It's obvious you just don't want to give a serious answer.
"The rest doesn't care" is just completely ridiculous. Anybody knows that there are many reasons behind the Kenyan success in distance running (even more on road and in the cross than on the track) but you just want to ignore them. But you can't change the obvious reality regardless how hard you want to do so.
In all the pages of this thread you have said nothing that amounts to anything more than that Kenyans have a natural talent for running. So what? As we see, they also have a natural talent for doping - which means you don't know whether they are as "talented" at running as you think they are.
For you there are two factors which might have some influence on the performance: doping and genetics. But I think you deny genetical differences?
I can't even remember you have mentioned training as some important factor. Over the years, hundreds of athletes from many different countries went to Kenya to train in big groups with high calibre athletes starting in early morning. They all did it just to learn how to dope? You can think this, I think different.
So far in this thread you have given two explanations for all the xc success: doping and that the rest doesn't care about the cross. The simplicity of this thinking is astonishing.
You can call anybody stupid who doesn't agree with you or that you are not interested in my questions. It just shows that you are not interested to openly think about the subject at all.
Over the years probably hundreds of Kenyan steeplers have gone over the water jump in a way "westerners" just can't do - doping also doesn't explain this.
Only a mind as deficient as yours could maintain we are in complete agreement. No one who has any expertise in antidoping says its incidence may be in the region of 5%. (That includes Howman). The lowest level of conjecture is given at about 10% across the board for all sports and it is often believed to be much higher (especially at the elite and championship level). To use another example, knowledge that crimes like black market corruption (as doping is) are being committed is not confined to the number of convictions, when most escape detection and conviction. Yet saying knowledge is confined to those who are caught is your infantile and utterly erroneous reasoning. I have never encountered anyone who works as hard at maintaining the lies he tells himself that you do.
When you have raised no contradiction, there is no disagreement.
You said, and I quote, "Howman has estimated it may be ten times greater than the numbers caught." In 2019, for Athletics, according to official WADA published figures, that is 5%-6.45%. 2019 is not special. Other years will be similar.
Now you are saying you were wrong? Quelle surprise! Maybe you will blame me for taking you at your word. Maybe you want to update your childlike explanations.
He has said the numbers doping will likely be between 10% at the lowest to maybe 40% of competitive athletes. Only a stupid bean-counter like yourself thinks you can absolutely measure the size of a cloud - which is a black market. The black market in doping is estimated by antidoping experts to be over a billion Euros. But your fatuous self-fulfilling studies of "historical performance" blinds you to what every other kind of evidence makes clear. Of course, if your "studies" had any intellectual credibility they would have been published. So which international experts on sports doping have expressly endorsed them?
What makes it particularly stupid is you don't know which athletes are doping and which aren't. You are like a blind man who thinks he can describe a country he can't see. Meanwhile, those who live in the country are all wrong in your books.
Since I have one conclusion applicable to the best of all performances combined, I have no problem splitting them up into two conclusions, depending on which performances are doped: "so few doped performances, and then by so little", plus "so few non-doped performances, and then by so little".
No matter how you want to slice it, the 30 years of non-African performance is recorded history.
You cannot draw a distinction between doped and non-doped performances when there is no data to tell you which is which. So you draw firm conclusions from what is only speculation - your ignorance.
In all the pages of this thread you have said nothing that amounts to anything more than that Kenyans have a natural talent for running. So what? As we see, they also have a natural talent for doping - which means you don't know whether they are as "talented" at running as you think they are.
For you there are two factors which might have some influence on the performance: doping and genetics. But I think you deny genetical differences?
I can't even remember you have mentioned training as some important factor. Over the years, hundreds of athletes from many different countries went to Kenya to train in big groups with high calibre athletes starting in early morning. They all did it just to learn how to dope? You can think this, I think different.
So far in this thread you have given two explanations for all the xc success: doping and that the rest doesn't care about the cross. The simplicity of this thinking is astonishing.
You can call anybody stupid who doesn't agree with you or that you are not interested in my questions. It just shows that you are not interested to openly think about the subject at all.
Over the years probably hundreds of Kenyan steeplers have gone over the water jump in a way "westerners" just can't do - doping also doesn't explain this.
