Epic fail: Abeba aregawi tested positive for doping

angry willy wrote:

Rowbury had some interesting companions in 2012.

"The 2013 world championships were Aregawi’s first major global championships for Sweden. While still running for Ethiopia in 2012, she was sixth in the 1500 meters, one place ahead of American Shannon Rowbury, at the London Olympics.

That 1500 meters at the 2012 Games may be one the most drug-tainted Olympic distance finals ever. Asli Cakir Alptekin, of Turkey, was awarded the gold medal but has since been stripped of the title and suspended for doping. Fourth-place finisher Tatyana Tomashova of Russia served a drug suspension of more than two years between the 2008 and 2012 Olympics, and seventh and ninth-place finishers Natallia Kareiva of Belarus and Ekaterina Kostetskaya of Russia were also disqualified for drug offenses"

Just sayin' ;-)

If I remember right (and I may have the years wrong), Rowbury changed coaches in 2007, went from a 4:10+ runner with a stress fracture to a 4:00 runner in 2008 at the age of 23. Good, clean American coaching - as evidenced by all the American sub-2:00 800m runners and around-4:00 1500m runners suddenly popping up around that time.

Those American middle distance runners, always getting cheated out of the medals by foreign dopers...

What do the people in the list below have in common?

Morocco - Rashid Ramzi

Ethiopia -Abeba Aregawi

Kenya - Isaiah Kiplagat

Turkey -Asli Cakir Alptekin

Canada - Ben Johnson

Spain - Josephine Onyia

Russia - Anna Lukyanova

USA - Michael Jackson

Jamaica - Asafa Powell

Naturalrun wrote:

This is just my opinion so do Judge to much. pay attention on how those people look when the finish a race, you will see the difference.

Could we all agree from now on that it's total BS to judge people whether they're doping or not based on how they look like after the race? The effect of drugs is not to make you look fresh after breaking WRs.

Let's not be dopes. The story says suspected. Lots of people have been accused. You can take cough syrup and be accused. Some even serve time for such minor offenses. But usually they do not.

Do not be a dope and do not tarnish our sport by pushing this stuff. It's way over blown!!!

You want our sport to fail?

HardLoper wrote:

2012 Olympic final:

1st Aslı Çakır Alptekin Turkey 4:10.23 - busted

2nd Gamze Bulut Turkey 4:10.40 - implicated

3rd Maryam Yusuf Jamal Bahrain 4:10.74

4 Tatyana Tomashova Russia 4:10.90 implicated

5 Abeba Aregawi Ethiopia 4:11.03 busted

6 Shannon Rowbury United States 4:11.26

LOL, now Shannon Rowbury is the #2 non tainted performance

Umm, isn't Rowbury's coach being investigated?

the heat is on dopers wrote:

If Aregawi was still running for Ethiopia she would have NEVER been busted.

Ethiopia is the last stronghold of massive doping coverups. The Didopers, errr the Dibabas are the biggest drug cheats out there. Will be a glorious day when they are exposed for the frauds they are!

one can always hope:

yourmom.com wrote:

Is this the first major Meldonium bust? Has anyone else been caught with it?

Sounds like it was added to the "monitoring list" for 2015 and was just freshly prohibited (

Yes, it was added to the prohibited list for 2016.

Why did it take me reading through four pages of tripe to get some facts. Have LetsTroll readers ever considered that jumping to conclusions without evidence is a kind of dishonest shortcut, like cheating in sport?

Speculation is the only thing you can feed on, when this positive test doesn't give you everything you want.

1) It was a positive test from 2016, so any potential ban starts in 2016, not in 2012 or 2013. Because logic. Because evidence.

2) Even if you *could* impose a retroactive ban beyond what the facts support, why would you when the prohibited drug was within the rules before 2016?

My guess - and I'll preface this as speculation, the way I'd hope all of us do - is that Aregawi continued to use a legal substance even after it was banned, or maybe the metabolites stayed in her system after the new year. We don't know yet. Let's wait for more evidence.

You know who wrote:

IF YOU KNEW HALF OF WHAT I KNOW, YOU WOULD BE MAD, TOO.

Can an anonymous IP address etc and start spilling.

HardLoper wrote:

2012 Olympic final:

1st Aslı Çakır Alptekin Turkey 4:10.23 - busted

2nd Gamze Bulut Turkey 4:10.40 - implicated

3rd Maryam Yusuf Jamal Bahrain 4:10.74

4 Tatyana Tomashova Russia 4:10.90 implicated

5 Abeba Aregawi Ethiopia 4:11.03 busted

6 Shannon Rowbury United States 4:11.26

LOL, now Shannon Rowbury is the #2 non tainted performance

that is your typical woman's final.

one or two in the final is clean.

The Epic fail is you!

Agree, seems as if this board doesnt let the facts get in the way of a good row.

Aregawi probably didnt cop that this was new on the banned list is a possibility. Likely ban however .

ya right.

except there are superhumans out there.

guys like rono, walker, kenio, ryun, others with the perfect situation and nutrition can approach the current world records. with all the legal aids of altitude,and perfect luck. no injuries.

PEDS make a great athlete a super freak.

PEDs pay the bills and pad the ego nicely.

The new list of Ethiopian investigated for doping, probably involves one substance only, and this is MELDOMIUM.

WADA started to have suspects about this substance, because they cantinued to find it in the samples of cyclists. For that reason, they started to investigate the effects, and from 1st Jan 2016 decided to add to the list of prohibited substances.

It seems this substance was recently introduced in Ethiopia by some Turkish doctor. The medicine, in all its various names, can't be found in US and in many other European Countries (also not in Kenya), since it's not approved by the specific US commission. Why in Ethiopia only ? Probably for the connections they have with the communist Countries, looking at their recent history.

