A closer look at EPO-era performances

Hmmm...it's strange that you never have anything to say about the surely even greater (and more sinister) "mindbogglingly unscientific" reason many here believe that "East Africans have a genetic advantage" due to their success. In fact, you often parrot your line that "East Africans were already starting to dominate xcountry before EPO" as proof that they have a genetic advantage rather than just EPO.

You don't seem to understand even the basic concept of how science works. You start with a manifestly obvious empirical observation. You then put forward the most manifestly obvious explanation. You then test that explanation, to see if it breaks down, in which case you refine the explanation, or come up with a completely new one to explain the observation.

That a small region of East Africa suddenly had massive jumps in peformance just when the first drug to increase red blood cell count became available, which we know is linked to athletic performance indicators such as VO2 Max, declined or stagnated as soon as testing for that drug became available, and has had around 400 doping busts since then, is rational grounds for believing that EPO works. Especially given that proposition that EPO works has the near universal backing of the scientific community, athletes, coaches, and anti-doping organizations. Yet you think you can overturn this simply by claiming that the rest of the world didn't improve so much as East Africa, based on the mindbogglingly absurd and unscientific value judgement that world class athletes in antartica and Haiti doped with EPO to the exact extent as Kenyans and Moroccans (53.105815%)

The odds of all these times, and all these 'GOATs' appearing in East and North Africa during a relatively brief window of opportunity when the first 'endurance' drug became available, and before any proper testing was introduced, is thousands to one. Especially when you consider that North Africa had done very little before (except the extremely dubious Aouita), and East Africa had never dominated and Kenya virtually nothing in the marathon. As well as the fact that the population of East Africa has almost doubled since the EPO era, infrastructure and training facilities improved, and all these 'role models' should have inspired even greater success.

With regard to super shoes, Kenyan times over the last five years have manifestly not improved so much as 'the rest of the world'. So is this proof that super shoes do not work? According to your 'logical argument' it does.

It's "Antarctica".

I appreciate the sudden renewed interest in this first "closer look" at "EPO-era" performances. I think the second "deeper look" was superior, using a lower cutoff to include a larger set of performances, and collecting data points for each 4-year (Olympic) cycle dating as far back as 1960 to better illustrate the time course of trends.

Since I gave the method I used, everyone is always free to do their own data collection.

I was considering repeating this second "deeper look" analysis after the end of 2024, which would show the effect of the shoes in two Olympic cycles post-Rio 2016, and any alleged effects of increased anti-doping testing for East Africans.

You should read what I write more carefully. Since I only looked at performances, any discussion of the causes remains speculative, regardless of who makes them.

You have a tendency to want to reduce the discussion to the false dichotomy of either EPO or genetics. If I were to speculate on the causes, I would point you to also consider the environment of high altitude.

You don't apply "how science works" to yourself. We know countries like Spain and Russia used EPO, but their men did not contemporaneously perform better than other Europeans. Once you speculate possible causes, the conversation doesn't stop there, but rather starts there. Once you have a refined or new explanation, you need to support it with data.

I didn't look at Kenyans, but East Africans as a group. Since the era of supershoes, we have seen East African times drop across the board too, for both men and women, on the track and on the road. Looking at Kenyans, in the marathon, Kenyan time have improved from Kimetto (2:02:57) to Kipchoge (2:01:09) and Kiptum (2:00:35). On the track in the mens 5000m, if I took the top-5 Kenyan average before 2018 as a pre-supershoe threshold, we would still find two Kenyan athletes faster, Jacob Krop and Nicholas Kipkorir, among 19 East African performances compared to 10 non-African performances. In the men's 1500m, Kenyans have been historically more sparse compared to the longer events (13 quality athletes in 28 years), but we still have Timothy Cheruiyot improving almost a second in the super-shoe era. More telling in the 1500m is the women, with Kenyan Faith Kipyegon leading Ethiopian Gudaf Tsegay and Dutch/Ethiopian Sifan Hissan with times challenging the Chinese records long thought untouchable.

There are significant limitations to what "we know" about "EPO works".

Science and scientists' studies mostly tell us what happens to amateurs from an uncontrolled initial state of training over the course of a few weeks. No scientist has conducted a study on elite performances.

