Is Eliud Kipchoge on the juice?

El Keniano wrote:

Conundrum wrote:

Clerk made an excellent and informative post. Its ok for you to try and dispute it.

But you tell Clerk to "do humanity a favor by killing yourself".....then you say the people here are nuts.

Do you see the irony in that?

But honestly, a "death threat"? Seriously?

No, it was not a death threat just a death wish. I think we both can agree it was a rather inappropriate comment in the context the discussion.

Based upon your other reasonable posts, it was beneath you.

I'm with El Keniano on this one. The "but he beats dopers" argument is a logic fallacy. It ignores probabilities and raw talent.

Consider basketball for a moment. The athletes in the NBA are ridiculous genetic freaks of nature. 6-7 ft tall and more nimble, quick, and coordinated than anybody that size should be. And yet you have Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, etc. etc. Guys who are head and shoulders above everybody else. They are statistical outliers from the outliers. Freaks of the freaks. But there are only 1, maybe 2 of them a generation.

Why shouldn't we expect the same in distance running? So you have the genetic freaks (Rupp, Solinski, Alan Webb, a few Africans every year) who are amazing. Sub 3:30, 13:00, 27:00, 2:05 talents. And then there are the freaks of the freaks (Bekele, Geb, Kipchoge, maybe Mo & Tergat) who are one-of-a-kind. Untouchable.

It is statistically possible to have these rare outliers who, clean & at their best, are untouchable even if everyone else is doped to the trachea. (doped to the gills is a tired phrase)

By setting your baseline arbitrarily, of course you can claim that the outliers are clean. You have even less evidence to say those times are status-quo for clean runners than I do to say Kipchoge could be doping. You are making assumptions that the runners establishing your baseline are clean.

Given what we know about the state of the sport (see my first post in this thread), those assumptions are not valid.

In setting your expectations, you need to account for the context and history of the sport. You are not weighing the changes observed after the introduction of Testosterone into accessibility, EPO, or GW1516. You are not observing the connection of top performances to new doping controls in deciding on a baseline "clean" level.

Kipchoge is an outlier. But he is an outlier beyond what we know is a doped baseline. Kipchoge was an outlier when there was no Biological Passport, and blood doping was less restricted. He is an outlier in a sport when one-third of 2011 World Championship qualifiers anonymously admitted to doping in the past year. He is an outlier in a nation that didn't take any out of competition blood tests until 2015. He is an outlier in a nation with several dozen positive tests from other athletes. He is an outlier in events that showed one-third of endurance medalists (55 gold medalists) blood doped between 2001 and 2012.

So given the pattern and culture of the sport, there is no way to assume that Kipchoge is clean, or that the runners and performances you are measuring him against were clean.

2:06 is the limit for clean athletes. Who was the first 2:05 guy? Exactly.

Ben Johnson wrote:

what's deal with Kipchoge? wrote:

Any insight into this?

What makes you post such garbage? Accusing people with no evidence

I accuse you of being an idiot

I accuse you of having yellow eyeballs and lactating nipples

Clerk, you normally are a correct poster. But this time you are VERY INCORRECT, when you write

"Support staff for Kenyans of the highest level who have facilitated doping:

Federico Rosa (arrested for doping athletes)

Claudio Berardelli (arrested for doping athletes)"

You MUST know they were arrested NOT FOR DOPING ATHLETES, but for the accusation to dope athletes. There is a Trials for them, and it's not correct to say "for doping athletes", since the final verdict still doesn't exist, AND I WELL KNOW THEY ARE COMPLETELY CLEAN.

About John Anzrah, he didn't took the athlete's test. He was in the village using the accreditation of Ferguson Rotich (who is not an athlete coached by Anzrah !), and the most stupid were the volunteers with the task to recruit the athletes in the dining area for antidoping, controlling their accreditation. John Anzrah was of sure confused and didn't act in clever way, but this NOTHING has to do with doping.

