More Kenyans busted

Once again, pharmacists and doctors are not the experts who can offer expert opinions about elite performance. That is simply not the same as physiology.

Your safe bet cannot be found at the top of all time performance lists. The men were non-existant for many decades, despite 70 years of doping. The women had some limited success in middle distance, and one runner in the marathon. No country doped more than Russia since the '80s.

You think Russia's continued use is proof of effect, but on the contrary, their lack of performance demonstrates that use does not lead necessarily lead to better performances.

I do not think doctors/pharmacists/athletes are stupid. You are the one who is speaking on their behalf, often contradicting them, or putting words in their mouth when they don't speak.

Armstronglivs, the situation is not as you think. NO EXPERTS of WADA have any knowledge about training, and ALL THEIR STUDIES are not based on the effects of the training of top athletes (that they don't know), but only on the effect of doping in athletes of different talent and, especially, of different training.

There is NO research where the "training" is detailed in the most important particulars : total mileage, percentage of the intensity related with the speed of the race, different workouts (long easy run, long fast run, intensive-estensive tests, long intervals, short intervals, long recovery, short recovery, days of recovery between different workouts, reached level of lactate for different types of training, influence on the athlete physiology regarding the percentage of recruiting of fast fibers, intervention of different type of long run on the number of mytochondria, increase of the permeability of the cell membranes, increase of the mjuscle reactivity, change in the running efficiency, change in the biomechanic form, increase in the velocity of elimination of lactate, and, at the end, the influence of all the above factors for changing the MENTALITY of every athlete.

So really do you think that doctors/pharmacists working for Antidoping can consider all the above factors as important for their research ?

What they can say is that with EPO you can improve the transport of Oxygen (this is a fact) but in many cases athletes using blood manipulation are not able to improve their PB run years before in clean way.

And don't say I don't believe in the effects of doping. I don't believe in effects of EPO as main reason of the continuous improvement in the performances of long distances, but is my convinction that steroids can increase the performance also at top level. Under this point of view, also myself thinks that if I administered some illegal steroid to my athletes, probably the WR of Shaheen could be under 7'50" and the marathon of Mosop under 2:02'. I never denied this possibility. But my experience about the big improvements with top athletes for the effects of EPO clearly makes me to think that all the conclusions of the scientists/doctors working for antidoping are only "propaganda" without any fundation if referred to top athletes, and for that reason I consider the "expert" of blood manipulation the most important testimonial PRO doping, thanks to their overevaluation of the advantages in the performances, that pushes athletes almost sure not to be tested (amateurs, schoolboys, masters, and generally weak runners) to take the illegal substance for having minutes of improvement, making doping more important than training.

You are talking to someone who has no interest in a serious discussion.

So the goal posts shift again. No one is arguing that doping is the only path; the issue is whether the best-trained athletes could improve further with doping. So here is the question: take a top athlete who is optimally trained, could they run even faster if they doped? Renato appears to say "maybe". But he can't be sure, because he says he has never worked with doped athletes (that he knows of). I would say they can, because altitude-trained athletes have doped for decades. There have been studies conducted on altitude-trained athletes that show an improvement from doping. The extent of the improvement will vary from athlete to athlete but there will be a gain.

The argument, meanwhile, that the best athletes won't gain from doping is based on an unproven assumption that their physical capacity cannot be increased through doping. If that were true then none of these athletes would see improvements from training, either. But they do. If training can lift their ceiling then so can doping, by enhancing the physiological factors necessary to improving performance.

That's the typical response of someone who cannot cope with an opinion that isn't their own.

Is elite performance based on physiology? Do the experts on drugs know how drugs can affect physiology? If they do then they can gauge the effects of drugs on enhancing the physiological features inherent in elite performance. Their perspective is also combined with that of coaches and trainers who assist WADA. Your "experts" on elite performance are experts on training and competing - like Lydiard was - they are not scientists who are expert on human physiology.

To imply Russians haven't benefited from their doping is off-the-charts doping denial. Unlike E Africans, whose only significant sport has been md and distance running, Russians have featured in a wide range of sports. They have rivalled the US for decades on the medal tables. The Kenyans haven't.

I don't speak for pharmacological and medical experts; I simply note that they advise WADA about drugs they see can have an unfair performance enhancing effect and/or deleterious health consequence, if so used.