I have seen virtually no statements regarding the significant power of EPO from elite coaches or elite athletes connected to elite distance running performance. (This contrasts with cycling.) I recall Mathew Kisorio once talked about something that sounded like EPO, but he was busted for steroids and wasn't sure what he was injected with. Salazar said something decades ago (about steroids and HGH and EPO), when marathon runners were running 2:07s.

On the contrary, experience with blood doping and altitude training produces a kind of mixed bag of results, with some high resonders to increasing blood, other high responders to improving performance, and some non-responders and some negative responders.

This whole thread was an exercise looking at "athletes' actual experience". Some groups of runners improved, seemingly corroborating EPO performance, while most other groups did not, including populations like Spain and Russia, known to take EPO.

East African track performances haven't really slowed down since AIU testing increased, when you look at Kenyan, Ethiopian, Ugandan, etc., men and women. What has happened is that in the supershoe era, non-Africans have notably improved, along with East Africans.

There is a tendency to think that speculative explanations are the final answers, and the conversation can be finished.

I would agree that there was no need for 43 pages, as we can fill many pages with insults targeted at me, or falsely attributing strawman conclusions to me. We can fill a handful of pages with useful constructive dialog, and many creative ideas about which factors could be the speculative causes of slow progress, or decline, but these are the start of new conversations, not the end. The next step would have been to look for data to corroborate the new hypotheses.

Yeah bash in Morocco while you can.
Did we have 97 cases in AIU in a single year?

We were the first African nation to get Worldwide Cross country title (1960 and 1966), followed by Tunisia.

Then came Aouita the hated one from Brits because he was their nightmare.

Then today El Bakkali, the 800m Algerian runners (after Makhloufi, Morceli)...

In fact, we know that you all East African countries ex Britain colonies are among the most hostile systems.

But we are at the end of road ... Morocco is winning because of the wise system and the strategic position. You will hear the news soon.

History will mark that NA has the second best performance in history in the 800m

1min 41 sec 46

American are hurt by that fact.

Its a coincidence or a fall of logic?

Neither. It's simply wrong.

The claim wasn't mine per se, but one example of several in a section entitled "How often do we see these kind of EPO related claims:"?

My purpose was to see how well these and other claims of EPO doping correlate with faster performance.

Non-African times and performances in global championships have improved relatively far more than East African times, and the reason is obvious to any sane person. It also started before super shoes.

Why did you open up another can of worms Coevett? Rekrunner is just going to rebut your position on this issue again. Having debated & argued with Rekrunner over the last several years over this, the best I could achieve was an "agree...to disagree" stance. I've have refrained from any further debates with him on the issue of EPO's performance effects on elites. 🙄

OK rek … (rek has many names on the board). The African men suddenly slowed down at the WCs when word got out beforehand that they were going to be under scrutiny and facing actual testing like everyone else. End of story, draw your own conclusions. Rek will always claim Africans don’t cheat. 😏

Horrendous take. you are making an assumption that only East Africans dope when I know plenty of American and British pros who dope.

Africans slowed down at the WC?

African Gold at WC in Women's 800m, 1500m, 3000m SC, 5000m, 10,000m

African Placement in WC in Men's Gold in 800; Bronze in 1500m; Silver and Bronze in 3000mSC; 2nd in 5000m; Silver in 10,000m

You must be one of these "fake" fans.

African men. Learn to read. And their performances dropped off compared to the past three decades of rampant drug use which accounted for much of their dominance. The ladies will eventually be under the same scrutiny. You will no doubt provide pages of laments and rationalizations.

Steroids work far better in women than in men when it comes to improving performance. See East Germany. I doubt that any of those gold medalists are clean.

This thread was not about "global championships", but about all time fastest performances.

What reasons are considered "obvious" depends on the beholder.

One obvious shoe-related reason: if shoes improve running economy, one obvious reason may be that non-Africans were slower because of poorer running economy, and the shoes help close that gap.

One obvious doping related reason: Non-Africans have found a new drug.

Since I only looked at best performances of each athlete, with no other context, the reasons for their best performance remains speculative. All options remain on the table.

We didn't disagree on much. I mostly agreed with you, and your experts, when you told me what "experts believe", especially when their beliefs were explicitly expressed with limitations, and wishy-washy language, like "could be up to".

I concede that "experts believe" "what could be", with limitations.