About Isaac Mwangi, he was already cleared. Do you really think some Kenyan official, well knowing the yearly salary of a policeman (in this case policewoman) of first level, such as Zakary and Koki, is about 1800 USD per year (and these two athletes NEVER had any meeting abroad, NEVER had a manager, so NEVER earned some money running), can ask them about 25,000 USD (that are 14 years of salary) for clearing their doping ?

I can explain you many stories about some of the athlete you put in the list. Somebody of them really looked for PEDs, somebody else instead was victim of a high level of ignorance. For example, about Musa Amer Obaid (I was the head coach of Qatar when he was caught positive, also if I was not his coach), he was caught during an OOC test when in Ifrane in Maroc, during a period with a stress fracture, without any training. Qatar Federation sent all the documents, including the MRI of 3 weeks before the OOC test, and another MRI of 3 weeks AFTER the OOC test, showing he was not in training during ALL the period (he lost 2 full months before starting again).

IAAF accepted the explanation, answering that "they saw the bona-fide in the situation of the athlete, but maintained the full period of ban because athletes are responsible about the knowledge of the rules".

In other words, he was not banned because doped, but because stupid !

So, many things that you say "We know" are questionable.

The reality is : "We don't know", since something is true, something is not true, and something is not clear, also for who works in Kenya and better knows the real situation.

Lol this "Cycling News Doping Forum" is full of sh**

It's better that Cycling News Doping Forum can speak about cyclism, not about Marathon. The fact the limit for clean athletes is 2:10 is something completely idiotic, and shows a total lack of knowledge of the specific event.

We had hundreds and hundreds of athletes, of different nationalities, who ran under 2:10 in the last 48 years. This is not a top time in the world, and not a top time for any Country with good interest for the event.

The fact that Ron Hill ran this time in Boston in 1970 already shows how stupid is to think not possible running faster without doping. All the sport became better in the last 50 years : better methodology, better equipment, better organization, more professionalism. The WR of one hour cycling improved from 47 km of Jacques Anquetil till 56 of Rominger, and, when the bikes with special advantages were cancelled, again is more than 54 km with Wiggins. Really, nobody seems more idiot than people little knowing their sport, who want to speak about some other sport.

Once again, EPO is useless for marathons, except maybe to combat volume-induced anemia. Some marathoners still may use it but they have no reason to.

If top Kenyan marathoners are on something, it's not EPO. I've explained before their overwhelming natural advantage in that event, i.e. low caloric intake by which they can grow up skinny but athletic, and energy efficient. The Japanese are good for the same reason, but they eat a little more, so not quite as good.

It is really that simple in the marathon. The west is just too well fed to match the talent pool of a country where adults average 2000 kcal/day.

You missed the point of my post and are continuing to use faulty logic.

I'm a 14:50 5ker. If someone has to dope in order to break 15 and I beat them, it does not mean I am doped. It means I am more talented.

Being an outlier does not prove doping, because you can't disprove superior genetics. Statistically, we should EXPECT a few clean Kipchoges/Bekeles/Gebs to pop up now and then. You cannot set a baseline for normal. You cannot set a ceiling for human limitations. Bringing a "baseline" into the discussion at all is rubbish because we're not discussing normal. We're discussing outliers. There have been and always will be outliers.

And ultimately, we will never KNOW if Kipchoge is doping unless he tests positive or admits it. Speculate away, but don't act like speculation = fact.

Bad Wigins wrote:

Once again, EPO is useless for marathons, except maybe to combat volume-induced anemia.

But isn't volume induced anemia pretty common among highly trained marathoners? Unless i misunderstand him, Renato canova's posts suggest that it is very common among top athletes born, living and training at altitude.

test2 wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

Once again, EPO is useless for marathons, except maybe to combat volume-induced anemia.

But isn't volume induced anemia pretty common among highly trained marathoners? Unless i misunderstand him, Renato canova's posts suggest that it is very common among top athletes born, living and training at altitude.

There is another possibility.

It is possible that Bad Wigins and Renato Canova are wrong.

you walked into this one wrote:

You cannot set a baseline for normal. You cannot set a ceiling for human limitations.

This is where we disagree. I am saying that we have some data, and can make a generalized conclusion about the limits of human performance.

