Nadal shows doping at the top of tennis

toozy wrote:

Heck, there were sprinters at the Ancient Olympics who were winning the sprint events and pentathlon into their 30s.

Leonidas of Rhodes won the 200, 400 and 800m (in light armour) at 36 - his 4th Olympics in a row.

Granted, lower levels of competition. But from a populous raised on exercise, where sports science was big business - with state sponsored training programmes - it’s a stretch to imagine these guys would be anything but phenomenal athletes.

So what will your argument be when athletes continue performing at peak levels into their 40's - as some are now doing?

At the very top of field sports? No. These guys aren’t world class athletes (in terms of physical attributes). There’s a documentary on YouTube of a 26 year old Cristiano Ronaldo running 25m and jumping with a step. His 25m time equates to around 11.8 over 100m (and that’s generously assuming he has the acceleration and speed endurance of an elite sprinter), his vertical was 30” (iirc) with a step (momentum). His ‘freak’ attributes were in positional awareness and his agility was very good.

You can watch it on YouTube - ‘tested to the limit’. The sprinter who puts .25 seconds on him over 25m ran a 10.6 in competition the next day.

The one position in sport which reflects the small drop off is running backs in American football. Yes, they get banged up, but there’s an observable decline after 26-27 in yards.

But, again, it’s a small drop off. What gets these athletes is the wear and tear. Prevent that and you see longevity.

Semenya’s case. Refer back to my wording. Variance within a normal range. I.e. Supranormal ranges provide a benefit, but within the normal range it doesn’t factor.

Women have natural testosterone levels of between 0.12 and 1.79 nmol/L, while a man’s ‘normal range’ is between 7.7 to 29.4 nmol/L (but the lower end for a young - or even middle aged man - is arguably too low).

The IAAF have capped the female limit at 5 nmol/L because, unlike with men, there’s a statistically relevant number of outliers amongst women (make of that what you will).

I don’t know if it’s been stated anywhere exactly how high Semenya’s was, but it stands to reason that it was more than 3x that of the very top of the natural range for your average woman.

In comparison, most studies on testosterone in general population show a very gradual decline of 1% per year. So, assuming a man has an 20 nmol/L level at 30, and that level declines by 10% by 40 (which isn’t always the case), he’ll still have 18 nmol/L at 40.

So you’re comparing apples to oranges.

Armstronglivs wrote:

https://www-telegraph-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/tennis/2020/09/24/revealed-tennis-drugs-testing-plummeted-lockdown/amp/?amp_js_v=a6&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQFKAGwASA%3D#aoh=16032215174589&amp_ct=1603221527702&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Ftennis%2F2020%2F09%2F24%2Frevealed-tennis-drugs-testing-plummeted-lockdown%2F

Revealed: How tennis drugs testing plummeted during lockdown

World's leading players barely tested during lockdown as tennis continues to lag behind other sports in its fight against doping.

Richard Pound, former president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)) commenting on the use of PEDs in various sports. In general he said:

"I certainly question everything I see now, in all sports. It's pretty clear just from the numbers of people being caught that drug use is rampant, and it's rampant at the top end of sports. 'This isn't people ranked at No. 300 taking drugs to boost them up the rankings, it's the people at the top who have used drugs to get there."

And of Tennis, he said:

"'When you look back at the era of McEnroe and Connors, in their prime they looked like little old men compared to the brutes now, thrashing around for four hours with a force and intensity that's ridiculous. Has tennis got a problem? Of course it has.'"

My question would be ‘are they really performing at peak levels, or beyond what you’d expect a 40 year old to be capable of?’.

None of the athletes I’ve seen pushing 40 are the athletes they once were. They’re technically better and better at reading the game. The rest don’t survive.

toozy wrote:

My question would be ‘are they really performing at peak levels, or beyond what you’d expect a 40 year old to be capable of?’.

None of the athletes I’ve seen pushing 40 are the athletes they once were. They’re technically better and better at reading the game. The rest don’t survive.

Your answer assumes that improvements in technique or equipment will compensate for natural physical decline. Yet at the top level in sport we are seeing that as a very recent phenomenon. It didn't really work for top sportsmen in the past. So why would you discount doping as being a credible explanation for that change we are now seeing (in likely addition to those other factors)?

No, I am not. The issue is not the variation in ranges amongst individuals but in an individual taking additional or supplementary testosterone to boost performance. It is a known powerful performance enhancing drug. When we age we lose testosterone - and that is one of the reasons we see a decline in physical performance. The huge difference between men and women in testosterone levels is also why it was identified as a crucial factor in the case concerning Semenya.

Your comparing a footballer with a runner is not valid; each sport has its own particular physical requirements, and at the top level the differences will be very small.

Armstronglivs wrote:

How about Viagra shows your claim to be false that it is only "magical thinking" that performance enhancing drugs work? Try also, that if Viagra is used because it produces results then other performance enhancing drugs like EPO are also used because they, too, produce results? Or, further, that you can't fool anyone about what works in the bedroom, so why should they be fooled on the running track?

This is not my claim.

My claim is that there is a gap in your logic -- a gap that is filled with faith. I have shown you where the gap is.

Showing that other drugs work in other sports brings you no closer to concluding "Nadal shows doping".

rekrunner wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

How about Viagra shows your claim to be false that it is only "magical thinking" that performance enhancing drugs work? Try also, that if Viagra is used because it produces results then other performance enhancing drugs like EPO are also used because they, too, produce results? Or, further, that you can't fool anyone about what works in the bedroom, so why should they be fooled on the running track?