Renato, I am not persuaded simply by your writing longer and longer posts.

WADA uses experts in the sport, who know about modern training methods - and drug use. They advise WADA that certain drugs are being used by athletes and WADA then consults pharmacological and medical experts on the effects of those drugs, both on performance and on health. From that, WADA makes a decision on whether the drug should be banned.

Your detailed material on training schedules is only that - training schedules. This is stuff that has been known by coaches for decades and it has become accepted knowledge in the sport through gauging its effects on the athletes using it. It hasn't required being a biologist or any other kind of scientist to know that it works. You bandy pseudoscientific terms around ("permeability of cell membranes") but are you such a scientist? If this knowledge were necessary to elite performance coaches would all be boffins. They aren't. As for scarcely educated Kenyan athletes - they wouldn't have a clue what you are talking about. And they are the ones doing the running.

I will go with a couple of other experts, who knew quite a bit about elite performance. Percy Cerutty, who coached Herb Elliott, said "training is simple". And so did the three-time Olympic champion, Peter Snell - who gained a PhD in exercise physiology (which is more than what you have, if I understand your credentials correctly).

As I have said many times, what has impressed me the most about what doping is able to do - for every kind of athlete - is that the practice has grown worldwide and in every sport; it calls on the latest pharmacological, medical and scientific knowledge, together with the latest sports knowledge. No sport is immune from doping and some simply couldn't exist without it now. That includes distance running. The debate about whether doping "works" or not, to enhance performance of athletes from recreational to championship level, is long over.

Well no -- I was just saying where the disagreement was, even if you are both saying "maybe".

Which studies on altitude athletes do you refer to? I can only recall one, and the altitude based athletes ran 9 minute 3000m time trials at marathon pace as a baseline and at half-marathon pace on EPO.

You are talking about doping and training theoretically with false equivalencies, as someone without any qualifications in either domain. Performance is a system optimization problem. Improving one or two physiological parameters does not necessarily mean the overall system will be better optimized.

There is a link, but performance and physiology are not the same thing. The physiological model for performance can be quite complex, and using drugs to tweak one or two things does not necessarily make the overall performance better. You measure performance with a stop-watch, not with VO2max tests or blood tests or muscle mass. To guage the effect requires simulating real conditions that occur in races -- something your amateurs do not do.

When I speak of Russian benefits, I look at Russian impacts on all time historical running performances in the last few decades. I'm not all that interested in the rest of the wide range of sports, like racewalking, weightlifting, or chess. What have their men done on the track or the roads, besides walking?

You also mentioned Spain earlier (either in this thread, or another), but again, looking at all-time performances, Spain hardly stands out at the European level, let alone the world stage.

Distorting people's words, and presenting your opinions as facts is something you often do. This is not about not coping with your opinion.

Just stating a fact. We are not talking about opinions. You don't even accept not debatable facts like numbers of records and/or medals if they don't fit to your view. You never agree when it's just proved you were wrong on something. Dozens of examples for this.

I want to share a my experience with Russian coaches in 2015. I received an e-mail from Vadim Zelichenok, IAAF responsible of the IAAF Center in Moscow (on 11th December) with the invitation to go Moscow for a clinic with the Russian coaches of middle and long distances. The message, after a first communication in Russian language (that I was not able to understand), included the invitation for supervising the activity of National coaches during 3 training camps in Kislovodsk, how you can see :

Dear Renato,
Once again lots of thanks for your kind proposal.
This is to inform you that we have drawn up an approximate timetable of training camps for 2016, and for endurance running I am pleased to confirm that we will organize three camps in Kislovodsk in spring., i.e., in March, April and May, each camp will last from the 8th until the 25th. Please, advise, how many times you will be able to come and specify the dates, so that we could issue an invitation for your multi – entry visa to Russia and organize your travel.
Best regards,
Vadim Zelichenok
IAAF RDC Moscow Director

That invitation came after being the lecturer in Moscow in October 2015 for a 3 days clinic, for explaining to the coaches how it was possible to improve without doping.

At that time, Russian Federation (after the scandal of Sochi Winter Games) appointed Yuriy Borzakovskiy as Head Coach. Yuriy showed me the papers with the training plans of the coaches, and some times there was a small * a side of the plan. Yuriy explained this was the programmed doping as part of the normal training, that every coach had to do, following the official training schedules working for all the national coaches.

