Sunday Mail Has More Details on Paula's Blood Values and Off Scores + News She'll Put up £1m for an MRI lie detector

rekrunner wrote:

... laboratory equipment and analysis documentation, supplementary athlete explanations...

But Paula, a leading anti-doping campaigner, tells us that the lab equipment can be faulty.

And how likely is it really that an athlete under scrutiny is going to provide anything other than the stock explanations of being dehydrated, having trained at altitude, etc.

If suspicious off-scores can simply be explained away by these glib responses, then what good is the ABP?

Only really dumb (or poorly managed) athletes are going to present whacky off-scores moving forward, so let's see how many athletes in coming months get IAAF bans for anomalous blood readings.

My bet is it will be single figures for this year.

I'm actually tired of Paula saying she is innocent now. She is boring me into disinterest. Rightly or wrongly, I think marathon athletes are as cynical as cyclists and will do what they need to do to get paid.

Sorry for the typos. I hit post by accident

1000 wrote:

Most of us cannot believe the Russians were so dumb

All we know is that their athletes were banned, for political reasons, but not that they took any drugs.

That WADA supports Coe proves my point again, that the drug agencies were set up to determine who gets banned and who doesn't based only on politics, i.e. what country people are from, who's friends with whom, and who pays the most money.

Yes - and I'd agree with rjm33 on all points. I'd also add that if the 16.2 would have come from altitude, the ret-% should have been higher. So again, altitude is just a lame excuse like the dehydration thing. Strange also how Coe was so well informed about all of Paula's tests, excuses, and the experts' opinions on those, but didn't notice any of the corruption and the disappearing of thousands of tests.

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

Reposting this in case Larkimm misses it.

rjm33 wrote:

Her OFF score was 109.35, with a Hb of 16.2 and reticulocyte score of 0.77%. The reticulocyte score is within normal range of 0.5 to 1.5%.

Inexplicable scores... Check

Extraordinary human biology artifacts with no rhyme or reason... Check.

Paula's 2015 explanation conflicts entirely with other facts including her own biography... Check

EPO cheats out Paula.

J.R. wrote:

1000 wrote:

Most of us cannot believe the Russians were so dumb

All we know is that their athletes were banned, for political reasons, but not that they took any drugs.

That WADA supports Coe proves my point again, that the drug agencies were set up to determine who gets banned and who doesn't based only on politics, i.e. what country people are from, who's friends with whom, and who pays the most money.

OMG!! You continue to amaze

Except that the athletes with scores of 150 were sanctioned by the IAAF.

Put yourself in the shoes of an expert looking at Paula:

- Off-scores below 111 are below the altitude threshold (2005 and 2012)

- Low RET values indicate post altitude (2003 and 2005) artificially raising these scores

- High RBC also indicates altitude (2012)

- (Schumacher tells us) exercise in the heat needs two hours to produce reliable blood samples (completely invalidating 2003 and 2005 for ABP/off-score type analysis) artificially raising these scores

- RBC values around 18 are considered life threatening (compare to Paula's highest values around 15-16)

- Shobukhova's off-scores of 135 to 156 are in another ballpark compared to 110 and 115

- ABP standards established only in 2009 (ALL pre-2009 samples rendered incomparable and unsuitable for ABP/off-score type analysis)

Paula is simply not on the expert's radar, and likely never was. Take away the British press (ironically the only ones subject to litigation under England's libel laws), and nothing about this story is, or ever was, about Paula.

The ARD story was completely about the IAAF "lack of action". This looks only true for a handful of Russian athletes.

The Sunday Times added the "famous British athlete" angle, and other "podium finisher" angles, ignoring altitude and other common non-doping factors.

Apart from the Russian bribery (and Paula is inarguably not Russian), WADA's "wow factor" part 2 report largely, if not completely, vindicates the IAAF as a leader in anti-doping sanctions, following up every lead in an optimised way.

Furthermore:

- the pre-2009 data is not reliable for ABP type analysis against individual athletes. But it is sufficiently reliable for a "prevalence analysis" that indicates Russian doping. These are not contradictory.

- Paula rightly should not be suspected of a doping offence on the basis of the "suspicious data" sensationalised in the Sunday Times.

