So we know Ruth is dirty.. but was it EPO or something stronger?

I'm pretty confident that the clean record is at least as fast as 2:16-ish.

I just can't believe that the clean world record is someone worse than Deana Kastor or Mizuki Noguchi, who were 2:19 runners without super shoes and never broke 30:50 in the 10k. They'd certainly be 2:16 or 2:17 low with the shoes. So think its totally concievable that there are women running 2:14 - 2:17 today with super shoes while clean.

Take your tinfoil hat off and go back to your mom's basement.

From the graph in Figure 1 and paragraph above it, Ruth had to wait approximately 3 or 4 more days to pass the test:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Detection of urinary markers for thiazide diuretics after oral administration of hydrochlorothiazide and altizide-relevance to doping control analysis - PubMed

In sports, thiazide diuretics are used to flush out previously taken prohibited substances with forced diuresis and in sports where weight classes are involved to achieve acute weight loss. Thiazide diuretics include compound...

Open link

Full text on Sci-Hub.

They should have got their money back then because on the track, besides Farah, the Brits kinda bombed out completely in the distance races.

Wiggins, Froome and the Brownlees hardly shocked the world with their performances, they were already among the best in the world.

Maybe they were all doping, but nothing in those 2012 Olympics really indicates anything.

My gut says a burrito made from fake meat.

That would probably have to be a large, state sponsored effort. Interesting idea though. Unless you had records to make a biological passport, this would be very difficult to detect and possibly super effective.

EPO with HGH and testosterone is incredibly powerful, even microdosing.

& the effects last long after the drugs have been pissed away.

For the testosterone, Nandrolone would be too easy to detect, so expect something like Tetrahydrogestrinone or newer with a masking agent and full body shave/short hair to hide the evidence.

In cycling, something not yet detectable is being used by 2 to 5 riders. It’s bloody obvious, but nobody knows what it is or how to test for it. Maybe she mis-dosed this mystery substance and tried to hide it with a proportional dose of masking agent?

2:13 by Hassan

She is infinitely more talented than Ruth and Tigist. Give her the same drugs and she'd run 2:07.

Two words: Spanish marathoners, 1990's

What is doing there your father El Bakkali, USA and England don't have a middle/long distance runner of his size in the last ten years.

(even if you count Mo Farah)

The first EPO test came out in 2000 but my understanding is it sort of sucked. See lance doping his way through the tour. There was a refinement around 2007/8 appears to have slown things down.

At the other end it isn’t clear when it started. Was Ondeiki or Sigei using ins 93/94? Maybe but put me in the camp where it was unlikely to be available in 89 when he was a 13:04 guy. A couple years later when people were running 26:30/26:40? Yeah that 20-30s is all EPO…

EPO became widely available in endurance sports in the early 1990s. The Ariostea cycling team went from mid-pack with a bunch of aging veterans to destroying everyone in one year. Michelle Ferrari perfected it and by 1996 you had results like this:

procyclinguk.com

Flashback to the Mapei 1996 Roubaix 1-2-3 podium finish - ProCyclingUK.com

Mathew Mitchell

With 86km to go in the race, 4 members of the Mapei team escaped off the front of the 20 strong peloton - Johan Museeuw, Gianluca Bortolami, Andrea Tafi...

Open link

The Italians were the ones who really perfected it (which is why you get Gen Xers and Baby Boomers so suspect of people like Rosa and Canova).

Anyway, based on what we know about cycling you can assume that Italian coaches were starting to use EPO in the early 1990s, that most top-tier sports programs in Italy, Spain and the Scandinavian countries were using it by the mid-1990s, and anyone who wanted to be competitive in elite endurance sports was using it by the late 1990s.

If you were not willing to do it, you were not competing at the highest levels throughout most of the 2000s.

There was a delay from cycling to athletics and then being available for the masses. You can see when it took hold in East Africa and became widely available by results.

Look at the spread on winners globally pre 2000s in the majors , then afterwards. It astonishingly easy to correlate the free for all of epo in East Africa to the dominance.

People will find all sorts of nonsensical arguments to say what what's staring them in the face isn't true. It's simply an availability v demand timeline. Once it became easily available to everyone, the utter dominance came.

The same couldn't happen in US/Europe as there isn't the same freedom to get and take epo. Limited numbers risk it for sure, but not enough to take on the hordes. It's killed athletics as a spectacle. Prior to the 2000s, maybe late 90s , you could win from any part of the glove. After that in was an East Africa party. Everyone too afraid to label them as you might be called racist. It's not racism , those countries are like East Germany of old , there's nothing genetic about it....which is easy to see from results prior to the free for all and the numbers of positives now.

are you kidding or serious?

My mention of dexamethasone was a joke, dude. The idea of someone trying to dope with steroids and injecting themselves with a glucocorticoid is funny in the same way as the dumb@ss criminals a few years ago who tried to steal oxycontin and ended up stealing oxytocin instead.

Obviously dexa wouldn't have the desired performance effect. That's the joke.

Welcome to the thread Frederico.

Apologies, as I took the comment at face value. I can imagine that group of criminals was easy to identify in the line up. They certainly would have had a place to hang their towel in prison.

Interestingly, decadron actually does increase rbc production, often given in some of the autoimmune related forms of anemia. Lesser corticosteroids are often abused as well, secondary to their anti-inflammatory affects post hard session/race and feelings of increased energy (note the comments previously by the American Fleshman regarding inhalers). Also remember the debacle with Armstrong needing to get the backdated prescription years ago for “saddle sore” as a front for his abuse of the glucocorticoid.
What is being abused in the peloton, on the pitch, or on the oval are just different derivatives of drugs that have always served the same purpose: increase the ability to recover, prevent breakdown, increase o2, increase o2 availability, stave off lactic acidosis, etc. The trick is to find the right cocktail that fits the individual for maximal affect in the above categories while mastering the ability to test negative during specific hours.
As a side note, I think it’s also a common misconception amongst the general population here that corticosteroids are anabolic.

The clean record is 2:13. You people are moronic beyond belief

Sure by 95/96 everyone was EPOing. What about 92? 93? Or 94? There were some big drops some of those years.

And there is some complexity in say 1 or 2 people doing (maybe Cacho had an early hook up) and the field ( all those races with a half dozen dudes sub 12:55) doing it.

Unless some coach with a dozen athletes from the era writes a tell all, we will probably never know