rekrunner wrote:
My sources:
- for Hesch: Hesch interview (see above) seeing drastic results only after two years and multiple regimens
Ah, but you claimed
rekrunner wrote:
Christian Hesch said he took EPO for 2 years before seeing any result.
Same old, same old.
"Mr. 75 % more wind" should just keep his/her mouth shut about "cherry picking" if you yourself have in front of you all the mean PB's of the group (800m to marathon) and you choose the marathon record of 2:12 over all the other PBs and claim that it represents the whole group.
Even if something "is not necessarily" something or "could've been" something, it doesn't change the fact that the Vo2Max changes vs. time trial speed changes throughout the study are totally inconsistent with the correlation seen in the material I referred to and I think the cohort is decently large with 19 participants when compared to many other blood doping studies. There is a nice contradiction to you particularly when you yourself insisted that the TT performance in the test 4 weeks after the rHuEPO treatment should've been worse in absense of rHuEPO.
Or was that "worse" argument just valid in that context and that time and now can be forgotten and do you still maintain that the Kenyans were on average 2:12 marathoners?
Aragon wrote:
Or was that "worse" argument just valid in that context and that time and now can be forgotten and do you still maintain that the Kenyans were on average 2:12 marathoners?
Stop trolling me, Mr. Cherry-Picker. I am neither here to overstate the EPO benefits (my estimate of 2-4% bonus for most runners is actually on the low side of both this forum and this study) nor to pretend that Armstrong would have won without EPO too, unlike you, fanboi.
Remember I was the first to report that that group included mid-distance runners.
casual obsever wrote:
Stop trolling me, Mr. Cherry-Picker. I am neither here to overstate the EPO benefits (my estimate of 2-4% bonus for most runners is actually on the low side of both this forum and this study) nor to pretend that Armstrong would have won without EPO too, unlike you, fanboi.
Remember I was the first to report that that group included mid-distance runners.
I am not trolling you "Mr. 75 % wind", I just want to point out your contradictions because your credibility goes easily if you don't admit errors or flip-flop with your interpration about the same data depending how it suits your case. And before name-calling please do show me where I have stated that Armstrong would've won without EPO, because it is easy for me to know that I haven't made that claim because I don't make my statements and beliefs ad hoc so life is pretty easy when I can remember what I haven't stated.
If you don't want to make a statement on whether Armstrong would have won without EPO then just exit the discussion.
You and Gary are both just dancing all over the issue and playing both ends against the middle.
At least Jon Orange has the casters to come right out and admit he takes the moran side of the discussion.
Aragon wrote:
In statistical terms, the drug increasing total hemoglobin mass had enough potency to increase performance by 3.4 % four weeks after its administration was ended but still it hadn't to statistically increase Vo2Max, the key mechanism via which it increases performance.
You are going to have to elaborate on this one, are you referring to synthetic epo because this section followed on from previous paragraphs where you were referring to 900ml reinfusions.
Aragon wrote:
And just for the record, those are all 900 ml reinfusion studies from the 1980's and the TT tests are almost all there have been carried out at all, so cherry-picking isn't that possible answer to this problem.
Interestingly, I was made aware of a recent general health transfusion study that found less in more.
The quality of transfused blood is now vastly superior to the 1980s, stored as such to minimize cell death.
Aragon wrote:
Here is the link to the study showing 1.2 % improvement in performance after placebo injections I mentioned a day or two ago. It was mentioned in the "discussion" - part of the 2018 Haile et al. study, so the authors of that study also found it relevant enough to refer to:
http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/102299/1/102299.pdfI have only browsed it through relatively quickly, but as the paper states relating to RPE that "[t]here were also no significant differences in RPE between pre- and post-intervention races in either the control or placebo condition" and later that "improved exercise performance for the same degree of perceived effort was observed following placebo administration in the present study", it at least looks plausible that any change in perceived effort would increase performance on top of that 1.2 % placebo effect.
Hey Aragon, I don't hold any animosity towards you and you did point out that getting 63 half runners to runner 9min 3km tts isn't ideal. However ^ getting 39min 10k runners to improve by 1.2% is just as misleading.
Really time to exhaustion studies or speed at vo2 and time held at vo2 studies are better indicators of the effectiveness of EPO.
I am referring to the 2018 Haile et all. study in that paragraph, whereas the few earlier paragraphs are about the 900 ml reinfusions studies where the amount is also specifically mentioned. All the studies used high-glycerol freezing both to minimize cell death and to make sure that Hb had pretty much recovered to the control level after blood donation.
