But there is scientific evidence that EPO works on populations researchers have access to. Like a lot of people on here, I have a problem with Renato claiming without hard evidence that the general finding don't apply to his specific case. He's going against the scientific consensus so the burden of proof should fall on him not the rest of us.
yeah,the talent needs to be there in the first place.lots of drugs will help mediocre athletes and athletes who arent very good,improve a hell of a lot,with the right training,but they probably wont become world leval.maybe doses of epo might turn a 3.20 marathoner,into a 2.50 marathoner.
Also, rekrunner, I understand being rankled by the triple-n troll, but why are you on here defending Renato Canova's arguments? As far as I understand things, you are skeptical that VO2max is a limiting parameter in marathon performance and thus are skeptical about the purported benefits of EPO at that distance. In my mind that is a perfectly reasonable concern to have (although as more marathon major winners get popped for EPO it's looking less and less likely to be correct), however, this bares little resemblance to what Renato Canova claims. He says EPO doesn't help elite Kenyans living at training at altitude even in the 3k streeplechase--the distance where performance correlates most strongly with VO2max.
Maybe I'm the wrong one to talk to about that.The challenge with all EPO experiments on amateurs not trained for competition, is determining to what extent can we apply these findings to elite athletes who have trained extensively to be ready for national or world class competition. There is no scientific consensus, nor any guidance from the EPO studies, about how much can be applied to elites.At the very least, we could reasonably expect some kind of diminishing return, as "clean" race times get faster. At some point, the extent to which "EPO works" may become negligible, as other factors begin to dominate. There is no scientific consensus about that point.Renato actually has supplied hard evidence in the form of blood values of Kenyans and Chinese and Italians that shows little correlation, and often an opposite relation, to athletes blood values and their improvements.You might then change the conversation to recovery -- what do the studies tell us about EPO and recovery and how that was applied to training during the study? They always tell us it's all about blood values and VO2max and sub-VO2max.
test2 wrote:
But there is scientific evidence that EPO works on populations researchers have access to. Like a lot of people on here, I have a problem with Renato claiming without hard evidence that the general finding don't apply to his specific case. He's going against the scientific consensus so the burden of proof should fall on him not the rest of us.
If you are waiting for banned drugs to be tested on world leading athletes to form an opinion, then you will wait forever. There never will be a public study on such athletes (maybe Salazar or another coach has run one but it likely will never see the light of day). A researcher would essentially have to buy out an athlete's career to get them to submit to such a study. So there's a sense in which Renato Canova's claims can never be directly confirmed or proved false.
About his "hard evidence", I do appreciate his sharing it but at most it proves that world class performances are possible with relatively low hematocrits. Personally I find this encouraging (maybe some top performances are unaided) but it doesn't prove anything about what effect EPO would have had on these athletes. As Renato repeatedly tells us, training improves performance and lowers hematocrit. So the inverse correlation in the blood values would be expected in clean athletes. Again, this tells us nothing about what would have happened had blood values been raised by a separate mechanism like doping or EPO. Renato is making the mistake of assuming that correlation implies causation.
To illustrate the logical mistake I'm accusing Renato Canova of making, consider the following mock "proof" that testosterone doesn't help distance runners. Training increases performance. Training decreases testosterone levels. This implies performance correlates negatively with testosterone level. Therefore supplimenting testosterone will provide no benefit to a top Kenyan distance runner born, living and training at altitude.
I didn't come into this thread to defend Renato's ideas, per se, but to wonder at the boldness, combined with perceived lack of expertise, and double-standard, of his detractors.I share with Renato's idea that the performance effect of EPO for distance running, even the 3K steeple, is vastly over-estimated, based on studies with subjects having lots of room for improvement.
test2 wrote:
Also, rekrunner, I understand being rankled by the triple-n troll, but why are you on here defending Renato Canova's arguments? As far as I understand things, you are skeptical that VO2max is a limiting parameter in marathon performance and thus are skeptical about the purported benefits of EPO at that distance. In my mind that is a perfectly reasonable concern to have (although as more marathon major winners get popped for EPO it's looking less and less likely to be correct), however, this bares little resemblance to what Renato Canova claims. He says EPO doesn't help elite Kenyans living at training at altitude even in the 3k streeplechase--the distance where performance correlates most strongly with VO2max.
rekrunner wrote:
I didn't come into this thread to defend Renato's ideas, per se, but to wonder at the boldness, combined with perceived lack of expertise, and double-standard, of his detractors.
