They work, even according to Canova, but ever since Canova explained that, rekrunner doesn't appreciate his expertise anymore.
Missing tests work for a while for hiding the doping, and even if you miss the 3rd within 12 months, it's still better than a positive, as you only get 2 years typically.
Rekrunner knows all of that too, but, well, rekrunner is rekrunner.
What did Canova explain? I did find one post where he hypothetically thinks what could probably be for Mosop. This hypothetical does not rise to the level of knowledge. Regarding what Canova explains, I can find many more posts that explain how drugs are not necessary to increase the volume of aerobic intensity, only a strong mind.
In any case, I don't blindly follow people - including Canova. Blindly following people risks becoming a "fallacy of appeal to authority".
I rather prefer to look at real data in context. Where is there any data suggesting that steroids made any marathon performances faster than was possible without? Did Canova's explanation provide any data for Mosop on steroids? We know that Russia has been doping their men and women with steroids since the 1970s. And yet the Russian men's marathon record is only 2:09:07. (For Coevett, the Soviet record from the Russian Republic is a comparable 2:09:17). These are about the times that Derek Clayton was running in the late '60s, and UK athletes like Ron Hill and Ian Thompson were running in the early '70s. Were they also on steroids?
Ian Thompson entered a first-aid tent where I was receiving attention (during a 70s cross-country meet) - never did I see a more muscular endurance athlete.
I asked a simple yes/no question, and it is telling that no one has yet said "yes, we can say we know it is more than 10%" and then point me to that knowledge.
Yes. It is telling. It tells you that we all know it's a lot more than 10%, and we know you know it. Quick googling using rekrunner and prevalence and site:letsrun.com shows several instances where you yourself have quoted much higher numbers.
But fine, so you can finally stop trolling with your hilariously wrong 10%: here is a 2020 study with the numbers way above 10%:
In-competition blood doping alone is already 15 - 18% (12 - 22% including CI):
Our results from robust hematological parameters indicate an estimation of an overall blood doping prevalence of 18% in 2011 and 15% in 2013 (non-significant difference) in average in endurance athletes [95% Confidence Interval (CI) 14–22 and 12–19% for 2011 and 2013, respectively].
Look at the intro too, which gives a nice overview, including:
For example, doping (in all forms) prevalence is said to range between 39 and 62% based on anonymous questionnaires answered by athletes competing in two 2011 competitions of the World Athletics [WA, formerly International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF)] (Ulrich et al., 2018).
39 - 62% including all forms of doping and in- and out-of-competition .... and you troll here with 10%. LOL. Rekrunner "facts"...
As we know with the similar data from the same period for intersex athletes and their elevated testo levels. Those with elevated blood levels are 10-80 times more likely win medals.
Don't be obtuse. This is a primarily a distance running site. The percentage of dirty Kenyans is way more than any other country in those events; 800 to marathon. No need to answer back. I'm troll resistent.
The percentage of clean Kenyans is also way more than any other country in those events.
What a freaking troll.
That's why all these global championship medalists, from junior championships to the Olympics are getting busted. And before you whine and say that Kenya has more medalists, the percantage of Kenyan busts must be at least 5 or 10 times that of the rest of the world.
We need to start a petition to have the Brojos limit Rekrunner to a certain number of posts per day. It would benefit everybody, including Rekrunner.
If steroids don’t work then why the f*&% are they all taking them?
That is the right question. Steroids have never been known to "work" for distance runners (with the exception of women in shorter distances requiring muscular strength).
The rationale will be something along the lines of quicker recovery enabling more training. But the question remains unasked and unanswered whether this produces faster performances than is possible with clean training at altitude.
Yes. It is telling. It tells you that we all know it's a lot more than 10%, and we know you know it. Quick googling using rekrunner and prevalence and site:letsrun.com shows several instances where you yourself have quoted much higher numbers.
But fine, so you can finally stop trolling with your hilariously wrong 10%: here is a 2020 study with the numbers way above 10%:
In-competition blood doping alone is already 15 - 18% (12 - 22% including CI):
Look at the intro too, which gives a nice overview, including:
39 - 62% including all forms of doping and in- and out-of-competition .... and you troll here with 10%. LOL. Rekrunner "facts"...
Is this "knowledge"? The very first sentence in the introduction of this study "virtually" debunks that notion:
"The true prevalence of doping among athletes competing at the highest level remains virtually unknown ..."
And yet somehow you claim to know, and that I know, and that you know I know, something that your own reference says "remains virtually unknown"?
This alone proves my point. Should we bother to read any further? It doesn't get any better.
