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

Surely the experts are aware of external confounding factors, but this information can not be found in the blood database. And they did not say "highly suspicious", but "likely doping" or "abnormal". And we don't know where Paula fit in their analysis.A big problem is separating what the experts said, and what the Sunday Times said. But there is no doubt that the experts had incomplete information, and based all there analysis on values in a blood database (which WADA just told us, even that was incomplete), and no context of altitude, illness, medication, equipment calibration, post-race test, etc.As we can see, the Sunday Times analysis, that led to statistics like 1 in 3 podium finishers, failed to take into account altitude, and dehydration, and non-standardized processes, leading to the much less interesting, and nuanced "1 in 3 podium finishes doped, or trained at altitude".In my opinion, the "dangerous to health" athletes apply to the athletes with values like 18 for RBC, and not 15. All of the Ashenden/Parisotto comments make sense for the Russians, like "dangerous to health", and "did not follow up positives", where we know the scores were orders of magnitude higher. It's really not clear to me (again my personal opinion) that Paula is intended as a target of these comments, with much lower scores, at the "altitude" threshold, and RBC values.

WADA wrote:

What this demonstrates is that Ashenden and Parisotto are very well aware of potential confounding factors yet still found the pre-2009 values to be highly suspicious and potentially dangerous to athlete health.

These are the two leading experts, highly reputable, and you think they have put their names to something without context. If that was true you would have heard them criticize the Sunday Times reporting a long time ago and admitted their analysis was performed with insufficient information. Shobukhova had a crazy off-score of 150, if ever there was a time to claim faulty equipment surely that would be it! Sorry but If the data is good enough to implicate the Russians then it's good enough for Paula.

rekrunner massively trying this case in the media, but with no agenda of course. May be a correlation between guilt and massive whitewashing spin storm.

Of course they didn't find anything in his urine sample in 2012, looking for EPO... Her thing was autologus blood transfusions....

Radcliffe is a doper.

rekrunner wrote:

As we can see, the Sunday Times analysis, that led to statistics like 1 in 3 podium finishers, failed to take into account altitude, and dehydration, and non-standardized processes, leading to the much less interesting, and nuanced "1 in 3 podium finishes doped, or trained at altitude".

I think the ABP is almost pointless now. It will only catch the stupid, badly managed doping athletes who have little idea of how it works. Elite athletes (or if not, their management teams) will these days fully understand the blood doping process, how it is tested for, and how to explain away borderline scores.

And from what Conte said recently, most of the testers don't even know what the latest designer PEDs are, let alone how to test for them.

As you can see, I'm not feeling very optimistic about the great clean-up which Coe and co are hoping will materialise over coming months and years. At least there are no cheats in tennis. Right?

The ABP is a complementary approach that has had measurable improvement.Here is a discussion from the Sports Scientists about the deterrent effect of the ABP, even if it produces no positives:http://sportsscientists.com/2011/03/biological-passport-effective-fight-or-futile-failure/The UCI also confirmed, in their own Independent Commission report, based on various interviews from cyclists, that the ABP significantly reduced doping performance gains:"The Commission was told that today doping performance gains are perhaps around only 3-5%, compared to 10-15% ten years ago."http://www.uci.ch/mm/Document/News/CleanSport/16/87/99/CIRCReport2015_Neutral.pdfDon't pretend that the athlete and his/her manager have the final word. They have a chance to offer explanations, but if the expert panel finds it not credible, or not supported by external corroborating evidence, then the explanation can be rejected. But if there is corroborating evidence, like plane tickets from Kenya, then that carries more weight. Don't forget, the athletes have to continuously report their whereabouts, so you can't just "fake" a claim of being at altitude, to explain high scores. Other factors, like dehydration, equipment calibration, etc., are eliminated by stricter processes (e.g. waiting two hours before blood withdrawal; requiring control documents; doping control forms; etc.) So the kinds of problems observed pre-2009, that must be considered in any conclusions, if the hypothetical pre-2009 ABP process had actually occurred, can no longer be applied post-2009.The ABP hasn't completely eliminated doping, but it significantly reduced the effect of doping on performance. At 10-15% clean athletes have no choice, but at 3-5%, there is still hope that the most talented can still compete clean and be competitive.With respect to Conte, he seems to be saying whatever he needs to to make his name relevant. In any case, the strength of the ABP is that it doesn't need to detect designer PEDs, just the indirect impact on blood parameters (with similar approaches for HGH and steroids).With respect to Coe and the IAAF cleanup, I think you pessimism is "mostly" unfounded. What all the commissions and investigations have confirmed is:1) Diack created an unofficial inner-circle2) The official IAAF structure let him proceed unchecked3) The inner circle instituted blackmail/extortion/bribery4) Although delayed, even the "failed" official structure eventually worked, preventing (independent of ARD) the blackmail/extortion/bribery from succeeding two ways: by the anti-doping department maintaining pressure on sanctioning high profile Russians, eventually sanctioning all the athletes, albeit delayed; and by the newly formed IAAF Ethics Commission launching its own internal investigation of the IAAF misbehavior (8 months before the ARD documentary aired in Dec. 2014).Today the inner-circle is completely gone. The only "clean-up" required is structural reform to prevent new unofficial structures, and implementing more checks and balances, to signal abuses within official structures.My opinion is that the biggest issue is the long delay required to bring justice, both with respect to prosecuting ABP positives, and to the specific case of the IAAF sanctioning it's own misbehavior. Getting your gold medal 7 years after the fact does not undo all the damage.

