Wejo (and others): Tell me why Paula wasn't a doper.

rojo wrote:

9:20 + 3200 guys don't place top 100 much anymore at all.

He did run 29:45 here.

I can name a couple of 9:20+ guys from my area alone who went on to finish top 100 at NCAA D1 XC. One of them, a former teammate of mine, finished top 20.

The ones I'm thinking of ran quite a bit quicker than 29:45 as well. Nothing against Sage or your handling of him (I really know next to nothing about him or the situation...I'm sure he's a hard worker and talented athlete and you coached him well), but your argument seems really weak. Founded on false assumptions and poor logic. Like usual.

London Marathon does blood tests, much more stringent than urine

I didn't know what a SARM was until this thread.

I just don't buy the "well they're better than everyone else so they must be doping" line. If that's the case then our sport is dead. I love our sport.

Sure people can ask questions and they do ask questions. Doping speculation is a huge topic of conversation among hard core runners. That is why people ask questions on here because this is the hangout of those most informed in the sport. By not pretending these questions don't exist I believe we help make the sport cleaner for a few reasons. 1) The authorities in the sport will push for better tests if the public is concerned about doping 2) The clean athletes will want better test to a) get rid of the cheats and b) show they are clean.

I know the huge improvements I made in the sport by training the best way properly. Thus I believe it is possible for the Radcliffes, Bolts, Ucenys, Farahs of the world. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be vigilant or be afraid to ask questions.

A couple observations....

1. Some drugs will increase performance all on their own. Some steroids will put mass on you without you doing any training at all. EPO will make you faster even if you lay on the couch. EPO and certain steroids also will give you the ability to train harder and recover faster.

2. I think it's extremely naive to think athletes wouldn't dope to make millions of dollars or even hundreds of thousands.

Here's my question to all the decent runners out there....let's say I have a PED program for you that takes you from mid pack in the Diamond League to first or from an Olympic afterthought to first or from just another runner to a winner and record holder. You go from making tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands or even millions. Athletes in all sports: cycling, track, football, baseball, basketball, etc all come to the same conclusion...if you want to compete and be successful and make a living off the sport you love then you will likely have to dope. Of course there will be the few, like Wejo, and most western runners who can do just fine for themselves without running. But for the majority of top level athletes....the opportunity to dope, the availability of products, and the financial windfall to follow would simply be too great to pass up.

Radcliffe's marathon is rated according to IAAF tables as better than Flo-Jos 100m/200m, better than Koch's 400m and better than MJ's 400m.

There are always going to be athletes who "try harder than anyone" and who have "the highest pain tolerance I've ever seen". I think the same super human qualities were given to Lance at one time as well. I'll just continue to assume everyone at the top is on something and just continue to enjoy the freak show.

Alan

Was Actovegin not illegal or detectable when she was in her prime?

Actovegin is not tested for, but is not huge either with regards to performance. Blood doping is what makes a difference, and to some extent testosterone and growth hormone at low doses used during base training. Medications like thyroidea and insulin does also have a positive effect if used correctly, but can also be very dangerous if used incorrect.

I also agree very much with Sir Lance about judging some athletes based on feelings rather than objective knowledge.

“If someone disagrees with you all you can do is appeal to scientific values and if he doesn’t share those values the conversation is over. If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument are you going to provide to show the importance of logic?"

-Sam Harris

According to the "guilty until proven innocent crowd", we must assume Paula is a post-op transexual immigrant from Jupiter's moon Europa. So what if she's never tested positive for post-op Jovian transexuality? As with any statistical outlier of athletic performance, the suspicion that they are not human is there. According to you, suspicion, not evidence, is what matters.

Lots of people have enjoyed putting words in my mouth. I'm not looking for anyone to PROVE anything. I'm looking for people to CONVINCE others of something. I've always believed Paula to be clean.

Alberto Contadoro wrote:

Frozen blood samples do not mean anything, there is so many ways to dope that is completely not detectable. Other medicines that have half lives of a few hours, the samples will be clear of every trace and no thinkable future apparatus can detect what does not exists.

Is that a professional opinion? Because I think Rachid Ramzi and the other athletes who had their Beijing samples stored and later tested positive for CERA would wish that were the case.

I'd like to see some science on the matter, especially since forensic toxicologists can determine what drugs a person consumed well into the stages of decomposition.

