So Wejo, Did you talk to Paula

rekrunner - you can no longer cling to your shred of hope that Paula was not the unnamed British runner with suspicious values.

" The increase of 2.8 in Hb (and no significant effect on ret%) is due to a drastic hemo-concentration caused by the specific race conditions. "

Has Paula published what her haemoglobin value was when she was tested?

(FWIW I think she's clean.)

If she has her blood values from the report, why didn't she release those with her statement today? They're going to come out anyway. On the small chance that she's clean, this is a glaring mistake; she's learned nothing from this.

And are you really qualified to understand those results, Wejo? Did she think that you are? Why did she show them to you, then?

I'm sorry, but I'm not buying that she was clean. I wish I could. But think about this as someone not close to her might. She ran, in the middle of the EPO era - in fact, just before a reliable test for EPO came online - a time that even doped Kenyans haven't come within 3 minutes of for the last 12 years. She left you, as a pacer, when you weren't too far off 28 flat 10k shape, nearly in the dust when you tried to pace her.

And now, she's behaving in a very suspicious way, not to mention there *are* THREE anomalous blood readings. There's other prominent athletes who probably were cheaters, who, as far as we know, had none.

Link wrote:

I'm sorry, but I'm not buying that she was clean. I wish I could. But think about this as someone not close to her might. She ran, in the middle of the EPO era - in fact, just before a reliable test for EPO came online - a time that even doped Kenyans haven't come within 3 minutes of for the last 12 years. She left you, as a pacer, when you weren't too far off 28 flat 10k shape, nearly in the dust when you tried to pace her.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

If that was natural, then she would have had AMAZING results routinely crushing her competitors for years. Her time was about as consistent and predictable as a bolt of lightning on a clear day.

And, BTW, she'll stick to "I never doped." because she never tested positive. Rekrunner, you'll be able to hold onto your fantasies that way.

rekrunner wrote:

The default for ALL athletes for ALL sports is to keep test results non-public.

We don't need valid reasons to hide the scores from the public. We need valid reasons to support exceptions to policies designed to protect the innocent.

Baseless suspicions from anonymous fans that Paula is even "the British athlete" with suspicious values, hardly seems to justify making an exception now, for Paula.

Not so baseless now, are they rekrunner?

Look at all the good hiding test scores has done the IAAF:

Diack/Russia/BOD Bribes

Persistent rumors of bribes at NADO-level sanctions.

General perception T&F is mostly sports fraud.

Please stop using words like innocent/guilt. There is no such thing in sports administration. None.

Clean athletes would benefit the most from having all results published. But, you know that already. You are here to defend dopers and doping, the same old IAAF.

Link wrote:

If she has her blood values from the report, why didn't she release those with her statement today? They're going to come out anyway. On the small chance that she's clean, this is a glaring mistake; she's learned nothing from this.

And are you really qualified to understand those results, Wejo? Did she think that you are? Why did she show them to you, then?

I saw the values because she asked if I would like to see them. Of course I said yes.

She showed them to me either because 1) I'm a friend and she had nothing to hide and wanted to assure me she is clean or 2) She thinks I'm an idiot and she could pull one over me and I have a lot of influence in the running world.

I lean strongly against #2, because she indicated that she would release them on her own time schedule and put them out their for public scrutiny. She was going to have a BBC reporter tell her whole side of the story and release her values. Also she showed me letters from independent doping experts who said the values were not consistent with doping. She wanted WADA to clear her name publicly. That was the end game for her. Also she felt a lot of animosity against the Sunday Times.

My take on this is Paula felt when the Sunday Times first confronted her she thought they were going to say she was like Shobukhova and the Russians. The way she described it to me, they showed her the Russians values and she wasn't surprised saying one of them had been busted and the other she had been calling a cheat for years. Then they showed her her values and implied she was just like the Russians.

Paula said it was in that context she said, "You do that and I'll sue you." She was worried about what the granny on the street in England would think if there wasn't the proper context. I told her I believed long term the truth would win out and people would understand how she could be clean and have "suspicious" values. I felt long term if her values were suspicious because of doping that would come out. However, the values she showed me, only had I think one value above any suspicious altitude off-score cutoff. So to the layman (me) they were way less damning than I thought they would be.

