Alex Hutchinson calls out CANOVA over study confirming EPO works on Kenyan runners

rekrunner wrote:

I'll trust your math. 0.5% progress seems inline with my 0.3%-0.8% and 0.7% for the marathon.

So given Carlos Lopes (2:07:12) and Steve Jones (2:07:13), I see you had to throw in 3 more runners, averaging 2:08:50 to get your lower pre-1990 European average of 2:08:10. Using Top-5 in case of such lack of depth of quality from smaller populations seems to be too many.

Only Europeans running faster than the 1985 marks of Carlos Lopes and Steve Jones. were Spaniard Julio Rey (2:06:51) and Portuguese Antonio Pinto (2:06:36) and French Benoit Zwierzchiewski (2:06:36) -- and now in 2018: Moen (2:05:48).

Wait a minute here Slick...I followed the protocol from your EPO-era performance thread where you compared the top 5 averages from the post-90s with the top 5 averages from the pre-90's marks. In this case, I took the average of the top 5 fastest Spanish times post-90s, and compared them to the average of top 5 fastest European times pre-90s...and now you change the guidelines because I threw in "3 more runners" with Lopes & Jones to get the top 5 average? (btw, the next 3 dudes after Lopes & Jones are all in the 2:08 range...so it's not like they're running 2:12s or something which would really bring down the average).

So, you change the guidelines to fortify your position...fine. Lets just take Rey then, the Spanish NC, and his time is faster than your two sub-2:08 guys, Lopes & Jones, who were obviously the cream of the crop in Europe, pre-90s.

Subway Surfers wrote:

Speaking of Yannis, here's the study we've been debating.

https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/health/article/2001295637/study-shows-doping-helps-kenyans-run-faster

Good fine there.

Ever heard of Ángel "Memo" Heredia Hernández? The infamous doping coach from about 10 yrs ago?

Here is an interview with him on what substances he used with and advised his athletes to take. Also, interesting info on why EPO is used by sprinters including the EPO-roid-GH stack Marion Jones was on.

Recent interview with Angel on the current state of doping:

Let's not forget that one of the Belgian guys who paced Lopes to his WR later ran under 2:08 a couple of times himself a number of years later. Of course he was strongly suspected of doping.

But even then: a) If the top-5 times were "clean", we learned that EPO was not an important factor for top times, in the EPO-era. b) Learning EPO is better than blood transfusion (+ more steroids) is enough to curb some of the more exagerrated claims. I don't think my numbers "prove" anything about EPO effect. Much of what I say relies on my expectation that these numbers would be much larger, for non-Africans too, since EPO was global, and not local, and for a decade, the lack of testing was also global, not local. Arguments about steroids and a decline of interest did not persuade me that at least 5 athletes, with sufficient talent, (or even just 1), from 5-continents, over nearly 3 decades, would not at least try to leverage the full power of EPO, with or without steroids.

casual obsever wrote:

Exactly, and either way (assuming the worst/best equally for Baumann and Bekele):

The difference between Baumann and 12:37 then must not be drugs, but something else, like talent.

Do the same for the best pre-1990 non-African mark: 13:00.41.

So let's assume the worst for the 12:54 + 13:00 --

Or let's assume the best for the 12:54 + 13:00 --

I tried to get you to understand this years ago: such a comparison, when done under consistent postulations, will either show the difference between a) clean times, or the difference between b) EPO times with limited roids and blood transfusions with unlimited roids.

In case a), you learn nothing about EPO.

In case b), you might learn whether or not EPO is better than blood transfusion (+ more steroids).

Yet you continue to claim that your numbers prove that EPO isn't an effective performance enhancer.

Fair enough. Lombard improved by 10% in a short time, when he changed his coach, made significant changes in his training, and took EPO. He is an exceptional outlier and not the general rule. I don't need a crystal ball -- I say he was a potential sub-28 runner, because EPO is not a proven 10% drug for distance running. And I would not consider a claim that EPO caused the 10%, that did not even attempt to address other significant circumstances that could have partially contributed to the improvements. I suppose that athletes who have confessed when they started, or evidence existed like prescriptions or receipts, had their results annulled without ABP data as evidence.

