'Doping in Kenya is completely out of control'

You're welcome.

So, he changed his training & his coach, that alone wouldn't account for his dramatic improvement or he wouldn't have gone on rocket fuel in the first place (btw, I wonder if his new coach knew he was using EPO? 🤔).

And he also could have just as well changed his hair style, his socks, running shorts, jock strap, etc & you'd say those were also confounders. 🤣

Lombard is basically saying that everyone at the Olympic level back then was on the gear, hence "equal chances." He didn't lacked any confidence in his training, he knew he wasn't fast enough as a 30 min runner & be competitive at the Olympic level he'd have to go on the gear (at least he's being honest & could have been like so many of the dopers that get caught denying ever using PEDs).

But this is just going around circles with you ad nuseam (nothing new there. Lol). It's been your strategy to always obfuscate these EPO/blood doping positives where the doper signficant improves & does something special with these ridiculous "confounders."

Remember the case with Abraham Kiptum where he set HM WR at Valencia? He blew his ABP to pieces with a 60 Hct & an astronomically high Off-Score of 148! 😲 (99.99 specificity - one of most egregious doping cases the anti-doping experts said they have ever seen).

I don't quite remember all the crazy "confounders" you came up with, but at the end of the day you refused to acknowledge that O2-Vector doping had anything to do with Kiptum's improved performance setting the WR. 😉

insidethegames.biz

Kiptum handed four-year ban as Kenyan doping woes continue

@insidethegames

Kenya's Abraham Kiptum has been handed a four-year ban by the Athletics Integrity Unit over an athlete biological passport violation.

Open link

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How do any of the following investigations show that Kenya was being tested out of competition like the rest of the world? These were just a few of the many articles on this.

“The harsh truth is that Kenyan athletes and athletes from poorer countries are generally not tested as rigorously as, say, British runners or American runners. Richer countries have the money to finance national antidoping agencies that focus on testing out of competition, which is when most athletes dope.”

“Antidoping officials have criticized Kenya for being lax in monitoring its athletes for doping. But at least the testing in Kenya is getting tougher by the day. It used to be virtually nonexistent.”

“Kenyan athletes are now tested by a regional antidoping agency that consists of several countries that have banded together because each cannot afford to finance the testing of its athletes on its own. Kenya has been a part of that program for the past four or five years, said David Howman, the director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

“Kenyans runners are also tested by the International Association of Athletics Federations, the world governing body of track and field. But with countless athletes in the I.A.A.F.’s testing pool, each top marathoner — especially those training in far-off Kenya — can be tested out of competition only so often because of cost and logistics.”

“[Frank Shorter] said his first indication that Kenyans might be doping came in the 1980s, when athletes began to use Italian doctors as agents.

“Of course, doctors would be good coaches and agents, right?” he asked, sarcastically. “My statement to my friends then was: ‘Kenyans on drugs, it’s all over. Nobody has a chance.’ ”

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/sports/holes-in-kenyas-doping-system-cast-a-shadow-on-all-its-runners.html

Not having a lab in Kenya meant urine samples suffered from the same problems as blood samples:

“With no operational anti-doping agency of its own, testing in Kenya is conducted by a regional anti-doping organisation on Wada's behalf.

“But, with limited resources, it was able to carry out just 40 drugs tests in the country in 2015.

“There is no Wada-accredited laboratory in Kenya and the regional agency does not have the facilities to carry out blood tests.

“All urine samples have to be tested in South Africa.”

bbc.com

Kenya misses athletics doping deadline - BBC Sport

https://www.facebook.com/BBCSport

Kenya misses a deadline to prove to the World Anti-Doping Agency it is tackling cheating in athletics.

Open link

More information on the advanced notice problem:

“But even this is not enough. Last week the Canadian runner Reid Coolsaet, who is training in Kenya, tweeted: “Kenyan-style anti-doping test. Notify us the night before. One-hour drive to test site at 5am. Many Olympic medallists in house. It was an IAAF accredited test. Procedures are far from what I’m used to in Canada.”

“By giving advance notice, it turns an already porous drug-testing programme into one with gaping holes: an athlete who has recently taken a banned drug can simply not turn up for the test. Yet his experience is not unusual. In Iten, I heard stories of athletes being told weeks in advance when to attend the testing centre in Eldoret.

“More worryingly, Coolsaet’s tweet also highlighted the fact that even the IAAF, world athletics’ governing body, is not testing to the highest standards when in Kenya. Once again, the need for a vastly beefed-up team of investigators and testers, to enter suspicious countries and dig until they find where the bodies are buried, seems essential.“

The more you NEED the money, the further you will go to get it.

No surprise that doping is common in Kenya (and some other nations).

Wrong training alone can completely explain why an athlete like Lombard never reached his potential, until he solved his unique training problems.

You are spinning in circles because you don't know how to make an argument without resorting to fallacies.

You cannot fix your failure to make a substantial argument by attacking me for pointing out why your examples fail.