So how have Kenyans trained in a way that the rest of the world doesn't or can't do? That training methods that ensure Kenyans' competitive advantage are overlooked by the rest of the international running community is as ludicrous a suggestion as any I have heard.
My point is whether or not Kenyans are genetically favoured in some way is not possible to estimate when doping has long been an inextricable factor in their elite performance. They are one of the worst doping nations in the sport of distance running. This didn't occur overnight. So trumpeting Kenyan "natural superiority" is as meaningful as concluding the doped E Bloc athletes were inherently superior during the Cold War.
EPO does not have the "potential" to be performance enhancing ...
Wow.
I knew you wouldn't understand that. Too subtle for the bean-counter. EPO is undoubtedly a ped. Its "potential" is only that to someone who has never used it - like yourself.
Why argue? EPO is illegal. Lots of people who run for a living are caught taking it. Most of those people are from Kenya. There are many other drugs. There are many other countries no doubt doing the same thing as the Kenyans. Running has a drug culture. As does sport. My wife is a doctor and she constantly has even recreational types (triathlon particularly) who want Thyroid and Asthma meds.
He argues because he would have to blow his brains out if he were to accept that his beloved distance running - and particularly Kenyan distance running - is as fraudulent as any other doped sport.
I knew you wouldn't understand that. Too subtle for the bean-counter. EPO is undoubtedly a ped. Its "potential" is only that to someone who has never used it - like yourself.
From the mind of a child. WADA is committed to saying EPO can be a "potential" PED. I can choose to defer to WADA's couched lawyer language, or the gospels of a "power of doping" disciple, also with no real experience, pretending the knowledge of "experts" and "athletes" alike conforms with his deep-rooted beliefs.
With a little more wisdom and knowledge, we don't need to use it to know:
Too much EPO will thicken the blood, reducing oxygen to the muscles.
In studies, we have seen high responders, low responders, no responders, and reverse responders. In practice, we have seen anecdotes where high red blood cell responders did not correlate to improved performance and vice-versa.
Why argue? EPO is illegal. Lots of people who run for a living are caught taking it. Most of those people are from Kenya. There are many other drugs. There are many other countries no doubt doing the same thing as the Kenyans. Running has a drug culture. As does sport. My wife is a doctor and she constantly has even recreational types (triathlon particularly) who want Thyroid and Asthma meds.
I do not argue that EPO is not "illegal", nor that lots of people are caught, nor that many are Kenyan.
If posters only said that, I probably would never respond.
I am interested in what the available data shows about prevalence and performance, and point out some of the seeming contradictions that routinely appear in these threads about the alleged role of doping in elite performance.
Why argue? EPO is illegal. Lots of people who run for a living are caught taking it. Most of those people are from Kenya. There are many other drugs. There are many other countries no doubt doing the same thing as the Kenyans. Running has a drug culture. As does sport. My wife is a doctor and she constantly has even recreational types (triathlon particularly) who want Thyroid and Asthma meds.
He argues because he would have to blow his brains out if he were to accept that his beloved distance running - and particularly Kenyan distance running - is as fraudulent as any other doped sport.
From the mind of a child.
How fraudulent are other sports? If you said Kenya was only "as fraudulent", this addresses my question whether the "rate" of busts, as a percentage, indicates Kenyan doping is worse than the global average.
In this thread we were talking about reasons for "superiority", not existence of doping or fraud.
Number of Soviet Union male marathon runners under 2:12 1982-1991 = 5
Number of former Soviet Union country runners under 2:12 1992 -2001 = 22
So the number of sub 2:12 runners more than quadrupled in the EPO era, the period when the disintergrated Soviet Union was a shambolic mess that could barely keep their societies together let alone administer a State Sponsored program like that of the Soviet Union in the previous decade.
What was that about you saying that Russian marathoners not improving in the epo era proves that against the mountain of scientific evidence, that EPO doesn't work, and that East African's greater aeordynamic shaped craniums give them an advantage?
Number of Soviet Union male marathon runners under 2:12 1982-1991 = 5
Number of former Soviet Union country runners under 2:12 1992 -2001 = 22
So the number of sub 2:12 runners more than quadrupled in the EPO era, the period when the disintergrated Soviet Union was a shambolic mess that could barely keep their societies together let alone administer a State Sponsored program like that of the Soviet Union in the previous decade.
