A closer look at EPO-era performances

You ignore cultural differences. On purose. Most African cultures, including North Africans, actually see nothing wrong with cheating and among themselves laugh and think Westerners tring to be “fair” are idiots. After all, everything is by any means necessary. They pretend to be pious and fair around gullible Westerners. There is little doubt you are aware of this. Your apparent ‘assignment’ is to be an apologist for rampant African doping.

People claiming that NA results were du to EPO just have a look at the results of a big sportive country like Egypt.

Read the comment of "Sprint Athletics 2022" in his youtube channel 2 days ago:

Isn't it time yet..! How can a country like Egypt, which has not won a single Olympic medal in athletics since the first edition in Athens, Greece, 1896 until the 30th edition in Paris, France, 2024? Also, Egyptian athletics has won one world medal since the first edition in Helsinki, Finland, 1983 until the 20th edition in Tokyo, Japan, 2025. The only world medal was achieved by champion Ihab Abdelrahman, who won the silIsn't it time yet..! How can a country like Egypt, which has not won a single Olympic medal in athletics since the first edition in Athens, Greece, 1896 until the 30th edition in Paris, France, 2024? Also, Egyptian athletics has won one world medal since the first edition in Helsinki, Finland, 1983 until the 20th edition in Tokyo, Japan, 2025. The only world medal was achieved by champion Ihab Abdelrahman, who won the silver medal in the men's javelin throw with a throw of 88.99 meters during the World Championships in Beijing, China, 2015. Throughout all its Olympic participations, Egypt has won more than forty medals in other sports.ver medal in the men's javelin throw with a throw of 88.99 meters during the World Championships in Beijing, China, 2015. Throughout all its Olympic participations, Egypt has won more than forty medals in other sports.

Your comment belongs to the stone age era.

You have nothing to teach about culture to NA because they were your teachers.

and it was founded by a women in the time were your grandfathers were slipping.

I just looked a documentary two days ago while resting in a clinic.

This culture of cheating is not limited to Africans. There is an extensive history in countries like Russia and East Germany. I can't count how many times have I been reminded of Spain's use of EPO. Or look at the history of cycling.

Here I didn't comment on African doping, but wondered why non-African doping didn't produce comparable results.

Thanks for bumping the thread -- it gave me another opportunity to re-read the first couple pages and see if there was anything I would change. It certainly seems to challenge a lot of popular assumptions.

You aren't the first one to notice the improved times in the supershoe era -- "Gdhjv" asked me just one year ago to "do this with legalized epo (aka cheat-shoes/spikes)" to which I responded "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."

Note again that this is an exercise that everyone could do, as I clearly described my method. The most difficult part is the manual post-exercise of counting East African imports as East Africans.

People are mistaken when they say my conclusion from, and motivation for, this analysis was that "EPO doesn't work" -- my conclusion was not a conclusion, but a question about why so few non-Africans ran faster than the non-Africans of the 1980s, and then only by so little. In part, I was searching for a performance basis for statements like "EPO works for top-East Africans like everyone else", by looking at the performances of East Africans versus everyone else, in order to elevate it from popular assumption to a statement with an observable basis.

My performance analysis was also criticized for being unscientific. Sure -- maybe someone smarter than me with an advisor could turn it into a peer-reviewed paper. But my "peers" are here, where I published my results. My "design" was inspired by a performance analysis by a paper from Prof. Olaf Schumacher, who looked at trends of a top athlete, and the average of the top-20, from 1975 to 2000. Yes this is the same Schumacher that often appears in these threads as an expert witness opining that "EPO works".

But this kind of performance analysis cannot be used to prove, or disprove, doping -- and I did not and do not attempt to do that. Prof. Ross Tucker -- yes the same repeat "expert" that letsrun pays to offer opinions -- says it better than I can:

"NOT proof of doping, but a flag for intelligent testing

Is this an indication of EPO use among elite distance runners? We don’t know. It could be. But there are many other reasons that may explain why the records fell suddenly. This is the challenge with performance analysis. Please read this before sending in the hate mail and criticizing my cynicism, because I must emphasize that this kind of analysis does NOT prove doping! As Schumacher states in the paper, there are many other factors that could explain why performance suddenly improves, so one must be careful not to infer doping without acknowledging a wide range of potential contributing factors."

I agree here with both Profs Ross Tucker and Olaf Schumacher. Schumacher at sportsscientists:

sportsscientists.com

Performance analysis: A weapon against doping?

Those who followed our coverage of the Tour de France will recall , which was ignited when a French scientist, Antoine Vayer, estimated Alberto Contador’s power output to be around 445W, and …

Open link

The biggest 'scientific' flaw in your 'analysis' is it entirely rests on the absurd value judgement that all populations dope equally at all times.