I hope you aren't lumping me in the with the detractors. My only issue with him is that I think he's making a logical error. There's nothing wrong with pointing out an error when you see one, regardless of the eminence of the person who made it.
rekrunner wrote:
I share with Renato's idea that the performance effect of EPO for distance running, even the 3K steeple, is vastly over-estimated, based on studies with subjects having lots of room for improvement.
Maybe. As a scientist I always like the idea of more studies. Hey, you follow this stuff as closely as anyone on here. Wasn't there supposed to be a big EPO study coming out, what was it, in last fall? From researchers in Denmark maybe? I looked for it a few times and can't find it. Do know what happened to it?
test2 wrote:
About his "hard evidence", I do appreciate his sharing it but at most it proves that world class performances are possible with relatively low hematocrits. Personally I find this encouraging (maybe some top performances are unaided) but it doesn't prove anything about what effect EPO would have had on these athletes. As Renato repeatedly tells us, training improves performance and lowers hematocrit. So the inverse correlation in the blood values would be expected in clean athletes. Again, this tells us nothing about what would have happened had blood values been raised by a separate mechanism like doping or EPO. Renato is making the mistake of assuming that correlation implies causation.
In addition to the correlation /causation issue you raise, there is also extremely incomplete disclosure of the evidence he does have. He has given a few exmaples, but he claims to do blood testi g every couple of weeks for athletes he trains. Hr has trained many, many athletes. Which means he must have thousands of data points. I am unimpressed that a selective disclosure of a few of those data points actually supports a particular position.
I have encouraged him to publish all of his data or to give it to a researcher to be analyzed and published. He has not acknowledged those posts.
If he will not, for whatever reason, release that information, nobody should assume that the few data points he has released are representative of the entire set. Nobody should assume that set supports Canovas claims.
It is a scientific question and if data is claimed to exist to support a certain conclusion, that data must all be available for examination and analysis.
No I wasn't lumping you in with the detractors.Do you mean the Dutch study of cyclists cycling up the Mont Ventoux?http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/popular-doping-drug-may-not-actually-help-cyclistsInteresting that the placebo group was 38 seconds faster, and the EPO group didn't feel invincible, 62% thought they were on placebo, and not "rocket-fuel".As far as I know, it has not been published -- so who knows if they did it right?
test2 wrote:
rekrunner wrote:I didn't come into this thread to defend Renato's ideas, per se, but to wonder at the boldness, combined with perceived lack of expertise, and double-standard, of his detractors.
I hope you aren't lumping me in the with the detractors. My only issue with him is that I think he's making a logical error. There's nothing wrong with pointing out an error when you see one, regardless of the eminence of the person who made it.
rekrunner wrote:
I share with Renato's idea that the performance effect of EPO for distance running, even the 3K steeple, is vastly over-estimated, based on studies with subjects having lots of room for improvement.
Maybe. As a scientist I always like the idea of more studies. Hey, you follow this stuff as closely as anyone on here. Wasn't there supposed to be a big EPO study coming out, what was it, in last fall? From researchers in Denmark maybe? I looked for it a few times and can't find it. Do know what happened to it?
rekrunner wrote:
No I wasn't lumping you in with the detractors.
Do you mean the Dutch study of cyclists cycling up the Mont Ventoux?
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/popular-doping-drug-may-not-actually-help-cyclistsInteresting that the placebo group was 38 seconds faster, and the EPO group didn't feel invincible, 62% thought they were on placebo, and not "rocket-fuel".
