I’m counteracting Renato’s claim that he never said EPO doesn’t work. Care to address that or are you going to gloss over the quote like Renato does every time someone provides evidence that he actually said it?
Fair enough. I appreciate the effort to bring exact quotes into the discussion. Most everyone else tends to criticize him based on their own paraphrased limited understanding, rather than based on a genuine understanding of what he really said and didn't say.
When you compare the two statements side-by-side "EPO doesn't work for Kenyans" and "these drugs, like EPO or CERA, can’t work with the top African athletes", these are two different statements saying two different things. One is a universal statement about all Kenyans regardless, and one is about "top" African athletes, implying a high state of training that has put them on the "top". Renato denies saying the first statement. You are not counteracting his claim, but confirming it.
If you dig enough, you will find posts with Renato explaining that EPO can work for everyone, including all Kenyans, when their aerobic fitness is under-trained, to quickly get up to about 90% aerobic fitness. This can be understood as an advantage, from a WADA point of view, but not one that will result in super natural performances. To go beyond 90% requires proper training and cannot be achieved by blood doping. In the case of top athletes, who live and train at altitude, with a high volume of intense aerobic training, he is saying that EPO and CERA will not bring any further additional benefit, while qualifying that this is his personal opinion based on his personal experience of training top athletes, provided without any proof.
Before training Sondre Moens, his practical experience with altitude training was limited to East Africans, so his stated opinion was limited to his personal experience. This is something that cannot be said for any of his critics. But after the success of Sondre Moens running a 2:05:48 marathon from 8 months of living and training at altitude, in 2017, he expanded this claim to include non-Africans too. Going back in history to what Renato said in 2012, or to 2007, does not reflect this new information.
Going even further (my opinion, not Renato's) this is not something that is exclusive to Kenyans or top-athletes. Sea-level amateurs who live and train at altitude long enough to achieve their own personal "top" fitness, with an optimal training, will reap the benefits that EPO can bring naturally, because the altitude stimulates EPO and RBC production. You can think of living at altitude as micro-dosing EPO 24x7, but in a WADA legal way. We have seen this confirmed in many altitude studies, mostly conducted on non-elite, but well-trained, volunteers, which result in similar performance benefits as blood doping studies.
On the scale of ridiculousness, someone like Renato saying EPO doesn’t work for top Africans is still at the top (a statement he made without evidence in support).
I don’t know why you feel the constant and continual need to defend this guy. He knows perfectly how well this stuff works on the top Kenyans. He also knows perfectly well how long it and other steroids have been abused in Kenya. Kenyan dominance is built on fraud, as recent drug tests have confirmed. Your proud legacy is a lie, and Renato knows that too.
Not sure how anyone can argue that EPO doesn’t work.. It works on everyone and we all know it.
It reminds me of when people used to walk around in face masks ‘for the benefit of others’ believing an old rag actually did anything..
It sure is easier to fool some people than convince them they have been fooled.
No one disputes that EPO "works" to increase blood values. The question that remains unproven is whether EPO can produce super natural distance running performances. Is training with EPO superior to all other methods without EPO?
If you want to argue that "it works on everyone and we all know it", how do you explain the disproportionally few and comparatively slow non-African performances worldwide, from 800m to the marathon (excluding women on steroids), for the last three-plus decades? Do you think that the super-rich Kenyans out-doped the rest of the world for three decades? Doesn't "everyone" mean "everyone"? I've seen a wide variety of attempted explanations, so don't be shy.
I find that many people are fooled by "you can't trust authorities, but you can trust me".
When there is no out of competition testing in your joke of a country for 30 years while the rest of the world is subject to legitimate testing then yes, you are out-doping everyone else. The well-connected and well-funded European coaches and agents negate any poverty alibis.
On the scale of ridiculousness, someone like Renato saying EPO doesn’t work for top Africans is still at the top (a statement he made without evidence in support).
I don’t know why you feel the constant and continual need to defend this guy. He knows perfectly how well this stuff works on the top Kenyans. He also knows perfectly well how long it and other steroids have been abused in Kenya. Kenyan dominance is built on fraud, as recent drug tests have confirmed. Your proud legacy is a lie, and Renato knows that too.
Saying "EPO works for anyone at the top" is similarly lacking evidence in support, and comes from those with no experience with training athletes to top performance.
Shouldn't we listen to the insider who knows perfectly well, with a proven track record and road record of top athlete success?
Or should we listen to the inexperienced and uninformed?