The documentation would contain equipment calibration information to help assess if the equipment is faulty. Without it (think about the Sunday Times/Ashenden/Parisotto analysis/allegations) you cannot assess it.An athlete under scrutiny can say what she wants to an independent panel of 3 experts, qualified to put that in perspective, factoring in credibility. They might ask for proof like plane tickets, for corroboration.For ABP purposes, off-scores did not even exist pre-2009. All this talk about 110 and 115 are pseudo-off scores not even requiring explanations. An ABP expert knows how to interpret glib responses. Think about it. If you are skeptical, they would be too -- only they know better.You don't need to listen to Paula. All of these facts and conclusions can be reached without ever asking Paula to explain anything. And clearly her pseudo-offscores were so marginal, that altitude and dehydration is enough to explain them away.

1) From a sanctioning point of view, the pre-2009 blood values were not collected for sanctioning, and there were no rules that allowed the IAAF to use blood for sanctioning purposes. They were used as general markers to intelligently prioritize urine tests, which were valid for sanctioning purposes, but had a limited window of detection.2) Forget the whistle-blowers and ARD and the Sunday Times. The IAAF eventually sanctioned all of the Russian cheaters flagged by the pre-2009 data.None of this is really directly connected to transfusions. WADA/IAAF eventually detected a way to detect transfusions from another person, but only the ABP can indirectly detect "autologous" transfusions.Paula has no case to answer because her scores are only marginally high, and instantly explainable by the known effects of altitude and post-race blood collection.The Sunday Times analysis was wrong, because they attempted to do some kind of post-2009 ABP analysis on pre-2009 data, with predictable flaws. The 1/3 figure was inflated for many reasons (e.g. not considering altitude, and using the whole window of 2001-2012 to define "suspect")

To sum up where we stand wrote:

In basic terms it is as follows (tell me what is incorrect)

1 No individual athlete has a case to answer for based on pre 2009 data unless it led to an EPO test that was positive. Pre 2009 tests are unreliable and not designed to catch transfusion that have been used for decades.

2. Pre-2009 data did indicate lots of Russian cheating but we will stay out of individual cheating. (What am I missing? Was this only reviewed because of a whistleblower?)

A

Betyyween 2003 and 2009 people may have been caught for EPO. Now they could be caught for EPO and transfusions with ABP.

iAAF and WADA did I not set up a system to catch transfusions until 2009.

WADA says the Su day times was wrong because the analysis was based on pre-2009 results. So the â…“ of podium places could not have been suspect.

Wow. The last athlete I saw that portrayed a more guilty stance was Lance Armstrong of the USA.

Paula Radcliffe is a disgrace to our sport and I will tell her when I see her again.

rjm33 wrote:

Did anyone read the Telegraph article on the front page at LRC about Operation Puerto back in 2006 and Dr. Fuentes, known as "Dr. Blood", with the 200 bags of blood at his residence?

In the article it states that in a May 2013 email to his lawyer, Dr. Fuentes threatened to reveal ..."My medical relationship with winners of the London Marathon"....

That is an interesting statement by Dr. Fuentes. Note that he used the plural "winners"....implying he was associated with multiple runners who did autologous blood transfusions... that were winners of the London Marathon.

Will those names of London Marathon winners associated with "Dr. Blood" Fuentes ever be revealed?....

Hopefully the names come out. Will be decided soon. Press speculated it was a Spanish winner of London:

And I got caught up on this thread today. I saw it bumped back up there. I figured people were talking about the WADA report and how it relates to Paula but they are not.

only conclusion is that those off-scores are off/bocus.

for paula to run w.r time would need one's like shobukova.

We are not talking about it because we understand it does not vindicate or clear Paula in the slightest bit, even though her apologizers are trying to spin it that way. We've known for months that WADA is simply a standards organization, and that it would report that "proper protocol" was followed in not investigating her further, and in her not releasing her blood values.This is entirely different than the topic of whether or not Paula actually doped/transfused. Are you being disingenuous, or can you simply not wrap your brain around that distinction?

wejo wrote:

Hopefully the names come out. Will be decided soon. Press speculated it was a Spanish winner of London:

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/may/10/spanish-doping-doctor-reveal-sports

And I got caught up on this thread today. I saw it bumped back up there. I figured people were talking about the WADA report and how it relates to Paula but they are not.

What is there to say about the WADA report?

