Paula Radcliffe's WR could go down this weekend, what questions would you like us to ask her this weekend?

PR FTW wrote:

For the record, there is absolutely zero chance that anyone betters Paula’s record this weekend. I doubt anyone will be within 2:30 of the record.

And like I said, no one within 2:30 of Paula’s record. Snooze fest.

I wish they’d give up trying cos it ain’t gonna happen.

Mary - if you went through halfway last year in 66:54 and blew up, going through just 20 seconds slower when it’s much hotter isn’t going to work either.

PR FTW wrote:

PR FTW wrote:

For the record, there is absolutely zero chance that anyone betters Paula’s record this weekend. I doubt anyone will be within 2:30 of the record.

And like I said, no one within 2:30 of Paula’s record. Snooze fest.

Why can't these hotshot Kenyan & Ethiopian runners break her record? How long has the record stood now? So it was a little warm in London yesterday. Big deal...aren't these East Africans adapted to the heat after centuries of evolution where their physiology should be more efficient at handling heat during endurance excercise? And I think it was fairly warm when Paula set her WR? I'm laughing at the East African female marathoners. ? They're very overrated and can't come close to Paula's record!

Paula rules! ?

unlike the womens records being broken on track

have alot to do with extra speed and the speed peptide .

also being used in marathon and making for a still very fast time 2'18''

but still the endurance is not the same as paula .

epo doesnt work aswell on the women and obviously some kenyans and ethipians are on it too

but to get to endurance levels of paula

need the hct levels only got by added blood transfusion's

and not many are getting away with that unless got carte blanche to dope

or use other means if find new endurance ped etc

cannot of been that hot as many pb's were set yesterday or close .

aduck2022 wrote:

unlike the womens records being broken on track

have alot to do with extra speed and the speed peptide .

also being used in marathon and making for a still very fast time 2'18''

but still the endurance is not the same as paula .

epo doesnt work aswell on the women and obviously some kenyans and ethipians are on it too

but to get to endurance levels of paula

need the hct levels only got by added blood transfusion's

and not many are getting away with that unless got carte blanche to dope

or use other means if find new endurance ped etc

cannot of been that hot as many pb's were set yesterday or close .

???

What on Earth are you talking about?

The road is her toilet

Was it really necessary to bring that up?

As far as I know, the East Africans are not particularly adapted to heat. The reason they are more heat resistant in warmer temperatures has more to do with their low bodymass. Heat generation is a function of volume, while heat dissipation is a function of skin surface area. The difference in bodymass is greater in elite men than in elite women. One main reason why Paula's record has stood for so long, at the risk of sounding circular, is the lack of depth at the top: - Since 2003, 36 men have run faster than Paul Tergat's 2:04:55, within 2 minutes of the current world record. That allows for large groups as far as 25-30K at world record pace, and rivalries. - Before 2018, only 23 women had even run below 2:20. This looks to be improving, as in 2018, between Dubai, Tokyo, and London, 6 new women have joined the sub-2:20 club. - Lack of depth means lack of critical mass necessary to pace a group at world record pace far enough for record attempts, unless you use male pacers. - This often means slow tactical races, with the goal of winning, rather than fast times. 2:20 will win most races, so the women don't usually need to run faster. Fast races from the start, like London 2017, and Boston 2014 (thanks to Shalane) are by far the exceptions. - Lack of depth means fewer rivalries, which incentivizes athletes to push themselves harder in order to win. - Lack of depth and lack of critical mass severely reduces the number of potential opportunities to attack the world record. Specifically, in London 2018, with the inclusion of male pacers (compared to 2003): - The temperature and the wind were not ideal. In 2003, " it was a perfect day for marathon running, with temperatures at a lowly 10ºC at the start, and rising just 6 degrees during the race. Radcliffe also had the assistance of a south-easterly breeze for much of the race." - The pacing was too fast. In 2003, Paula ran with "two pacemakers designated to run at 2:16 pace" and "passed the halfway mark in 1:08:02". The best chance so far to challenge the record came in London 2017 -- if Keitany and Dibaba had had male pacers, and had started less aggressively, we surely would have seen 2:16s, if not 2:15.

What's up with this? wrote:

Why can't these hotshot Kenyan & Ethiopian runners break her record? How long has the record stood now? So it was a little warm in London yesterday. Big deal...aren't these East Africans adapted to the heat after centuries of evolution where their physiology should be more efficient at handling heat during endurance excercise? And I think it was fairly warm when Paula set her WR? I'm laughing at the East African female marathoners.

