You should be impressed with my arguments. Thanks for the compliment. As you can see, my views are based on a large body of real world data. I would be happy to reconsider my views in light of different real world data, but after several repeated requests, you were either unwilling or unable to provide me any reason or data to do so. But the inquiry and invitation is still open. Note that the 11% was among World Championship and Olympic marathon medals won, and not prevalence among all marathon participants. It was also a lifetime attribute -- i.e. if someone was "suspicious in 2001 on the track, and won a medal in 2011 in the marathon, while never being suspicious again after 2001, that counted as a "suspicious" medal won. So earlier track history would have been included. I suppose you agree that doping should increase the likelihood of winning medals, because, as we have both assumed for discussion, doping works. Alternatively, doping prevalence among medal winners should be higher than general prevalence, because it is harder for clean athletes to win medals, while there is no barrier for clean athletes to merely participate. If you suggest that actual blood doping prevalence is generally much higher than percentage observed by Ashenden and Parisotto among medal winners, that raises the question why proportionally fewer doped athletes, and proportionally more clean athletes are winning medals.
Armstronglivs wrote:
I'm always impressed by an argument that begins as an apparently open inquiry into a question and ends with the answer that you intend at the outset, which is that marathon running has the likely lowest incidence of doping in any sport. If you'll believe that you'll believe anything.
It is also somewhat inconsistent with the fact that many if not most top marathoners are also track athletes, and track has one of the highest incidences of estimated doping.