Third Kenyan runner in 10 days fails doping test

Everyone's looking for an edge wrote:

But here's some news that might brighten your day. Did you here about the big doping ring broken up in Spain this past June? There were two main branches operating out of Spain; a Morrocan branch and an Ethiopian branch...no mention of a Kenyan branch. ?In fact, one of the athletes arrested was Ethiopian Gizaw Bekele. So, there's hope after all.

On the other hand, the trial of Kenyan Rio team manager Michael Rotich, accused of running a doping ring for top athletes out of an Eldoret hospital, is due to start any time now. This might be the final nail...

From my unbiased and noob perspective, this is the deal:

It is a proven fact that some of the best-ever performances and biggest medal-winning races have been achieved by E. African athletes who have used.

Some people consider the evidence now available sufficient to conclude that other specific top E. African athletes are also using, or have used in the past, while others consider the evidence insufficient.

Whether any particular substance enhances the performance of any individual athlete is relevant only in the sense that if it is not true, it would tend to support the suggestion that “the top” athletes “would not” use.

That’s it. This is but one very small niche in this whole discussion, that has derailed the broader conversation. Not only is it of very tiny, it is also not even strong let alone determinative, because it is easily and completely countered by the suggestion that they “would use” if they “believed” they would benefit—a suggestion that finds support in the proven fact with which I began.

The discussion should therefore shift to individual athletes, as it has in fact done, until such time as there are systemic problems revealed in a particular nation/area/team/program/group. That is also happening, supported by various investigations and by the building body of athlete evidence.

It is great that with the limited budgets and rampant corruption, that such a discussion should even have any basis.

There is hope.

Renato Canova wrote:

I told him to take only Mg in hot water, for avoiding some cramp he had in his hamstrings.

Renato, I have a question as a magnesium user myself for calf cramps; why the "Mg in hot water", is it to aid absorption and get it in to the bloodstream quicker.

Renato Canova wrote:

The Hct of Ronald is 53 in altitude.

So basically Kwemoi would have been banned by cycling and cross country skiing.

You would know Professor Bengt Saltin:

""I began in medicine when I was 20," said Saltin, "and for 30 years I never came across a haematocrit level (percentage of oxygen-carrying red cells) greater than 45-46%, the average being 42- 43%. Then in the late 80s, the haematocrit levels of endurance athletes began to rise, up to 50% and over. This was not done by nutrition or training, this was EPO.

"The difference to performance was huge. Look at it this way: the haemoglobin or red cells carry oxygen from the lungs to the contracting muscles and each litre of blood has a given amount of haemoglobin. The normal upper limit is 145 grams per litre. That can

carry approximately 200ml of oxygen per litre of blood. That is the upper value, you cannot change it. With EPO you can get the haemoglobin level up from 145 grams per litre to around 200, and suddenly you are carrying 30% more oxygen in your blood."

Professor Saltin has worked with world-class endurance athletes over the past decade and has known the result long before the competition: "You work with a team that is not manipulating their blood, their haematocrit levels are a normal 42-43% and you know they will not be able to compete in major championships. You almost want to say, 'Don't even bother going."

I think your old countryman Sandro Donati has echoed the same claims.

Great find there Subway!? This should put the lid on any doubt that the increase in Hct doesn't improve endurance capicity. Imagine increasing Hct by means of rEPO and consequently improving endurance...geez...who would have thought. Lol.

And our esteemed statiscian rekrunner needs to put down his "logical fallacies" books down and read up on Professor Saltin. He belittles us for not knowing anything on the subject, so maybe an expert like Saltin can get through to him. ?

Subway Surfers wrote:

Professor Saltin has worked with world-class endurance athletes over the past decade and has known the result long before the competition: "You work with a team that is not manipulating their blood, their haematocrit levels are a normal 42-43% and you know they will not be able to compete in major championships. You almost want to say, 'Don't even bother going."

I think your old countryman Sandro Donati has echoed the same claims.

' You almost want to say, "Don't even bother going." '

Wow, that's such a wow I had to bold it and copy and paste it twice, thinking it is bad enough, but imagine if you had to tell an honest hard working athlete that.

the problem with these integrators is that today we are looking for parts per million. if you start to eat spaghetti and what dish was examined, it would be a doped dish in parts per million because the saliva contains testosterone. It is absurd.

Having found other venues to publish my "pretentious expertise", I have retired from this forum. Still here two brief comments about that Saltin quote.