Reading on we can find significant expressed limitations with the WC blood data: "one should note that the method used to determine prevalence estimates may produce a notable upward bias" and "altitude exposure prior to the competitions as a confounding factor ... data about prior altitude exposure were missing for Daegu and only partially recorded in Moscow ..."
Anonymous surveys are no better. First and foremost, the question is whether anonymity ensures survey compliance. It is most troubling that the survey researchers recommended discarding 30% of their own data based on survey response time, in order to remove a large 12 percentage point bias (e.g. from automatic "yes" responders), without any guarantees that they removed all of the bias in the remaining 70% of the data. We cannot be sure the survey result reflects true doping prevelance, unbiased by survey respondant apathy.
Rather than calling it "knowledge", here's what your reference says: "these results shall first underline the large variability and heterogeneity in the determination of doping prevalence with a questionable significance."
Furthermore:
The question I raised here, in this thread about Kenyans, is about Kenyans who intentionally dope. In the 2011 analysis, only 47 of the 1808 athletes were Kenyan. In the 2013 analysis, only 49 of the 1875 athletes were Kenyan. WC Kenyans represented about 2.6% of the total WC athlete population.
From the other side, most of the Kenyans being busted today, among the "hundreds, if not thousands", in the Kenyan "pyramid" of "top-class" athletes, are not WC athletes.
Is the historical data collected from 2011 and 2013 even relevant today? This predates the IAAF-Russian scandal, and the creation of the AIU, and doesn't reflect any deterrent from the WADA investigations, raised public awareness, and increased testing.
Wow so many many words, dancing around the fact that 39 - 62% admitted to doping, and yet - since the absolute number isn't absolutely certain - you can claim it may only be 10%????
And of course you ignored that 15 - 18% used even hard-core in-competition blood doping.
And the big whopper at the end. Now we can't talk about peer-reviewed papers from 2018 and 2020 because things may have changed?
Are you saying even more Kenyans doped before 2018?
Look also at the ranking of that North African country that you hate so much and that is making a great and organized efforts in Schools and Academy for years.
Don't be obtuse. This is a primarily a distance running site. The percentage of dirty Kenyans is way more than any other country in those events; 800 to marathon. No need to answer back. I'm troll resistent.
The percentage of clean Kenyans is also way more than any other country in those events.
Slithering around with your usual lies. The percentage of Kenyans who are dirty in relation to those who are clean is likely to be much higher than in other countries, as far more Kenyans are committing doping violations than is shown by other nations. It is irrelevant to say that as Kenyans have more distance runners than some other nations so they will have more clean runners by virtue of the disparity in their respective totals. More Kenyans will be likely dopers as a percentage of their own total of distance runners because they are completely outstripping the numbers of dopers caught in other countries.
But in regard to your claim above, you have no idea how many Kenyan athletes are clean because you have previously conceded you cannot know how many are doped.
You never make an honest or a true statement on this subject.
This post was edited 43 seconds after it was posted.
That is the right question. Steroids have never been known to "work" for distance runners (with the exception of women in shorter distances requiring muscular strength).
The rationale will be something along the lines of quicker recovery enabling more training. But the question remains unasked and unanswered whether this produces faster performances than is possible with clean training at altitude.
LOL. Bold statements, but no source whatsoever.
In the worse case, that makes us even.
But I just included Salazar as a source: "Other than blood doping, which was rumored to have been used successfully by the Finns, there were not any prohibited practices or doping methods that were clearly beneficial for distance runners".
What sources are there that have explained why distance runners take steroids, or that have shown that steroids are "known" to work?
What's up rekrunner? Testosterone, anabolic steroids, SARMs, etc. - that's all "low-octane" doping for endurance athletes/distance runners (It's high-octane doping for strength & speed athletes!). It's not going to do much to improve performance for distance runners, IMO.
Those compounds would help an endurance athlete recover faster from an injury (and have used as such in the past). And they might recover more quickly & feel better the next day from a hard workout since intense endurance exercise increases cortisol levels which in return suppress testosterone levels.
Furthermore, an endurance athlete getting up in their age, say over 40, would probably benefit from testosterone as age-related testosterone decline starts after about age 35 with most men (TRT is huge with master distance runners these days).
When it comes to endurance sports & distance running it's all O2-vector doping to improve performance. This has been the gold standard since the induction of rEPO in the early 1990's.
Exactly. Distance runners historically didn't even believe in steroids, only blood doping. Here is what the infamous temporary marathon world best holder (disputed short course) Alberto Salazar expressed in 1999:
"I, naively, did not know the extent of doping in athletics and believed that it was a problem primarily in the sprint and weight events, as compared to distance running, where muscular power rather than endurance and cardiovascular ability is crucial to an athletes' success. Other than blood doping, which was rumored to have been used successfully by the Finns, there were not any prohibited practices or doping methods that were clearly beneficial for distance runners, or I did not know about them."