I have already mentioned several times, that while I did use "top-5" averages, trying to use the same guideline with smaller populations risk including significantly slower times, due to a lack of depth of quality. I paid special attention to this, and specifically noted that for the women, in the longer distances, the lack of maturity in the times lead to lower references, and much larger "post-1990" figures versus the men. I did not change the guidelines, but just noted that 2 times were 2:07:1x, and the remaining three must average 1:40 slower, at 2:08:50. As I already noted this several times, that this is what I feared would happen, I thought it appropriate to demonstrate that that is what happened because we shrank the samples to just European marathon performances. Then, like I said it was fair, and you seem to have accepted, I compared the fastest Spaniard, Rey, to Pinto (POR) and Benoit (FRA). My position is that Spain stands out when it comes to examples of doping busts, doping rings, etc., but does not particularly stand out, when comparing their times to non-Africans, and now just other Europeans. I didn't change the guidelines to fortify that position. Using my and your guidelines, 0.5% progress against this weaker European reference, for the marathon is rather small, for a doping nation, in an event which Subway thinks benefits the most from EPO. And Rey was still slower than a Portuguese and a Frenchman.

rekrunner wrote:

Fair enough. Lombard improved by 10% in a short time, when he changed his coach, made significant changes in his training, and took EPO. He is an exceptional outlier and not the general rule.

I don't need a crystal ball -- I say he was a potential sub-28 runner, because EPO is not a proven 10% drug for distance running. And I would not consider a claim that EPO caused the 10%, that did not even attempt to address other significant circumstances that could have partially contributed to the improvements.

I suppose that athletes who have confessed when they started, or evidence existed like prescriptions or receipts, had their results annulled without ABP data as evidence.

Hardly...Poistagova, who laid out her program & washout period in the lead up London (EPO & oxandrolone), was elevated to silver. It's bad enough with all the doping in this sport but sh*t like this makes the sport lose all credibility and suggests major corruption.

Wow! Pretty devastating revelations.

"Oh yes, of course. There are tablets for the kidneys that block the metabolites of steroids, so when athletes give a urine sample, they don’t excrete the metabolites and thus test negative. Or there is an enzyme that slowly consumes proteins - epo has protein structures, and the enzyme thus ensures that the B sample of the doping test has a completely different value than the A sample. Then there are chemicals that you take a couple of hours before the race that prevent acidification in the muscles. Together with epo they are an absolute miracle. I’ve created 20 different drugs that are still undetectable for the doping testers."

Hmmm this reminds me of something.

"SPIEGEL: Once again: a constant performance at the world-class level is unthinkable without doping?

HEREDIA: Correct. 400 meters in 44 seconds? Unthinkable. 71 meters with a discus? No way. You might be able to run 100 meters in 9.8 seconds once with a tailwind. But ten times a year under 10 seconds, in the rain or heat? Only with doping."

Maurice Greene doesn't come off very well in this.

He says actovision but I think Actovegin is meant, so the king of drugs says it's a performance enhancer.

Pretty clear epo is a massive enhancer for sprinters.

Subway Surfers wrote:

Wow! Pretty devastating revelations.

"Oh yes, of course. There are tablets for the kidneys that block the metabolites of steroids, so when athletes give a urine sample, they don’t excrete the metabolites and thus test negative. Or there is an enzyme that slowly consumes proteins - epo has protein structures, and the enzyme thus ensures that the B sample of the doping test has a completely different value than the A sample. Then there are chemicals that you take a couple of hours before the race that prevent acidification in the muscles. Together with epo they are an absolute miracle. I’ve created 20 different drugs that are still undetectable for the doping testers."

Hmmm this reminds me of something.

Pretty devastating indeed:

SPIEGEL: So the idea that sports are a fair competition within established rules actually died long ago?

HEREDIA: Yes, of course. Unless we were to go back to ancient times. Without television, without Adidas and Nike. It’s obvious: if you finish in 8th place at a big event, you get $5,000; if you finish first you get $100,000. Athletes think about this. Then they think that everyone else dopes anyway, and they are right. And you think athletes believe in morals and ideals? Peak performances without doping are a fairytale, my friend.

Rob De Castella broke 2:08 in 1986. Oh yeah, suddenly we're only talking European.

Yes, but all of that is old news.... the truth has been out there for a while...

So from what you are claiming epo is most effective for 400m-3000m. However, we know that it was almost mandatory for major cycling tours, lasting several weeks at sub maximal effort. So that theory only partially matches with real world examples. It helps for both aerobic and anaerobic events.

There is necessarily no mystery there, because part of the rHuEPO benefit is the faster recovery between the stages because heart rate could've been lower with high Hct and there no such a recovery period during longer continuous efforts such as marathon.

In his memoirs Tyler Hamilton describes this phenomenom with riders winning time trials and shorter stage races with low hematocrit, whereas physiological cost becomes too high during multiweek tours and causes "hematocrit to drop, testosterone to dwindle. Without [EPO] and [testosterone], those costs add up".

Because only a rare doper takes care only of the hemarocrit, it isn't that clear whether stable testosterone or Hct is the crucial part particularly because falling Hct during stage races is almost totally only hemodilution and plasma expansion as such should have almost no negative effect on Vo2MAX.

It's a big mistake to try to compare the type of effort of cycling and of running.

These are the differences :

1) The duration. In cycling the average duration of every race (included the stages of big tours) is between 5 and 6 hours, in this similar an ultrarace of 100 km or longer.

