My goal is not to cancel EPO from the list of illegal substances. I want that athletes taking EPO can be banned, and, in order to have a sanction equal for everybody, ALL THEIR RESULTS (including what they did when 15 years old...) MUST BE CANCELLED (so, we finish to speculate WHEN a doped athlete started to use EPO).
My goal is to put again the performances in middle and long distances in a different perspective.
People has to understand that the improvement athletes can have using EPO (attention, I don't say "using doping" : there is some doping that can produce really big advntages) is strictly individual, and can go from 3-4% till nothing or, in some case, can make the performance also WORSE.
The factors at the base of any individual answer are :
a) Different physiological qualities. More an athlete is aerobically strong, under genetic point of view, less effects can have, with him, the EPO assumption.
b) Different level of training. More intense and consistant is training, with the final goal to increase the VOLUME of specific intensity, less (or nothing) effect there is on the performances.
c) Different continuity in training. The continuity produces STABILIZATION in the physiological effects coming from hard and correct aerobic training ; but, after reaching with training only the best personal performances, if athletes reduce their training and don't have continuity, in the same period they used forproducing improvement, they lose everything, going back to their starting level (principle of REVERSIBILITY). The continuity in training is, for example, the most important factor in the continue improvement of Eliud Kipchoge, in spite of his age and of the length of his career.
d) Different self-confidence. Athletes able to improve their performances in clean way, are also able to increase their self confidence step by step with continuity, and almost want to challenge the idea that doping can increase their results. They believe in themselves, not in external aids, and this can give an extra-strength, under mental point of view, compared with athletes looking at doping for emerging. So, it's easier to find athletes looking at doping NOT during their period of improvement, but AFTER reaching their top, because, when they start to find problems, start to lose step by step the full confidence in themselves, and look around for the solution (changing coach, changing training, changing manager, and, at the end.... trying doping).
All these situations cover a wide range of casistic, and it's not possible, and fundamentally wrong and not fair, to try a quantification of the effects of doping.
In this range of casistic, may be there is somebody improving more than 10% (Lombard), but there is also somebody who, when in full shape (it means at the max level under physical, but also mental and motivational point of view), could LOSE something, using doping, compared with what is able to do in clean way.
We know possible to run WR clean. Doping can show that SOMEBODY was able to run a WR doped (Kiptum). The fact that Kiptum could run the WR doped, doesn't mean that Eliud Kipchoge CAN'T run faster than him in clean way.
What is not acceptable is to look at ALL THE TOP TIMES as doped performances. And, I repeat, under this point of view, EVERY SCIENTISTS WHO GIVES PERCENTAGES OF IMPROVEMENT (NOT VERIFYIED DIRECTLY WITH A PRECISE SUBJECT) MAKES AN ACTION AGAINST ATHLETICS, and without any real scientific base.
When a coach, like me, speaks about the REALITY, many don't believe, thinking I can be suspicion because my role, and because the results of my athletes in all my career. But, when a scientist WITHOUT any practical experience writes of basic studies, doing the mistake to transfer the results of THAT research to the WHOLE ATHLETIC WORLD, many look at his studies like to the Bible, because is something "scientific".
We need to look at facts, only. If an athlete runs fast taking EPO, it means he was able to do THAT performance with EPO. Nobody knows if he could run the same in clean way, or the time he could have run in clean way, because there is no proof. This doesn't mean that ALL THE OTHER ATHLETES faster than him had necessity to use EPO for beating him, because there is no connection between the two situations.
And we don't believe in the "general" effects of doping because have the evidence of some of the WR, achieved by our athletes (I speak not for myself only, but at the name of several coaches of top athletes), in clean way.
So, my final goal is not to deny that EPO can help some performance, but is to show that with the right training there athletes who can achieve the same results in clean way.
And, sprintgeezer, I can assure you that, IN THE REAL ATHLETIC WORLD, the one on tracks and roads, not behind a computer, NOBODY can have some suspicion about myself regarding doping (my battle against doping is well known everywhere from 50 years, and I'm sure many athletes, of different levels, understood what I said and their behavior was consequent of the ethic that was at the base of their activity.
