Official: Paul Radcliffe statement

She had a rather unconvincing interview with ITV news tonight

Struggled when asked if the data would be Independently analyzed

This is actually correct. In the hospital and ER, we see the reverse every day when patients come in totally dehydrated from illness. Their initial HGB looks normal, but, after rehydrating them, they drop multiple percentages on their hemoglobin and hematocrit. This is how we discover severe anemia in ill patients. Clearly, any endurance athlete running at their max for the finish line after 10+ miles in warm weather will have sweat out liters of fluid. The resulting lab hemoglobin measures represent a "hemo-concentration" that is the same as what occurs when patients lose fluid with vomiting or diarrhea. This is how the body adapts to long distances when it is warm out. Any athlete testing "normal" after a hot, long distance race would know they are anemic, and would perform much better if they had a higher hemoglobin when replete on fluids.

OK Paula, whatever you say. (your goose is cooked by the way)

ML wrote:

This is actually correct. In the hospital and ER, we see the reverse every day when patients come in totally dehydrated from illness. Their initial HGB looks normal, but, after rehydrating them, they drop multiple percentages on their hemoglobin and hematocrit. This is how we discover severe anemia in ill patients. Clearly, any endurance athlete running at their max for the finish line after 10+ miles in warm weather will have sweat out liters of fluid. The resulting lab hemoglobin measures represent a "hemo-concentration" that is the same as what occurs when patients lose fluid with vomiting or diarrhea. This is how the body adapts to long distances when it is warm out. Any athlete testing "normal" after a hot, long distance race would know they are anemic, and would perform much better if they had a higher hemoglobin when replete on fluids.

Neutral Observertard wrote:

He just says that Paula cheated over and over and over again.

And does.

So really what shes saying is that in all reality we should NEVER be testing athletes right after a competition because their blood chemistry is all over the place, right? And we've been doing it wrong all this time?

Shes a lot like Hillary Clinton and her email saga. Deny and deflect as long as you can and ten give us a corny apology or explanation.

These are shrewd slick women, who would never give us an explanation if we just asked them. They need to be brought kicking and screaming to a table and confronted. And there is something wrong with that. State the facts and take responsibility. Especially if they have done nothing wrong.

Tommy2Nuttz wrote:

So really what shes saying is that in all reality we should NEVER be testing athletes right after a competition because their blood chemistry is all over the place, right? And we've been doing it wrong all this time?

Shes a lot like Hillary Clinton and her email saga. Deny and deflect as long as you can and ten give us a corny apology or explanation.

These are shrewd slick women, who would never give us an explanation if we just asked them. They need to be brought kicking and screaming to a table and confronted. And there is something wrong with that. State the facts and take responsibility. Especially if they have done nothing wrong.

+1

I've gone from believing to now, merely hoping, that Paula Radcliffe ran all those fast times clean; and she does make valid points about incomplete data taken out of context and the sensationalist and biased nature of ST coverage which, quite frankly, has been unfair to a slew of unnamed runners who have to compete under a cloud of suspicion.

However, I just have to shake my head, in disbelief, at Paula's own hypocrisy given she had no problem outing and implicating other supposed cheaters with incomplete evidence herself. In the case of Jemima Sumgong who she was happy to gossip about in front of the media in New York implying she shouldn't have been allowed to run, turned out Sumgong's circumstances and reasons actually serve as a better excuse than this lawyer-drafted excercise in public relations.

Let's not forget Paula was a pioneer in volunteering to freeze samples for future testing which were not required for any governing body. And those samples are available now.

The problem we see is idiots who don't understand how to interpret data, wanting access to bits and pieces of data without taking into consideration the totality of the data. It is simplistic to say the data speaks for itself; all data requires interpretation, and all interpretation requires context. A fully hydrated, out-of-competition sample is not the same as one take immediately after finishing a hot HM. At least with regards to specific parameters.

I paid for the rehearsal dinner at my wedding through a consulting contract garnered through this website to serve as the expert witness for the defense on an EPO doping situation. Suffice to say, I understand the system, and have the technical understanding 99.9% of the riff-raff here lack. This entire situation with Paula is BS.

