More Kenyans busted

rekrunner wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

You have yet to realise the argument you employ about the benefits of training - which cannot be measured precisely, as you have shown - applies also to doping. Therefore they both aid performance, if you are to be consistent.

Does that argument apply to doping? I have my doubts. That is the question you keep avoiding. Asking "what about training?" will not answer that question.

But sure, knock yourself out. You can try to make the same argument, and to settle that argument, you will ultimately need facts, data, and observations -- this is what is wanting for doping and elite distance running performance (with the possible exception of steroids for women in events requiring muscular strength).

Where are the experiences and observations of "correlation" you previously alleged? When has anyone observed and experienced the "correlation" between doping and elite distance running performance improvement?

I predicted you would fail to be responsive, and you delivered again.

Fundamental Truth wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

I think you have lost sight of Thoughtleader's post and my reply to his post. No one debates or disputes Kenya has a doping problem. If you want to ignore degrees, the whole world has a doping problem.

Not only do experts acknowledge Kenya has a doping problem, they have investigated and listed various factors that describe the doping problem with more insight. The same experts acknowledge that contributing factors are depth of talent, lack of anti-doping education, negligence, exploitation, desire to escape from poverty, among others, that makes the reasons for Kenyan doping different than the reasons for other nations.

Kenya should be banned from competing in athletics.

Doping IS rampant in Kenyan running and has been for a very long time. If one that follows distance running can’t grasp that then they are completely naive, caught up in it themselves or worse one of the enablers.

The country of Kenya is so corrupt (rushwa). So much so that it will take a permanent (outside of Kenya and placed in Kenya) anti doping group such as the AIU to root out the dopers. It would take a permanent (outside of Kenya and placed in Kenya) investigative task force to root out the Cartel infrastructure of doping and athlete exploitation. But why should organizations outside of Kenya be consumed by trying to clean up Kenyan doping. Why should resources (money and people) be deployed to a morally bankrupt country like Kenya? Why should others put their lives in jeopardy to root out the enablers (coaches, agents, doctors, pharmacists, mules, enforcers)?

World Athletics - Just ban Kenya from running. The world-wide embarrassment Kenya will suffer from and the cash flow cut off from said action might drive change from within Kenya or Kenyan running will fizzle away over time.

To think of all the clean athletes that have had their medal chances, personal triumphs, notoriety, financial gain taken away from dopers (not just Kenyan dopers) from the many dopers over the years is a travesty. Wada, AIU, and other countries anti-doping organizations please keep up the fight for clean sport. The vast majority of runners are clean, compete clean. They are the ones that need to know they have a healthy chance to compete at the highest levels in running.

rekrunner wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

The correlation between doping and improved performance was shown decades ago. It is why it can be found now in every sport and from schools to elite and professional levels and seniors. It is the main reason why antidoping exists. You are the only one who won't see it.

As you already know, the main reasons anti-doping exist are three-fold: potential risk to health, potential performance benefit, and spirit of the sport.

If such correlations have been shown decades ago, why are you unable to show that here, for elite distance running performance?

You only delude yourself by saying I am the only one. I largely share information that other experts have already said.

For example, did you click on the link Aragon provided some weeks back and read the damning study? It turns out that when conducting a review of "the literature" showing doping and performance, most WADA banned drugs lack scientific evidence showing improved performance. They found some good evidence for steroids and sprint speed and power and strength, but virtually nothing of scientific quality for endurance performance.

Just for kicks, I opened up my copy of Timothy Noakes' bible, The Lore of Running 4th Edition. There, around page 700, he has a 41-page section on "Ergogenic Aids". He ranks them roughly in order of proven benefit. At the top of his list was "Exercise Training". He gave estimates ranging from 10% (speed) to 3000% (increase of distance at a sustained speed). At the end of the chapter, under the section of substances with no proven benefit, he lists "Most IOC-banned stimulants", debunking any notion that substances that are banned must be known by "experts" to be performance enhancing.

rekrunner wrote:

Fundamental Truth wrote:

Kenya should be banned from competing in athletics.

Doping IS rampant in Kenyan running and has been for a very long time. If one that follows distance running can’t grasp that then they are completely naive, caught up in it themselves or worse one of the enablers.

