Keira D'amato is Suspicious

Armstronglivs wrote:

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Everything that is known about doping indicates that is far from the case.

I might argue that by presenting a hypothetical example. Consider that there is a shoe with marked performance-enhancing properties that is banned but the technology involved is extremely difficult to detect. Runners who use the shoe know they will have a distinct advantage over those who don't - and they are unlikely to be caught. What do you think will be the incidence of its use at the top levels of sport? That is doping.

That hits the nail on the head. You say "everything that is known" as if there is a significant body of "knowledge" linking doping to elite performance. "Everything that that is known" about doping, and specifically the relation to elite marathon performance, would not fill a specimen bottle. And what we do know often doesn't strongly correlate doping with better elite performances.

You cannot use science that measures the wrong thing on the wrong people under the wrong conditions to suggest that doped elite performances in the marathon should be faster than non-doped elite performances. Even the scientists conducting the studies agree and typically caution against such projections.

You cannot use a handful of anecdotes, as they lack controls for a proper comparison, and are generally not blinded.

You certainly cannot use anecodotes from other events and sports.

When someone argues about lack of testing, or concedes there is a lack of data because athletes evade or hide data collection, this only confirms that we are in the realm of that which we do not know.

You cannot combine all of these together and fill a specimen bottle with the combined knowledge.

A compromise I would accept, lacking athlete specific doping data, is to look for performance trends over all time. This should be possible to observe when "1 in 2" athletes are allegedly doping, and the effect is allegedly greater than shoes. We instantly saw this trend globally with the introduction of shoes causing a noticeable drop in road racing times across the board. This is often why many people suggest Kenyans and East Africans started doping in the '90s. But recall that, while the performance evidence exists, the evidence that East Africans were doping in the '90s on such a large scale doesn't exist.

Doping shows no such performance trend in many countries known to dope. On the contrary, we often see apparent contradictions. In the specific case of the women's marathon, comparing Russian women, to the Japanese women, as two countries over all time, fails to confirm the expected prediction. Russia has been known to dope both their men and women with steroids and blood doping since the '70s, while Japan is notable for being among the least suspicious of doping, and often appearing as 0% in the few prevalence estimates available by country. Once you get past the sole example of Shobukhova, and compare country to country, over all time Russia does not outperform Japan by any metric.

If we accept that "1 in 2" championship athletes are doping, we should be able to identify performance trends in countries with a high percentage of doping busts.

Looking at performance trends in the marathon, it defies all the popular doping milestones. No improvements in the '90s, when no testing existed and testing wasn't standardised by WADA, for men and women until the very end of the decade; each time testing improves, with the first EPO test in 2000, OOC testing in 2003, improved testing in 2005, improved standards in 2007, ABP in 2009, and improved testing/enforcement in Kenya in 2017, the marathon just gets faster and faster, when you would predict it slows down.

We also saw in the Sunday Times that WC and Olympic marathon medals won over the period of 2001-2012 were "suspicious" only 1 out of 9 times -- meaning 8 out of 9 were not suspicious -- comparatively far below that of other events, and also below the global average. Here, a large database of collected blood samples could not provide evidence that blood doping was important for winning championship/Olympic medals.

All this suggests is that factors that limit elite marathon performance cannot be significantly addressed by doping.

No, we are not talking about Hall's collegiate 10k pb, we are talking her 10k pb as an elite distance runner from the year before she switched to the marathon. There was nothing in her elite track career that suggested she could run this fast in the marathon. She was no faster in the 5k/10k than she was in the 1500/steeple. Sure KD's progression is suspicious, but my argument is it isn't more suspicious than someone switching to the marathon and then within a couple of years running their 10k pace for the full distance.

You might want to try 'suspect' instead of 'suspicious.'

This will make you appear slightly less stupid.

MatthewXCountry wrote:

No, we are not talking about Hall's collegiate 10k pb, we are talking her 10k pb as an elite distance runner from the year before she switched to the marathon. There was nothing in her elite track career that suggested she could run this fast in the marathon. She was no faster in the 5k/10k than she was in the 1500/steeple. Sure KD's progression is suspicious, but my argument is it isn't more suspicious than someone switching to the marathon and then within a couple of years running their 10k pace for the full distance.