After reading through all the science and data, it is clear that Paula Radcliffe doped. The question, however, is through which means? I have concluded, as have many in the science and coaching community, that she did it by blood transfusion.

You haven't shown your work. In school you would get zero credit.We know the data is incomplete. Even WADA just told us that Ashenden/Parisotto had incomplete data.The anti-doping science experts with the most data did not reach your conclusions.The science shown so far speaks directly against any clarity of conclusions of doping, by measuring sources of non-doping errors.

kljc wrote:

After reading through all the science and data, it is clear that Paula Radcliffe doped. The question, however, is through which means? I have concluded, as have many in the science and coaching community, that she did it by blood transfusion.

rekrunner wrote:

Today the inner-circle is completely gone. The only "clean-up" required is structural reform to prevent new unofficial structures, and implementing more checks and balances, to signal abuses within official structures.

I know you are a stickler for evidence to support claims, so I think you will accept that we don't know for sure that the inner-circle is gone. Unless you or I worked in the IAAF, then we wouldn't know who was in the inner circle. Unless you have somehow been able to get access to more knowledge than the former vice-president of the IAAF, who didn't know about any inner circle until he read about what was going on in the national media.

Anyway, I'm less worried about an inner circle than a general ambivalence to drug-taking amongst high-ranking officials. What I mean by that is people who know it is going on, but are afraid to do too much about it as it will damage the reputation and income of the sport.

A couple of years ago I read an article that suggested that a tennis grand slam winner had tested positive and was serving a six month 'silent ban'. He didn't compete for several months, claiming injury. I scoffed at the story originally, but now I look back and wonder whether this was indeed some half-way house punishment which maintained some integrity within tennis but without damaging the sport's reputation.

Anyway, I take your points, and I hope that your glass-half-full approach to these doping scandals is more founded in reality than my more pessimistic outlook. Particularly on the Radcliffe saga. But as I've said before, if she did blood dope, then who can blame her, and she still beat the hell out of the opposition who were perhaps/probably doping themselves.

I, and you, have access to two detailed and reliable sources of "more knowledge than the former vice-president of the IAAF: the WADA-IC report, and the IAAF Ethics Commission report. Every "bad guy" named in these reports are out of the IAAF today. Maybe some lesser remnants exist, but the current unofficial structure is gone, and instituting new checks and cross-checks so that it doesn't come back should prevent something similar coming back.

Regarding "ambivalence" the only one in the IAAF who could be accused of that was Nick Davies, and his actions were arguably not based on fear of doing too much -- he wanted to delay reporting for marketing reasons, but I think there was never any intention on his part to hide or delay justice, but just strategically time the reporting of the justice.

Regarding this idea of Paula's autologuous blood-doping, here are some more thoughts. IMO, doping is not a good explanation for one extreme outlier, lacking evidence of an Armstrong-esque level of sophistication and support network. If Paula did so well, compared to others who are known to have blood doped with EPO and/or blood transfusions, how effective can we conclude blood doping is when generally it hasn't worked for the rest of the historical female population to produce a sub-2:18? Recall EPO is preferred over blood transfusions, because you could theoretically "micro-dose" every day if you had too, while self-blood transfusions require removing blood then adding it later. EPO offers much more flexibility for designing a doping regime. Transfusions could be a tool for racing, but not for training. And blood withdrawals would negatively impact training. Blood transfusions do not look like a likely explanation for the Chicago 2002 and London 2003 marathon performances, at the very least because any samples between 2001 and Oct. 2003 were not reported by the Sunday Times as suspicious. If we want to rely on the leaked blood data, and specifically what the Sunday Times chose to report as suspicious, when they had access to all the samples (at least 14 between 2001 and 2008), blood doping could have only started well after April 2003.

rekrunner wrote:

I, and you, have access to two detailed and reliable sources of "more knowledge than the former vice-president of the IAAF: the WADA-IC report, and the IAAF Ethics Commission report. Every "bad guy" named in these reports are out of the IAAF today. Maybe some lesser remnants exist, but the current unofficial structure is gone, and instituting new checks and cross-checks so that it doesn't come back should prevent something similar coming back.

Hmm. Coe is still there claiming to know nothing. He knew nothing at FIFA too. A large number of people are still there that weren't swept up. The same is true for cycling.

