Joshua Cheptegei is SUSPICIOUS

John_James_413 wrote:

Killeriott wrote:

Joshua ran a 12:35 5000m which meant he was running liken 3 and 1/3 1500m avg 3:46.6 and yet he cannot easily run faster than 3:37 for 1500m. He should be able to EASILY run 3:37. It makes me think he is taking PEDs.

That's really cool.

It would be fun to see him race in lingerie though. Full bra, panties, garter belt, nylons,, etc.

Hey Matt, transvestism is so 1980's. It's transgenderism in 2021. If you want to go down that route, have the balls to identify fully as a woman and refer to yourself as Matilda or Johanna

You still cling to a strong man of your own making.

You are wrong about what it is that I deny.

I do not make the expert claims you say I make.

But you digress.

You have also lost sight of what the topic of the thread is.

It is not about any effect of doping on elite performance.

It is not about rekrunner's opinions and observations based on real world data of all time historical performances.

It is about speculation about whether Cheptegei has doped, based on an analysis of his performances -- specifically his slow 1500m.

It would be premature to talk about any doping effect, if in fact, he did not dope.

It was Killeriottt and you that argued that his slow 1500m indicates doping.

You asserted that this performance relation of low speed and high resistance is the hallmark of doping.

This argument was not raised by elite athletes, coaches, trainers, physios, doctors, or anti-doping experts and officials.

It is the argument of two self-credentialed anonymous posters.

You presume to speak on behalf of all of your acquaintances, and apparently for Snell's views on modern training.

We took a digression because you don't understand how modern training differs from the Lydiard training of 55-60 years ago.

For each of your unsupported speculative claims, I have asked you for concrete examples -- real world facts and findings -- that could connect your opinions to real world observations.

Since you obviously do not possess any relevant personal knowledge of these real world facts, maybe one of your many knowledgeable contacts can help you find substance for your hearsay speculations.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Since you only discuss EPO and blood doping it appears you know nothing else about the variety of drugs now available to athletes, that are believed to be in triple figures.

This is the value of fast forwarding to the end result, and basing my observations on what is known to have happened historically.

My characterizations of the best historical all time performances are not limited to EPO and blood doping, but are based on race results that would have been influenced by each and every one of your hundreds of undetectable drugs.

In intellectual discussions, the burden rests on those who suggest such correlations can be found to affirm it.

To be clear, a correlation has a mathematical definition, comparing two variables, with values close to 0 being weak, values close to 1 being strong, and negative values showing an inverse relation.

Correlations cannot be established by cherry-picked anecdotes -- even thousands of them.

Anecdotes must be controlled to have any substantive value.

It is also important to consider any potential confounders, to avoid finding any spurious correlations.

You proposed that 2006 was a significant milestone, and I gave not one, but six examples where such a milestone post-2006 is not obvious, for both non-African and East-African men, over three different distance events 1500m, 5000m, and the marathon.

Nevertheless, despite anyone failing to meet this burden, I have looked.

With respect to the men's distance running, I have looked for correlations with any and all suggest doping milestones.

A women's "depth of quality" analysis can also be done, but is more complicated to interpret, given the immaturity of the longer distance events, due to societial stereotypes which prevented women from training and competing until recently, and the higher expected response to steroids and testosterone. I have done one detailed analysis for the women, which supports these expectations, but haven't done a second analysis for the women, in part due to these complications, and in part, because there is no major disagreement, and in part because I am already confident what the results will be. If you still feel one is necessary, you have my methods and are welcome to do it.

I have listened to all the experts, and they have not spoken about nor shown any strong correlation based on first hand observations of elite distance running performances. The few times we have seen scientists speak up about expected performance benefits for elites, I have listened to them, and heard that it was based on studies of other events (e.g. cycling, skiing, max power, time to exhaustion), from studies which I have also heard expert scientists disclaim the findings for elite athletes. Another claim of expected blood doping performance was based on an altitude study as a proxy for doping. I'm only aware of one elite distance running coach who has spoken on the topic, who confirms a correlation for steroids, but not for blood doping.

More importantly, for threads like this, which reverse the flow of cause and effect, by speculating that a fast time must be doped, by virtue of the fast time, scientists are never looking at the right metric. They should not measure the short term improvement of a doping intervention. To show whether fast performances are out of reach using legal substances and methods, they must measure, over a long term, the best doped performances with the best legal performances.