The country of Kenya is so corrupt (rushwa). So much so that it will take a permanent (outside of Kenya and placed in Kenya) anti doping group such as the AIU to root out the dopers. It would take a permanent (outside of Kenya and placed in Kenya) investigative task force to root out the Cartel infrastructure of doping and athlete exploitation. But why should organizations outside of Kenya be consumed by trying to clean up Kenyan doping. Why should resources (money and people) be deployed to a morally bankrupt country like Kenya? Why should others put their lives in jeopardy to root out the enablers (coaches, agents, doctors, pharmacists, mules, enforcers)?

World Athletics - Just ban Kenya from running. The world-wide embarrassment Kenya will suffer from and the cash flow cut off from said action might drive change from within Kenya or Kenyan running will fizzle away over time.

To think of all the clean athletes that have had their medal chances, personal triumphs, notoriety, financial gain taken away from dopers (not just Kenyan dopers) from the many dopers over the years is a travesty. Wada, AIU, and other countries anti-doping organizations please keep up the fight for clean sport. The vast majority of runners are clean, compete clean. They are the ones that need to know they have a healthy chance to compete at the highest levels in running.

Sure, Kenya has a doping problem.

There have already been taskforces, internal and external, investigating the various causes and factors unique to Kenyan athletes doping, with recommendations. WADA and the AIU already tells us what these taskforces have found.

It makes complete sense to me for outside organizations to investigate and even help fund anti-doping efforts, as it is the athletes from all of the countries outside of Kenya who are the main beneficiaries. In addition to pressuring the Kenyan government to fund anti-doping, there should also be a global anti-doping fund that can redirect anti-doping efforts where it will be most beneficial.

Armstronglivs wrote:

With your usual cherry-picking you ignore the part of the WADA site that says the reason they oppose doping is to ensure "fair" sport. That means they are opposed to cheating - which is what doping is - because it confers an unfair advantage. They wouldn't say that if there was no reliable correlation between doping and performance. Issues of health and sportsmanship are a mere corollary. Indeed, there wouldn't be a doping problem, of any kind, if doping didn't aid performance because athletes wouldn't choose to dope. But this is quite beyond your powers of basic reasoning.

Of course there are studies claiming there is insufficient evidence to say that doping aids performance; none of them have used doped elite athletes as their subjects as none have participated in such studies. So - like you - they base their conclusions on an absence of evidence. All they can show is that without the relevant subjects for their research they can't come up with anything better about the effects of doping than they "don't know". So it is research of no real value. How surprising.

Yet, correspondingly, no one has produced conclusive data on how much a top athlete like Kipchoge has improved through training; it is reliably assumed it has contributed to his performances but we don't know by how much. It is the same with doping (and the problem with training today is that we can't as a fact separate doping from training in enhancing performance, as we see that many top athletes employ both). All the evidence (except for the inadequate academic studies you refer to) suggests doping contributes to performance, as training does, even though the exact extent of either can't be measured.

rekrunner wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

With your usual cherry-picking you ignore the part of the WADA site that says the reason they oppose doping is to ensure "fair" sport. That means they are opposed to cheating - which is what doping is - because it confers an unfair advantage. They wouldn't say that if there was no reliable correlation between doping and performance. Issues of health and sportsmanship are a mere corollary. Indeed, there wouldn't be a doping problem, of any kind, if doping didn't aid performance because athletes wouldn't choose to dope. But this is quite beyond your powers of basic reasoning.

Of course there are studies claiming there is insufficient evidence to say that doping aids performance; none of them have used doped elite athletes as their subjects as none have participated in such studies. So - like you - they base their conclusions on an absence of evidence. All they can show is that without the relevant subjects for their research they can't come up with anything better about the effects of doping than they "don't know". So it is research of no real value. How surprising.

Yet, correspondingly, no one has produced conclusive data on how much a top athlete like Kipchoge has improved through training; it is reliably assumed it has contributed to his performances but we don't know by how much. It is the same with doping (and the problem with training today is that we can't as a fact separate doping from training in enhancing performance, as we see that many top athletes employ both). All the evidence (except for the inadequate academic studies you refer to) suggests doping contributes to performance, as training does, even though the exact extent of either can't be measured.

You gave one reason. I gave three. You picked one cherry, while I give you the cherry tree.