I'd like to remind you, the disgraced treasurer was giving a presentation about the financial state of affairs at an IAAF meeting months after Shubakova's claims went public, Not an IAAF official apparently still doing IAAF business?

There's no transparency to support your claim something has changed. None.

I wish it were different and there were ways to check.

In the end, it seems we know very little about that era. There was doping and corruption and the ABP was a mess. We will not get any further clarity on this issue. In contrast to what you imply here, it seems like the experts agreed to disagree and move on. No-one will win this argument.

It looks like most of the testing is still kind of a mess and, at least, applied unevenly across the sport. I bet things are cleaner now than they have been in the past, but do not I have a lot of confidence in IAAF or the ABP at this point.

I don't expect Coe to have known anything about the deal with the Russian federation, or Diack's involvement. I don't know why you do. Coe wasn't named in either the IAAF report or the WADA-IC report as being involved.I'm not sure about your timeline. Shobukhova's claim went public on Dec. 3, 2014, and Valentin Balakhnichev stepped down from his IAAF on Dec. 11, 2014. Do you have different dates?I didn't claim the IAAF structure has changed yet, but that it needs to be changed (Coe's 10 point plan). All I claimed was that all of the persons named in the IAAF report or the WADA-IC report, that formed this unofficial structure, are now banned. This is publicly transparent.

I'm not sure what "era" you mean, but the ABP was nothing (in athletics) until 2009. This is why an ABP type analysis before 2009 is fraught with uncertainty.The experts agreed with each other, and agreed to disagree with the Sunday Times non-expert interpretations and conclusions. They also agreed that there is no issue that needs further clarity.Read the sports scientists link above to gain more confidence in the ABP. Justice admittedly takes time, but the deterrent effect is immediate and in cycling was dramatically effective. The IAAF has been by far the most aggressive and successful organisation using ABPs to obtain sanctions. If you don't trust the IAAF and the ABP, who do you trust? You should still trust them the most.The IAAF leadership has some work to do to regain public trust that they will manage all doping positives appropriately, but you shouldn't doubt the anti-doping organisation underneath (and excluding) the former director Dollè.

Not the last name ... wrote:

In the end, it seems we know very little about that era. There was doping and corruption and the ABP was a mess. We will not get any further clarity on this issue. In contrast to what you imply here, it seems like the experts agreed to disagree and move on. No-one will win this argument.

It looks like most of the testing is still kind of a mess and, at least, applied unevenly across the sport. I bet things are cleaner now than they have been in the past, but do not I have a lot of confidence in IAAF or the ABP at this point.

rekrunner wrote:

Regarding "ambivalence" the only one in the IAAF who could be accused of that was Nick Davies, and his actions were arguably not based on fear of doing too much -- he wanted to delay reporting for marketing reasons, but I think there was never any intention on his part to hide or delay justice, but just strategically time the reporting of the justice.

Nail on the head. Don't damage the 'product'.

Unfortunately for the sport of athletics, this attitude has led to a fall in audiences and an erosion of belief in the cleanliness of the athletes.

Paula, Usain, Mo - they may be clean(s), but people aren't sure. And that takes away the buzz.

rekrunner wrote:

She advocated publishing the anti-doping test results, and not publishing the private medical data of all the athletes.

This is so confusing. If this were true, then why didn't she publish all her anti-doping scores?

It's simple. Permit discussion of all her scores to determine her likelihood of doping. Instead, we get excuses, obfuscation, and misdirection.

I like and respect Rekrunner, as his/her posts are never rude and most responses are measured and thoughtful.

What we should understand though, is that in Rekrunner's world you have the guilty (caught), and the innocent (not caught). There is no middle ground.

For many of the rest of us, there is a middle ground, and that is largely what we are debating on this long thread.

I could be wrong, but I really doubt Rekrunner will give you the name of any athlete he/she considers to be 'suspicious'. If that is the case, then all further debate on Paula is orthogonal and pointless as there is only a binary conclusion: guilty or innocent.

Interview with Runners World about the allegations etc. Bad blood (pun intended) with Ashenden. She sure knows all about the scores etc

I don't know why you are so confused. The raw data, and the pre-2009 scores, are not anti-doping test results.She didn't publish her blood data:- because no athlete should never have to. Sensationalist journalism is not a good reason to waive the athletes' rights.- because you cannot determine the likelihood of doping based on the raw data alone.Contrary to your repeated insistence, it is not that simple. Discussion of her pre-2009 scores will not bring any clarity to the likelihood of doping, for all the many reasons scientists gave, and the skeptics chose to ignore.Her excuses are consistent with the science, and IAAF procedures. The obfuscation and misdirection is all in the minds of the public.

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

She advocated publishing the anti-doping test results, and not publishing the private medical data of all the athletes.

This is so confusing. If this were true, then why didn't she publish all her anti-doping scores?

It's simple. Permit discussion of all her scores to determine her likelihood of doping. Instead, we get excuses, obfuscation, and misdirection.