I have also looked at all time results which include the literally thousands of dopers over all time. As I indicated above, we must be much more careful with anecdotes like Ramzi, Jeptoo, and Kiptum, and consider confounders much more closely, to avoid drawing spurious correlations.

Armstronglivs wrote:

You can always be trusted to chime in - and completely miss the mark. I don't claim to be an expert. Moron. But I do know more than someone who cannot answer any of the 4 questions in the affirmative. You do understand that 2 is greater than zero, right? From your answer, I guess not. Thick as a row of planks.

Your four questions are again a feeble attempt to come up with another false "if it were so" relation.

They are not sufficient to qualify, or disqualify, anyone from making an informed opinion.

If you know as much as you think you do, why do you consistently fail to come up with real world facts that would demonstrate your knowledge? When you have to resort to satellites and comets to support your ideas of doping and performance in distance running, this only confirms my suspicion that you do not possess the required knowledge of what happens on our planet Earth. (Ignoring for the moment that you got the space facts wrong too.)

Knowing an expert, coach, athlete, physio, local gym members, anti-doping officials, is not knowledge.

Hearsay is not knowledge.

rekrunner wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

Since you only discuss EPO and blood doping it appears you know nothing else about the variety of drugs now available to athletes, that are believed to be in triple figures.

This is the value of fast forwarding to the end result, and basing my observations on what is known to have happened historically.

My characterizations of the best historical all time performances are not limited to EPO and blood doping, but are based on race results that would have been influenced by each and every one of your hundreds of undetectable drugs.

That is a longer answer that effectively admits you don't know about any drugs other than EPO and blood doping. Your knowledge of race results is irrelevant to the question of what you know about the kinds of drugs athletes use and the effects they have.

It mat well be that many of today's top athletes would only be running times comparable to the 60's and 70's if they were clean. You don't know what the clean base is because you don't know what effect any drug may have - and there are many - on any given athlete, and nor do we know who is clean and who isn't. Your " fast forward to the end result" argument is based on a premise that you know what the clean base level is. You don't. It may well be much lower than you suppose.

As you cannot meet any of the criteria above that would establish expertise on the subject of doping it disqualifies you from making any expert observation about Cheptegei. Your comments, however you choose to dress them up, are mere guesswork - and not well informed, either, because you rely on none of the sources that have a direct experience of doping or knowledge of how it is practised. Your speculations are little more than reading tea leaves.

If "hearsay" isn't knowledge then that only leaves direct experience - of which you have none.

The opinions of those who do have direct experience does confer knowledge. It is not hearsay - which is a legal term you misuse because you don't understand it. Hearsay is when you claim to know what someone said based on what another person has told you they said. That is not a person who is describing their own experiences - which is the knowledge above that I refer to.

The researchers who have attempted to study the effect of doping on sporting performance have had a very small class of athlete on which to base their findings. No champion or even elite athlete has ever taken part in such a study. Hence the researchers have cautioned against reading too much into their findings. That is an admission of the limitations of their research. It is a slender base on which to build an argument that doping does not confer benefits upon top athletes - as you choose to do.

However it is patently false to claim that their researches are the only reliable information on which to form a judgment about doping in sports. Doping is an activity that has occurred over decades and involved countless athletes, coaches, trainers physios and doctors. If whatever information that can be gleaned from those sources, however anecdotal, is discounted as "hearsay" then all that is perpetuated is an ignorance of a very large and complex issue.

Your attempt to form conclusions based on an analysis of historical performances is similarly flawed, because it assumes you know the measurable effect doping has on performance. You dont. But those with direct experience do. Yet you do not seek to know what they have experienced or you discount it as "anecdotal". Of course. You dismiss what doesn't fit your preconceptions.

LOL, what? Six? Let’s recap your tricks:

1) You divided pre- and post-2006 into 4-year steps from 1985 to 2016, giving you 8 steps instead of 2. Your choice.

2) Then you divided into East African and non-African, giving you 8 x 2 = 16 steps. Your choice. Wait - don’t you usually go with African vs. non-African?

3) Then you added the marathon (with the professionalized pacing in the last 12 years or so) into our discussion of Olympic track distances, giving you 5 distances, thus 5 x 16 = 80 steps. Your choice.

Then, after your choice of 4-year steps and East African instead of African (how many data did you have to crunch to come up with those steps?), you find 6 out of 80 where there was no decline from pre-2006 to post-2006.

