Aras Kaya, "turkish" x-kenyan gets 3 years for EPO.

How many apples add up to an orange? Let's parse your fruit-basket of numbers.

I did not say "11% of Kenyans doping". It is the Australian scientists who analyzed an unofficial database with blood data parameters to come up with two levels of blood suspicion among 5000+ athletes over 12+ years. The 11% is the dubious sum of "likely" blood doping and "at the very least abnormal". The "real" prevalence of blood-doping, or total doping, will likely vary greatly.

What is interesting to me is not 11%, where the accuracy of indirect blood doping suspicion by proxy could be in doubt, but rather that the global average using the same method was 14%, and Kenyan blood doping "suspicion" during this more than a decade period was below the global average. Hard for me to reconcile all these mythical claims that EPO and blood doping, in or out of competition, is the best explanation for Kenyan and East African long-distance domination, while countries like Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey and Greece out-blood doped the Kenyans with no corresponding performance to show for it.

Let's look at your other data. A small discrepancy, but I counted 1281 male runners under 2:10, and at least 532 of them (not counting exports) were Kenyan. Your suggestion of "say 150", is a drastic under-estimation -- there are about 150 Kenyans under a 1990 benchmark of 2:07:15.

How many busts have there been this year? I can't see how that is relevant to your marathon example. How many of those busts involve your example of sub-2:10 marathon runners? What are you trying to add up here?

I think many of you don't understand the mathematics of how many Kenyans actually dominate distance running, and how the sheer numbers alone, just assuming an "average" doping rate, predicts large number of Kenyans doping, because the pool of fast runners is so much larger.

Using your benchmark of sub-2:10 marathon runners, I count 532 Kenyans and 252 Ethiopians, without counting any East African exports. Similarly I count only 29 Moroccans/Algerians, again not counting exports. This means, from the pool of 1281 runners, there are an estimated 350-400 runners who are not East or North African, from the rest of the world.

If, for arguments sake, we assume among these sub-2:10 runners, that the Kenyan doping rate, as a percentage, is the same as the world average, and detection rates are the same, this predicts that Kenyan busts will outnumber the rest of the non-African world combined, by an estimated 133-152% -- for the same prevalence and detection rates.

It's tempting to think that more doping by more athletes in Kenya and East Africa is the likely explanation, but then data like these from the Australian scientists don't reflect that -- this data rather supports that Kenyan doping, or at least blood doping, is average or below average.

Sub-2:10 though is not a strong reference, with such times achieved more than 50 years ago by the end of the 1960s. When I counted performances in 2018, before the effect of new shoes, relative to a 1990 benchmark, the East African dominance in the marathon was far greater. Out of 201 male marathon athletes faster than 2:07:11, 123 (61%) were Kenyan, 57 (28%) were Ethiopian, 3 (1.5%) were other East Africans, while 6 (3%) were North Africans, and 12 (6%) came from the rest of the world. Again, assuming an "average" doping rate, we should predict, among these top runners, that Kenyans doping will outnumber the rest of the world by a factor of 10, by sheer virtue of a much larger number of fast performers.

So when Armstronglivs naively accuses me of not understanding "human nature", and the universal desire for athletes to do what it takes to run fast -- this thinking seems to fall apart when you look at performers outside of Africa, with the same "human nature", who are largely unable to outperform their own predecessors, let alone the current competition.

To explain regional long term dominance, you cannot rely on global factors like "human nature", or more generally "doping", but must look to factors specific to that population from those regions.

You would have made a perfect follower of the Reverend Jim Jones - utterly immersed in a world of fantasy. You could even have been Jim Jones, preaching your fantasies to those deluded enough to believe in them. Either way, you have every appearance of a cultist.

Only someone who is completely ignorant of human nature chooses not to see the role that it plays in why people choose to do things - such as their doping. Without human nature, there is no doping. What are "the factors specific to a population or region" that aren't also part of human nature, which in sports is the drive to succeed? The only factors that explain regional variation are the relative availability of drugs, the cultural and sporting norms towards their use, and the presence or otherwise of antidoping measures. People will dope if they believe others are and that it's the best way to succeed - and they can get away with it. That has been Kenya - until antidoping enforcement has been stepped up and they are no longer getting away with it.

I know enough to know that human nature is global, as is the drive to succeed, as is the availability of drugs and the ease of avoiding detection. These things existed worldwide for decades and centuries, and still do. What is regional are external things like the environment.

Yes, people will dope simply "if they believe", and also if someone else "believes" on their behalf.

Is she still coached by him?

In her interview after winning Chicago, I think she said she didn’t have a coach. Most likely a lie. Ruth Chepngetich is a fraud.

Africa… The entire continent is corrupt. People’s way of life and morality (lack there of) is all about survival and getting ahead. The corrupt European coaches and agents use that mentality to dope their athletes and everyone exploits each other. The losers in all of that are the clean athletes around the world. Their fame and fortune and dedication to hard work is continuously stolen from them by the athletes who dope.

Kenya should have been sanctioned/banned a long time ago. Ethiopia is now a member of the BRICS a nice group of law abiding countries (tongue-in-cheek statement). Uganda is another safe haven for dopers.

Obviously. Rekrunner is the knowledgeable and logical one!