What was that about you saying that Russian marathoners not improving in the epo era proves that against the mountain of scientific evidence, that EPO doesn't work, and that East African's greater aeordynamic shaped craniums give them an advantage?
I honestly wonder how what I say can get so distorted so quickly in your mind, because these do not remotely resemble my words or ideas or beliefs. I do not say countries don't improve over time. I would also hesitate to attribute any improvement to EPO, without a deeper analysis into all potential causes. I did not look at causes, so never ruled out any potential cause. But I did find large (non-African) populations that did not significantly improve, either in terms of quality or quantity, in an era where the wide believe in EPO as a powerful endurance game-changing drug became so strong.
Why would you pick 2:12? When I looked at "top performances", I looked at runners running faster than the best 1980s marks, e.g. faster than Steve Jones and Carlos Lopes running 2:07:12-13 in 1985. The Russian marathon record is 2:09:07 -- about 2 minutes slower than my benchmark. This is just slightly better than Derek Clayton in the 1960s. My source "alltime-athletics" doesn't even list marathon performances slower than 2:10:30. You had to dig pretty deep to cherry pick the best statistic you could find.
What that was about me saying was that no Russian man appeared in any of my lists of "faster than 1980s" performances from 1500m to the marathon.
The trend is that all countries improve with time for a variety of reasons. Going from 5 to 22 runners, over a decade, doesn't seem all that significant, for a country the size of Russia, particularly in an event where participation generally increased. How does that compare to other countries?
I just wonder if the Russians had focused on modern training and proven methods, rather than hoping blood doping and steroids would close the gap, if they would have more runners running 2:05 and 2:06. The misplaced focus on doping as something that could bring any significant benefit probably slowed them down for decades. Maybe the "shambolic mess" helped the times precisely because the state was doping them less.
Otherwise, I wish you would stop repeating the lies. Where is this alleged mountain of scientific evidence? Recently there were no less than two meta-studies saying the mountains of scientific evidence covering decades of research on EPO and elite performance either didn't exist or was largely over-estimated.
My explanation is that East Africans live and train at altitude, and tend to weigh less. It is simple physics that it takes less energy to move less mass across a distance. If we had more non-Africans training long term at altitude, like the Robertson twins, or Sondre Moens, or Ryan Hall, I'm sure we should start to see improvements in the mid to long term.
My explanation is that East Africans live and train at altitude, and tend to weigh less. It is simple physics that it takes less energy to move less mass across a distance. If we had more non-Africans training long term at altitude, like the Robertson twins, or Sondre Moens, or Ryan Hall, I'm sure we should start to see improvements in the mid to long term.
There is also this factor -- perhaps the least debated aspect of high-altitude training is that the beneficial response to hypoxia in terms of Vo2Max, running efficiency, performance boost differs significantly between individuals.
It follows almost tautologically that because 100 % of high altitude residents go through the hypoxic adaptation, most of the the high and super-responders to altitude training are found by them tending to ourperform the "low-responders".
There is no similar mechanism amongst European and North American "low-landers". Even if all the financial and other incentives, natural amount of running from early age on and the conditions were similar (none true), only a fraction of the high and super-responders would find ever out their natural gift.
For you there are two factors which might have some influence on the performance: doping and genetics. But I think you deny genetical differences?
I can't even remember you have mentioned training as some important factor. Over the years, hundreds of athletes from many different countries went to Kenya to train in big groups with high calibre athletes starting in early morning. They all did it just to learn how to dope? You can think this, I think different.
So far in this thread you have given two explanations for all the xc success: doping and that the rest doesn't care about the cross. The simplicity of this thinking is astonishing.
You can call anybody stupid who doesn't agree with you or that you are not interested in my questions. It just shows that you are not interested to openly think about the subject at all.
Over the years probably hundreds of Kenyan steeplers have gone over the water jump in a way "westerners" just can't do - doping also doesn't explain this.
So how have Kenyans trained in a way that the rest of the world doesn't or can't do? That training methods that ensure Kenyans' competitive advantage are overlooked by the rest of the international running community is as ludicrous a suggestion as any I have heard.