Some people will look at the current WR's, and use those to infer the limits; 100 years from now, the WR may be 3:20, 12:30, 26:00, 2:00:00, whatever. To say that you can't predict the limits of human performance ignores that there are physical and physiological limits to how our bodies move, and what stresses can be put on them. I think it is fair to use the statistical trends to make predictions about what those limits are. In doing so, though, we cannot accept that every performance on record has been done cleanly. That narrows the expectation for where we should see the limits of clean performances.

Kipchoge is an outlier... And that's the cause for suspicion.

Because in this sport, dopers are far more likely than clean outliers.

Thank you for your reply.

Yes, some cases are still ongoing.

With regards to Musa Amer Obaid, maybe we should discuss what led to such a stupid decision? I know you have said that the myth of EPO effectiveness is powerful, and needs to be clarified to protect athletes. But in the case of Obaid it doesn't matter, because there was still someone he could get it from, likely someone he consulted for the administration of the drug, and of course those who informed is intentions that it could be helpful or that it would be acceptable. All of this still speaks to the issues I describe.

Issac Mwangi may have been cleared, but the other cases are still in the air. Accusations are not facts, but even those cannot be ignored when assessing the situation in Kenya as whole, especially when they haven't been dismissed or shown inaccurate.

And for John Anzrah, it is a problem of course when stories are reported initially, and never followed up, or even worse, not corrected. If those are the facts, then I am misinformed. But I will wait for some statement by the IAAF Ethics Commission, presumably, to report the situation.

To that end, it is always appreciated that you share facts that haven't been reported, but the situation in Kenya is still an issue. This is relevant to assessing runners from that nation for the possibility of doping.

Well I mean, sure, we can say with 100% confidence a human will never run 1 mile under 1 second. There are obvious extremes that can never be done.

And sure, you can use math and science to try to predict human limits, but what data points are you going to put into your model? How can you know each data point is untainted by drugs? Ultimately the limits you predict will have a confidence interval grounded in how good or bad your model is. Considering your posts are pure speculation, it is safe to say your predictions have a wide CI.

And so you can't take 1 outlier and say he's doping simply because he's an outlier. Outliers always have and always will exist. Probability guarantees that somebody more talented will be born to beat any of a former generation's greats.

Okay fine. I don't disagree. But suspicion is not fact. You are presenting your argument as a foregone conclusion, and ultimately this is what bothers me.

I would simply like you to consider that any given outlier could be legit.

Renato Canova has also stated that he thinks Wang Junxia of China was a natural talent who was CLEAN.

Renato Canova does not think that Wang Junxia was doping.

Wang Junxia just trained hard at altitude.

Just had to point out that Tiger Woods is a known doper. Michael Jordan was a heavy Winstrol user. He'd have "paper" sheets of it Fedex'd to him.

Lionel Messi was put on HGH as a child (very well documented) to help with his height. Is that doping? Not sure, but who knows if he would have been as good two or three inches shorter.

I have to believe Roger Federer is clean, though in the wake of the whole melodium scandal with Sharapova I wouldn't doubt if he was given "grey" market recovery aids without his knowledge. Nothing explicitly banned...

Babe Ruth, believe it or not, actually experimented with injecting sheep testicle extract-- though I have no idea if he thought that would help cure a hangover...lol...

The Great One is clean.

I will consider that an outlier could be legit. But I will also consider the context of the sport. Back when Dibaba broke the 1500m record, that consideration was made, but then I accounted for the context of the sport: the dope fueled record she broke (and the amount by which she broke it), the anti-doping presence/non-presence in Ethiopia, the history of her coach at the time, and of course now, the drugs found in her team's hotel.

And for Kipchoge, you can see my thoughts on that context in my first post on this thread.

rjm33 wrote:

test2 wrote:

But isn't volume induced anemia pretty common among highly trained marathoners? Unless i misunderstand him, Renato canova's posts suggest that it is very common among top athletes born, living and training at altitude.

There is another possibility.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3874847/

It is possible that Bad Wigins and Renato Canova are wrong.

That article says "VO2 max" about 1000 times, and my post says "marathons."