Give me specific and concrete reasons to believe there is anything more than a random chance relation between EPO and other steroids and Kenyan performance.
Yes. But it’s not the super-rich Kenyans. It’s the super poor Kenyans who dope for purely financial reasons. They have nothing to lose and a fortune (one that can set them up for life) to gain.
WADA reports do say that poor athletes are being exploited by local doctors/chemist and foreign agents, but do you think that Kenyans are out-doping the rest of the world, and have been since the 1980s world domination in World Cross Country? See for example Russia using state resources to dope their athletes, and cover it up.
And this still doesn't explain the poor evolution of performance (in terms of both quantity and quality) among non-Africans who could not benefit enough from EPO in the EPO-era to outperform their pre-EPO predecessors from the 1980s.
When there is no out of competition testing in your joke of a country for 30 years while the rest of the world is subject to legitimate testing then yes, you are out-doping everyone else. The well-connected and well-funded European coaches and agents negate any poverty alibis.
I'm sure John Ngugi would be surprised to learn that.
Arguing "lack of testing" is essentially arguing "lack of evidence".
European coaches and agents are better funded than Russia? Or America?
More importantly, this tells me you don't really know the facts and history of testing for EPO.
30 years ago there was no testing worldwide, in or out of competion, for EPO or blood transfusions. Everyone world-wide could dope with EPO for a decade without fear of being detected and without any deterrent of testing positive in or out of competition.
In 2000, at the Sydney Olympics, they started testing for synthetic EPO with in-competition urine tests.
In 2002, the IAAF started out-of-competion tests (urine) for EPO worldwide, also in Kenya. The timing requirements for transporting urine to a WADA Lab are less strict than for blood.
In 2009, the IAAF started ABP testing, collecting blood data.
For more than two decades, Kenyan testing for EPO was the same as testing everywhere else in the world.
Only after 2009, when the ABP was rolled out, did OOC testing in Kenya become a relevant problem. And even then, that is not the problem it is made out to be, because the ABP's "off-score" and "ABPS score" are designed to detect abnormal blood values in-competition, long after the use of EPO has stopped.
In 2015, the Sunday Times gave us a window into the leaked IAAF blood database, with blood data for more than 5000 athletes collected from 2001-2012. Kenya's and Ethiopia's "suspicious" samples, based on off-score calculations, were below the worldwide average. They were not blood doping as much as other countries -- they were not even in the top-10.
What is the evidentiary support for "EPO works at the top" again? Shouldn't we find it working for these top-10 blood doping countries?
On the scale of ridiculousness, someone like Renato saying EPO doesn’t work for top Africans is still at the top (a statement he made without evidence in support).
I don’t know why you feel the constant and continual need to defend this guy. He knows perfectly how well this stuff works on the top Kenyans. He also knows perfectly well how long it and other steroids have been abused in Kenya. Kenyan dominance is built on fraud, as recent drug tests have confirmed. Your proud legacy is a lie, and Renato knows that too.
Saying "EPO works for anyone at the top" is similarly lacking evidence in support, and comes from those with no experience with training athletes to top performance.
Shouldn't we listen to the insider who knows perfectly well, with a proven track record and road record of top athlete success?
Or should we listen to the inexperienced and uninformed?
Give me specific and concrete reasons to believe there is anything more than a random chance relation between EPO and other steroids and Kenyan performance.
How many elite level runners have you experimented EPO on?
Yes. But it’s not the super-rich Kenyans. It’s the super poor Kenyans who dope for purely financial reasons. They have nothing to lose and a fortune (one that can set them up for life) to gain.
WADA reports do say that poor athletes are being exploited by local doctors/chemist and foreign agents, but do you think that Kenyans are out-doping the rest of the world, and have been since the 1980s world domination in World Cross Country? See for example Russia using state resources to dope their athletes, and cover it up.
And this still doesn't explain the poor evolution of performance (in terms of both quantity and quality) among non-Africans who could not benefit enough from EPO in the EPO-era to outperform their pre-EPO predecessors from the 1980s.
Yes. Kenyans are doping more than the rest of the world. And have been since the late 80s / early 90s.
Saying "EPO works for anyone at the top" is similarly lacking evidence in support, and comes from those with no experience with training athletes to top performance.
Shouldn't we listen to the insider who knows perfectly well, with a proven track record and road record of top athlete success?
Or should we listen to the inexperienced and uninformed?