My point is whether or not Kenyans are genetically favoured in some way is not possible to estimate when doping has long been an inextricable factor in their elite performance. They are one of the worst doping nations in the sport of distance running. This didn't occur overnight. So trumpeting Kenyan "natural superiority" is as meaningful as concluding the doped E Bloc athletes were inherently superior during the Cold War.
The success of the GDR was the product of a variety of reasons, doping was one of them. To explain their success by "they doped and the rest didn't" is childish thinking.
Many athletes for sure are looking for the best environments for further improvement. They might change the local club, the coach, the town, the country...
Have you ever heard that the Kenyan runners come from high altitudes? that the altitude stimulates the production of red blood cells? That this has a beneficial effect on oxygen transport? That training alongside of dozens of top-runners might give some athlete additional motivation? And many more reasons which are discussed since decades.
Many many athletes from many countries have gone to Kenya for training because of those reasons. Since decades. They did it just for better doping options? You might think this, for me it's ludicrous.
You don't have to go into any of my points (because - according to you - I don't have any). You just show to anybody that you are not interested in any fair discussion.
Persist in your overly simplistic view that Kenyans (all of them) dope better than the rest of the world (since the early 1980's, starting in their earliest youth) and that this is the sole reason for their tremendous success. Many observed phenomena are not explained by this, but you say you are not interested in them.
So how have Kenyans trained in a way that the rest of the world doesn't or can't do? That training methods that ensure Kenyans' competitive advantage are overlooked by the rest of the international running community is as ludicrous a suggestion as any I have heard.
My point is whether or not Kenyans are genetically favoured in some way is not possible to estimate when doping has long been an inextricable factor in their elite performance. They are one of the worst doping nations in the sport of distance running. This didn't occur overnight. So trumpeting Kenyan "natural superiority" is as meaningful as concluding the doped E Bloc athletes were inherently superior during the Cold War.
The success of the GDR was the product of a variety of reasons, doping was one of them. To explain their success by "they doped and the rest didn't" is childish thinking.
Many athletes for sure are looking for the best environments for further improvement. They might change the local club, the coach, the town, the country...
Have you ever heard that the Kenyan runners come from high altitudes? that the altitude stimulates the production of red blood cells? That this has a beneficial effect on oxygen transport? That training alongside of dozens of top-runners might give some athlete additional motivation? And many more reasons which are discussed since decades.
Many many athletes from many countries have gone to Kenya for training because of those reasons. Since decades. They did it just for better doping options? You might think this, for me it's ludicrous.
You don't have to go into any of my points (because - according to you - I don't have any). You just show to anybody that you are not interested in any fair discussion.
Persist in your overly simplistic view that Kenyans (all of them) dope better than the rest of the world (since the early 1980's, starting in their earliest youth) and that this is the sole reason for their tremendous success. Many observed phenomena are not explained by this, but you say you are not interested in them.
If Kenyans have so many genetic and environmental advantages why do they dope in the numbers they do? They cheat even when they don't have to?
I didn't say the GDR were the only ones doping. You made that up. But some countries dope much more than others - as the GDR did and Russia does today. And Kenya.
The success of the GDR was the product of a variety of reasons, doping was one of them. To explain their success by "they doped and the rest didn't" is childish thinking.
Many athletes for sure are looking for the best environments for further improvement. They might change the local club, the coach, the town, the country...
Have you ever heard that the Kenyan runners come from high altitudes? that the altitude stimulates the production of red blood cells? That this has a beneficial effect on oxygen transport? That training alongside of dozens of top-runners might give some athlete additional motivation? And many more reasons which are discussed since decades.
Many many athletes from many countries have gone to Kenya for training because of those reasons. Since decades. They did it just for better doping options? You might think this, for me it's ludicrous.
You don't have to go into any of my points (because - according to you - I don't have any). You just show to anybody that you are not interested in any fair discussion.
Persist in your overly simplistic view that Kenyans (all of them) dope better than the rest of the world (since the early 1980's, starting in their earliest youth) and that this is the sole reason for their tremendous success. Many observed phenomena are not explained by this, but you say you are not interested in them.
If Kenyans have so many genetic and environmental advantages why do they dope in the numbers they do? They cheat even when they don't have to?
