Dr. Renato Canova talks about Ruth Chepng’etich’s world record.

LOL. Rekrunner just wrote this gem in one the current Ruth threads:

"Coming full circle, I still see no reason to think that elite marathon runners would be any faster doped than clean."

"nuances" - lol. Nope. Hard core trolling with "no reason to think"...

The problem with your post here is that you don’t go into details (about doping) or nuances as I called it…

I have read research that doesn’t see any benefit of using EPO, and I have seen research that claim significantly benefit on athletes’ performances….

I’m no expert on doping and I’m open for everyone that can put some facts on the table. But in a field with very little research (especially on the top elite), and indications in all directions, I cringe when posters claim full certainty. And I don’t see this in rekrunners or Canova’s posts, but very much in their opponents’…

In my opinion there may be prevalent doping in the marathon event, or it may be very little (among the top elite). And the same in track and field generally. -I have no problem believing WRs to be clean, but I have no problem with doping suspicions either. I simply don’t know… And EPO doping might work among the top elite, or might not -I have no clue. And it might even be a middle position -it might be an advantage for some athletes (that know how to administer the dope correctly and also have some luck) and it might be an disadvantage for others that get overconfident from the dope and overtrain and become injured. Or sick. Or there’s an individual factor…

”Coming full circle, I still see no reason to think that elite marathon runners would be any faster doped than clean” is a sentence I don’t necessarily agree with, but it’s an opinion I think is totally OK -with indications in all directions that opinion is totally fine as I see it. So is it correct? Well, we then have to balance pros and cons -your part should be to find evidence / convincing indications for the cons, instead of claiming trolling from rekrunner et co…

It is nuanced. Don't confuse yourself by falsely equating sweeping statements like "doping works" or "EPO categorically doesn't work", with the narrow case of the existence of "reasons" concerning elite marathon performance.

What details or nuances? That statement categorically denies that there are any reasons to think any doping might aid in the marathon. It's his post that doesn't "go into details (about doping) or nuances". You come over a blind defender of rekrunner, without any nuances.

You also don't admit that you just argued otherwise ("Neither rekrunner nor Canova has stated “there’s no evidence that doping works” ") - meaning you were evidently wrong, at least for the marathon. But like rekrunner, you cannot admit that you were wrong, not even about rekrunner. Hilarious.

Note: reasons to think, he didn't just argue that the evidence isn't 100% convincing, or that there is "no evidence" (which you said he never did), he even claimed that there is no reason to think.

Nothing to do with EPO etc. Plus, if you have seen such research as you said, then that would be a reason to think... proving rekrunner wrong again. In that thread, several reasons were mentioned, of course all thereof shutdown without any nuances by said poster.

Haha ironically one reason to think doping aids in the marathon was that Canova himself said so. Who just got ample praise by rekrunner again, for all his experience lol. But then - according to rekrunner - his words were no reason to think that doping might make elite marathoners run faster.

Or you could just answer the question. Why so defensive?

I can't judge if your posts have directly addressed Canova's coaching and Kenyan experiences -- all I saw was a statement not addressing anything, ending with "for reasons too obvious to restate", some implied guilt by association, and then some downplaying of his contribution to the sport and to letsrun.

I also wouldn't judge the truthfulness of your posts by "upvotes" or whether you are an outlier. Posting something a small number of posters agree with doesn't make you right or wrong.

What I have seen from many posters is that Canova will say something nuanced and specific, and people will generally understand something else, like "Canova says EPO doesn't work on Kenyans", rendering it one of these famous misquotes that were never said, like "Play it again Sam", or "Why don't you come up and see me sometime."

So in your posts that address Canova's coaching and Kenyan experiences, did you respond to what he actually said, applicable to the context in which it was said, or to some broader misunderstandings?

In one of my quests for evidence, I looked at historical times and concluded by asking if EPO worked for sea-level non-African athletes in the EPO-era. Part of the motivation for that quest was to verify the knee-jerk response to Canova that "EPO works for East Africans like it works for everyone else", which still left me wondering if that means it works for East Africans.

This highlights a fundamental difference in how we see reasons. Someone saying so, but without supporting data, is not a reason for me. I look for supporting data behind what people say, in order to give it any weight. If I have doubts about the existence of some cause and effect relation, even Canova is required to back up what he says with facts, data, and controlled observations, to address these doubts.