This is not my claim.

My claim is that there is a gap in your logic -- a gap that is filled with faith. I have shown you where the gap is.

Showing that other drugs work in other sports brings you no closer to concluding "Nadal shows doping".

You have not shown that "gap". Not is my argument that because doping works in other sports that Nadal must therefore be doping. That is a facile misrepresentation. But that's what you do.

toozy wrote:

I’ve observed over a few replies now that you’re not (for whatever reason) of assimilating my points. Here you’ve quite literally answered your own question.

But anyway, I’m going to leave you to it.

I understand your points. I don't agree with them. But your general courtesy is appreciated.

Armstronglivs wrote:

You have pointed nothing out. You're full of air. You are also quite the liar - as you have repeatedly denied that performance enhancing drugs work, and that athletes take them on "faith" because there is no proof they work.

Of course I have throughout this thread.

I have never denied that performance enhancing drugs enhance performance -- this is a tautology and a trivial conclusion.

Because it is a trivial conclusion, showing performance enhancing drugs work brings you no closer to concluding "Nadal shows doping".

Although my initial interest in starting the thread was to elicit discussion on Nadal doping, the nature of most responses has changed the subject of that interest; I am now inclined to a study of the range of personality disorders in social media. Thank you all. You have given me much to go on.

Armstronglivs wrote:

That drugs enhance performance is not a tautology but a fact - but one you have denied again and again on so many threads. It is also not my argument as to why I think Nadal dopes. But dancing around your mulberry bush is a pointless exercise. I will leave you to it.

You are trying to pull a bait and switch.

You said "performance enhancing drugs" before, and now you just say "drugs".

I confirm and repeat my conviction that all performance enhancing drugs enhance performance.

Likewise, all non-performance enhancing drugs do not enhance performance.

There is no in between.

If performance enhancing drugs did not enhance performance, this instantly leads to the absurd conclusion that that drug is both performance enhancing and not performance enhancing.

If non-performance enhancing drugs enhanced performance, we arrive at the same illogical absurdity.

In sports, when we talk about doping, we talked about a subset of drugs that appear on WADA's pre-determined list. Some of these can be performance enhancing, and some are not. This determination might vary by sport, or by athlete, or by athlete's fitness, and a host of other factors.

A reminder of the gaps. You have failed to show:

- That Nadal doped

- That Nadal's performance indicates doping

- That doping can explain Nadal's performance

- That only doping can explain Nadal's performance

Prevalence does not show any of these things.

Suspicions of anti-doping experts and other players do not show these things.

Viagra in the bedroom does not show any of these things.

To be clear, I make no claim about Nadal, tennis or doping here, but I make a claim about your thread and your logic and knowledge gaps in your discussion that force you to make faith based conclusions.

I doubt anyone can show doping to you. For you it exists only as an abstraction, somewhere out there; it doesn't exist in an individual without a confirmed violation - and even then you don't accept it will have added to the athlete's performances. They only take it on "faith" that it will.

We know from you that EPO, for example, isn't a performance enhancing drug because it doesn't enhance the performances of the very top athletes - as you have told us. Yet they keep taking it.

We also know from you that performance enhancing drugs only work on "weak" athletes (thereby seeming to contradict your own argument that there is no "in between" with performance enhancing hancing drugs: they apparently work for some athletes but not for others).

Since we also know that Nadal is not a "weak" athlete we can assume that no performance enhancing drug would assist him. There is no reason to care - at least for you - whether he dopes or not, because we can take it from you that nothing would help him.

NameStoIenAgain wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

I have had patellar tendonitis and it won't go away if you keep playing. You can't even run on it when it becomes severe. Ultimately, it required surgery.

Again, you make the mistake of using your decrepit self as example and standard.

Actually, if you read my comment you would see that I was writing about Nadal possessing an injury for 15 years that has been a repeated excuse for his losses as well as having taken him off the tour on several occasions, that has regularly required PRP treatments but never surgery in all that time - unlike most athletes with a chronic injury. It is also an injury I have had personal experience of - years ago - but I do not claim that makes me the benchmark for an elite athlete at anything. But patellar tendonitis is a very debilitating complaint that will not go away without either sustained rest or surgery - without which it will only get worse. He has had neither. He's played through it for years.

Of course doping is real beyond confirmed violations.

I would even consider "confirmed violations" insufficient, considering human error can lead to false positives.

Some of the confusion can be cleared up by understanding that I don't treat "doping" and "PEDs" as interchangeable terms.

You started a thread about "doping".

You should have titled this "Does Nadal's performance show doping?" and settled for a lengthy discussion that cannot reach any conclusion because of the gaps in knowledge and logic.

In yours, apparently.

And more importantly yours, as I have explicitly enumerated above.

rekrunner wrote:

And more importantly yours, as I have explicitly enumerated above.

That you can count doesn't prove you can add up. You will never see what you don't want to. Doping.

Armstronglivs wrote:

That you can count doesn't prove you can add up. You will never see what you don't want to. Doping.

I have nothing to prove -- I am not the one who started a thread wishing to discuss how a 34 year old clay expert beating a 33 year old on clay can be best explained by doping.

It looks like no one in this thread was particularly interested in discussing the topic with you, and like all threads I have seen you participate in, it quickly degrades in an exchange of personal insults, as if that was the real goal.