All of your examples again point to the same lack of a local WADA approved lab in East Africa. I already acknowledged this was a temporary problem for blood samples in the timeframe of 2010-2018, because of the time constraint to get blood samples to the lab. Urine samples do not have that same problem, because there is not the same time constraint. See again your SI article: "urine samples, that don't have to reach labs so quickly." It was not a problem to test urine samples in South Africa.

You keep comparing Kenya to the rest of the world. In the rest of the world, the OOC testing varied widely by country, and often the countries' anti-doping labs doubled as a warning system for the athletes. Recall in the rest of the world a series of rumors and scandals, from East Germans in the '80s, USA coverups in the 84 and'88 Olympics, legal blood transfusions until 1985, Chinese women in the '90s, Conconi leading the national anti-doping lab in Italy in the '90s, lack of testing in Jamaica, and the best for last, Russian doping since the '70s, including extensive national research, precautionary testing, urine swapping, and IAAF bribing and delayed enforcements, until 2012, when all these things were exposed.

Note the logistical and financial reasons that hindered anti-doping also hinder setting up doping programs on the large scale required that could explain the depth and breadth of Kenya's world-class performances. See again Russia for comparison.

And a lack of OOC testing doesn't automatically mean that athletes are doping. It only means we don't have enough visibilty or data outside of competitions to conclude one way or another. This is fundamentally an argument from ignorance.

For someone who claimed to be born in elite track and field, I am largely unimpressed with your display of your detailed elite track knowledge. You asked me not to mistake you for a typical LR poster, but so far I fail to see any difference suggesting that would be a mistake.

Head. In. The. Sand. No piece of evidence will ever be enough for you. But then again, I expected nothing less from the guy who claims with each new batch of positive tests in Kenya that it only proves how clean the other Kenyans are. Your beloved countrymen are nothing but a bunch of liars. Now the entire world knows it too.

My countrymen? Who do you mean? Frank Shorter?

What do you propose all the evidence combined is suppose do show me? I think you've lost sight of what argument you are trying to make here, because you are kind of all over the map.

If your argument is that East Africa didn't have a local WADA lab, and that OOC blood testing was an issue between the rollout of the ABP and the rollout of the lab, no evidence was necessary. I was already aware of that before your series of links and quotes. Your evidence was superfluous.

If your argument is that Kenyans have a signficant doping problem, I have no doubts from all of the evidence combined that at least in the last 10-15 years or so, that was the case. I think the best source of information about the current state of Kenyan doping are reports found on WADA's website, and updates from the AIU, like from Brett Clothier. If you are aware of evidence that exists of a significant problem before say 2010, and before 2000, I would be most pleased if you shared some of this new evidence.

If your argument is that "EPO works for elites", which is what I thought we were talking about, I would be persuaded by evidence suggeting a positive correlation between EPO and the fastest times. You can't show a correlation with only a few examples like Cathal Lombard, (even if you know how to bold and italics the numbers and use emojis 🤔, and resort to emotive euphemisms like rocket fuel 🚀). There is plenty of evidence suggesting many countries are blood doping, but they don't have notably fast times, suggesting a poor correlation. There is evidence suggesting that Kenya and Ethiopia were not blood doping as much as many other countries (below the world average between 2001-2012), yet they have many multiples more athletes running much faster times, and have been dominating the world as far back as 1980s (if not already since the '60s), again suggesting a poor correlation.

If you are suggesting that the lack of OOC tests somehow provides evidence, you seem to have gotten that backwards, as a lack of testing just means a lack of evidence.

In recent history, we have seen global improvements attributed to new shoe technology. Since around 2018, times have been dropping across the board for athletes worldwide, male and female, sea-level and altitude, African, caucasian, asian, etc.

If EPO indeed works as many people suggest, for everyone from amateurs to elites, from sea-level to the high plateaus, I would have already expected to see broad evidence of this in the 1990s around the world, in a similar way, when everyone could do it and not get caught. And also in the 2000s, when testing was easy to beat, before the ABP. We can argue about local exceptions here and there, like OOC testing in America and the UK, or potential athletes going to soccer, but not for all countries within 5-continents for nearly three decades, especially considering what we know about Russian state doping of their men and women since the 1970s.

Deflect, deflect, deflect. Same old MO.

How ironic. What is that post but deflection?

What are fabricated claims like "the guy who claims with each new batch of positive tests in Kenya that it only proves how clean the other Kenyans are", but deflection?

What is "Your beloved countrymen are nothing but a bunch of liars", but deflection?

You made it about evidence. It was a simple question and now you are deflecting. What is all the evidence combined supposed to show me?

Where is your evidence of significant (above average) Kenyan doping in the '80s, '90s, or '00s? You argued the opposite, that evidence wasn't being collected for 35 years.

I have found evidence contradicting about half a dozen of your statements -- why should I take you at your word? How can anyone?

I have provided evidence. You’ve ignored it. But that’s what you do.

You've ignored this question twice already: "What is all the evidence combined supposed to show me?"

I accepted your evidence that OOC testing for blood was an issue, after the ABP and before the Nairobi lab.

What else? Can you give me a short list, supported by the evidence you have provided, that I haven't disproved with evidence I have provided?