6 out of 80? Not very convincing. Background noise. But wait!

Even your cherry-picked statements like

Further prove the point, because considering training and technology and nutrition advancements, the top-5 East Africans should have been a lot faster in 2013-2016 than in 1997-2000, not just “as fast”. Don’t you agree? We are talking about 16 years of training and technology and nutrition advancements – yet no progress!

Anyway. Without cherry-picking, pre-2006 vs. post-2006 until 2018 to exclude the shoe and Covid effects:

800: 1:41.11 (1997) -> 1:40.91 (2012)

1500: 3:26.00 (1998) -> 3:26.69 (2015)

5000: 12:37.35 (2004) -> 12:43.02 (2018)

1000: 26:17.53 (2005) -> 26:25.97 (2008)

800: improved by 0.2 s = -0.2%

1500: slowed down by 0.69 s = +0.3%

5000: slowed down by 5.67 s = +0.7%

10000: slowed down by 8.46 s = +0.5%

Conclusion: at the very top, the Olympic track distances slowed down by an average of 0.3%. I don’t see the improvements from 2006 to 2018 that should be there based on all the training and technology and nutrition advancements.

Do you want to look at 2nd best? 3rd best? … Be my guest. Sooner or later you might find yet another data point that fits into your agenda.

Incorrect. Three experts with "first hand observations of elite distance running performances":

CAS Karamasheva hearing:

Sunday Times 2015, advised by Ashenden + Parisotto:

And, the positive long time experiences of various athletes at the very top with blood doping, including Ramzi, Jeptoo and Kiptum.

And, coaches like Epo-Aden and Salazar despite all the risk, with Salazar claiming that doping provides a two minute advantage in the marathon - recall that Salazar already used testo during his running career, and that one of his pupils was subsequently banned for testo.

And, the faith and or experience of countless athletes, including e.g. Radcliffe and Willis and Flanagan and Cheptegei, to name a few, that doping provides an unfair advantage.

Again -- which of these statements about knowledge cannot be equally applied to you?

You are the one making all these fantastic claims about high prevalence, high effect, classic hallmarks of doping, and doping revolutions, and presumptions about the use of doping, purely from fast performances, and yet rather than address your failure to provide a single supporting fact, you want to point a finger at me and shout "hey look over there".

Seems like if you really were besties with all these elite athletes and anti-doping experts, you could ask them for help supplying real world facts .

Armstronglivs wrote:

As you cannot meet any of the criteria above that would establish expertise on the subject of doping it disqualifies you from making any expert observation about Cheptegei. Your comments, however you choose to dress them up, are mere guesswork - and not well informed, either, because you rely on none of the sources that have a direct experience of doping or knowledge of how it is practised. Your speculations are little more than reading tea leaves.

I guess that explains why I did not even attempt to make any expert observation about Cheptegei.

My observations were about the arguments, and lack thereof, in posts by you and Killeriottt.

They are mere guesswork - and not well informed, either, because you rely on none of the sources that have a direct experience of doping or knowledge of how it is practised. Your speculations are little more than reading tea leaves.

We have discussed many times why all of these examples fail.

Tricks? I looked at 6 out of 6 curves, looking for any significant changes in trends post 2006 versus pre 2006.

I could add 3 more North African curves, and only the 1500m shows the expected post-2006 decline you expect from more sensitive testing, making 8 out of 9 curves not obvious.

Take away the marathon and it is 5 out of 6 curves where pre- versus post-2006 doesn't look like a significant milestone with respect to changes in depth of quality of top performances.

Regarding my "cherry-picked" statement:

In the 1500m, East Africans in 2013-2016 were faster than East Africans in 1997-2000 -- by about 0.75 seconds, and 2001-2004 -- by about 0.98 seconds.

So there was progress like you expected.

What I said above was that East Africans in 2013-2016, were as fast at the top-5 *IN THE WORLD* (which includes El G and other North Africans and the rest of the world) from 1997-2000 (0.01 seconds faster) and 2001-2004 (0.09 seconds slower).

Sorry for any confusion caused by mixing groups. It was meant for emphasis, but that is not obvious without graphs.

