I'm jumping back into this thread. The case with Paula is settled, with no new information coming out, and I agree with Rekrunner pointing out the fact of the burden of proof for any disciplinary action not being met. I think that the evidence points to her doping, but whatever. I left and this thread simmered.
But now I see these mistruths pop up. Renato can't help but talk about how clean his Kenyan's are, even as an irrelevant comment in a dated thread about a single British runner.
I called him and those with similar ideas out on other threads for not substantiating their claims. These posts and posters continued to cast doubt on the understanding of elite athlete's blood profiles, but failed to show why. In arguing the positive (elite runners blood won't benefit from blood doping) they failed to provide evidence, and in arguing the negative (you can't compare conclusions from studies done on amateurs to conclusions about elites) they failed to explain what differentiates them.
I didn't mind leaving those topics, because any reader could see through the whole thread that their position was questioned and not defended.
But now they're here, without any context, where any casual reader can see these assertions and assume the posters are speaking truth.
So, let's outline the breakdown in the argument. I'd say the biggest exchange was on the "EPO helps mid-distance" thread. Page 5 gets it going:
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=6669078&page=5Focusing on Renato, he makes the claim that EPO doesn't help elite runners for two reasons:
...going on to say that the increased viscosity is a disadvantage, because it is more difficult to clear lactate from slower moving blood.
I respond by saying that
I also add studies that show cardiac output is maintained despite the higher blood viscosity. Moreover, these increases come from the increase in blood pressure, not the strength of the heart. The ability to maintain cardiac output is not dependent on training status. Read the whole post.
If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong, and I'll accept it. But Renato never responded to these points, changing the discussion to a statistical analysis of the EPO period.
Aragon and I go back and forth about the statistics. I believe they show stagnation until the development of EPO, rapid improvement, and then stagnation again as controls tighten, and I believe that their correspondence with EPO shows its use and effect in elite athletes. Aragon and I start to talk about the size of the effect, where he separates himself from Renato, saying that the cited effect of 5-7% is overstated, as opposed to non existent.
Renato comes in and says that the EPO era just happened to coincide with the best talents ever to compete, Geb, Komen, Bekele; once-in-a-generation runners all happened to be within the same few years. While I believe this is putting the cart before the horse, and doesn't prove that they didn't take EPO to become the greatest, I conceded that looking at statistics is futile. Sport is complicated and not even a wonderdrug will make definitive all the time, for everyone.
So here we are now, seeing the same arguments that I challenged in the beginning, recycled again. So before any reader implicitly accepts these ideas as truth:
1)What has Renato done to show that the mechanisms of EPO on amateurs is markedly different than what could happen in elites? I showed viscosity is a red hearing, that a body accommodates to it anyway. He didn't respond, and now cycles back to "no studies on elites". As often as he's made the claim, he has not substantiated the specific difference in an elite that makes them immune to EPO. He says there are no studies on elites but hasn't shown why the existing knowledge isn't generalizable to elites. He has only said "I've seen the athletes, I've seen the data. They're clean"
2) What has Renato done to show that the talents he worked/works with really were the greatest physical bodies ever, instead of runners who took drugs to become the greatest ever?
Whatever. It's all there in the links. I'm just tired of these claims being recycled for new readers to see without challenge. I probably made this post too long for any casual reader to continue to care anyway... back to hibernation.