OT: I don't think Lance Armstrong would've succeeded in TDF without rHuEPO and the only claims in his defence have been that he didn't necessarily gain more advantage from it than his competitors did so he migh't ve won had everybody been clean. But to think about it, there are sentences like this from me that taken out of context might sound like that I am making the claim that Riis/Armstrong could've won without rHuEPO:
"Riis and Armstrong both had Giro/Tour stage wins prior to taking EPO (latter actually competing against EPO users), so it isn't necessarily true that "killer combination" made them good. And as I understand it, Riis was mostly a support rider with very little own career interests until mid 1990s."
casual obsever wrote:
[ I am neither here to overstate the EPO benefits (my estimate of 2-4% bonus for most runners is actually on the low side of both this forum and this study)
So where does the 2-4% come from? What is the mechanism that allows more chemical work to be done without disturbing homeostasis. Your investing your time and effort arguing endlessly in a futile debate about which you have no sources of reliable information.
Newton's laws of thermodynamics relate to bioenergetics
Newton's laws of motion relate to biomechanics
Without a reliable biogenergetics/biomechanics model, you're just relying on superstious belief in magic potions that give superhuman strength.
That's what all the PED talk boils down to, superstition not science.
Can't you see that the authors in these studies work backwards from the assumption of the efficacy of the drug? And that's what they are being paid to do?
Renato Canova wrote:
a) Two groups of athletes of medium level (maybe 5% slower than the current WR), that are not elite, but better than the subjects normally used for the researches (this means about 27'30" for 10 km, 62'10" forHM and 2:09' for Marathon).
I love your use of medium for what are very fast times. But they are only 5% slower than the world record because of the copious amounts of drugs used to set these world records in the first place. Between you and me, federations like the IAAF, UCI, IOC tested epo on reasonably elite athletes and found massive gains. Hence the drug was banned back in the early 1990s, but as you know nobody had a means to properly test for it until the ABP.
JonO. wrote:
casual obsever wrote:
[ I am neither here to overstate the EPO benefits (my estimate of 2-4% bonus for most runners is actually on the low side of both this forum and this study)
So where does the 2-4% come from? What is the mechanism that allows more chemical work to be done without disturbing homeostasis. Your investing your time and effort arguing endlessly in a futile debate about which you have no sources of reliable information.
Newton's laws of thermodynamics relate to bioenergetics
Newton's laws of motion relate to biomechanics
Without a reliable biogenergetics/biomechanics model, you're just relying on superstious belief in magic potions that give superhuman strength.
That's what all the PED talk boils down to, superstition not science.
Can't you see that the authors in these studies work backwards from the assumption of the efficacy of the drug? And that's what they are being paid to do?
Homeostasis is not a thing when racing. Stop flogging that dead pony.
Also cut out the superhuman BS. Elites are already superhuman. We're just talking about making them a bit better with drugs
JonO. wrote:
Without a reliable biogenergetics/biomechanics model, you're just relying on superstious belief in magic potions that give superhuman strength.
You don't have that model either.
These were posts in responses to earlier posts where I referenced "my performance thread" and "look again at how they ranked as a national force on the world scene". In this context, nothing should have indicated that I was talking about RACEWALKING or comparing anyone to the weaker than WORLD standard of Russians in the 1990s. Talking about WALKERS in the context of a thread about a study on Kenyan RUNNERS being similar to other RUNNERS (like Russians) is even further disconnected. I didn't specifically exclude BOWLING, DARTS, POOL, SWIMMING or NORDIC WALKING either, but to be clear, I'm mainly concerned with DISTANCE RUNNING. If you take away Coe and Co, and your one whistleblower, I still find enough evidence by my standards.
casual obsever wrote:
rekrunner wrote:
Do I really have to say MEN and DISTANCE RUNNING everytime?
This is a thread and forum about RUNNING, about MEN, about TIMES.
In the 6 events I analyzed, Russia, the #1 country in DOPING, had ZERO men better than the1990 top-5 average times.
This thread title only specifies "(Kenyan) runners", and EPO.
In any case, so you meant six selected events without specifying, and with "1990 marks", you didn't mean the Russian records from 1990 (while you spoke about Russian men), but you meant "the1990 top-5 average times" worldwide. Got it.
"the #1 country in DOPING" So it seems. But, is there enough evidence to be allowed to say that by your standards?