But at this point, we have to start to think about the "effects" of doping.

Is Meldonium REALLY useful ? And, if yes, why can be useful for Ethiopian only, and we don't find in other African Countries ?

Are the steroids involved in the 95% of the cases of doping in Kenya really effective ? And if yes, why rarely in other Countries we can find athletes positive at the same substance ?

The reality is that there are "Areas of influence" for different criminal organizations, exactly like in the drug market. So, in some area there are pushers of steroids, in other areas of Meldonium, in other areas of substances for covering some other doping.

While in cyclism, during Lance Armstrong's period, we could see cocktails of a lot of pharmacs, scientifically prepared, with a full pool of advanced doctors organizing every thing (and with a very high cost), in athletics we see simple doping, with athletes taking one illegal substance only, different from one area to another, and in the most part of cases very cheap, since they don't have money enough for some advanced doping (the cost of Meldonium seems to be about 2 USD per tablet).

So, this is my question : we don't discuss and not refuse the fact many African runner are now taking some illegal substance : this is a fact.

But the question is : how much effective these pharmacs can be, in the role of PEDs ?

I think in the mind of the athletes of today there is a clear overestimation of the effects on performances. This because seems doping is the main argument when we look at sport of today.

In this process, people of antidoping try to grow in importance, overrating the effects of many pharmacs that they don't know, and creating a widespread idea that all the best go to use some doping. But which doping ? The doping used by Ethiopian only ? Or the doping used by Kenyan only ? And with which control, and which organization at their shoulders ?

I was the first time in Kenya in 1998, and (apart the last two years when I was in China) normally I live 5-7 months in Iten every year. Also if I can personally say something changed (till 2010, I never heard some athletes asking for some supplement, today it seems everybody needs supplements for running slower than 10 years ago), I never had any suspicion about the best runners, since I coached athletes bettering WR who refused every kind of medicine, also when were sick (apart malaria). And these athletes were Shaheen, Nicholas Kemboi (moving in 2 months from 28'19" to 26'30" in 10000m, living in my same room in St. Moritz in 2003, so I perfectly know what he was eating and drinking), Moses Mosop, Florence Kiplagat, and also now I have athletes completely new and naive, like Ronald Kwemoi, who can become in two-three years the new WR holder of 5000m.

So, it's ridiculuous to say that there are limit under which it's possible to run only with external aid (legal or illegal).

The real battle against doping can't start with the idea that athletes can have a lot of advantage, but with the idea that is 99% completely USELESS (I speak about blood doping). We can accept the idea doping can be a shortcut FOR ACHIEVING THE SAME RESULTS of tough training, not the idea these results can become better.

I repeat again : I coach top African athletes from 18 years, and with them frequently I do common blood tests, in order to see their health (especially about Iron, Ferritine and Transferrin). NEVER I saw any link between high values of Hct and Hb and level of performances. For the same athlete, normally when the performance improved, the values became lower.

So, I think that the African athletes taking doping (and there are many) are the weakest under mental point of view, and don't have anybody able to guide them on a correct way of training. So, it's exactly the opposite of what the most part of people thinks : are free dogs without coach, and without good organization behind, who suppose to be able to fill the gap using some external aid (I repeat, for me legal or illegal are the same, because in any case is the same signal of weak mentality), and these athletes are abused by local doctors and pharmacists who put in their mind the idea doping can work for changing the performances of an athlete, from high-middle level to the top.

Abeba Aregawi in Ethiopia doesn't have any coach, but is her unofficial husband following her under technical point of view. This situation allows athletes to search individual solutions of every problem, without any real strategy. It's the technical confusion that brings athletes to look at some doping, not the reality of advantages in their performances.

Abeba had big problems in her back and in one leg during the last two years. Probably, she lost confidence looking at the great improvement of Genzebe and of Faith Kipyegon, and looked for something (at that time still legal) for recruiting the aerobic shape in shorter time.

But for reaching the top personal performances, there is a balance among the psychological situation, the methodological aspect and the level of the ambience around the athlete, that can't be reached working in one direction only. So, the most part of athletes doped, started to take PEDs AFTER having some problem, fearing not more possible to reach again the same levels (see the Italian walker Schwazer, winning 50 km walking in Beijing completely clean, and starting to look at doping in 2012, after one bad season in 2011), BUT WERE CLEAN WHEN THEY HAD FOR THE FIRST TIME THEIR BEST PERFORMANCES.

Top athletes can look at doping only when they discover their body is no longer able to sustain the same level of training, hoping to fill the gap in this way. Big mistake, because doping NEVER can replace the natural possibilities of a fresh mind and a fresh body, during the period of top motivation and when there is the opportunity to reach the best possible targets.

People don't use doping in order to conquest what they still don't have, but when they fear to lose what already have.

good.now hopefully genzebe dibaba,sifan hassan,and the rest of the ethiopians finally get caught !

dibaba's always get best ped's, other sister cera like haile(2002 on) and bekele.

hermens is good.

now genzebe

If anyone didn't have time to read Renato's impassioned plea, it essentially repeated his usual claims that doping doesn't work on Africans and then blamed the people who want doping out of the sport rather than the filthy dopers themselves.

'4) 40 Kenyans testing positive in the last 3 years, more than all Jamaicans have ever tested positive or more than all American sprinters have ever tested positive....and they're about to be banned for not testing!'

No way is doping in Kenyan long distance running worse than American sprinting. It could be as bad but not worse. They are just more sophisticated in avoiding positives in America.Unless you think there is no new 'clear'.

Even when there is a positive test the guy has been doping and passing tests for years

clear message tat off cards now

like did for gw501516 in early 2013.

epo stil king and out of testin there ,do little.