Peter Bol tests positive for EPO

A Titan has fallen

I’d agree with the incentives to cheat you laid out. But it does suck more for you if you’re caught than you’re suggesting.

We’ll have to see with Shelby but I suspect she will have a much harder time of getting into many meets (Europe DLs etc.). She’ll get into the Portland Track Festival, sure. But will she get into Monaco or Rome? Doubtful. Appearance fees? Forget it. So you lose 3 years (likely 4 because Westerners will hang onto their innocence). That’s a lot. Your sponsor likely dumps you. For most athletes you’ll be done. When you come back, it’s prize money only and an uphill battle to get into any lucrative meet besides the World Champs. Under the new system you better hit the times because g/l getting the World Ranking being a quasi-pariah.

Whereabouts is a different story than getting popped for EPO. You have plausible deniability, and nobody knows for sure if you actually cheated. If you’re cheating, it sure beats the alternative. But it’s also 2 automatic years off, and good luck if you think you won’t be getting tested extra-often until the end of your career.

OK but when you say you have always liked Peter Bol, do you know him? I have a hard time liking or disliking people I don’t know. Plus when you say it must be humbling that the best he can do is “mid-table” even on EPO it is an odd statement because he is a world class 800m runner and some of his rivals are likely taking something too. Many of your Kenyans have been testing positive and some of them are not world beaters. I will add that I have agreed with you that Kenyans are treated poorly here by many posters and that they are not winning just because of doping.

Shelby, who is white, was popped

It's not a race thing, it's a flagrant doping thing. EPO clears in 48 hours anyway - just have a whereabouts failure

Well, I’m definitely not smarter than you, but your reading of the study is correct. The study benefits from being a highly controlled randomized trial. However, the dosing of the epo and other variables, such as the subjects exercise profile and the fact that nobody was at altitude and the timing of the testing may not reflect the real world doping and testing environment. Therefore you could argue that what they did and what Bol may or may not have done would differ. However, all of this would be expected to impact on the sensitivity of the test (likelihood a doper has a positive test), but not the specificity (likelihood a non doper has a negative test) or the false positive rate (false positive/FP + true negatives). The finding you quote, that the sarcosyl-page assay has a 4-6% false positive rate with the initial test, but none of the subjects taking placebo had an adverse analytical finding on repeating testing. If this is the assay being used for Bol, it means that without knowing his B result, there is a about a 5% chance he’s still in the clear, but if the B sample is +, then it’s 100% he used exogenous epo.

Manute Bol?

Some junkie stabbed him with a needle that contained EPO? lol

100% agree.

I would add that I think this the thing that is always overlooked with these "limit" violations is that these limits are set really high. They are meant to take into account extreme natural outliers (say people with really high hematocrit, hormonal levels etc) and then put as little a buffer as possible on the top of them to give an almost certain indication of foul play. For an athlete to broach that EPO threshold, it's almost medically impossible for them to do it naturally and would need insane extenuating circumstances (like eating the wrong burrito you ordered that coincidentally had offcuts of an animal fed with food containing performance enhancing substances) ;)

That's why the lab "f--k-up" is such an unlikely occurrence and bad excuse. Funny that a lab messing up would cause just hematocrit to spike - why not testosterone levels? Or nandrolone levels, Or anything else? And it's always a perfect coincidence that it's always just enough of a mess-up to get someone into the danger zone above the legal limits.

Of course what most likely happens is men and women try and push the boundaries of what's legal and every now and then they slip because it's an inexact science. Then they cross fingers that say if they "hit 51" on the A sample of their hematocrit, that they might get lucky and hit 49 or even 50 on the B sample at which they get off (which is honestly ridiculous when you know how high that limit really is). Which is exactly what Mr Nice Guy but straight up cheat Bernard Lagat did back in '03.

OK - I’ll bite, only because I’m not the type of person that says they don’t read these boards. Plus I always post under my own name, so I can’t hide from this.