1) Blood doping hasn't been Bengt Saltin's area of specialty and - even when a Swede - he was not directly involved in the breakthrough research on blood doping that took place in the 1970's and the 1980's, so that statement is made by a professional anti-doping activist who wanted more resources to his cause and to draw attention and that is the context in how the statements should be read. The part where he claims having never seen hematocrit levels excess of 45-46 % is demonstratively false, because - for instance - he coauthored a paper in 1964 with P.-O. Åstrand ("Plasma and red cell volume after prolonged severe exercise"), where he measured Hct levels of five cross-country skiers and the highest two figures were 48.5 % and 48.0 %.

2) I forwarded that same quotation to one researcher who has studied blood doping extensively and his opinion was that the improvement in performance is far from linear if you increase Hct by 30 %, because the chain of oxygen delivery/utilization is so complex that the other links can't keep up with the elevated Hct. If you know anything about Bengt Saltin's other writings, he made a lot of effort to research the possible peripheral limitation on Vo2Max and he is far more skeptical whether increasing the capacity of one link in the complex oxygen-delivery chain can induce change in the "totality".

I won't even bother to respond to any follow-up comments, because I made the same observation as Sam Harris did some time ago about Twitter debates - you think they make the difference, but after all the time and effort you put it, you're really lucky if you get back to zero.

Subway, I was speaker in 4 different seminars, from 1998 till 2008, together with Saltin, and I know very well his real thought.

At first, it's not true that the athletes having Hct higher than 50, in cycling and ski cross, before the possibility to directly detect EPO, had not allowed to compete for 15 days in order to "save their health".

Many athletes have natural Hct higher than 50. In this case, the athletes had to be investigated by specific doctors for a long time, in order to demonstrate that this was their normal and natural value, and in this case they were allowed to compete.

In the Biological Passport, is not the high level of Hct having a role, but the FLUCTUATION. It's more suspicious an athlete moving from 39 to 46, than an athlete ALWAYS over 50 without fluctuations.

Physiology is not able, at the current state of the art, to explain why to enhance the Hct over some PERSONAL OPTIMAL LEVEL doesn't produce improvement, but decrease in the performances. It's clear that, when Hct goes over a personal optimal limit, in the body there is the activation of some process creating inhibition to use the increased quantity of Oxygen.

It's also clear that, especially when we speak about distances based on long duration, the velocity of the blood circulation has probably the most important role in the physiological attitude, and when we have high Hct as product of EPO or some manipulation (for example, homologus transfusion) the velocity decreases.

Increasing the ability to transport O2 we can enhance the AEROBIC POWER when we look at events based on the POWER of the aerobic system. But, when we compete in some event where we can use a PERCENTAGE of the Aerobic Power only (for example, the best athletes run a Marathon at 95% of their Lactic Threshold), a reduction of the speed of blood circulation can be considered as the most important LIMITING FACTOR.

People living in the Ande Mountains, in town like Bogota' or La Paz, or in Tibet (I had part of the Chinese team coming from Tibet) have average Hct between 50 and 60, but in spite of this data are not able to produce significative differences between their performances in a marathon at high level and in a marathon at sea level. This means they have a specific adaptation for living at high altitude, but are not able to take more oxygen from the air also when there is in the air a bigger quantity of the gas.

The connections among all the physiological parameters at the base of any performance of endurance are still not clear, and it's easy to look at Hb or Hct only, but this doesn't give any real information about the ability of the athlete.

Yes most of this has been discussed here before but a hematocrit level of 53% is very rare among elite athletes in a natural non-doped population. It would be highly likely this person would have an OFF-SCORE around 120 or higher unless he also has very high RET levels. The mountainous people do have higher Hct but they likely have mediocre stroke volume levels (not trained properly). Interestingly, you were the one on here that argued Hct levels feel as your athletes got in better shape, hence your argument that epo couldn't work on elites. Yet Kwemoi and Moen had high or rising Hct levels last year when doing fantastic times 3:30a, 7:28 & 2:05.

Coevett wrote:

Everyone's looking for an edge wrote:

But here's some news that might brighten your day. Did you here about the big doping ring broken up in Spain this past June? There were two main branches operating out of Spain; a Morrocan branch and an Ethiopian branch...no mention of a Kenyan branch. ?In fact, one of the athletes arrested was Ethiopian Gizaw Bekele. So, there's hope after all.