Think back 10 years. After all, if the one whistle blower hadn't come forward, or if Coe and Co. had been more successful in ignoring him, we'd think differently. In other words, Russia was very unlucky.
Are we interested in THEORICAL researches, or in PRACTICAL results ?
Here I can give you some example of how the THEORICAL advantages, that are in the mind of Mindweak and Casual Observer and also your, are absolutely out of every logic and of every statistic research.
I consider the real WR for every event from 800m till Marathon, the SUPPOSED WR clean 4% slower, and how many performances there were (updated at today Saturday 15 September, tomorrow we have to change both Marathon and Half Marathon) :
800m :
WR 1’40”92 (+ 4%) = 1’45”29
Top 100 performances : 1’42”98 (41 by KEN - 12 by US)
Top 200 performances : 1’43”34 (69 by KEN - 28 y US - 10 by GBR)
Top 500 performances : 1’43”88 (116 by KEN - 73 by US - 31 by GBR)
Top 1000 performances : 1’44”32 (180 by KEN - 170 by US - 65 by GBR)
Performances under 1’45”29 : 3185 by 414 athletes
1500m :
WR 3’26”00 (+ 4%) = 3’34”24
Top 100 performances : 3’29”91 (36 by KEN - 8 by MAR - 8 by ESP - 4 by GBR - 3 by US)
Top 200 performances : 3’30”80 (66 by KEN - 15 by MAR - 15 by US - 6 by GBR)
Top 500 performances : 3’32”01 (114 by KEN - 68 by US - 34 by GBR)
Top 1000 performances : 3’33”14 (175 by KEN - 138 by US - 60 by GBR)
Performances under 3’34”24 : 1775 by 414 athletes
5000m :
WR 12’37”35 (+ 4%) = 13’07”64
Top 100 performances : 12’54”70 (46 by KEN - 25 by ETH - 8 by MAR)
Top 200 performances : 12’57”60 (87 by KEN - 36 by ETH - 19 by MAR)
Top 500 performances : 13’01”93 (169 by KEN - 67 by ETH - 37 by US)
Top 1000 performances : 13’07”34 (292 by KEN - 107 by ETH - 93 by US)
Performances under 13’07”64 : 1045 by 200 athletes
10000m :
WR 26’17”53 (+ 4%) = 27’20”63
Top 100 performances : 26’57”88 (54 by KEN - 27 by ETH - 3 by ERI - 3 by GBR - 2 by US)
Top 200 performances : 27’08”94 (92 by KEN - 42 by ETH - 10 by US - 4 by GBR)
Performances under 27’20”63 : 389 by 141 athletes
HALF - MARATHON :
WR 58’23” (+ 4%) = 1h00’43”
Top 100 performances : 59’22” (71 by KEN - 16 by ETH - 3 by ERI)
Top 200 performances : 59’37” (130 by KEN - 38 by ETH - 5 by ERI - 3 by GBR)
Top 500 performances : 1h00’08” (301 by KEN - 79 by ETH - 19 by ERI)
Top 1000 performances : 1h00’41” (564 by KEN - 129 by ETH - 47 by JPN)
Performances under 1h00’43” : 1052 by 404 athletes
MARATHON :
WR 2h02’57” (+ 4%) = 2h07’52”
Top 100 performances : 2h05’27” (54 by KEN - 37 by ETH - 3 by US)
Top 200 performances : 2h06’13” (118 by KEN - 60 by ETH - 5 by JPN)
Top 500 performances : 2h07’15” (261 by KEN - 98 by ETH - 32 by JPN)
Top 1000 performances : 2h08’16” (465 by KEN - 180 by ETH - 104 by JPN)
Performances under 2h07’52” : 769 by 321 athletes
I'm not usual to insult people, but it's evident that, if you REALLY think that 3185 performances and 414 athletes in 800m,
1775 performances and 414 athletes in 1500m, 1045 performances and 200 athletes in 5000m, 389 performances and 141 athletes in 10000m, 1052 performances and 404 athletes in HM, and 769 performances and 321 athletes in Marathon (so all the performances FASTER than the supposed CLEAN WR, according the hypothesis of theorical researches), you can only be an idiot, not knowing anything about athletics (this is very clear reading your posts), but also anything about mat, statistic and logic.