She told me another story that implied very bad faith by some of the parties involved (I'm trying to verify it). That along with her indication that she was going to release her values in conjunction with a full explanation detailing the whole back story did not give me the impression she was hiding anything. She was just delaying things a few weeks or months. I thought this was a bad strategy but people she trusted advised her to do it.

While I'm not qualified to assess the values on my own, she did give me enough knowledge to debunk what she said about her values if it wasn't true and to call her out if in the next few months her values were not released on her time schedule with the full story told. So just speed up the process now.

When I spoke to Paula today very briefly (less than a minute she was going to a school function for her kids) she almost seemed relieved now that she didn't have to tiptoe around to make sure someone did not name her off of her own time schedule. She said something along the lines, "you can say whatever you want now. Nothing to hold back."

So I welcome the public scrutiny. I still believe she has nothing to hide. If that is the case, we'll see if the public is smart enough to believe that. If she has something to hide, then shame on her, but I still don't think that is the case.

I'll post the full thing tomorrow about Beijing.

The cycling/track trend after an event like this is for fellow athletes, coaches, handlers, and hanger ons to now step forward and discuss the shady things they've seen. So far no one else has publicly done so. Anyone associated with Paula's doping would fetch a high price for an interview with the British press. This leads me to believe she may be telling the truth.

wejo wrote:

The way she described it to me, they showed her the Russians values and she wasn't surprised saying one of them had been busted and the other she had been calling a cheat for years. Then they showed her her values and implied she was just like the Russians.

Are you saying Radcliffe has values are similar to two "known" cheats? Or, are you saying they (Sunday Times) claimed the values are similar and she has no way to know. That's an honest question.

It's not WADA's job to help an athlete. Not at all. The only org that can help her is the IAAF. It must be nice to walk through life that uninformed about your own profession and have no consequences.

There is nothing to lose by choosing transparency.

wejo wrote:

Link wrote:

If she has her blood values from the report, why didn't she release those with her statement today? They're going to come out anyway. On the small chance that she's clean, this is a glaring mistake; she's learned nothing from this.

And are you really qualified to understand those results, Wejo? Did she think that you are? Why did she show them to you, then?

My take on this is Paula felt when the Sunday Times first confronted her she thought they were going to say she was like Shobukhova and the Russians. The way she described it to me, they showed her the Russians values and she wasn't surprised saying one of them had been busted and the other she had been calling a cheat for years. Then they showed her her values and implied she was just like the Russians.

I'm even more worried now having read this.

And why is she calling someone who hasn't been busted a cheat?

I thought its all about due process and trusting the authorities.

Yes and no. Yes on the athlete, but no on the suspicious values.Of course, only now, after the statement from Paula confirms previous speculation and assumption, can we be more certain that she was the athlete in question. It's a question of degree of certainty.But the Sunday Times said the unnamed athlete had 3 values with a 1 in 1000 chance of being unnatural. The "new evidence" says that only one value was slightly above "1 in 100", and no blood result is close to "1 in 1000".If indeed, no values were "1 in 1000", and only one value was "1 in 100" (which can also reasonably be explained by non-doping factors), then there really never was any story about the IAAF not following up on Paula.

Not anymore wrote:

rekrunner - you can no longer cling to your shred of hope that Paula was not the unnamed British runner with suspicious values.

So she showed you her blood values? These are the blood values that she won't reveal because (a) they are personal, and (b) open to "wrong" interpretation, but at the same time she has no problem showing them to you? I wonder why?

Isn't it at all worrying to you that she can apparently condemn these Russian athletes as cheats based on evidence that was gathered using exactly the same protocols that the evidence against her was gathered? Can you not make the logical link that, if we are assigning guilt based on evidence gathered under a previous paradigm, either all the people she has been accusing of cheating over the years are equally as innocent as she is, or they are all guilty?