Your "non-cherry picked" analysis looks at best times with a depth of 1 -- all East African, except for North African El G (strange in a response that was initially talking about non-Africans). I selected a "depth of quality" top-5 average to make it less susceptible to large individual variability. This should still remain valid, considering assumptions of widespread use and significant effect. Even then, average slowdown of 0.3% looks like noise, and the slowdown for 1500/5000/10000 is completely explained by exactly 2 athletes, with the retirement of El G, and the peak of Bekele.

Furthermore, your analysis fails to consider other external non-doping factors that cause times to slowdown, like changes in incentives, competition formats, migration of top-talents to the roads, often bypassing track, etc.

hearsay:

"information received from other people which cannot be substantiated; rumour"

"the report of another person's words by a witness, which is usually disallowed as evidence in a court of law"

Just to bring up a recent example -- you reported Snell's views on modern training to us, and could not substantiate it. When asked for his exact words, verbatim, you gave us your interpretation -- another report of his words.

I don't find your direct experience interesting or informative or indicative of reality.

As tempting as it is for you to reduce everything to false dichotomies, another option for those without direct experience is to quote an expert source.

One difference between you and me is that I will tell you the source of ideas which are not mine, often providing direct quotes, while you evade every attempt to cite such sources directly, and try to fault me for your failure to meet this basic standard.

Regarding doping research, even for amateurs, it does not support the conclusions you want to make. Among the amateur "well-trained" subjects, the research only looks at short term delta gains of one doping intervention over one simulated season, often paying little to no attention to training, before or during the study. They do not attempt to find the long term maximum time trial ability of these amateur subjects. We cannot conclude that doping would lead to extra-normal or super-normal performances for these amateur athletes.

I don't claim that researches are the only reliable information on which to form judgement. In fact, I consider all of the doping research to date unreliable for forming the kinds of judgement you want to make about athletes like Cheptegei.

My performance analysis doesn't require knowing any effect of doping, when I adopt your assumptions of widespread use and significant effect, and I only make comparisons of one group with another, or one group with the same group, over different time periods, or when I make comparisons of groups by country with known doping prevalences by country. When an all time curve remains flat for 40 years, I can safely form an opinion against any alleged doping revolution over that 40 years, without knowing the true effect of any doping before or during the 40 years.

You speak of direct experience, yet ironically you ignore the direct experience of Renato, giving no reason, in favor of something you think you heard Snell said, when Snell created no champions, and Lydiard created Snell as a champion. Athletes with direct experience are not neutral observers making double-blind, controlled observations. They do not know the measurable effect doping has, compared to legal alternatives.

They do tell me what they know. I have talked with professional athletes and coaches, and doctors, about their experiences and what they observe or know about doping. I have done the same with antidoping officials. What I have learned from them is knowledge. To you it is hearsay because I can't give you a citation.

I am also a professional musician. I know quite a bit about the performance of music in an ensemble setting. My interactions with other musicians has given me knowledge. If you have no such experience then you would dismiss such experience because it cannot be accompanied by citations - it isnt "real world data".

So it is with this issue. What you have no experience of you disregard. But you don't have to depend on what I might tell you. There have been accounts from many in the field who have offered their experiences and insights. However, you dismiss all that as "anecdotal". Logically, you would do the same with every witness in a court case who described what they had seen or experienced. Thankfully, most jurors don't think like you - nor do most rational people.

So Canova would know more about the effect of training on an athlete than an athlete, like Snell, who has been the subject of training? If Canova's knowledge is based in his experience then the same certainly has to apply to Snell - who, incidentally, also made a career of studying exercise physiology.

Your insistence that I cannot prove to you what Snell said is a fatuous objection. It was made in the course of a public broadcast interview. Anyone who heard it would have understood what he was saying. It was not complex - which was also his point about training. It is immaterial to me that you are not convinced that what I have said is accurate; I do not expect to persuade you of anything. No one does. A verbatim transcript would not change that.

I maintain my earlier point that your historical performances are not a measure of the effects of doping on sport - or its lack of effect - when you have no base for establishing what is clean. That is reinforced when you have no knowledge of the effect that any drug will have on an individual athlete, as you have made no study of ped's, you have no experience of their use, and no knowledge obtained from either those who have used them or who are trying to eradicate them. Your arguments are merely speculation, and your only purpose here is to set a standard of proof for others that you have made sure they cannot meet. That is how a denier works.

Late to the thread, but what is he suspicious of.

WADA IS COMING 4 U RUN! wrote:

Late to the thread, but what is he suspicious of.

He is suspicious that Rekrunner is clamoring to be his agent.