This is exactly right. Talent doesn't go away (barring some chronic disease or severe injury). If you were elite in your early 20s, there's no reason you can't be elite in your mid 30s, at least at longer distances. There's also no reason why not training in your late 20s would set you back. It doesn't take more than 4 years of good training to reach your potential.

It's probably more suspicious when someone who has been training seriously for a very long time makes a breakthrough. That indicates either doping, weight loss (which is usually visible), or that they were making significant training errors, year after year. Of course, in the marathon, it often takes a long time for someone to show their ability, simply because you get so few cracks at that race. If you get bad weather or a slight injury in training, it could take years for an athlete to get in the right race to let one rip.

Anyway, if you say that Keira is suspect, then you also have to say that Hall, Huddle, and even Deena are suspect. Deena may have finished second at NCAAs, but her times were truly pedestrian compared to what she would later run as a pro.

MatthewXCountry wrote:

Nothing would delight me more than to be wrong. The implications would be enormous. To me it would imply that KD found a method of training that is heretofore unobserved.

You’ve got a real emotional paradox going on.

You want to be delighted by her being clean, but the proof of her cleanness would sadden your stubbornness and cynicism.

I choose to react to facts, not feelings. She trained hard and ran an amazing time. We lived in the same town for a long time, so I’m a bit of a homer as well, but I am inspired by her last two years.

You have constructed a very good argument for saying that doping doesn't help marathon runners (even though marathon champions and medalists dope, as we have seen) by selecting arguments that could fill your specimen bottle. We know a lot more about doping than you allow. I won't attempt to write a book about it - as one could. It is a massive industry world wide; it is the height of naivety to suggest marathon runners are immune to a practice that is found in every sport or do not benefit from it. Your relentlessly cherry-picked arguments simply wish the problem would go away, by saying it doesn't work in your favorite events.

Armstronglivs wrote:

You have constructed a very good argument ...

Thank you ...

Armstronglivs wrote:

... for saying that doping doesn't help marathon runners (even though marathon champions and medalists dope, as we have seen) by selecting arguments that could fill your specimen bottle. We know a lot more about doping than you allow. I won't attempt to write a book about it - as one could. It is a massive industry world wide; it is the height of naivety to suggest marathon runners are immune to a practice that is found in every sport or do not benefit from it. Your relentlessly cherry-picked arguments simply wish the problem would go away, by saying it doesn't work in your favorite events.

... yet I didn't really say so all that much about doping. Sure we "know" a lot about doping.

I mostly talked about the missing evidentiary links to faster elite marathon performance, or rates of progression.

I don't ask you to write a book, but simply tell me the name of "who" has already written books.

I don't suggest marathon runners are immune to any practice, but let their performances speak for themselves.

Bump

Lenny Leonard wrote:

I’m suspicious of neither, because I’ve followed the sport my entire life.

😂😂😂

You haven’t followed the sport very closely then….

Lenny Leonard wrote:

I choose to react to facts, not feelings…

…. We lived in the same town so I’m a bit of a homer as well

So… what you’re saying is… you’re letting your feelings impact your judgement?

You just keep throwing yourself under the bus 😂

Jim Ryun is suspicious. Some hick from Kansas on a cinder track runs 3:55? Highly suspicious.

There are many, many male runners who ran much faster than Keira in the 5k and then, after college, started running marathons. Virtually none of them ever ran 2:19. . . . Letsrun is full of posters who ran 14:30 or 15:30 and then made a go of the marathon when they were in their 20s. These guys mostly end up running 2:30 or 2:40 or 2:50, not 2:19 . . . .Maybe a few guys run 2:20-2:30 but not many. Wejo ran 14:30 or whatever in college, then improved to 14:06, trained 150 miles a week and barely beat what Keira ran in the marathon. And he was in his 20s. . . . Heck, 13:30 guys run only about 2:09. . .

Could she be clean? Of course. But I think the only explanation would have to be that she is an insane natural talent who just never really tried and then started trying in her late 30s. Imagine if Frank Shorter or Meb or Ryan Hall never ran growing up but then started running at age 30 and got really serious. They could start running 20 miles a week and run a marathon in 3:10. Then they go to 50 miles a week and they run 2:30. Then they go to 120 miles a week and they run 2:10. In other words, for me to believe this performance, her old times have to be much slower than her real potential.