Give me specific and concrete reasons to believe there is anything more than a random chance relation between EPO and other steroids and Kenyan performance.
How many elite level runners have you experimented EPO on?
That doesn't seem all that concrete or specific.
Who here is qualified to express any opinion about "EPO works" because they have experimented on elite level runners with EPO?
According to "40sRunner": "It works on everyone and we all know it." For the intellectual sceptic, this instantly raises questions: Does it work on everyone? Does everyone know that? How do we all know that?
Whenever I attempt to scratch the surface, and dig for foundational concrete evidence supporting this universal knowledge, all I ever get in response is a windstorm of psychological defense mechanisms and burden shifting.
That is not a solid foundation for universal knowledge.
My current ideas just follow all of the publicly available data. If you want me to change that direction, you need to provide concrete data, not burden shifting questions that I have not succeeded to disprove what has not yet been proven.
Post the progression while doping of those athletes from non-African countries and we can discuss further. You can dope an average athlete to the gills and MOST won't get to world class level because of the lack of talent and proper training.
Re your second point - sorry you guys have narrowed down these athletes (aka cherry picked) to a point that such a study can't happen. What I will give you is this.. logically the effect may be less drastic because those athletes are already quite good so the absolute performance gains would naturally be lower, BUT enough to make all the difference at that level.
To avoid the risk of cherry-picking, who would you suggest are the best non-African candidates for such a performance progression analysis, from these countries of high blood doping suspicion: Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Belarus, Slovenia, Romania, Brazil and Spain? I looked worldwide, twice, not finding obvious non-African candidates based on their peak performances. I see you have confounded the effort listing three variables to consider: doping to the gills, talent, and training.
Regarding the second point, it is not because something is difficult to establish, that we can or should assume it, or we can conclude that it has already been established. Yet I have not made it impossible to perform such a study. For example, Pitsilidas could repeat his famous EPO time trials on the Scottish and Kenyan athletes, with some refinements: introduce a phase to optimally train the athletes at altitude to their peak 3000m performance, using that as the pre-EPO baseline, and then continue with a double-blinded EPO treatment compared to a control group, while motivating the athletes to race the time-trials at maximum effort, rather than tempo-ing it. Or someone can repeat the Stray-Gundersen altitude studies, with the addition of an EPO+altitude group -- even if conducted on amateurs this would provide more information than we currently have.
Im pretty sure doping is far worse,and more widespread in USA (as well as much more sophisticated) than it ever was in ukraine,romania, bulgaria,greece, belarus ,slovenia ,turkey,brazil and spain all put together. Yes theres also massive doping going on in kenya, but theyre not the only ones. They are not the only country who cheats to win.
WADA reports do say that poor athletes are being exploited by local doctors/chemist and foreign agents, but do you think that Kenyans are out-doping the rest of the world, and have been since the 1980s world domination in World Cross Country? See for example Russia using state resources to dope their athletes, and cover it up.
And this still doesn't explain the poor evolution of performance (in terms of both quantity and quality) among non-Africans who could not benefit enough from EPO in the EPO-era to outperform their pre-EPO predecessors from the 1980s.
Yes. Kenyans are doping more than the rest of the world. And have been since the late 80s / early 90s.
Based on multiple WADA reports, and unofficial Sunday Times reporting of IAAF blood data (from 2001-2012), Kenya wasn't doping significantly before the 2012 timeframe (18 cases before 2012 from all sports), nor blood-doping significantly, as late as Aug. 2018, with only 16 known cases between 2004-2018. Between 2004-2018, EPO was third to nandrolone and corticosteroids. Regarding doping, something changed in Kenya around the 2010-2012 timeframe.
I'm just not seeing any data that Kenya (and Ethiopia) were ever blood doping, either by transfusions or with EPO, in any significant quantities, before the era of new shoes.
Without any specific and concrete data, it just doesn't seem credible that Kenya and Ethiopia would dominate the world as far back as the 1980s (if not the 1960s), because of EPO and blood doping, while the rest of the world stood and watched, despite the existence of a powerful and undetectable elixir which would also make them competitive, and despite what we know about doping in countries like Russia and Spain and other sports like cycling.
wah!! wah wah wah wah WAHHH!!! My heros have been exposed AGAIN!!!
Yeah buddy I bet it's devastating for you that your brown heroes are crumbling before your eyes
???
Which heroes? Most of the doping positives in Kenya is from no name athletes with mediocre performances from some obscure drugs I've never heard of, with questionable performance benefit.