All BS wrote:

Let's not forget Paula was a pioneer in volunteering to freeze samples for future testing which were not required for any governing body. And those samples are available now.

...

I paid for the rehearsal dinner at my wedding through a consulting contract garnered through this website to serve as the expert witness for the defense on an EPO doping situation. Suffice to say, I understand the system, and have the technical understanding 99.9% of the riff-raff here lack. This entire situation with Paula is BS.

1. So is Paula gonna release those samples for independent evaluation?

2. So when you say you "understand the system," I assume that means you know why independent evaluation is so important. I bet there was a paid expert on the other side of that trial who jus happened to come to a different conclusion than you, right?

ML wrote:

Clearly, any endurance athlete running at their max for the finish line after 10+ miles in warm weather will have sweat out liters of fluid.

Think about it a minute. Paula's claiming elite performance at dehydration levels you see in a hospital. Paula's top-10-something, somewhere, and claiming extraordinary dehydration that would actually put her way off an elite pace.

I'm not saying sick people aren't dehydrated. I'm saying her explanation is improbable. Her kind of improbability is infamous with dopers in cycling with it's tainted beef, ephemeral twins, mysterious ailments, epo for pets and more.

I also believed Floyd Landis.

Reading his book, Positively False: The Real Story of How I Won the Tour de France, was very convincing.

At the end he wrote that he set up a defense fund to pay for his legal team to clear his name and asked supporters to contribute to it.

I thought there was no way he could be guilty and ask for money from his fans to pay his lawyers.

I was wrong.

Tommy2Nuttz wrote:

So really what shes saying is that in all reality we should NEVER be testing athletes right after a competition because their blood chemistry is all over the place, right? And we've been doing it wrong all this time?

The earliest probable baseline was about 2011 since 2012 was their first sanction. Maybe four years? Certainly nothing was in place during her peak. As others have pointed out, her peak coincides with no EPO testing, and no bio-passport testing.

Another part of her explanation that has fatal logical problems.

here's the link mentioning the 2011 baseline.

collected a blood sample from every athlete because “it was establishing the athlete biological passport in athletics with a specific interest in establishing population-based reference values

Tommy2Nuttz wrote:

So really what shes saying is that in all reality we should NEVER be testing athletes right after a competition because their blood chemistry is all over the place, right? And we've been doing it wrong all this time?

I think you are wrong.

A key thing Paula told me is 2 of her values were taken immediately after a race. Blood testing protocol now requires that athletes NOT be blood tested within 2 hours of exercise. Blood tests need to be done BEFORE competition or 2 hours after.

See this:

"No blood collection for 2 hours following training session "

Radcliffe I believe only had 3 values that were close to a suspicious "off score". If I interpreted what she showed me correctly, only one of these values was above any 1/100( maybe 1/1000) cutoff that would be suspicious for an athlete at altitude. 2 of the tests were done immediately after a race (at the World Half and after the Worlds 10,000m). Those values were 2 of the suspicious ones and now anti-doping authorities realize they can't use blood tests immediately after a race because they aren't reliable.

That was my reading of it. People speculating off an incomplete picture is why why she wanted to release everything on her timetable. When I spoke to her in Beijing she gave the impression it would all be released with proper context.

Again, I think if you could remove yourself or if you were not friends w/her, I think you would have a totally different view of the situation w/o a bias statement or at least look at it in a neutral context. Maybe I'm wrong, but wanted to give you my humble opinion even if it's only worth less than 2cents..;)

wejo wrote:

If I interpreted what she showed me correctly, only one of these values was above any 1/100( maybe 1/1000) cutoff that would be suspicious for an athlete at altitude. 2 of the tests were done immediately after a race (at the World Half and after the Worlds 10,000m). Those values were 2 of the suspicious ones and now anti-doping authorities realize they can't use blood tests immediately after a race because they aren't reliable.

As recently as 2014, the IAAF is still doing in-competition blood tests. Do you even bother to read WADA's publications at all?