One example. The articles I’ve provided clearly show that drug testing in Kenya was a joke prior to 2016. Urine, blood, doesn’t matter which. Athletes were notified days to weeks in advance of testing, significantly fewer athletes were tested than in other counties, and the number of times they were being tested was significantly less than in Western nations. This is not something that simply occurred from your arbitrary 2010-18 time period. Your response? John Ngugi was banned for refusing a urine test in 1993 so clearly the evidence is all wrong.

This is not a good faith debate on your part. It never is. Your sole purpose on this board is to respond all doping claims against Kenyans and to defend Renato. You make demonstrably false claims repeatedly (“nobody good has been caught,” “Kenyan athletes are the cleanest in the world”). You purposefully ignore any objective information that makes you look bad, misconstrue evidence, and respond to every post with a scatter shot of random statements that are almost always your personal opinion that you try to pass off as truth. The sad thing, is that you spend this much time on a board where you are not respected and almost always dismissed out of hand. But hey, you do you.

For context, I recall your original argument about lack of Kenyan testing was "When there is no out of competition testing in your joke of a country for 30 years while the rest of the world is subject to legitimate testing then yes, you are out-doping everyone else." in response to my question "Do you think that the super-rich Kenyans out-doped the rest of the world for three decades?"

As we have seen, OOC testing started at least 31 years ago in Kenya in 1993 (John Ngugi), and the rest of the world was not always subject to legitimate testing (e.g. Russia, China, Italy), not to mention all the scandals and cover-ups which I have mentioned. Since both premises are false, I have to doubt your conclusion that Kenya has outdoped everyone else.

These counter-examples were made in good faith to show why I cannot agree with your conclusion.

But let's look at your evidence of Kenyan drug testing being a joke as its own conclusion. Sure Kenya could have done more testing, but you started out saying they had no OOC testing. The evidence you gave me is not so much wrong as incomplete. I do not ignore it, but complement it with other evidence.

For example, in 2015, your BBC source said that there were only 40 tests conducted in Kenya by the RADO. That may be true, but one quick trip to the WADA website, and within 5 minutes I see that in addition to the RADO tests, the Kenyan Athletics Federation itself conducted 50 tests in 2015, resulting in 4 positive tests. And of course this neglects that the IAAF also tested the Kenyans, as you showed me in your BBC and SI articles. So maybe Kenya could have done more to test their athletes, but it is not like Kenyans have been escaping ever being tested. 2015 was the year of the Beijing World Championships, where the IAAF conducted an unprecedented 1405 doping controls, which surely included Kenyans. They did something similar in 2013 and 2011. (The IOC would simillarly test Kenyans at the Olympics). The IAAF has a lot of resources to test if they felt it was a priority.

Regarding advance notice, your evidence tells me that this was only for blood tests, and that urine tests were not advanced notice tests. The IAAF's Kyle Barber said "Advance notice is only given in Kenya for some ABP testing, Barber said. Athletes get no advance notice for all other anti-doping tests, including the collection of urine samples, that don't have to reach labs so quickly."

And none of this discussion about a lack of testing answers the more important questions. A lack of testing does not automatically mean that Kenyans were doping since the 1980s, or during the 1990s, or 2000s, or that doping helped them run faster than their competitors or predecessors, or explains why non-African athletes who were not rigorously OOC tested, or circumventing the doping tests, did not have comparable improvements in performance.

As for your psychological lecture, I did not make these demonstrably false claims you say I made. This is your bad-faith. Contrary to your misperception, my main purpose is to collect new objective evidence I may not have, not to ignore evidence I do not like. I am not so interested in your conclusions, nor anyone else's, but just the data. I value accuracy and completeness. I do spend a lot of time fact checking posters like you, when you provide inaccurate and/or incomplete evidence. I rarely give my personal opinions, without substantiating it with external sources, and I am prepared to change my opinion on those rare occasions when someone actually provides contradictory information to statements I actually made, rather than contradicting a strawman, while providing some insults and psycho-analysis.

As for my sole purpose being defending Kenyans and Renato, you must have missed my posts over time, similarly looking for objective evidence how doping has been shown to impact elite performance, and in the cases of Houlihan, Jama Aden, Salazar wrt the NOP athletes, Mary Slaney versus the IAAF, the IAAF during the Russian/IAAF bribery/extortion scandal, and whether Radcliffe or Coe were implicated, not to mention other rare posts in miscellaneous conspiracy topics like flat-earth, moon-landings, COVID anti-vaxx, and global warming. All of these posts follow the same pattern, and are meant to challenge the unfounded or misfounded beliefs of various posters, by either pointing out the inaccuracies and incompleteness, or, if I'm wrong, by getting them to defend their ideas with objective evidence.

I am not concerned in the slightest if I am respected or not respected by a dozen or so anonymous people who I don't know from Adam, especially those who don't seem to have accurate or complete information before jumping to their own conclusions. I do not post seeking to be popular or seeking approval or seeking to belong with like-minded posters.

We all know what you are. And a collector of “new objective data” is not it.

That is a reflection of posters like you who provide no "new objective data".