You can't have it both ways.

rekrunner wrote:

Yes and no. Yes on the athlete, but no on the suspicious values.

Of course, only now, after the statement from Paula confirms previous speculation and assumption, can we be more certain that she was the athlete in question. It's a question of degree of certainty.

But the Sunday Times said the unnamed athlete had 3 values with a 1 in 1000 chance of being unnatural. The "new evidence" says that only one value was slightly above "1 in 100", and no blood result is close to "1 in 1000".

If indeed, no values were "1 in 1000", and only one value was "1 in 100" (which can also reasonably be explained by non-doping factors), then there really never was any story about the IAAF not following up on Paula.

Not anymore wrote:

rekrunner - you can no longer cling to your shred of hope that Paula was not the unnamed British runner with suspicious values.

Wrong. The protocol ONLY gives the 1/100 threshold and that alone can be enough to get you busted, or lead to further testing.

There may of course be some unwritten further rule/guideline we don't know about. I have wondered if in fact the procedure is that they will bust you on passport alone if you meet the 1/1000 level.

Phil Knight wrote:

The cycling/track trend after an event like this is for fellow athletes, coaches, handlers, and hanger ons to now step forward and discuss the shady things they've seen. So far no one else has publicly done so. Anyone associated with Paula's doping would fetch a high price for an interview with the British press. This leads me to believe she may be telling the truth.

Maybe I'm just forgetting, but it wasn't until 2009 - 3 years after Armstrong dodged a bullet similar to the one PR is facing - that anyone but the Andreu's were publicly accusing Lance of anything. It was still 3 years after that before he was finally brought down.

Right now, what I notice is that none of her contemporaries are rushing to her defense, either. Given the danger that they could some day be caught up in a similar situation to Paula, I'd think they'd want to defend a clean runner.

But it's very early either way. The British tabloids now have this in their teeth. As do have reputable journalists. We may get to the bottom of this much faster than with Lance. Hopefully....

Yes, only now we have a basis that the Sunday Times was talking about Paula. It was speculation and assumption before.What needs to be confirmed now was that any values at all were "1 in 1000". Was Paula ever part of the story, or was she just dragged into to it by sensationalist journalists to help make a non-story relevant? I'm waiting to see if Ashenden will comment specifically on Paula's values.I'm all for independent expert review of the blood values, (or bribery rumors), but think that making them public is a big mistake, as a large minority of the fans will be unable to interpret it, and use the data to confirm what they always believed, no matter what it shows.The lesson we should learn from cycling is that the sports federation should not be the one policing the sport, because there is a conflict of interest. This looks like a step Coe wants to make with the IAAF.The lesson we should learn from Bernard Lagat, is that making his results public was a huge mistake that only caused harm, and helped nothing.

pop_pop!_v2.0 wrote:

Not so baseless now, are they rekrunner?

Look at all the good hiding test scores has done the IAAF:

Diack/Russia/BOD Bribes

Persistent rumors of bribes at NADO-level sanctions.

General perception T&F is mostly sports fraud.

Please stop using words like innocent/guilt. There is no such thing in sports administration. None.

Clean athletes would benefit the most from having all results published. But, you know that already. You are here to defend dopers and doping, the same old IAAF.

I'm all for independent expert review of the blood values, (or bribery rumors), but think that making them public is a big mistake, as a large minority of the fans will be unable to interpret it, and use the data to confirm what they always believed, no matter what it shows.

There seems to be some confusion about the off-score values and the 1/100 or 1/1000 chance

I would like to see this clarified

Also do any of paula's explanations such as dehydration and time of testing amount to much.

Today's telegraph says her specific results were 1/1000

Ok, papers are saying 3 tests in the "1/1000" Mark, Paula is saying none above "1/100". Wejo, you've seen the readings - just tell us.

When will we know. wrote:

Ok, papers are saying 3 tests in the "1/1000" Mark, Paula is saying none above "1/100". Wejo, you've seen the readings - just tell us.

To be fair, the Telegraph is reporting that ST reported that.

Do we know if any other papers have the actual test results? Is Paul still going to sue ST if they release them without her permission?