More of your selective argument and humbug. You quote Salazar as an apparent authority on what doping will do - or not do - for distance runners but you have previously sought to discredit his claims about the performance gains that blood doping and EPO will enable marathon runners, because you never concede that doping of any kind enhances distance running performance.
The percentage of clean Kenyans is also way more than any other country in those events.
What a freaking troll.
That's why all these global championship medalists, from junior championships to the Olympics are getting busted. And before you whine and say that Kenya has more medalists, the percantage of Kenyan busts must be at least 5 or 10 times that of the rest of the world.
We need to start a petition to have the Brojos limit Rekrunner to a certain number of posts per day. It would benefit everybody, including Rekrunner.
Where does "5 or 10 times" come from?
When I counted the fastest athletes between 1990 and 2018, for every non-African from 5 continents combined (the Americas, Europe, Russia/Asia, and Oceania), there was 1 North African, 3 Ethiopians, 7 Kenyans, and 1 more East African.
I have trouble accepting any suggestion that Kenya outdoped the rest of the non-African continents combined, by a factor of 7x, as far back as 1990, especially when the 5-continents includes populous nations like Russia and India and China.
The "why" has repeatedly been explained by WADA and the AIU: Kenya has a huge pyramid of top-class talent -- hundreds if not thousands of athletes -- and they are being exploited by local doctors and pharmacists, as well as foreign agents, in addition to a significant lack of anti-doping education and awareness of the athletes' obligations, leading to whereabouts failures and doping positives for routine treatments of injuries and diseases.
Wow so many many words, dancing around the fact that 39 - 62% admitted to doping, and yet - since the absolute number isn't absolutely certain - you can claim it may only be 10%????
And of course you ignored that 15 - 18% used even hard-core in-competition blood doping.
And the big whopper at the end. Now we can't talk about peer-reviewed papers from 2018 and 2020 because things may have changed?
Are you saying even more Kenyans doped before 2018?
Au contraire. Are you suggesting it is a fact that 39-62% of Kenyans admitted to doping?
The 62% comes from the Pan Arab Games, which includes no Kenyans.
The 39% comes from all World Championship athletes, of which we saw only 2.6% were Kenyans. The remaining 97.4% includes Russians before the scandal, and sprinters, throwers, and jumpers, and excludes thousands of Kenyan non-WC athletes.
This ignores that the 39% result was not considered a reliable estimate -- even by its own authors.
Similarly the 15-18% blood doping estimate comes from 2.6% Kenyans, and 97.4% non-Kenyans, and does not properly account for altitude exposure, and does not count non-WC Kenyan athletes.
I don't claim that it "may only be 10%", but that none of this constitutes knowledge that Kenyan WC+non-WC doping prevalence is greater than 10%.
The date on your papers don't matter as much as the date the data was collected. A lot has changed since 2011 -- that data is not only not current, but does not represent the group of Kenyan World and non-World championship athletes.
But I just included Salazar as a source: "Other than blood doping, which was rumored to have been used successfully by the Finns, there were not any prohibited practices or doping methods that were clearly beneficial for distance runners".
What sources are there that have explained why distance runners take steroids, or that have shown that steroids are "known" to work?
"worst case"? "even"? Dream on. I just gave you two references, showing 1) in-competition blood doping of 12 - 22%, and total doping of 39 - 62%, as well as Canova for the steroids. And Salazar said not "clearly beneficial", which is quite different from not beneficial. And it's ironic, considering that he doped himself with testo, and so did his athlete Slaney, still a few years later.
A normal poster would have said: "thank you for the information. Wow, that much? Sorry, my 10% were way off".
The percentage of clean Kenyans is also way more than any other country in those events.
Slithering around with your usual lies. The percentage of Kenyans who are dirty in relation to those who are clean is likely to be much higher than in other countries, as far more Kenyans are committing doping violations than is shown by other nations. It is irrelevant to say that as Kenyans have more distance runners than some other nations so they will have more clean runners by virtue of the disparity in their respective totals. More Kenyans will be likely dopers as a percentage of their own total of distance runners because they are completely outstripping the numbers of dopers caught in other countries.
But in regard to your claim above, you have no idea how many Kenyan athletes are clean because you have previously conceded you cannot know how many are doped.
You never make an honest or a true statement on this subject.
We have no way to determine what you believe is "likely" without the data.
More of your selective argument and humbug. You quote Salazar as an apparent authority on what doping will do - or not do - for distance runners but you have previously sought to discredit his claims about the performance gains that blood doping and EPO will enable marathon runners, because you never concede that doping of any kind enhances distance running performance.