I didn't say the GDR were the only ones doping. You made that up. But some countries dope much more than others - as the GDR did and Russia does today. And Kenya.
You put the GDR success down to doping and only to doping. This conclusion obviously includes the others don't dope.
I don't know how many Kenyans dope at all and compared to other countries. Obviously "many" Kenyans dope. Why are they doing this? You ask me why are they doing this? Why are humans cheating? Maybe to get some advantage? Just because the all-around conditions in Kenya are better than in most other places on Earth there should be no incentive to dope? This makes absolutely no sense. When you are one of the best 1000 runners in Kenya (and so one of the best 2000 on Earth) one might start thinking about reaching the next step with illegal methods. Most of what you write makes no sense at all.
Athletes from any nation on earth are doping (for sure the doping athletes are not equally distributed over all countries). "Doping" does not explain the tremendous Kenyan distance running success, which began to show up in the mid 1950s.
If Kenyans have so many genetic and environmental advantages why do they dope in the numbers they do? They cheat even when they don't have to?
I didn't say the GDR were the only ones doping. You made that up. But some countries dope much more than others - as the GDR did and Russia does today. And Kenya.
You put the GDR success down to doping and only to doping. This conclusion obviously includes the others don't dope.
I don't know how many Kenyans dope at all and compared to other countries. Obviously "many" Kenyans dope. Why are they doing this? You ask me why are they doing this? Why are humans cheating? Maybe to get some advantage? Just because the all-around conditions in Kenya are better than in most other places on Earth there should be no incentive to dope? This makes absolutely no sense. When you are one of the best 1000 runners in Kenya (and so one of the best 2000 on Earth) one might start thinking about reaching the next step with illegal methods. Most of what you write makes no sense at all.
Athletes from any nation on earth are doping (for sure the doping athletes are not equally distributed over all countries). "Doping" does not explain the tremendous Kenyan distance running success, which began to show up in the mid 1950s.
I didn't say that doping is the only reason for GDR success - or Kenyan success. But it can't be separated from their achievements. It is a simple point but I do understand why you struggle with it.
"If your 'studies' had any intellectual credibility they would have been published. So which international experts on sports doping have expressly endorsed them?"
"If your 'studies' had any intellectual credibility they would have been published. So which international experts on sports doping have expressly endorsed them?"
But crickets.
Is that the standard for posting, or are you being a hypocrit again?
I'm sure you will have no problem producing the catalog of internationally expert endorsed studies establishing EPO as the cause of elite East African performance, in the EPO-era, and apparently before the EPO-era in cross-country, not to mention the establishing the game-changing improvements among sea-level non-Africans who stand to benefit the most from a boost in EPO and red blood cells.
When you have raised no contradiction, there is no disagreement.
You said, and I quote, "Howman has estimated it may be ten times greater than the numbers caught." In 2019, for Athletics, according to official WADA published figures, that is 5%-6.45%. 2019 is not special. Other years will be similar.
Now you are saying you were wrong? Quelle surprise! Maybe you will blame me for taking you at your word. Maybe you want to update your childlike explanations.
He has said the numbers doping will likely be between 10% at the lowest to maybe 40% of competitive athletes. Only a stupid bean-counter like yourself thinks you can absolutely measure the size of a cloud - which is a black market. The black market in doping is estimated by antidoping experts to be over a billion Euros. But your fatuous self-fulfilling studies of "historical performance" blinds you to what every other kind of evidence makes clear. Of course, if your "studies" had any intellectual credibility they would have been published. So which international experts on sports doping have expressly endorsed them?
The thing is, we still don't know what Howman said, if he said anything at all. We only have your word.
Did he say 10x or 10%? Without a verifiable quote, I assume he said neither, but you that said both. When I showed you that "10x the number caught" means 5% in 2019 (according to data published by the "experts"), you started dancing and singing and scurrying and blaming me for disagreeing with yourself.
If it is an unmeasurable cloud, why stop at 10%-40%? You gave us an "expert" that said "more than 1-2%" and another that said 80%. If we don't really know because it is a cloud, it is correct for me to say that it is not knowledge.
My "historical performance" is not a study, but accurately measured observations and real world data. If your myths about high prevelance and significant effect were true, everyone should be able to see it in decades of performances.
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