You didn't read the study. Unsurprising. The list of failures go far beyond not studying elite athletes. They spoke of both "absence of evidence" and "evidence of absence". As a reminder, they concluded only "5 of 23 substance classes show evidence of having the ability to enhance actual sports performance, i.e. anabolic agents, β2-agonists, stimulants, glucocorticoids and β-blockers." and "For 11 classes, no well-designed studies are available" and "for the remaining six classes, there is evidence of an absence of a positive effect" and "for the majority of substance classes, no convincing evidence for performance enhancement is available".

This is the body of literature that WADA "experts" would rely on to establish a "reliable correlation between doping and performance", and they can only do that for 5 classes out of 23. WADA would say "potential to enhance performance" and create a fuzzy subjective "2 out 3 criteria -- but we won't tell you which two" when "there was no reliable correlation between doping and performance".

You keep asking "how much" -- this is a red herring. With doping and elite performance, the question is whether any alleged benefit is positive, neutral, or detrimental. That answer depends on 1) the dope, 2) the athlete, 3) the event, and 4) the athletes' state of training relative to his/her potential.

rekrunner wrote:

whataboutery wrote:

Times of elite marathon runners to the introduction of EPO correlation is high. Remarkably correlated with the era of East African dominance.

Is this meant to be a joke? Of all the distance events, the marathon is the least correlated to the "introduction of EPO", if not the counter-example.

Depending on the thread, some say the "introduction of EPO" was around as early 1987. What is the marathon timeline, compared to EPO and EPO testing?

The world record in the marathon didn't move at all for a decade between 1988 and 1998.

EPO testing was introduced in 2000.

It was only in 2003, when Tergat set the record, and then again in 2007, when Geb moved to the marathons, that records started falling -- some 10-20 years after the "introduction of EPO".

ABP was introduced in 2009. That's when the marathon records really started falling by more and more East Africans.

Then after super shoes were introduced, the times fell some more.

According to two Australian anti-doping scientists, as reported by the Sunday Times, based on unofficial calcuations from a large IAAF blood database leak, the Marathon was the event that was the least suspicious of all, with only 1 in 9 World or Olympic medals won by a "suspicious" athlete (8 in 9 by "clean" athletes). These aren't EPO positives, but the more visible and long-lasting "off-scores" that indicate recent blood doping (or altitude). Up through 2012, EPO use (or high blood values) was not significant by either Kenyans or Ethiopians.

In terms of quantity (number of athletes faster than 2:10:30), before 2001, the non-Africans always outnumbered the East Africans. The East Africans didn't start to outnumber non-Africans until 2001-2004 Olympic cycle. By 2009-2012, the number of sub-2:10:30 East Africans had tripled, while the rest of the world declined by half.

Speaking of the rest of the world, why wouldn't a few rogue marathoners also take EPO, either to set a record in the 1990s when EPO was untestable, or after 2003, when East Africans started running faster? After all, EPO is a worldwide drug, and we know countries like Morocco and Spain and Russia were using it. As a group, the fastest non-Africans stopped improving after 2000, and very few non-Africans have run faster than the 2:07:12 times of Carlos Lopes and Steve Jones from 1985 -- only about a dozen over three decades, before 2018 when the effect of supershoes on marathon times became apparent. As a group, the fastest are the Japanese -- a country not often associated with EPO.

rekrunner wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

I find it hilarious that we know that coffee, bananas and chocolate bars - and even water - are performance enhancing but you look for "studies" that show drugs of every kind, taken by elite athletes under expert pharmacological, medical and training guidance, aren't.

I don't just look for studies. Long ago I switched away from studying the complex subject of exercise physiology, with a lot of theories and a lot of unknowns, to looking for trends in performances found in all-time performance lists.

Recall I did two "closer looks" at all-time performance progressions, and from that look, I started to look for any similarities to known patterns of doping or testing. If there was a strong correlation to doping, and any of the often expressed anti-doping milestones, and the faster times (or slower times) in the last few decades since the 1960s, I couldn't find it, either in terms of quantity or quality of the fastest performances.

When I bring up studies, it is usually to point out their limitations in the real world of elite performance. Recall that that is what anti-doping experts look at, to form their opinion if a drug can be performance enhancing and should be banned, and that the basis of their decisions, to the extent they rely on these incomplete, or poorly designed studies, is faulty. As I have seen (and you have not because you don't read links), the scientific basis for the WADA banned substances list is wanting.