On the other hand, the trial of Kenyan Rio team manager Michael Rotich, accused of running a doping ring for top athletes out of an Eldoret hospital, is due to start any time now. This might be the final nail...

https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1065686/controversial-kenyan-athletics-coach-rotich-charged-with-alleged-involvement-in-doping-conspiracy

and this......let me guess rek and ex and renato will have some bullsh*t excuse for this as well

Subway Surfers wrote:

Yes most of this has been discussed here before but a hematocrit level of 53% is very rare among elite athletes in a natural non-doped population. It would be highly likely this person would have an OFF-SCORE around 120 or higher unless he also has very high RET levels. The mountainous people do have higher Hct but they likely have mediocre stroke volume levels (not trained properly). Interestingly, you were the one on here that argued Hct levels feel as your athletes got in better shape, hence your argument that epo couldn't work on elites. Yet Kwemoi and Moen had high or rising Hct levels last year when doing fantastic times 3:30a, 7:28 & 2:05.

lolz.....are you saying you caught renato in a lie?

no thats impossible, he is infallible lolz

well another kenyan in trouble with doping...nothing to see here.....soon the whole thing will come down and yes renato if you are involved you will be ruined

I wish everyone would learn some basic physiology.

The idea that you can improve performance with blood boosting is pure pseudoscience. Because you have a limit to how much heat you can produce when you exercise. So your oxygen uptake is limited by thermoregulation.

Lance Armsrtong and all the other EPO boosted cyclists produced power outputs in the normal range.

But the mythology that so many of you crave insists that their power output was superhuman.

You people are part of the problem.

I accept brojos' quest to point out the corruption is good journalism, but repeathing a mythology about so called PEDs and reinforcing it is bad journalism and makes the problem worse.

But I know people love to mythologize and to sum it up the mythology can be equated to the idea that these drugs give you more energy.

When I sum it up like that, hopefully intelligent posters here might see the stupidity of belief and how it is a mythology that people crave?

m!ndweak wrote:

Coevett wrote:

On the other hand, the trial of Kenyan Rio team manager Michael Rotich, accused of running a doping ring for top athletes out of an Eldoret hospital, is due to start any time now. This might be the final nail...

https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1065686/controversial-kenyan-athletics-coach-rotich-charged-with-alleged-involvement-in-doping-conspiracy

and this......let me guess rek and ex and renato will have some bullsh*t excuse for this as well

Certainly rekrunner will downplay it probably stating something along the lines that's it's a "logical fallacy" to assume that a refusal actually means the athlete was doping. ? Canova, OTOH, surprises me. I would have thought by now with this rash of top Kenyan doping positives he would be outraged & angered to no end.

Kenyan Athletics is imploding...this is getting ridiculous! See El K's post up thread, with the Bett refusal he's even pissed off and has had enough of this.

They why are all these Kenyans dropping like flies for PED positives lately? The lastest one being the Bett "refusal" to submit a sample is potentially catastrophic. If the refusal is upheld this young kid faces a 4 yr ban and the wrath of the running community! He won bronze at the 2017 WC and had a future going for him. And of course there's still Kiprop's case and on the women's side; Jebet, who is an Olympic Gold medalist, former WR holder & currently 2nd fastest SC all-time.

Your message of PEDs not working is falling on deaf ears in Kenya. Lol.

Once again, whether EPO improves the performance of highly-trained elites is not the big issue.

The big issue is that an ever-increasing number of them have been shown to be willing to cheat. THAT is the point.

Why? Because rEPO isn’t the only banned substance that will improve distance performance. In particular, microdosing test, HGH, etc produces a benefit. And there are race-day substances with super-fast clearance that aid performance in a specific race.

The proven willingness to use rEPO is the proven willingness to cheat, at which point all banned substances are possible...regardless of whether or not rEPO works, other banned substances do.

It's a shame. Who is to blame?

Sprintgeezer wrote:

Once again, whether EPO improves the performance of highly-trained elites is not the big issue.

The big issue is that an ever-increasing number of them have been shown to be willing to cheat. THAT is the point.

Why? Because rEPO isn’t the only banned substance that will improve distance performance. In particular, microdosing test, HGH, etc produces a benefit. And there are race-day substances with super-fast clearance that aid performance in a specific race.

The proven willingness to use rEPO is the proven willingness to cheat, at which point all banned substances are possible...regardless of whether or not rEPO works, other banned substances do.

But it won't improve distance performance. It's just a stupid idea that everyone is supposed to believe. You can't exceed your oxygen uptake values with more red blood cells, because that scenario implies that you can exceed normal heat production. You can't it's impossible.

Lance Armstrong's power outputs were in the normal range. We have enough data to see that. But the mythology of his supposed superhuman feats persists because people prefer mythology to reality.

You are endorsing rEPO use by sticking to the dogma.

Like i said in another thread, your argument presumes that the thermoregulatory system is at capacity, and that it is incapable of being improved. Both are unwarranted, and the second is plain wrong.

Weather plays a role, and of course hydration and nutrition/electroltyes are critical, as is how a race is run, in the longer distances. In situations of progressive dehydration and limited intake of water, yes thermoregulation may indeed be the limiting factor in longer races, but that situation is not normal.

Plus, such a limit would be historically averaged-out in both populations, and individual athletes.