For example, you actually point to Russia/the Soviet Union (erroneously ignoring that they were two seperate states and that the former has less than half the population of the latter and even less a percentage of the elite Soviet runners) as proof, despite the Soviet Union being one of the most sophisticated state sponsored doping regimes in history, and there being NO EVIDENCE that post-communist Russia during the EPO era (before Putin arrived) had any state sponsored doping (I doubt if it was even possible due to how chaotic things were).

It's like 'proving' that bicarb doesn't aid 800m performance after all because in 2025 the best Slovakian woman runner ran 5 seconds slower than the best Czechoslovakian in the 1980s.

You are mistaken. My "performance analysis" rests entirely on recorded historical performances, combined with the regions of the ancestral origins of the athletes.

Any presumption of doping by any group rests entirely on information which is external to my "performance analysis", and was meant to discussed, in this thread, in combination with my performance analysis results: specific hypothetical discussions about how well that that doping might have "worked", historically, for that group, or discuss reasons why the presumed doping didn't appear to work.

Your distinction between Russia and the Soviet Union is entirely irrelevant, as in all cases, both Russian and the Soviet Union athletes would have been counted in the same "world" group (pre-1990), or in the "5-continents" group (post 1990), without any further distinction. Only the collective regions of East Africa and North Africa were isolated and treated separately with distinction.

Furthermore, for the analysis of the men's events, there wasn't any single Russian nor Soviet Union athlete included, neither pre-1990, nor post 1990, as they all ran too slow to be included.

And as I tried to make clear, by quoting Prof. Ross Tucker, these kinds of performance analyses results may or may not be linked to doping. Doping is one potential factor which must be considered along with many others in a holistic way. This is the same for your Slovakian women bi-carb example. We can trivially say bi-carb didn't make them faster in 2025 than Czechoslovakian women in the 1980s, but that may be for a combination of reasons which may or may not include bi-carb.

Most of these times still haven't been beaten by non-Moroccan Spaniards.

White boys don't cheat. It's forbidden in their society to cheat, and their religion ;)

Although this thread was mainly about the apparent anomaly of non-African non-performance at the very top, I was interested in seeing what the intellectuals were saying contemporaneously about East African performances and world domination since their emergence as far back as the 1960s.

I couldn't find that much written about Ethiopians or other East Africans. Researchers have mainly looked at Kenyan athletes, as well as a few at South African athletes. They looked at a wide variety of potential factors, ranging from genetics, to physical attributes, to mental factors, to the altitude environment, to poverty and economic factors. Essentially researchers couldn't find any obvious explanation from any one or two factors, so they usually concluded it is a combination of many known factors and perhaps unknown factors. One thing they noted as relevant was the ability to sustain a higher percentage of VO2max for longer. This ability was something that East Africans shared, as well as black South Africans when compared to white South Africans, permitting them to have faster performances, for the same VO2max, but could not be explained physiologically.

Regarding performance accolades, what they reported is that for success among East Africans, it is mostly Kenyans. Among Kenyans, it is mostly Kalenjin from a population of less than 3 million, or 10% of the Kenyan population. Among Kalenjins, it is mostly those from the Nandi tribe, from a population of about 500,000. (Similarly in Ethiopia, the success comes concentrated from a few regions within Ethiopia). Whether you counted medals, going back as far as 1964, in the distance events Kenyans won about 40-50% of them, with Kalenjins winning about 30-40% globally, and Nandi winning about 20% globally, or fastest times, examining times of the 1990s produced roughly the same distribution percentages.

What about doping? None of the articles I found, which spanned 1997-2013, mentioned doping as a possible consideration, but this could be a result of how I searched using performance terms. For those who want to argue that doping is not only a possible explanation, but the best explanation, I found nothing matching the level of details that exist for these other performance factors, which would clearly show excessive doping among the Nandi versus Kalenjins versus Kenyans versus East Africans versus the non-African world.

Articles:

1) The Sports Historian No. 17 (2) Nov, 1997 "KENYA’S RUNNING TRIBE" John Manners

2) Br J Sports Med 2000 "East African running dominance: what is behind it?" Bruce Hamilton

3) UPI ARCHIVES SEPT. 29, 2000 "Analysis: Kenyan Runners -- What's Their Secret?" By STEVE SAILER

4) Marathon Medicine April 2000 "Dominance of the Africans in Distance Running" Professor Mike Lambert & Professor Timothy Noakes

5) Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A 136 (2003) "Kenyan dominance in distance running" Henrik B. Larsen

6) International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 2012 "Kenyan and Ethiopian Distance Runners: What Makes Them So Good?" Randall L. Wilber and Yannis P. Pitsiladis

No one cares.