation with drugs was especially bleak and it’s a far better state today.
No they didn't. They got beaten by the Germans and Russians and Brits and Lewis + Decker + Johnson.
Personally this performance actually gives me greater confidence that some of the women running 2.14/2.15 might possibly be doing it clean.
If everyone at the top is doping why is she still such an outlier? It's not like anything she has done before suggests she is on a different level to her competitors.
Good point. We now know that a woman can run 2:09. So yes, 2:14 should possible for an equally talented clean woman (now with supershoes + pacing + current nutrition and training).
This is such an obvious dirty (and for many demoralizing) result, but this quote sums up the reality for so many of the African elites who do this.
Ha, but not so for Americans, Europeans, and other white people?
I definitely think American's and Europeans dope and other white people dope forsure. I think there are degrees of doping. To take the Lance Armstrong argument, I think Ruth would still be better than almost everyone/most the other elites if they were all clean, or she's still better with same access to same PEDS as others (lance argument).
What I'm saying is that American's and Europeans esp in marathons can make the prize money equivalent of a policeman's or nurse's salary or thereabouts if they win a world major. The financial incentive is not there. Look at the NFL - think they dope (yes) and there is a huge financial incentive to do so.
I definitely think white people are doping. I think that the Ingebrigtsen's had a "likely doping" flag on the biologic passport a few years ago - gee ironic.
But I think the calculus to take the risk and go whole hog makes more sense in road marathons for people who really stand to benefit financially. Plus in honesty I just think E. African's are better genetically suited for the marathon on top of this. Even if an American went doped to the gills and got away with it they still probably wouldn't win. Why do it.
Or look at the results of the Tour de France from the 1990s. Or listen to interviews with people who took EPO and T. Tyler Hamilton can tell you what it feels like when you can ride so hard that the peleton can't keep up. Drugs work. We know they work because we see them in medicine every day. If they work in medicine, why wouldn't they work in sport?
To be clear, I am 100% of the opinion that Chepngetich is not clean. But did you read that review article you linked to? Here are its conclusions:
-There is low-to-moderate quality evidence suggesting that, independent of dosage, rHuEPO may be more beneficial than placebo in enhancing haematological, pulmonary measures, maximal power output and time to exhaustion. -These improvements are almost exclusively seen during maximal exercise intensities.
As far as hematocrit percentage, here is what your article says about what studies have found when grouping the studies by dosage used:
Low dose One study reported no significant difference between the placebo group and the rHuEPO group.
Medium dose Two studies reported no significant difference between the placebo group and the rHuEPO group.
High dose One study reported that hct% was significantly higher in the rHuEPO group compared with the placebo group (p<0.01). In contrast, another study reported that hct% was similar between the rHuEPO and placebo groups.
I think the thing people tend to overlook with EPO is that it's a signal for increased RBC production. But just because there is a physiological signal for something doesn't mean that that thing is actually produced and/or maintained. For example, you still need a sufficient supply of the raw materials, like folate and B12, for making those RBCs that the EPO has signaled for, which is not necessarily a trivial ask in a runner doing 200km a week. And you need to convince your body not to kill off newly matured RBCs, which can happen for a multitude of reasons, some of which may be quite tricky to override.
Do you feel this way when you watch the NFL? Hockey? Baseball? Baseball in the 90's (was it pathetic) - or fun to watch.
I get it - doesn't seem real/fair to you but most sports are not clean.
Or is it pathetic b/c of who is winning dirty. Peyton Manning was on HgG - was he pathetic - probably loved watching him - quarterback rocket arm, white guy.
Criminalizing things which are not immoral is itself immoral. PED's are not bad in themselves, but breaking agreed upon rules is.
The motto is Faster, Higher, Longer. This is the motto of excellence, of the Ubermensch. End the farce that drug testing is and let the athletes shoot for the sky.
As much as people think the current drug testing sucks and it does suck if the goal is clean sport. What it actually allows is micro-doping up to set limits. In the Tour de France heyday prior to EPO test it was exactly what you are talking about. The limiting factor was people dying of clotting and cyclists getting up in the middle of the night to ride their bike stationary as to not throw a blood clot while sleeping. Now with biologic passport you CAN dope and not get caught if you're careful - just dope up to Hct limit and find a way to stay consistent with your blood levels. Only way you fail epo test is if you're tested within 8 hours of injecting. You can gain a % or two or maybe 3. You CAN use testosterone (but not Deca as shelby did) in low doses and pass most urine tests. But removing the testing would then become a game of who is most willing to jeopardize their health.
This thread is full of morons talking about whether she's doping or not. The real question is... What the hell is she taking?
Is she a super mutant super responder to EPO, is she working with a biolab in China, did Nike put a motor in her shoes.
Like this is unexplainable, regardless of super shoes/pacers/god genetics, how is it possible that she's steaming people that can lap her twice in a 10k???
Until this question is answered, women's distance running is officially on my banned list (Kipyegon ruined middle distance 🙄)
I think a good theory could be that she was just going harder with the EPO. Most people will use up to Hct of whatever limit is 50 or whatever it is to flag biologic passport. This allows for a debatable but say 1-3% gain in performance. But there is more to be gained beyond biologic passport limit, with diminishing returns up to a point of the blood being too thick by going beyond this. She probably just trained alone as she said went heavy or harder than she could have gone with the epo otherwise and lucked out and never got tested. Plan was probably to hide and miss test if random testing came around first time then abort plan of going hard/heavy in case a second testing came. probably never got tested and got to dope industrial strength while others are microdosing.
Let’s get real. If she’s on something, which is very possible, it’s the same stuff everyone’s on. She doesn’t have a staff of medicinal chemists producing compounds unknown to the pharmaceutical industry.
She could just be a super responder to said compounds or she's willing to take more risks in taking it just prior to, or in competitions. It could be methods that pose serious health risks and certain athletes are willing to take those risks. They could be wildly expensive too.
How is it that in an era where cyclists are producing outrageous numbers, one guy is making the rest of the peloton look like juniors. Either we're looking at multiple generational talents never seen before, or some athletes have found a way to gain an advantage over others who also are probably doping.
It's all just speculation, but a handful of athletes across multiple sports are in a completely different league than the rest of the sport.
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