Canova said something once about steroids potentially helping Mosop in the marathon, as opposed to blood doping which would not help, but I have seen no reason to think that this hypothetical statement from Canova has ever been confirmed with real data, either directly by Canova, or indirectly witnessed by Canova.

"Marathon" is a detail and a nuance. I don't need to go into details or nuance to express doubts, because the default position is to be skeptical of all proposed relations, until established otherwise.

I did not "categorically deny", but said "I still see no reason ...". This can be seen as an invitation for giving me a reason to believe. I was given a long list of other people who said so, or believed so, or were busted, but again, none of the items in this list provided me with any reasons to think that any real doped marathon performances were, or would be, actually faster because of doping than would have been possible clean.

To be clear: Doping can work, e.g. steroids for women. Doping can even work for the marathon, when the athlete is not fully trained. There is no categorical denial, but conditional denials, depending on the athlete, the event, the state of fitness, the dope, etc. The question I always raise is whether the clean athlete, when optimally trained to peak fitness, can potentially benefit further from doping. Only when we can answer yes, can we start to doubt that the fastest times are not likely clean. It is not enough for someone, even some "expert", to say empty words.

When it comes to the marathon, my question is, where is the data, for any athlete, showing doped performances are faster than what is possible clean? You ask about "research" -- where is their any research on the marathon and doped performance?

Indeed, expert statements do give me a "reason to think", while they are not necessarily 100% convincing.

Maybe Canova will explain to us why he was convinced that Mosop would have run a 2:01 marathon with steroids, given that he is posting here in this very thread.

Hmmmm, has his statement about blood doping ever been confirmed with facts, data, and controlled observations? I recall him saying that that's only his "belief".

And here again, you categorically deny that doping can work for the marathon when the athlete is fully trained.

Speaking about nuances, FYI your original statement didn't even have that disclaimer about "fully trained" ("no reason to think that elite marathon runners would be any faster doped than clean").

Also FYI, women - who typically benefit from more testosterone - also run the marathon.

My mate Mike ran 2:09:43 without getting anywhere near those 5/10K times. I'm very suspicious about Ruth's WR, but not for the reason you stated.

Here's the thing: I don't care whether data from controlled experiments, etc, EVER 100% confirms the efficaciousness of EPO use in distance running-- ALL of distance running, from the beginner to the elite ranks (and such data will NEVER be adduced, btw).

The fact is, the global endurance sport community has been conducting a massive natural experiment on itself for decades now-- and I mean the business part of this community in particular, the part with real financial and reputational skin in the game-- and it has all of the "data" it needs. Its conclusion: blood vector doping improves performance-- for athletes at ALL levels. Or at least that the data is sufficiently strong to tip the balance in favor of use, despite the grave risks of banishment from sport.

Take Kenya. On one had we have "rekunner" and Canova arguing that, in their amateur rendering of applied performance hematology, EPO may not--theoretically should not-- improve performance in "highly trained" distance runners (a deliberately ill-defined term, BTW). On the other hand, we have literally hundreds of athletes and many (dozens?) of coaches, many no doubt with reliable knowledge as to who is using EPO and who is not, and watching for changes in patterns of performance for years and years. Then, knowing the high stakes involved in testing positive, choosing to use EPO in particular to improve performance.

And so who or what is the casual, moderately scientifically literate fan to believe? The claims of a coach with a shady past in a country formerly notorious for blood-fiddling who claims that top Kenyans are not doping-- or, that if they are, it's out of stupidity, or whatever, because there's no reason to believe it is helping their performance-- or the top Kenyans themselves, whose steady stream of positive EPO tests suggests that they have practical knowledge --and probably direct, personal experience-- to the contrary?

I honestly wonder what a top athlete who had risked it all to use EPO (e.g. Lance Armstrong, or any of the top Kenyans who have been busted) would say upon being told by people like Canova and rekrunner that they were/are probably dumb or misinformed in their decision to use EPO. They'd probably think that a top level coach in endurance sport like Canova was straight-up joking, or blowing smoke, and that a tendentious crank like Rekrunner was a quaint curiosity. And they would be correct.