Agree, saying I can 100% confirm…..was a bad choice of words and any normal person would forgive me and understand this is a very stressful time. I am not with my athletes 24/7 (I work a full time job and earn no income from my coaching), so all I can rely on is the 8 years I’ve coached Pete, the character traits he’s displayed over those 8 years and my gut feel. So I have to put 100% trust in him, like he puts 100% in me as his coach. If anyone has followed my twitter account ‘fast8trackclub’ you’d know that we are open and transparent about our training. We are not the type of group that disappears on training camps or not constant on the racing circuit. If you wanted to find any of my athletes, you’d just need to open tweeter.

Clearly I can’t say too much, as we still need to make sure the process is followed in it fullest and await the B results. I’m not going to claim that I don’t know what EPO is, but the only real knowledge I really have is watching those documentaries on Lance Armstrong and that ICARUS Netflix program. Plus what the experts on letsrun tell us on these boards. Last week was the first time I googled rEPO and tried to learn more about the testing process. It just not something that I’ve every thought I needed to be across and even now I feel uncomfortable about trying to learn more.

I’d also like to address Pete’s 1500 results last year, as this seems to be the evidence that he is taking drugs. If you look back at Pete’s 1500 results, you’ll notice that he only ever runs one in January at the start of our Australian summer season and he wins a majority of the time. I don’t think he’d been in a race that went sub 3:00. We’d always want to run a fast 1500 in Europe, but never got the chance. This year he got to run one when he was in peak shape and the result is a true reflection of what I thought he could run. I thought he was in 3:34 shape (and maybe the super spikes have helped a little, but that’s another thread). His 800m results has been a steady progression over the last 8 years.

There is something very confusing about the positive test result, but I’m not an expert, so I’ll need to trust that they’ll get to the bottom of it. It’s not in line with the other 27 blood and urine test results he was subjected to in 2022. Here in Australia, athletes are charged $1250 to obtain a copy of their testing package, so it can be an expensive exercise asking for all of them. But if it’s what we have to do, we’ll do it so we can get to the bottom of things.

Lastly, I’m not angry at the people throwing hate or shade our way, as I have been guilty in the past of thinking the same way when there has been a positive test result. I love this sport (or the 800) has much as everyone and all we want to to see people competing on a level playing field. I would never do anything to jeopardise that.

JR

I don't know who this athlete is and don't much care, but I'm curious about the point of this post and the 39 upvotes it's received. If someone in this position chooses to issue a public denial in the first person, it's entirely reasonable that he do so only after consultation with competent legal and public relations experts.

I have to say you sound believable to me so if you aren’t telling the truth you are very good at sounding believable. As for your athlete, I guess he may have doped without your knowledge. Or maybe he didn’t dope. But I appreciate you acknowledging that you can understand based on other cases why we are skeptical. Also bravo for not hiding.

Glad I'm not from Australia so I don't have to believe him

Kudos for posting Justin. Takes guts especially considering what can be said on these forums. Wishing you Pete and the team all the best. Pete’s legacy should be defined by his impact on all the communities he’s done so much for, not athletics.

Justin great job here and thanks for posting this. I think none of this sounds unreasonable.

You are right to stand by your guy and go with your gut - totally understandable and rational. I’ve tried to stress here that while coaches are big influences in athletes lives they can’t control everything - eating, sleeping, decision making. I think either way this goes this wouldn’t change my opinion of you and some of the other guys you coach because I do know some of them.

Thanks for posting and hopefully the truth comes out and you can be at peace with it either way.

There is presumption of innocence until you test positive. After a positive test (A and B if so requested), there is indeed presumption of guilt. But you don't have to really prove innocence, just demonstrate that innocence is likely. Of course claiming the dope was in the kangoroo burrito will be rightfully ridiculed.

That is not specific to Houlihan, Gatlin and Kiprop among many others tried the same and failed too. Fortunately! Good riddance.

But if you weren’t going to be good enough to get in a DL race, or get a good sponsorship deal….Some guys are doping just so they can pace Kipchoge and make a few $.

Sad day for Aussie track. Not often we have two male events with top ten runners (800m and 1500m).

B sample is rarely different from A, so looks like Peter Bol will be out for a long time.

Interesting... if false positives are possible then I'd say there's a good chance this gets overturned.

If there's even 1% false positives and 1% true positives, then it's 50/50 whether a positive will be confirmed.