2) The lack of even efforts. While in any athletic distance (from short till marathon) we have a very little variations in the speed, so the efforts are at even pace (with a final increase only, of course when the athletes have still energy...), and is possible to run at a well defined percentage of the max aerobic speed, in cycling we have continue change of speed, with intervention of both aerobic and anaerobic systems, in continue modulation.

3) Depending on the above point, in running we have a level of lactate that can only grow, from the start to the end, since there is not the possibility to recover DURING a race, also reducing a little bit the speed (something, instead, possible in training, for example when we use tests on track, modulating intensity and recovery). On the contrary, in cycling we alternate long periods at very low level of intensity (when they are in group at 40 km of speed, the HR is under 120, in some case 100) with periods where the most important quality is the anaerobic power (for example, 20' at 12-15 mml in the lactic area, using physiological characteristics that marathon runners don't have because of their training, never looking at increasing the lactic power because their effort is ALWAYS submaximal)

4) In long running events, the increase in max strength is not important, instead sometimes can create problems to the best aerobic level. More muscle strength means to increase the consumption of fuel at the same well defined speed (the speed of the race), while the physiological goal is to REDUCE the consumption of fuel, and to maintain the right and even level of thermodinamics, for the time of the marathon. In cycling, the performance depends not only on the technical action of the cyclist, but on a technical use of a machine. This means that there are more variables for increasing the speed, for example the ability to use a gear developing, for every revolution, 30cm more. So, while the speed of a runner is the product of the frequency per the length of every stride, in cycling we have the frequency of pedaling per the power of every single action, and one of the causes of the increasing speed is the improvement of the muscle strength.

5) For that reasons, the doping of cyclists is very much complicated, including a lot of substances with the goal to increase MAX STRENGTH and FAST RECOVEY, situations that in the running endurance are less important, but, shorter is the event, more important they are.

6) Reading the interview with Heredia, we can understand how the knowledge of doping from all these "DOPING ADMINISTRATORS" (like Conte too) is limited to what they did for enhancing the muscle strength and for acting on the nervous system. They speak about sprinters, throwers, jumpers, and about other sports where the only important resistance is not aerobic, but LOCAL for producing anaerobic effects connected with max intensity, and subsequential recovery. Under this point of view, EPO had the function to support all the substances part of the cocktail used by athletes of explosive events, having in this case not a direct effect on the performances, but effect on the VOLUME of training at high intensity.

But when we speak about AEROBIC EVENTS, there is the wide spread idea that EPO can be a DIRECT AID for the performance, something that Heredia and Conte don't know, because was not part of their illegal experience.

7) For runners, we have 350 days of training every year, with normally 2 session per day (we can suppose an average of 600-650 training sessions per year) for preparing 10-12 competitions, in case of marathon runners 2-3 races per year.

This means that the recovery between one session of quality and the next session of quality is not very important : what is important is the LEVEL of SPECIFIC QUALITY, connected with the event the athletes go to prepare.

This means that we need to give the priority to the SPECIFIC SESSIONS, and we can decide the time of recovery looking at the INDIVIDUAL ability in that direction. If, for example, after giving an athlete a session of 32 km including 7 km + 6 km + 5 km + 4 km + 3 km + 2 km at Marathon pace or faster (in the case of an athlete with the goal to run the full marathon at 3' per km (2:06:36), for example, 7 km at 3'02" + 6 km at 3' + 5 km at 2'58" + 4 km at 2'56" + 3 km at 2'54" + 2 km at max speed) alternated with 1 km of recovery run in 3'25" every time, something we use with top athletes, the next session of specific quality can be after 4 days, or 5 days, or 6 days, depending on the individual recovery, BUT THIS DIFFERENCE DOESN'T HAVE ANY INFLUENCE IN THE FINAL PERFORMANCE.

For cyclists, we have about 70-90 days of competition in one year, and, with the only exception of periods of preparation BEFORE the beginning of the season, IT'S NOT POSSIBLE TO DECIDE THE RIGHT MODULATION OF THE LEVEL OF THE EFFORT, since this depends on the situation of every race (and in big tours, of every stage), so in some case the assumption of substances for helping recovery becomes a must. Look, for example, what happened in Giro d'Italia to Yates, who was able to dominate the first two weeks, and was exhausted in the last 4 days.

In the big stages on the mountains, cyclists can go 5-6 times in 6 or 7 hours between 300m and 2500m of altitude, with temperatures moving in short time between 5 degrees (Celsius) and 30, creating a very high stress to their body. For example, the dehydration after a big stage in Tour de France (run in July, in full Summer) can increase the level of Hct, for a cyclist having 45 at the start, till near 60 at the arrival, and this means that he needs to have physiological solutions after the race for recreating the previous balance.