What you suggest/expect the IAAF should have confirmed is highly inappropriate. Releasing partial information to the public, including confirming suspicion, about any ongoing investigations, can cause irreversible reputational damage for the athlete, and generally harms the fight against doping. Even if you want to maintain maximum skepticism regarding specific IAAF statements about Paula and other Fancy Bears athletes, the detailed rebuttals gain credibility from the use of extensive footnotes and endnotes to external sources which support the IAAF statements. The IAAF responses have been in line with standard ABP descriptions and WADA guidelines. I also suggest you read, or re-read, the IAAF statements more carefully. They didn't confirm or deny any suspicions, but they did explain what the terms mean: "The official terminology which includes “Likely doping”, “Passport suspicious; Further data is required”, “Likely medical condition”, “Normal”, “Cancelled by APMU” (Athletes Passport Management Unit) are used to classify profiles flagged as “atypical” by the ADAMS mathematical model, indicating whether or not an athlete’s biological passport profile should be further investigated. It does not provide a final determination on whether or not an athlete has committed an anti-doping rule violation." In that sense, they confirmed that the athletes' profiles were flagged by the mathematical model, but that is not enough for a final determination. If you were paying attention to the response to the Sunday Times allegations, you would recall other non doping considerations that can trigger the mathematical model: "Professor Massimo Coccia, a senior CAS arbitrator from Italy, has explained clearly that an OFF-score that is flagged as abnormal by the Adaptive Model ‘does not mean in itself that there is a probability of doping but only that the profile differs from what would be expected in a clean athlete; an atypical profile as such is not evidence of doping. An atypical blood profile may actually have different explanations: pure chance (which is statistically possible if many tests have been performed); instrument malfunction or inappropriate storage or transport of some blood samples; pathological or medical condition that has caused an abnormal change in blood variables; and doping in the form of blood manipulation. Therefore, no definite conclusions may be drawn at this stage. The Adaptive Model is only a filter that excludes normal profiles and triggers the expert review of any atypical blood profile’." Whether it's Paula, or the Fancy Bears athletes, this stresses the importance of knowing just how far in the process any "atypical" findings progressed, before jumping to any conclusion that the athlete "likely doped" or that IAAF response was not appropriate.

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

And what happened after the Fancy bears hack came out? Instead of saying "yep we suspect these people but it's not 100%," they denied it and apologized to the likely cheats. Any denials regarding Paula from the IAAF are simply not credible.

"Passport suspicious; Further data is required" vs "Likely doping" means two entirely different findings. One is mere suspicion that very well may not involve any doping while the other is a much more likelihood that doping is involved. The numbers their experts examine after an atypical flag determine the different classifications, otherwise why not leave all atypical findings under the "Passport suspicious" classification.

If you look at the FB hacked document the "Likely doping" cases trigger very aggressive target testing IC & OOC. Lets face it, WADA is hoping for a "Likely doping" athlete to be glowing OOC and get nailed the easy way. It becomes a "cat & mouse" game; WADA isn't going to forewarn the athlete of the flag and yet the athlete may realize something's going on with the increased testing that they're not normally subjected to. And it's not rocket science that the athlete will figure this out. A positive finding of a banned substance per a drug control is a much easier way to put together an anti-doping violation case than an ABP sanction case...nothing new there.

rojo wrote:

Gravy+ v.3 wrote:

.l

Though a fierce anti-doping campaigner, Radcliffe has been scurrilously treated by the French media, and spent much of Thursday and Friday demanding that such a test be done on her, to give no further opportunity for unwarranted slurs. She was delighted when doping analysis was eventually arranged before the race.

That was an interesting article. Why was the French media treating her scurriously before she’d even really don much? Anyone remember?

Paula writes in her autobiography about a journalist (Stefan L'Hermitte) from L'Equipe who had written an article about her, basically being sceptical about whether what he was seeing was believable (in the same way that people don't really believe the performances of Almaz Ayana, despite her never having tested positive etc). The performance in Munich was the one that people found hard to believe - terrible conditions, puddles on the track, having to run a much longer distance due to lapping athletes, running solo, and running 30:01.