This idea that steroids helps marathons is relatively new, and as far as I can tell, only being argued by about 5 letsrun anonymous posters.
Even Lance called it "low-octane" for cycling.
You've been around for 60 years -- when did steroids ever creep up into distance running conversations?
it’s fair to defend one’s own country. It’s expected. Bit of bias creeps in naturally. But show some level of balance. For example India has a few more suspended athletes than Kenya as number 1 and 2 most caught, putting Russia’s systematic program aside. Per capita, Kenya — come on admit it — has a problem. A major problem. Perhaps so does Ethiopia. We may find similar numbers when a good lab and enough DCOs can be employed in Ethiopia.
For example, why does Canada have one positive from a third rate athlete? Yet Canadians will post on social media, “thank you to DCOs for their work.” After having been awoken at 6:00 am to take a sample.
Cause they care about having a level playing field.
I am sure there are many honest Kenyans. I have met and run with many. Nice people. But by and large they are doing whatever they can to earn precious first world (I hate that term) money. Makes sense. The money is an opportunity. But you cannot possibly defend 100 percent of Kenyan dopers and not come across as biased.
Does Canada produce world records and Olympic gold medals? Nope. But the doping is very scarce.
Follow the money - follow the medals - follow the dopers.
"worst case"? "even"? Dream on. I just gave you two references, showing 1) in-competition blood doping of 12 - 22%, and total doping of 39 - 62%, as well as Canova for the steroids. And Salazar said not "clearly beneficial", which is quite different from not beneficial. And it's ironic, considering that he doped himself with testo, and so did his athlete Slaney, still a few years later.
A normal poster would have said: "thank you for the information. Wow, that much? Sorry, my 10% were way off".
But not you. You just troll harder.
Your two references don't speak about steroids "working" for distance runners. Neither of them measured "work". The first one was about blood doping, not steroids. The second one isn't limited to steroids or distance runners, or necessarily even a reliable measure of doping.
Canova did not say he knew steroids would work for Mosop, but he once said what he thought would probably be. Even from a coaching guru like Canova, this falls far short of "known to work".
Salazar saying "not any prohibited practices or doping methods that were clearly beneficial for distance runners" is entirely consistent with not "known to "work" for distance runners".
It's not clear that Slaney ever doped with testosterone, rather than surpressed epi-testosterone. She was caught by a T/E ratio test that is no longer considered reliable enough to sanction athletes. But in any case, I would expect steroids to work for women in the shorter distance events, especially older women in their mid-30's, when their hormones start to fluctuate.
None of the responses so far demonstrates the existence of any knowledge of steroids working for distance runners, or knowledge that Kenyan doping is known to be more than 10%.
This is why the conversation centers around what experts and non-experts believe without any real data.
it’s fair to defend one’s own country. It’s expected. Bit of bias creeps in naturally. But show some level of balance. For example India has a few more suspended athletes than Kenya as number 1 and 2 most caught, putting Russia’s systematic program aside. Per capita, Kenya — come on admit it — has a problem. A major problem. Perhaps so does Ethiopia. We may find similar numbers when a good lab and enough DCOs can be employed in Ethiopia.
For example, why does Canada have one positive from a third rate athlete? Yet Canadians will post on social media, “thank you to DCOs for their work.” After having been awoken at 6:00 am to take a sample.
Cause they care about having a level playing field.
I am sure there are many honest Kenyans. I have met and run with many. Nice people. But by and large they are doing whatever they can to earn precious first world (I hate that term) money. Makes sense. The money is an opportunity. But you cannot possibly defend 100 percent of Kenyan dopers and not come across as biased.
Does Canada produce world records and Olympic gold medals? Nope. But the doping is very scarce.
Follow the money - follow the medals - follow the dopers.
I'm not defending the Kenyan dopers so much as the Kenyan non-dopers. Look at the calls for banning the whole country based on the actions of who knows how few relatively speaking.
I think it is correct to ban Kenyan athletes for whereabouts failures, and for intentional doping, and to ban and punish the support personnel.
I don't deny that Kenya has a big doping problem, but I see the root cause of the Kenyan doping problem the way that WADA and the AIU explain it: there is an extremely large pyramid of talented athletes who are easily exploited, in addition to the honest Kenyans who get caught due to a lack of diligence from routine treatements for injuries and diseases like malaria, or a lack of diligence with respect to whereabouts.
I see the priority to solving the problem as a combination of punishing the exploiters, and educating the athletes as well as doctors.
I see as a separate and independent discussion whether these doping Kenyans were more successful because of the doping. If doping worked so well for distance runners, we would have already seen that in other countries as far back as the '70s.
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