Where are these blood samples of Paula's stored? Have there been any re testing of these samples in the last 12-24 months? I wonder will these samples be re tested? Paula's record marathon is better than many "suspected drug users" best performances, why is there any doubt why many would think she was aided by pharmaceuticals.

Cera stays in the system for several weeks, only athletes with very little knowledge will use it.

Ramzi likely got told no test for it had been developed.

Search around for the half lives of intravenously administered epo, hgh, igf, insulin, those are most common.

Then you have self transfusion.

A small dose of epo injected into a vein before bed, is out of the body long before breakfast.

Of course there are medications that stays in the body for a very long time, like most steroids. So if someone agree to freeze their samples it certainly means they do not use any new undetectable steroid similar to that developed by BALCO, or new pegylated ESA with long half life.

But if we talk about endurance, to my knowledge steroid use is minimal anyway.

'Radcliffe's marathon is rated according to IAAF tables as better than Flo-Jos 100m/200m, better than Koch's 400m and better than MJ's 400m'

The tables are outdated

The marathon is a relatively new event.She is the only woman to have raced the whole distance without coasting.

Those records will not be beat, at least not in the next 20 yrs, Paula's will

Your analyisis is flawed because you like the power events, they are pretty much doped up. The distances are different although the womens side is more suspect. Still training/living at altitude gives the same effect as EPO and on both there is a limit as to how far you can go. Using both does not double the improvement

It still comes back to one thing, on here if you are caught doping people will believe your BS excuses. Meanwhile those who never fail a test are guilty. Muppets!

If Radcliffe was African and coached by Dr. Rosa would we even have any doubt? This conversation suffers from a lot of Western bias.

Other women have had pacers.

Other women have trained just as hard.

She is competing in a sport filled with dopers.

Yet no one's been within 4-5 minutes of 2:15.

If you assume everyone is doped, yet you still beat them by 4-5 minutes, then it is STILL a testament to your skill and hard work. Doping isn't cheating if EVERYONE is doing it. So in the same way Lance killed everyone in a doped up sport it was still his skill and hard work that shined through. If Radcliffe has found some new doping agent or combination then by now more would have found it as well and we'd see more women closing in on 2:15. The fact that we don't tells us a lot about how hard she did work. Still doesn't mean she didn't dope.

Alan

Look at it from a different angle.

Paula’s a true English girl, born and bred, family middle class with an ancestry back to the Elizabethan times.

And a national heroine.

Now, what would be the reaction in this country, were she to be caught out taking drugs?

Well, unlike our other drug scandals in the past, it would be headline news in all the media for days on end.

She’d be hounded by press, TV and the paparazzi and she would most certainly have to leave the country for good.

And not only that, her family would be shamed and they’d probably have to move to a different part of the country and live anonymous lives.

Paula isn’t daft and knows full well the consequences of her being caught would be far greater than the punishment meted out to the average drug cheat.

I believe that if the thought of taking illegal supplements had ever occurred to her for a brief moment - she’d have instantly rejected the idea, knowing full well the unacceptable cost of being found out.

There are some athletes in certain sports that even if they were to fail a drugs test it would not be made public because of the damage it would do to the reputation of the sport. Paula is one of those athletes. I doubt she was a doper, she trained meticulously with a heavy involvement of some of the world's best sport scientists and had the greatest possible facilities available to her.

I have followed the progression of elite women for 4 decades and coached several Olympians. If you have followed the sport and Paula for a long time, you can see that she was always going out hard and dying in her races. Little by little her training allowed her to go farther and farther at an incredible pace. Sometimes she would blow up horribly, other times she would maintain and set an incredible mark. That contributed to her injury status and inconsistencies. Based on her progression and ability to put it on the line each time she competed, I would consider her to be clean. I follow this site almost daily but rarely reply. But I felt that the OP was indicating an unfair bias in his question.

clockwork bill wrote:

There are some athletes in certain sports that even if they were to fail a drugs test it would not be made public because of the damage it would do to the reputation of the sport.

And no athlete in modern times was more likely to have it swept under the rug than the Olympic Champion and World Record holder, Justin Gatlin.

That's a good arguement.

She's morally above cheating because she comes from a good british family.

Wow.

Against the I wrote:

She's incredibly outspoken against doping. It's unfortunate she hasn't performed up to expectations in the Olympics. But she's not a doper.

Lance is also incredibly outspoken against doping.