As far as I know, it has not been published -- so who knows if they did it right?
test2 wrote:I hope you aren't lumping me in the with the detractors. My only issue with him is that I think he's making a logical error. There's nothing wrong with pointing out an error when you see one, regardless of the eminence of the person who made it.
Maybe. As a scientist I always like the idea of more studies. Hey, you follow this stuff as closely as anyone on here. Wasn't there supposed to be a big EPO study coming out, what was it, in last fall? From researchers in Denmark maybe? I looked for it a few times and can't find it. Do know what happened to it?
What a ridiculous study. So the guys on it were 38 seconds slower up Ventoux than those who weren't...but how did they compare beforehand? How many units of EPO were they given a week? What were all of their ferritin and hematocrit levels to start with?
Anyone whose actually tried the stuff seriously can only shake their heads at such an idiotic study. What a waste of time, as if this hasn't been done for the past 25 years!
As for Canova, you guys need to put yourself in his shoes. There are certain things you can not tell people when they are not in a position to understand. That is a fact of life.
Your description of Edna Kiplagat fully falls into the EPO paradigm, athlete runs for years at a plateau, then at a relatively late age drops a great deal of time. Kenyans train in large groups and share their training so that many (all running on dirt roads at altitude) can improve together and know how the best train. The question is about the way in which many have come to dominate the world, rather than simply be highly competitive--in the same way that athletes at top American high schools all somehow run sub-4:20/9:20, with in some cases multiple sub 4:10. They aren't cheating. They are training right with lots of good people to train with. On a different level and from teens to 20s and 30s with not necessarily any school or work to get in the way, plus at altitude on dirt roads that allow you to avoid a lot of injuries, the Kenyan and Ethiopian training groups allow many, many people to join on many of their runs and that allows them to get faster. The drugs are what enable them to dominate the world and explain the difference between the 1970s and 1980s when they competed hard with the best and sometimes beat them all and the past 25 years where they have dominated like no era in history.
Renato, your post is probably the most convincing that you've written yet.
Can you imagine we are having this long conversation over a 2h20m potential EPO user and some people still believe Paula Radcliffe at 2h15m (done in London, she will be protected for a life time) is clean... haha
Everyone is looking at this wrong. This is not the story of whether Jemima is guilty or innocent. It's not the debate of whether she got her gains from training or from doping.
It's that story that YET ANOTHER massive talent, with massive training improvements, and EPO, still managed to 'hit a wall' minutes behind Paula's 2:15. Hmmm....
mnb,mnb ,mn wrote:
Can you imagine we are having this long conversation over a 2h20m potential EPO user and some people still believe Paula Radcliffe at 2h15m (done in London, she will be protected for a life time) is clean... haha
I can't imagine that. Quite sure everyone here knows about Radcliffe, but trolls will gladly pretend otherwise.
mnb,mnb ,mn wrote:
Can you imagine we are having this long conversation over a 2h20m potential EPO user and some people still believe Paula Radcliffe at 2h15m (done in London, she will be protected for a life time) is clean... haha
lol, you beat me to the punch.
I think the implementation of the Biological Passport will be a good starting point to avoid in athletics the scandals of cycling. In addition more rigorous in and out of competition testing will bust these cheats, no matter who they are. They are not sacred.
renato knows exactly whats going on......im pretty sure he knows doping is rife in east african athletics,but he has to be publically silent on the issue.the culture at the top is deny,deny,deny.
Are you the guy who comes on here to tell us that the most important part of the Aden reports is not (1) that EPO was found in his athlete's room during the raid or (2) that he was seen discarding syringes around town (which was evidence used to support the raid) but instead that the syringes he discarded did not test positive for PEDs (never addressing for the idea that they could have been cleaned). If so, thanks for all of your contributions and criticisms of others.
I don't see how anyone can argue that EPO does not help endurance athletes, even marathoners, after what we have seen in cycling. Response levels will vary individually but let's get real - it's likely to help. Arguing that we need an EPO study on elites is just distraction because we know it will never happen. The only real question is: how prevalent is EPO use? My hope is that it's not a very high percentage.