The one thing you can count on is that doping has continued to develop just as much as the rest of sport. It is big business world-wide. There is no way that we can conclude that it hasn't found a way to aid marathon runners, particularly when we see top runners using it, and when we see it increases aerobic efficiency in so many other sports. We know that doping in its variety of forms can benefit every kind of competitor, in terms of enhancing speed, stamina, strength, recovery and mental focus. The only information we don't have is exactly how much it benefits any given athlete, because no elite dopers volunteer to be research subjects.

That is the opposite of believable. Exceptional talent typically reveals itself early. If it turns up later that is probably doping.

15:00 males running slower than 2:30 or so never really trained properly for marathon. (Cf. Zatopek and other runners in the 1950s with comparably horrible marathon times because they ran this off their 5/10k training.)

This does not help for comparison, because it is the opposite situation.

As Ultra and triathlon shows, women are relatively better at longer distances (or put differently, relatively slower at track events). Therefore a ~16:00 woman can run 2:30 marathon or even faster.

Nevertheless, D'amato is still a bit of an outlier for women, both in the actual time run, in the improvement margins at 35-37 yo and in the marathon time compared to track or shorter distance times. The first and last point are not that extraordinary in the last few years, maybe partly because of the supershoes and more money to be made with road races/marathons.

Shiftering wrote:

Could she be clean? Of course. But I think the only explanation would have to be that she is an insane natural talent who just never really tried and then started trying in her late 30s. Imagine if Frank Shorter or Meb or Ryan Hall never ran growing up but then started running at age 30 and got really serious. They could start running 20 miles a week and run a marathon in 3:10. Then they go to 50 miles a week and they run 2:30. Then they go to 120 miles a week and they run 2:10. In other words, for me to believe this performance, her old times have to be much slower than her real potential.

She has always been an insane natural talent. She ran 10:30 for 3200 in HS. Back in 2001, that was an unreal time. She also finished 9th at FL South, just missing going to nationals. Nowadays they take 10 from each region, and there are so many more post-season championship races that she would have been in the national conversation even more than she was.

She obviously never gave the marathon a real go until she was in her 30s. Instead of pointing to 15:00 guys who never ran under 2:20, how about the guys who were 10:00 two mile guys in HS who went on to run in the low 2:1xs like Brian Sell and Tim Young?

This is really an unfair argument because if she's clean that never can be proven. Only doping can be proven.

If she were doping, is this something she can reasonably do completely on her own with no assistance, instruction or guidance? Wouldn't there be a high likelihood that someone behind the scenes is in on this with her? If so, would it likely have to be someone well versed in the methodology? If so, who else are you suspicious of? Does this person have a history of suspicious activity in working with suspected dopers?

I actually think Shiftering's argument is consistent with what you're saying about talent turning up early. If a person is severely undertrained, their talent wouldn't be as obvious, and their PRs would be slower than those we see with Keira. Imagine a runner doing consistent low mileage (30 miles per week) and no workouts. Adding workouts and high mileage would unearth that kind of talent. The problem with applying this argument to Keira is that she ran in college and was already exposed to quality training. World class talent rarely goes unnoticed in high level running programs.

Of course, there are some people who are much better at the marathon than 5k/10k, but even these people take several years to develop. Even if they peak late, their peak comes after years and years of training, not a lengthy break. Consider Des, who got much better after college while running much higher mileage for several years. Her trajectory makes much more sense than Keira's.

I'll note that Keira is not the only suspicious American female marathoner these days. There are several runners in the elite category who are now greatly exceeding their college potential. One explanation is that these women have an incredible response to the super shoes--I'm talking 10 min or greater time savings. I'd guess the average reponse to the best of the newer generation shoes is about 3-5 min for a sub-elite or elite runner. Guinness et al. at Cornell estimated about 2.5 min for women and 3 min for men, but this study was done before the Next% was ubiquitous and before most companies had a comparable alternative. If some runners benefit much more than others, there's no way to have a level playing field while allowing the shoes in competition.

IMO, the shoes explain the jump we see with Hall's road racing times.

"IMO, the shoes explain the jump we see with Hall's road racing times."

How does that explain her performance at Berlin in 2:22:16 in traditional flats before Asics had a supershoe? She claims to have not been wearing a carbon plated shoe there.