All is well in atheletics now, Coe is the perfect man for the job and only Russians have ever doped.

paula is protected, wont find info, all gone.

just as coe is chosen one

nd wada,

stil no mention of igf-1 lr3 use, liars

Thanks. I did not ask about Paula specifically bit, of course, this thread is about her. If I understand you correctly,:1. Transfusions: Yes, there's no reliable data pre-2009 so, no, there is no way of knowing the same things about those performances as we do about post 2009 performances. (That seems to support Eli,Omarion of records.) But we should not worry about it as applied to the Russian data set because of other means of detection were used.2. Pre-2009 data was used to address Russians with really high scores. I am not sure I follow why this data could be used but not the other data in the ST article. Is the logic that the score is so far off that lab error is irrelevant?3. Prevalence: all of the Russian dopers were banned due to prevalence. BecUse everyone was banned. Same question: what was the methodology? Too many high scores in a population? Was equipment accurate for that purpose? Did the pre-2009 / post 2009 differences not apply?I wonder have Ashenden and his colleague responded. And Tucker.Thanks

1) Russian and non-Russians alike. Pre-2009 Russians were not treated differently.2) Since the pre-2009 data was there for intelligent targeting (again both Russians and non-Russians), the impact of any lab or process errors pre-2009 might be that you waste your follow-up tests on athletes that were "really" clean, or you might miss testing someone who was "really" dirty. But it was still an improvement than intelligent targeting, or increased urine testing, without blood values.3) Russians weren't banned as a nation due to prevalence. The prevalence study said: these top six countries have a lot of strange blood values -- we better target them more, or alternatively, we should apply pressure on the national federations and NADOs to clean up their act, or for countries without NADOs to form one. Again it was a way to effectively use limited resources -- and not a tool for making individual conclusions.Tucker responded to the "wow report" -- something like "Wow -- was that it?" and a tweet that was very unhopeful for the sport.

Who were the "experts" who concluded that altiutude/dehydration were plasubile explanations for the unusual results? If they were from the IAAF then I am not sure that you can put much stock in what they tell you. This sort of thing has happened before; when Armstrong was testing positive for cortisone during the 1999 tour, officials at the UCI told us that this was because he was using a saddle-sore cream which contained the substance.

The discussion of the pre 2009 samples and the procedures followed always boils down to the same thing: whenever a suspicious profile arises you can say that procedures were not followed (to allow comparison cross samples) or that there was a calibration error or laboratory of some sort for that particular sample which makes the profile look unusual. Conversely, all of these things could be argued to have made the process less sensitive to picking up blood doping/EPO use.

When discussing technicalities such as lab procedures/protocols for the pre 2009 samples, one can also ask how much of a difference does this really make ?- The procedures were already being used to single out athletes for target testing so they had to be pretty accurate in the first place - what would be the point of carrying out expensive target testing based on an unreliable indicator to do so? The whole process was a prescursor to the biological passport; it should be noted that, as several others have pointed out on this and other threads, the profiles of pre 2009 samples seemed to show pretty well the blood doping that was going in Russian athletes which was later revealed.

This is an assumption. You do not know this unless you personally know the results. All we know is what has been reported to the public. It is strange that neither the athlete in question nor the IAAF has made these results publicly available if they had no cause for suspicion.

I think we agree that overall, more data is required to make firmer conclusions. However, these data have not been made transparent. Given the now known history of corruption and coverup in the sport's governing body, it is only normal that some members of the general public will continue be suspicious whenever a high profile athlete has multiple unusual blood-test findings and is declared innocent with no additional data made public to explain the fuller picture .

rekrunner wrote:

The experts at IAAF, UKAD, and Ashenden/Parisotto did not make any determination that Paula's blood profile was abnormal. This was done purely by the Sunday Times reporters and "rjm33".

There is no expert basis for suspicion.

[/quote]

The basis for suspicion is explained in this part of my post:

"However, there have been a series of scandals reported by the press of corruption and cover up in elite sports' governing bodies such as the UCI, IAAF, or FIFA which have been proven to be true. In this light, it is good and natural that the public and journalists will question any official finding or determination made by "experts" from or hired by these governing bodies."

I assume that you accept that corruption and coverup has happened in the IAAF, UCI, and FIFA.

To recap where we stand wrote:

I wonder have Ashenden and his colleague responded. And Tucker.

Parisotto responded -

Tucker is in the completely underwhelmed camp - probably a victim of Pound's hyping up of the report as having a "wow" factor, and then singularly failing to have one.