All these situations in running don't exist.

So, please, stop to use Lance Armstrong as example when we speak about EPO and doping for runners, particularly African runners, whose income in all their career can be 1/10 of the cost of doping for one year for the cyclists of Postal....

I understand your strong feeling against doping and doped athletes, but there is doping and doping, and it's always wrong to put everything in the same pot.

One other interesting tidbit about Baumann is that he used to hope for slow races, to then unleash his fierce kick, even in the 1500. For athletes like that, you can't use the normal formula to predict their 5000 time.

That he then, at age 32, became the fastest non-African over 5000 ever (over 20 years ago!), is quite sensational.

Still faster than everyone in the modern times, including Rupp with his testo meds, likely doping, testo spike, highly likely forbidden method, thyroid meds, altitude house, alter-G treadmill, and super training partner and genius coach.

Also, I see in all the interviews of Heredia and Conte the will to appear like PROTAGONISTS, giving emphasis to something that really was not so important.

For example, when Heredia speaks about the IMPOSSIBILITY to run without doping 44" in 400m, this is clearly the statement of somebody not knowing that already in 1960, with track of red earth, in the Olympic Final in Rome, Otis Davis and Karl Kaufmann were able to run in 44"9, that means 44" with the tracks of today, and with the reduction of rounds in the most important Championships.

If you ask to several persons working with one athlete winning a medal or bettering a record, which percentage they think to have in his performance (coach, manager, doctor, physio, psychologist, Federation, parents, friends, media, etc...) and you make the sum of these supposed percentages, you can have a final value of 300%, with a clear over evaluation of the role of everybody. And who was involved in some result, also if in marginal way, but wants to use it for a personal mediatic image, can easily to take merits (also negative) for something he never did, or did in very small quantity, becoming more important with the simple fact that doesn't consider all the other factors.

This is something ALWAYS happens in every physiological research, since every result "on demand" of the body is due to a combination of several factors (personal talent, training, education, ambience, enviroment, technical assistance, factors out of personal control like level of the coach and his availability, etc...), but the researchers have to extrapolate only ONE factor from a combination of factors, and this is not really "perfect" science.

I remember that, during a seminar in Baden Baden with the European Association of Sport Medicine, when I was one of the speakers together with other 6 scientists, Bengt Saltin, considered one of the most important researchers with sport athletes, told me : "You are very lucky to be a coach, because you work using ALL THE QUALITIES of the athletes, already having a GENERAL VISION of everything can produce the performance. Instead, we have to work with phenomena determined by multiple factors, but at the end we have to estrapolate from the whole some particular that is the goal of our research, and the final result never can represent the REAL intervention of the studied factor. So, always we have must have no confidence in the most acculturized coaches, who go to study everything we publish in our researches, thinking that the sum of all our researches can give the finale "whole". This is not true, because our "whole" doesn't correspond with the real "whole" we can find in nature, and that can be managed by who has the possibility to work with it only".

To summarize the only things I have claimed:

1) His 5000m PB time is only some 1 % better than his 3000m PB. If there is any claim made about the records, it is usually claimed that Komen's 3000m world record is "faster" than the 5000m record.

2) Baumann's Y-O-Y performance fluctuations in the 1990's are more in the normal range (c:a 1 %) and your claim that he focused on slow races questions how much his seasonal times even reflect his true capabilities.

I didn't address whether he doped or not nor how much he gained in performance via PEDs or whether his statistical peak in his 30's was suspicious or how his time compares to modern times. All I claimed that there is no sudden leap in performance out-of ordinary and even the statistical 14 second improvement in his 5000m times is only some 1.5-2.0 % in three years.

Unfortunate. I was asked "when was the last time anti-doping flushed a time without an IC positive or ABP data to look at?" Anti-doping agencies can use any evidence in its possession. For example, in 2012 USADA used Eddy H. confessions, and other evidence, to overcome the 8-year statute of limitations, to invalidate results from Oct. 2001 to Jan. 2004. It looks like in Poistogova's case, her interview with the WADA IC was incomplete, as was the ARD recordings, and whatever confessions she made probably lacked the sufficient detail, evidence, or corroboration, to annul her London 2012 performance. Furthermore, the IAAF is not responsible for the anti-doping for the Olympics, the IOC is. Nevertheless, the WADA IC recommended a lifetime ban for Poistogova. Rather than losing credibility, the only way to maintain credibility is to act on a solid case. Annulling results without it will just result in appeals that overturn the decision. Rather than suggesting major corruption, it suggests an inability to make a case on secret recordings and half an interview.

Barrel of Laughs wrote:

Hardly...Poistagova, who laid out her program & washout period in the lead up London (EPO & oxandrolone), was elevated to silver. It's bad enough with all the doping in this sport but sh*t like this makes the sport lose all credibility and suggests major corruption.