But I do know why -- rumor, faith, hope, belief, and exploitation.
This thread is about a new record holder, and not about dopers per se.
If doping didn't produce performance gains it wouldn't exist. It would be in the same category as eating popcorn - but it wouldn't taste as good and wouldn't be done to win. But it does produce results and since the best know that records can't be achieved without it.
Some doping does produce some performance games, for some people, in some events.
Doping will exist as long as their is a belief in a potential benefit. Placebo effect alone would be sufficient to "confirm" a potential benefit, and word of mouth would be sufficient to indoctrinate new believers.
If you want to establish that a PED exists for highly trained elite half-marathon runners, you have to do something more intelligent than say "I believe athletes believe".
As I have said, drugs are continuously developed because they are primarily based on medical research, which never stops. They are also produced by labs (like Balco was) that have identified drugs that are known to have performance enhancing effects and they mask the drugs. This means the drugs may never be detected - which is why WADA keeps test samples for 8 years, in the possibility they may eventually be able to detect an illicit substance. Sometimes they are lucky. The Al Jazeera report on doping said there are likely to be a hundred substances at any one time used by athletes that cannot be tested for. That is why antidoping is always trying to play catch up to doping - and failing. For the most part we will not know what drugs athletes are using because most users aren't caught. That does not enable you to say there is "insufficient data" to conclude they are doping - there is, we know there is doping - or that there are no new drugs being developed simply because they haven't been identified and may never be.
What enables me to say "insufficient data" is the lack of sufficient data. You seem to dwell on the possible existence of new drugs, and the possibility of athletes doping, but forget the only question is how that is relevant to performance, and more specifically, world record performances.
Nothing in your post seems relevant to helping you establish your currently baseless suggestion that some newly developed drug is able to explain, even in small part, the performances we are seeing in the supershoe era, in the last few years.
Your approach seems to be to convince me how much we don't know, and base your conclusions off of that ignorance.
It would be nice if the science had solid answers, but instead it's a matter of judgement with regard to rumors and history. The pro cyclists from the 90's have some wild stories, and Lance Armstrong did some elaborate schemes as well. He won.
What is obvious to me, from reading the science and policies is that professional sports organizations do not want to stop doping. That suggests, but does not prove, that a clean athlete doesn't have a chance to win at the international level.
If science has no answers, and we only have "wild stories" and "suppositions" from another sport, it seems like a matter of bad judgement.
I'm not sure I can agree with your suggestion that the chance of winning, in long distance running, depends on whether athletes are clean.
In the 90's, prior to the Festina bust, there was semi-open drug use. The team doctors would hand out paper bags to the riders in public. Everybody knew that doping was necessary to win.
Today, having flawed biomarkers and no testing for AICAR looks really bad. And it's silly to not use hair testing in some way, if even as a tool towards targeted blood and urine testing.
In the 90's, prior to the Festina bust, there was semi-open drug use. The team doctors would hand out paper bags to the riders in public. Everybody knew that doping was necessary to win.
Today, having flawed biomarkers and no testing for AICAR looks really bad. And it's silly to not use hair testing in some way, if even as a tool towards targeted blood and urine testing.
Do you think Americans and Europeans were doping in cycling, but not running?
On the track and the roads and in the fields, the '90s was a period of stagnation and regression for Americans and Europeans and Oceanians.
There is a lot of talk on these forums about drug use and drug testing and the lack thereof -- but the gap in the discussion how these things are related to elite performance, if at all.
That's a good question. There was a US training philosophy of quality over quantity while the Kenyans and Ethiopians were putting in high volume of easy runs which turns out to be better for distance running. But also, we don't know when their doping culture began. And they may have more natural talent for distance running, statistically speaking.
It's funny that we agree on the Houlihan issue and disagree on general doping. The reverse with Armstronglivs. Either way, it's good conversation.
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