Please, stop to show papers of researches made by physiologists that didn't have any clue about the real sport of elite. Stop also to compare the scientific doping of athletes supported by very rich teams (like Armstrong) with the naïve doping of some African runner. Stop to write something in your opinion ironic, that instead can only show how much you are stupid and ignorant of the problem (this is not for you, I speak about many posts that don't have any connection with the argument we want to treat). Stop to write intelligent messages such as "Bump". Stop to write that somebody goes home "devastated". This is only a show of children who don't have any knowledge (not only about athletics, but about anything) but are presumptuous and think to know everything about any argument, from physiology to methodology, from doping to policy (and after don't know that Portugal is in Europe, or that 78 years ago the second war started).
We can discuss methodology, medicine, doping, results ONLY having a clear picture of the final goal of the athletes, that is RUNNING AT THEIR BEST. If somebody is interested to improve his results, has to look at his training, not at the doping of OTHER people (supposed or real) for finding excuses about his poor training and poor results, without knowing anything about the value of every athletic performance, of the talent and of the real training.
You should maybe start telling Kenyans they don't need to dope. Save your vitriol for them.
Aragon wrote:
It is the same thing argued over again, if people let this thread to be hijacked, because - as the headline here states clearly - this thread is mainly to discuss the merits of the brand new research paper and whether it proves that Renato Canova is a liar or not.
C'mon Aragon...doping threads (actually most threads on LRC) are always being hijacked...nothing new there. You've posted here regularly in the past, so you should know that. FFS, you've got JonO bringing up Armstrong's Alpe d'Huez climbing wattage on almost every one of his posts! ?
Bottom line: There are no studies with elite runners and never will be because ethical reasons. A good well-designed RCT would end this debate for the most part. And another study should incorporate rEPO with the use of androgens and/or HGH. We have no idea what the synergistic effects would be on athletes useing multiple pharmaceuticals. The anecdotal evidence suggests multiple PED use with dopers (one popular combination is rEPO and HGH, and from tbe McLaren report the Russians regularly used EPO/blood doping with the steroid "Turinabol."
What were left with is anecdotal evidence & estimations. There will always be a wide spectrum of opinions. And like with all pharmaceuticals, there be individual variability. Different dosing amount (e.g.,therapeutic vs microdosing),schedules, additional PEDs, training application, etc. One-size-does-not-fit-all in the world of PED use.
Interestingly, in Malm et al ("Autologous Doping with Cryopreserved Red Blood Cells – Effects on Physical Performance and Detection by Multivariate Statistics") we get an estimation by qualified researchers.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0156157#pone.0156157.ref029From the introduction:
"Initially, blood transfusion was used to enhance military aviation pilots’ work capacity to fly at high altitude during WWII, when pressurized cockpits were not used [21]. Later, submaximal [22] and maximal [23] running performance was shown to improve with blood transfusion. The discovery of erythropoietin (EPO) [24] simplified blood doping in sports, supplementing blood donation, storage and re-infusion. Similar performance enhancements of 6–12% could now be achieved by a simple recombinant human (rh) EPO injection [25–27]. In a review on blood doping published in 1989, Jones and Tunstall [28] describe increases in performance and VO2max ranging between 0% and 40%, depending on the subjects included and methods used for both testing and doping. From the summarized literature, it can be estimated that elite athletes may improve performance by up to 3% with blood doping, regardless of method [29–31]. This enhancement is equivalent to, for example, seven minutes faster winning time in the 90 km cross country ski race Vasaloppet, 20–30 seconds faster time in any given 5000 m run at world class level, and four minutes faster finishing time in a marathon race. In cycling, a 3% increase in performance translate to a more than two hour faster winning time in Tour de France 2014."
Subway Surfers wrote:
Hey Aragon, I don't hold any animosity towards you and you did point out that getting 63 half runners to runner 9min 3km tts isn't ideal. However ^ getting 39min 10k runners to improve by 1.2% is just as misleading.
Really time to exhaustion studies or speed at vo2 and time held at vo2 studies are better indicators of the effectiveness of EPO.
That is a decent and valid point even when I brought up that placebo injection - research paper only because the authors of the 2018 Haile et all study mention it in their discussion - section them thinking that it is relevant and (as I stated) I haven't read it too carefully. I think my criticism is pretty independent of that study and I didn't do any substractions or other calculations based on it.
Out of curiosity I reviewed some of the research I referred to in my post and noticed that unlike I claimed, Anthony J. Brien and the coauthors actually measured also Vo2Max in their 1989 test where athletes run 1500 meters on a track. The Vo2Max change is 10.8 % and TT-performance was elevated only by 1.1 % pointing still to the direction that the increase in Vo2Max doesn't elicit same change in speed, far from it.