*And just one further side comment on Canova while I'm here. Through his many decades in the relatively small and close-knit professional distance running community in Kenya, a time during which we now know that doping was actually far more extensive than the outside world knew only a few years ago, Canova was either to most niave person imaginable in order to have believed what he said about top Kenyans and EPO, or one of the most suspicious. I don't recall other Kenyan coaches saying much of anything one way or the other about EPO use in Kenya over the years, yet Canova (with his background in Italian distance running, of all things) went out of his way to assert that there is no scientific reason to believe EPO would work on athletes like the ones he coached. All these years later, a very reasonable conclusion would be that he doth protest too much.

she's kinda tall, so she'll probably benefit abit more from using the alpha

There is no reason for me to think that Canova is an expert on doping elite runners.

Relying solely on expert statements, even from Canova, are "appeal to authority", when the expert does not give any reasons. Things are not more true because an expert says it, even if he is personally convinced, but only when an expert shows it, or alternatively supports it because someone else has shown it.

Which statement about "blood doping"? In science, the hypothesis that no relation exists between two things do not need facts, data, and controlled observations. Skepticism is the ever present default, until it can be rejected by facts, data, and controlled observations. But sure, the null hypothesis is still hypothesis.

Maybe it's me not understanding what "categorically deny" means. I thought "Categorical means absolute, unqualified, unconditional.", and we were originally talking about all categories.

Picking out categorical qualifiers and conditions like "fully trained" and "marathon" suggests that the denial is not absolute, and not categorical, but nuanced. Does "doping work"? It depends.

While women who take steroids and testosterone and other male hormones giving them superior muscular strength, also run the marathon, it is not clear that the marathon event, primarily an endurance event, is significantly limited by muscular strength.

In any case, "no reason to think" is not a categorical denial that something is so, but a much weaker statement of the lack of existence of reasons to think something is so, which allows the possibility that one day there may exist reasons, but not today. Maybe one day scientists will do a robust long term study on elites, and that would provide reasons, or some group will do a large scale epidemiological observational study establishing a correlation.

I'm not sure we are aligned on "the facts".

The data from your massive natural experiment is not sufficiently strong to tip the balance. I looked at the massive data of fastest performances worldwide during the EPO era. No natural experiment was bigger than Russia's. And while the cycling world had athletes from all nations taking EPO and blood doping, in running, the East Africans, and to a smaller extent some North Africans, ran away from the rest of the world. How would that even be possible if sea-level athletes could just tip the balance in their favor with a quick trip to the pharmacy?

You say "take Kenya". It is not clear that Kenya was significantly doping before 2009-2012 timeframe (for blood doping, see for example the Sunday Times reporting of leaked IAAF blood data), and since then, EPO and blood doping are not a significant part of the busts to date. Before EPO, in the 1980s, Kenya and Ethiopia started dominating the world in World Cross Country, despite other nations like Finland and Italy toying with blood transfusions.

Why do athletes risk it? Because they are not scientists evaluating data to rigorous standards, and apply the same faulty logic as many fans. Or they trust what their coach, manager, agent, etc. tells them. Or they trust charismatic but pathological liars. Lance Armstrong is not a scientist. We should ask these questions of Ferrari, not Lance. But it is sure that Lance would resist any suggestion today that his decision to dope was dumb and misinformed. Denial is the first step to acceptance.

Why do you say Canova has a "shady past"? Because Conconi and Ferrari are Italian?

You twist my words, in an un nuanced way: E.g you claim that Canova and rekrunner said that “no evidence doping works”, and when I show you (by citation) that they never said this in such a general and un nuanced manner (on the contrary they both stress that they think doping has an effect in some situations ) you add “at least for the marathon” that was not part of your original claim. So you probably lied to make them look worse…. And even when it comes to doping in the marathon they don’t categorically claim they know doping doesn’t work -Canova has said something about steroids also here, and rekrunner says that he sees now evidence for functional EPO doping as an explanation for the progress in the marathon. -But that doesn’t of course mean that he says there cannot be doping there too. -You have to learn to read things in context and look for nuances and what posters de facto are saying.

Canova and rekrunner have in threads after threads throughout the years given nuanced arguments for how they view doping. But that doesn’t of course mean that they are right -that just means that they have preliminary opinions they argue very good for. And preliminary opinions is all we can have without evidence…

Yes, there is research that shows significantly EPO performance boost for athletes (e.g cyclists), and this is tempting to transfer to an evaluation of the top marathon performances this year. But it isn’t as easy as that -Canova and rekrunner give interesting arguments for why not, IMO.