And, at the same time, the world knows dopers go to altitude to dope for the specific purpose of throwing off blood scores to hide doping.

There's just no good answer that hasn't already been used by some doper somewhere. Give the scores to Parisotto and Ashenden with no strings attached.

ML wrote:

This is actually correct. In the hospital and ER, we see the reverse every day when patients come in totally dehydrated from illness. Their initial HGB looks normal, but, after rehydrating them, they drop multiple percentages on their hemoglobin and hematocrit. This is how we discover severe anemia in ill patients. Clearly, any endurance athlete running at their max for the finish line after 10+ miles in warm weather will have sweat out liters of fluid. The resulting lab hemoglobin measures represent a "hemo-concentration" that is the same as what occurs when patients lose fluid with vomiting or diarrhea. This is how the body adapts to long distances when it is warm out. Any athlete testing "normal" after a hot, long distance race would know they are anemic, and would perform much better if they had a higher hemoglobin when replete on fluids.

I take your point, and believe that what you are telling us is the absolute truth, but this isn't how the testing protocol works for athletes - you don't just run up the finish chute and impale yourself on a needle. IAAF protocol states that the blood can't be drawn for a minimum of 2 hours after the race - plenty of time for rehydration in a fit athlete.

Balian wrote:

The Sunday Times at last check is not an official athletic governing body. Until we hear something official and definitive from one of them, I'd say she innocent.

Sorry but the whole point of the Sunday Times story was to expose that the IAAF was not acting on blood tests that showed doping. So I wouldn't trust what is coming from an organisation that is being accused of a cover-up.

WADA I have more respect for.

The Sunday Times do have a track record in exposing Lance Armstrong (mostly work by David Walsh who also ghost wrote Paula's book). Although I suspect that they have a lot of journalist with different opinions. If you've been following the story in the paper, then they've proved that some athletes had blood test scores that should have led to a ban but didn't. Paula's scores were not as high as these but were higher than any other British athlete.

I'm not an expert on blood scores but I thought that the scores merited discussion but were not as high as some of the other scores discussed. I think one athlete was describes of a having a score that was so high that the chance of them not doping was 1 in a billion. From memory I think Paula was 1 in 1000 and she is disputing that. So high, but not as high as some and not proof. Certainly in need of some investigation.

I've still got the paper from the 2nd August and in that it says that Paula's blood score went up 40% higher on the day of the race than a test taken 2 days before. I don't know if dehydration can cause that. Even the paper says that it's not proof of doping but that it could have been the reason.

The Times also asked "experts" if altitude training could explain one score that was investigated by the IAAF. Apparently at the time 11 out of 12 experts from the IAAF said the scores was consistent with altitude training. I'd like to ask the one that didn't why he thought it was suspicious. The Times said that experts they spoke to would only expect a small increase in blood score as a result of altitude training.

I want to see a proper discussion now with the scores being released. With Lance I was 100% certain he had drugged based on evidence I'd seen in the paper and with my own eyes. I'm still undecided on this one. Neither the paper or Paula have convinced me. There's certainly a need for more discussion.

The real debate isn't Paula though, it's the IAAF.

All BS wrote:

A fully hydrated, out-of-competition sample is not the same as one take immediately after finishing a hot HM.

If you understand the "system" as you claim, then you'd know that this scenario you invented doesn't happen.

You had a point until you started lying about your "qualifications".

Hartmann: I would swear on my life Paula is clean

Gerard Hartmann, Paula Radcliffe's long-time physical therapist, has launched an impassioned defence of the marathon world record holder after a British parliamentary committee indirectly linked her to allegations of blood doping yesterday.

Hartmann, the Limerick-based physical therapist who worked with Radcliffe for 14 years, says there is "absolutely no evidence she has taken drugs" and that abnormal blood readings are a regular occurrence among elite athletes.

"I would bet my house and all that I have that Paula Radcliffe never took a performance-enhancing drug in her whole athletics career," said Hartmann.

http://www.independent.ie/sport/other-sports/hartmann-i-would-swear-on-my-life-paula-is-clean-31512674.html