I can't have my statistical correlation both ways and out of fairness to casual obsever, if I maintain that there is some causal link between the two variables after blood infusion or rHuEPO administration, should the 6.2 % and 3.1 % increases in Vo2Max seen in the Haile et al study elicit some increase in speed regardless of placebo effect and higher RPE?
I think the answer is pretty obvious.
RFM wrote:
In a review on blood doping published in 1989, Jones and Tunstall [28] describe increases in performance and VO2max ranging between 0% and 40%, depending on the subjects included and methods used for both testing and doping. From the summarized literature, it can be estimated that elite athletes may improve performance by up to 3% with blood doping, regardless of method [29–31]. This enhancement is equivalent to, for example, seven minutes faster winning time in the 90 km cross country ski race Vasaloppet, 20–30 seconds faster time in any given 5000 m run at world class level, and four minutes faster finishing time in a marathon race. In cycling, a 3% increase in performance translate to a more than two hour faster winning time in Tour de France 2014."
Have you read the "summarized literature"?
1) A research published in 2000 (Birkeland et al) with very well trained (not elite) cyclists dealing mainly with hematological changes in detection context which doesn't even have a TT-type of test but only a time-to-exhaustion tests. This observation made in the study should be kept in mind when touting how the Kenyan/EPO paper "proves" that EPO improves the performance of Kenyans by 5 %:
Also, there was an improvement in time to exhaustion in the control group, although not of the same order of magnitude as in the EPO group. This shows the importance of a blinded and placebo-controlled design.
2) A research paper published in 1987 (Brien et al) with a good protocol where a group on well-trained (c:a 32:00-33:00 caliber) runners were some 3.5 % faster after blood reinfusion when compared to placebo group. Because the test run was conducted at altitude (1800 m), the results may not be fully similar at sea level and there is also the following sentence in the "Discussion" section:
The subjects in this study, although good-caliber runners, were not elite distance runners, and the results obtained in this study may or may not be applicable to the latter.
3) A blood reinfusion study from 1987 (Berglund et al) where a group of "well-trained" skier performed 5.3 % better compared to placebo on a 15 km cross country skiing competition. Interesting study that has the same limitation as the Brien study.
Christer Malm hasn't written extensively about performance enhancing effect of blood doping and the "up to 3 % with elites" is just an opinion, because it isn't that obvious from his source material. If one wants to appeal to authority, there are many rHuEPO-skeptics who have reviewed and meta-analysed the literature extensively (such as Jules Heuberger and Adam Cohen) with different conclusions who have more expertise on the issue. In addition about Malm's motivations, it should be kept in mind that while one of his former professors has vouched for the credibility of him in private discussions and is convinced that his autotransfusion-detection will be finished eventually, any panic about efficacy of rHuEPO coming from researchers wanting funding for their projects should be taken with caution.
I guess I need to do a performance analysis of Hesch during the doping years to settle the question of what happened before the drastic performance increase after three regimens. I see from his IAAF profile, all of his PBs pre-date his first doping regimen, but then again all of his 2010, 2011, and 2012 results are marked "DOP", with the times deleted. It looks like Hesch is a bad example though for another reason -- in that article he claims he always raced clean:
Hesch maintains that he never raced on EPO but used it to recover from injuries.
"Maybe this is my cue to walk away, but I’m real tempted to make a real clear point that I can and have run all those times perfectly clean. It’s not that difficult to run these times, and it doesn’t take any outside help."
So the drastic performance increase after two years and two more regimens, that failed to manifest after the first two "regimens" and first two years of use, did not even come from EPO.
He is an athlete who based his decision on taking EPO for recovery benefits, rather than performance, putting this logic in doubt: "If none of them would have noticed better training and racing results after the EPO injections, they would have stopped by now, "
casual obsever wrote:
rekrunner wrote:
My sources:
- for Hesch: Hesch interview (see above) seeing drastic results only after two years and multiple regimens
Ah, but you claimed
rekrunner wrote:
Christian Hesch said he took EPO for 2 years before seeing any result.
Same old, same old.
Renovate Kenya wrote:
You should maybe start telling Kenyans they don't need to dope. Save your vitriol for them.
Curious that Kenyans hold so much respect for Canova and his training, and yet as evidenced by the slew of positives that have been coming out of that country, seem to hold little faith in his 'public' hypothesis on what is being discussed.