This is the typical emotional reflex defense mechanism response when asked to provide any concrete data that "EPO works" for top athletes, and to explain why nothing really seemed to work all that well for non-Africans in the EPO-era.
Im pretty sure doping is far worse,and more widespread in USA (as well as much more sophisticated) than it ever was in ukraine,romania, bulgaria,greece, belarus ,slovenia ,turkey,brazil and spain all put together. Yes theres also massive doping going on in kenya, but theyre not the only ones. They are not the only country who cheats to win.
Careful -- we are in agreement here that doping is not just limited to tiny regions in Kenya and Ethiopia.
Im pretty sure doping is far worse,and more widespread in USA (as well as much more sophisticated) than it ever was in ukraine,romania, bulgaria,greece, belarus ,slovenia ,turkey,brazil and spain all put together. Yes theres also massive doping going on in kenya, but theyre not the only ones. They are not the only country who cheats to win.
It should also be noted that the Sunday Times did not report USA blood doping suspicion, for whatever reason. We simply don't know where they should be on the list.
It is not quite a first for track and field, but in telling the world yesterday, "Hands up, I did it," Cathal Lombard, the Irish distance runner whose positive test for the blood-boosting substance erythropoietin came to ligh...
☝️Cathal Lombard improved his 10,000m PB by over 3 mins in less than 18 months running an Irish record of 27:33.53.
He also qualified for the Olympics in both the 5,000 & 10,000m events.
So, there you are rekrunner - a non-Aftican elite from Europe who experienced a dramatic improvement in performance with EPO (we're obviously looking at a high-responder here).
When there is no out of competition testing in your joke of a country for 30 years while the rest of the world is subject to legitimate testing then yes, you are out-doping everyone else. The well-connected and well-funded European coaches and agents negate any poverty alibis.
I'm sure John Ngugi would be surprised to learn that.
Arguing "lack of testing" is essentially arguing "lack of evidence".
European coaches and agents are better funded than Russia? Or America?
More importantly, this tells me you don't really know the facts and history of testing for EPO.
30 years ago there was no testing worldwide, in or out of competion, for EPO or blood transfusions. Everyone world-wide could dope with EPO for a decade without fear of being detected and without any deterrent of testing positive in or out of competition.
In 2000, at the Sydney Olympics, they started testing for synthetic EPO with in-competition urine tests.
In 2002, the IAAF started out-of-competion tests (urine) for EPO worldwide, also in Kenya. The timing requirements for transporting urine to a WADA Lab are less strict than for blood.
In 2009, the IAAF started ABP testing, collecting blood data.
For more than two decades, Kenyan testing for EPO was the same as testing everywhere else in the world.
Only after 2009, when the ABP was rolled out, did OOC testing in Kenya become a relevant problem. And even then, that is not the problem it is made out to be, because the ABP's "off-score" and "ABPS score" are designed to detect abnormal blood values in-competition, long after the use of EPO has stopped.
In 2015, the Sunday Times gave us a window into the leaked IAAF blood database, with blood data for more than 5000 athletes collected from 2001-2012. Kenya's and Ethiopia's "suspicious" samples, based on off-score calculations, were below the worldwide average. They were not blood doping as much as other countries -- they were not even in the top-10.
What is the evidentiary support for "EPO works at the top" again? Shouldn't we find it working for these top-10 blood doping countries?
Do not mistake me for the typical LR poster. I have been around the elite levels of this sport literally from the day I was born. I know far, far more than you realize.
Every argument you make in support of Renato overlooks the (potential) obvious. The man claims that he knew nothing of rampant doping in a country that has had more positive tests in the last 8 years than anyone else by far. Just think about that for a second and maybe the light will finally go on for you.
Your arguments about Kenyan history are nonsense. Kenyans were not subject to any sort of serious out of competition testing (not just for EPO) for 30 years. That is a fact! And yet you dare argue that the lack of widespread positive testing during this period actually supports your position that they weren’t doping. Talk about absurd! The rampant positive tests we have seen for the last 8 years in Kenya are ample evidence of widespread doping programs so deeply ingrained in Kenyan culture that even when these clowns know the tests are coming they cannot change. Regarding your specific EPO arguments after testing began, you seem to not be aware of the existence of masking agents for some reason. Google Lance Armstrong since you don’t seem to understand what lengths people go through to hide EPO usage and how successful they can be. Your head is so firmly entrenched in the sand that you refuse to see the obvious in all of this.
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