Sport Integrity Australia clears Peter Bol, says his A sample should have been recorded as negative

For those who are inclined and interested as to how synthetic EPO testing is performed in the laboratory setting, this is a really illustrative manuscript from a group in the Netherlands looking at the performance of sarcosyl-PAGE and isoelectric focusing on detecting recombinant human EPO.

I haven't done an SDS-PAGE in over 8 years (my research stays strictly in silico now), but other people in my lab routinely do similar techniques for research purposes. Just from discussions that occur in lab meetings when the students and staff are showing their gel blots to the group, I can see how any diagnostic or classification problem that relies upon looking at a PAGE blot is going to be subject to some diagnostic variability from inter-observer, inter-specimen, and inter-test sources. It's hard sometimes to decide what you're looking at.

Methodologic highlights from this study: the investigators randomly assigned 48 trained cyclists to either 8 weeks of rHuEPO or placebo and were able to study the detection performance of both the biochemical methods as well as an approximation of the athlete biological passport system -- which I didn't have a great appreciation for how ABP worked until reading this article. Interesting findings (to me) were (1) false-positive rates on the screening tests were in the ~4-6% range; (2) sensitivity on the screening tests were disappointingly low in the ~60% range, so around 40% of the drugged samples were inappropriately called as clean; and (3) sensitivity of ABP seemed much better than PAGE or IEF without any major loss of specificity.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Sensitivity and specificity of detection methods for erythropoietin doping in cyclists

Recombinant human erythropoietin (rHuEPO) is used as doping a substance. Anti‐doping efforts include urine and blood testing and monitoring the athlete biological passport (ABP). As data on the performance of these methods ar...

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I don't think we will go back to that era... Not everybody can afford a miraculous lawyer as Peter Bol's, so most of the people are still very careful with what they get in their bodies...

No way, from now on he will be much better surveilled, so he cannot go on with the EPO micro-dosing he was doing so carelessly...
As it happened with many other athletes that were suspicious and then suddenly their performances started to decline: (some of the) Nike Oregon project athletes, Almaz Ayana, Ayanley? Souleiman, etc.

False positives in the 4 to 6 % range.

So every 10,000 tests a NADO does every year there is a risk of 400 to 600 false positives.

The EPO test is famously subjective. Here is an article explaining how the test is interpreted. There are a few areas where people could potentially disagree on the results:

It must show a 'characteristic band shape e.g. broad band’

‘a diffuse or faint area of the band above the corresponding endogenous
band is also indicative for the presence of epoetin‐α and‐β’.

sportsintegrityinitiative.com

EPO testing in anti-doping laboratories is no joke - Sports Integrity Initiative

Christiane Ayotte

Response to Lab Times’ biased description of Steven Colvert’s positive test results: Borderline Analysis: Another troubling doping case is questioning WADA’s credibility again. This article is the second one presenting the vi...

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I wouldn't say they are wrong; if you know the test you know it has a subjective element to it. If you are old enough to recall the Lagat case, you know how a sample integrity issue can contribute to this.

I had the dubious opportunity to be an expert witness for an athlete for an EPO test in the aftermath of the Lagat fiasco. I should thank Letsrun for that experience as it started here. What I will say is WADA does not like people questioning their testing, though the expert witness is supposed to have the opportunity to do that, and I'm surprised they allowed it to happen again. They locked up like a bank vault after Hans Heid took them to town on the Lagat test.

Well that means the issue remains an open question given diverse opinions. But, if not conclusive with universal agreement, the athlete gets off.

lawyer may have been good in terms of addressing public interest, but matter decided by experts. Nothing to do with lawyer.

Excellent, now do Shelby next

so reading between the lines here and as a clean runner who knows little about doping, does this statement imply that he was microdosing and was right on the edge of what was permissible?

Riiight. The doper is clean. Riiiight

there was divided opinion, so who knows

If Peter Bol has been cleared, then:

1.All the doping allegations against Kenyans should be dropped,

2. The anti_ doping exercises are just null and void_ exercise in futility,

3. This has just opened floodgates to full throttle doping,

4. Anyone on this board pointing fingers or making noises about African athletes on doping 👎👎👎👎

Wada have described itself as a business and a movement.

When they have a closed shop of labs with their experts drawn from such I get very worried about the integrity of the processes.

There is pressure to find positives to maintain the growth of the industry.

All this reminds me of when they said that Nandrolone is not produced naturally and they were going to ban come what may.

And then proper checks were done and they had to admit they were wrong.

Poor science follows when you are on a mission.

Makes one wonder if a few innocents have been wrongly taken down. Kipyegon Bett, for instance, was adamant about his innocence to the end. Sure, he was a running drunk, but his management didn't cover themselves in glory, either.

Bol dodged a bullet here. I wonder if he'll stop using EPO or if he'll just adjust his glowing period.

That is a comment only fit from a simple minded 14 yr old

Now the question that arises is have there been athletes whose careers have been destroyed due to incompetency of testing procedures not just in Australia but in other countries also.