Also around this time Paula started competing much less frequently, i.e. only 2 races in total between setting the World Marathon record in Chicago in October 2002 and September 2003 - the world record in 10k in San Juan in Feb 2003 and the still standing world record in London in April 2003. Other than this, Paula was basically off-the-radar - of course nothing wrong with that, but the kind of behaviour that invited suspicion. Then there were the numerous freak injuries and ailments in this period. Plus the training locations that she was mainly in during this time (Font Romeu and Albuquerque) both had reputations for being doping hotspots (discussed elsewhere on these forums) and also (so rumour has it) Gary Lough having links to some dodgy people involved in the sport.

That's the reason for the suspicion I believe. No smoke without fire. And over the years, the people who have shouted 'fire' have tended to end up being right.....

Rekrunner, I never replied to your post on the other Paula thread. Although I think you troll here a lot, you do a lot of good research and make people get their facts correct, and I take my hat off to you identifying that the WADA process that would have been followed in 2012 would potentially (although we don't know for certain) only been looked at directly by a 3 person panel, and not judged to be 'likely doping' by one expert, before being referred to this panel.

What do you think the reference for '12 IAAF experts' looking at the data is about then?

The British athlete said that 12 experts from the IAAF had viewed the data on these tests and 11 had concluded that the results were consistent with an athlete training at altitude."

Why on earth would there be 12 experts looking at these tests? When did they do that? Who was the 1 expert that didn't agree? etc.

Paula leaves her competition trailing in the shiite.

Imagine if she married Bekele and they had a runner child. Wow, just wow

With all due respect, it looks like your interpretation that one finding "is a much more likelihood" is the result of you guessing what these terms could mean. This is the beauty of the Fancy Bears leak: a substantial lack of real knowledge, combined with some fantasy, and the leak can mean as much or as little as you want. My guess is that "likely doping" is a classification of one sample, while "passport suspicious" is a classification of a passport profile (i.e. a set of several samples), and that "further data" means more samples are required to be sure. We've also seen that, rather than "aggressive target testing", it is better and more cost effective, to do "intelligent target testing", which attempts to predict when the athlete will be "glowing" next, without tipping the athlete off with many tests.

Thanks for the kind words -- it is very rare. I actually think I troll very little, but it's big of you to give me some credit where credit is due. Since I have no personal knowledge about Paula's samples, I can only guess that in normal circumstances, only three experts (at most) look at samples, and here, I guess the other experts were a result of the Sunday Times stories, as several bodies were able to review the data, i.e. UKAD, the IAAF (de novo), and experts helping the WADA IC. We know that Paula also had one expert looking at the data to help prepare her defense. There were 3 "atypical" samples, so we can also have different experts looking at the different samples. Here's a thought: maybe 2 of these 12 were Ashenden and Parisotto, and they were actually split. Maybe not, but wouldn't that be something? But for sure, any speculation that a "hung jury" was possibly split 2-1 against altitude (with Saugy to the rescue!) was debunked before it was even made, since the extended score was 11-1 in favor of altitude.

rekrunner wrote:

But for sure, any speculation that a "hung jury" was possibly split 2-1 against altitude (with Saugy to the rescue!) was debunked before it was even made, since the extended score was 11-1 in favor of altitude.

i.e. someone raised a red flag, so the IAAF, with very deep pockets, brought in some hired guns to resolve the situation. Business as usual really.

DHT123 wrote:

What do you think the reference for '12 IAAF experts' looking at the data is about then?

The British athlete said that 12 experts from the IAAF had viewed the data on these tests and 11 had concluded that the results were consistent with an athlete training at altitude.

Most likely just another one of her exaggerations, to put it mildly. Like the sonny 29 - 30 C, when the data, and the journalists at the time, showed 21 - 23 C with clouds, or her being tested "right after" the race, i.e. after the congratulations, the extended cooldown run, and the ice bath.

In this case, it was only a yellow flag, and required no deep pockets, to state that altitude of 2400m for 23 days was credible. But at least we agree that it would be ridiculous to suggest that the "hung jury" was ever split 2-1 against altitude, with no evidence, in light of the still standing claim, that 11 out of 12 were in favor of altitude.

off scores wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

But for sure, any speculation that a "hung jury" was possibly split 2-1 against altitude (with Saugy to the rescue!) was debunked before it was even made, since the extended score was 11-1 in favor of altitude.

i.e. someone raised a red flag, so the IAAF, with very deep pockets, brought in some hired guns to resolve the situation. Business as usual really.