Benard Kibet Koech, 5th in Paris Olympic 10,000, POPPED

They only seem endless and pointless as posters like you continue erect new goalposts to avoid ending the discussion of your original point. I was talking about your original point of "decline" of national records at the very top in track, and rather than properly ending that discussion, you inexplicably changed the topic to "effect of testing and bans".

You accuse me of being unclear about my stance on "effect", but that simply wasn't among any of the points I was making. For some reason, you are trying to bait me about some point you want to make about "effect", something I haven't really given any thought to, nor am I convinced I should. Again, I responded to your point about "decline". Rather than acknowledging the counter-examples, that indeed there was no similar decline on the roads, but in fact the polar opposite, you start talking to me about the "effect" of testing and bans on Kenyan success, as if I had already argued, or ever argued, "no effect". I don't understand why you are pretending this is an argument between the both of us, rather than you just arguing both sides, trying to put the contrary arguments in my mouth.

You also say these are my examples, but in fact they were your examples. I'm still not sure what point you are trying to make with these examples. I already conceded there is an effect, that banning athletes reduces the success attributed to that one athlete, one ban at a time. If you want to argue that that is "significant", please be my guest.

The one thing I did say was that your suggestion of a deterrent effect is not "well supported". That's not saying it is "wrong", or "arguing against all (your) points" or "disagreeing", but saying it is wanting for facts -- something that seems should be important to one who posts as "facts are facts".

In any case, you denied saying it, so it seems that that wasn't arguing against your point at all, but rather some seeming misunderstanding on my part that you were talking about a deterrent effect.

Giving it more rigorous thought, I struggle to find precedents where testing and bans have had significant effects on the success of athletes, with the exception of steroids around the late '80s, apart from the ban itself and that banned athlete's results. Typically any effect is temporary and short-lived, as creative athletes and their teams find workarounds or new drugs, to continue doping and techniques to evade detection. EPO testing forced athletes to go back to old school transfusions and micro-dose. BALCO developed an undetectable steroid. Many continue to say that the dopers are always ahead of the testers.

And to hear some tell it, despite all the testing and banning, doping is more prevalent then ever, as much as 100%. Look at Sledgehammer saying "all top Kenyans dope" and "every person at the top of the top uses it", for example "guys like Hocker, Kerr, Jakob", "16-year-old lad", and "Bell" -- "they all use pharmaceutical products to push that last 10% of their performances".

Some testing policies can have a negative effect on success, when there are no tests or no bans. Creating categories and putting Kenya in Category A creates another barrier to competing, for both clean and doped athletes, who are not tested or not banned.

Yes, those were your examples, cherry-picked from my larger list of banned Kenyan stars.

Here you picked Kibiwott Kiptum to make the point of "8 more Kenyans running faster than him".

But:

a) I also mentioned banned Rhonex Kipruto - and only 1 Kenyan ever ran faster than him.

b) I also mentioned banned Kibiwott Kandie - and no Kenyan ever ran faster than him.

c) 8 Kenyans - some thereof now banned too - in over seven years, with improved shoe tech, is not that much.

d) Kiptum himself was just starting out - most likely he himself would have run faster, especially when considering that his WR was from 2018 in the first generation of supershoes.

Yes -without those bans, the Kenyans would indeed have been more successful in the half.

You might want to go back to that starting point on page 3 (even that was not my original point, see pages 2 + 3). I'll do it for you:

That specific discussion you are referring to started with post #47.
charlesyo: "We have greater numbers of men approaching once "out of reach" WR's, but the mens Kenyan medal haul at the Olympics has dramatically tapered off."

Note: that comment came from the discussion of increased testing and bans!

Thoughtsleader: "It has? I think people have a misunderstanding of how prolific Kenya was getting Olympic distance medals."

facts are facts: "Well, look at age of the Kenyan National Records. And remember that we are now in the superspikes era, where everyone should get faster.
Event 800 1500 3000 5000 10000 3000-steeple
NR 2012 2001 1999 1997 1997 2011
Vast majority pre-ABP, during the EPO heydays. Not a single record in men's track events since the AIU was created. That is a whopping 6 : 0!"

My "original point": I added the track NRs in support of charlesyo's point of a smaller "mens Kenyan medal haul at the Olympics", to emphasize that they didn't coincidentally get fewer medals. No more, no less.

You are welcome.

Thanks.

In post #76, you explicitly clarified what your point was: "My point was that, yes, and that the increased AIU testing led to a decline of top Kenyan performances at the very top." Also in the same post, "Banning stars ... doesn't just remove those (for a few years), but also scares others into doping less."

These are your points that I responded to. I'll concede that they are not original. I wonder though, if AIU testing led to a decline on the track, did it also lead to all the world records on the roads, despite how scared other athletes were?

I'll just repeat what I said earlier -- neither of these points are well-supported.

I picked Kibiwott Kiptum? Who is that?

I did pick a subset of your examples that didn't seem to support "scares others into doping less".

You did mention Kipruto and Kandie -- were they scared into doping less after A. Kiptum's ban?

Now you are saying that 8 Kenyans breaking a 2018 WR set with the benefit of 1st generation supershoes, over 7 years, is not that much? Wow. OK. I wonder what the consensus is on that. How about 9 Kenyans? (Must have miscounted before.)

Just for clarification, are you saying success would have been more than 9 Kenyans running faster than A. Kiptum's WR, but for the bans, because the other Kenyans were too scared to dope more?

Keep in mind that this is the AIU testing era, which allegedly led to a decline in Kenyan success. In the preceding pre-AIU testing era, Tadese's WR stood for 8 years before A. Kiptum broke it, or 0 Kenyans over that 7 year period.