I started my lecture asking which was the best performance some Russian athlete achieved in the season in 5000m (of course I already knew...), and they told me " 13'35"43 by Anatoly Rybakov", one of the 2 twins who dominated the national list for almost 10 years.

So, I attacked : "Do you know that 58 years ago one of your athletes, running in Rome without rabbit, tartan and doping, bettered the WR running 13'35" ? Somebody can explain me why you need to use doping for running SLOWER than 58 years ago, when EPO still didn't exist ?".

The lack of the knowledge about the athletic history is one of the main reasons because the level of performances is overevaluated, and today there is the idea that athletes need to dope for performances that 40 years ago were normal, at top level.

Maybe in 1980-85 the best athletes used doping, but for what I know the massive doping regarded steroids, used in heavy percentage. In 1988 the fight against steroid became more effective (remember Ben Johnson), and as consequence we can still see WR in throwing (Men and Women), in jumping (men and women) and in sprint (women) run in that period. This means that, with training only, in those events is not possible to reach the same level of strength athletes can achieve using steroids.

In the endurance events, the type of doping was the blood manipulation, starting with self transfusions. When in 1971 Vaatainen won 5000 and 10000 in Europen Championships, and the practice of self transfusion was well known, all the world didn't consider this aswa a form of doping, but as "advanced methodology" thanks to a leading group of Finnish scientists (Komi, Vikho and the Italian Carmel Bosco living in Finland).

That practic replaced the training in altitude, used only few times after the first experiences organized by some Federation before OG of Mexico City in 1968.

In Italy, the self transfusion was part of the methodology for athletes and coaches believing in that solution till 1985. Some athletes, like Alberto Cova (winner of 10000m in Europen Champions 1982, WCh 1983, OG 1984 and World Cup 1985), or Salvatore Antibo, used that method, some other (like Stefano Mei, current President Italian Federation Europen Champion 1986 of 10000m, or Francesco Panetta, WCh of steeple in 1987, or Gelindo Bordin, Olympic Champion in Marathon 1988) refused to use.

We have one athlete only who lived both the situation, and is Salvatore Antibo. When used the self transfusion withou altitude, ran 27'39", when started to use systematic altitude (in Winter South Africa and Namibia, in Summer Sestriere) with the system 3 weeks high - 3 weeks at sea level, he became by far the best European and ne of the top 3 in the world, winning silver in OG 1988, Gold in both 5000 / 10000 in European 1990, and lowing the NR to 27'16" and 13'05".

Before the Barcelona Games in '92, Spain averaged 2-3 medals each Olympics. At Barcelona they hauled in over twenty medals. Spain has been acknowledged by its own political leaders to have a "doping problem", with violations in every kind of sport.

Russians have doped in a huge variety of sports - as with the old E Bloc. It has been reflected in their success in those sports. But they have also been up against other nations that also dope.

There are certain physiological features that are crucial to performance. If those features are enhanced by a given drug the experts say it has the "potential" to be performance-enhancing (but for ethical reasons they won't seek to prove it by actually doping athletes), and when athletes are using the drug you can guarantee it is performance enhancing.

However, by finding that a drug is potentially performance enhancing the drugs experts are not claiming to measure by how much it could enhance performance. That isn't their purpose. That will be measured by stopwatches - as you say - but none of the doping athletes and their coaches will be telling anyone how much they have gained. We have to guess. But at elite and professional level it is in plain sight - on the track and on the roads. The stopwatch (and the near miraculous absence of fatigue) is also telling us that.

I think you were referring there to Vladimir Kuts running 13:35 for the 5k in the late '50's. We see today Kenyan and Ethiopian women runners closing in on his record (Kuts first broke Zatopek's 5k record when he ran in the 13:50's), not to mention male marathon runners nearly running at the same speed for sections of the race. It is hard to see how training alone has enabled that kind of improvement.

The other notable point is that although you were invited by Russian sports administrators in 2015 to provide advice about how to improve performance without drugs Russia has since become the worst offender and the only country thus far to incur a national ban. They obviously felt drugs were more effective than just training.

Interesting, over 1 minute improvement at the very top with steroids...

What do you think about HGH, Mr. Canova? Good to extend someone's career, or helpful even for 25 year olds, or just a placebo for marathon runners?

If you can't cope with a debate then don't enter it.

Vladimir Kuts was Ukrainian.