People called me ridiculous for saying doping is very common in colllege

Ah yes -- the Kenyan study. Besides the lack of a control group, the fatal flaw in that study was that the Kenyans were simply not racing the time trials. This can be confirmed by estimating their 3000m ability, and was confirmed by the researchers with RPE measurements. It is not that hard at all to improve your 3000m time trials by 5% when the baseline time trial is run at your marathon pace. This can be done easily without EPO.

What a wasted opportunity.

Levine and Stray-Gundersen performed several altitude studies, showing the best results with a "Living High, Training Low" protocol.

https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/jappl.1997.83.1.102

I can't speak to what you have seen, but I just linked to one.

Do you have reliable performance data showing any cumulative benefits of EPO + altitude training?

That's interesting about the RPE. It did go up in Kenyan study but was similar in their sister study of low-altitude runners.

I think it may be possible that some of the top endurance athletes living at 7,000 feet may be clean, especially if they are using sauna or hot tub to expand plasma volume and doing hard workouts with oxygen or at low altitude. It's hard to know the answer. Also, living at moderate altitude may reduce the number of hours needed in high altitude simulation which can also be achieved in a bedroom environment.

But I still think doping is common in the NCAA.

Several hundred busted Kenyan dopers, most of whom also trained at altitude.

All of this doping is analogous to the financial and political worlds. It's really hard to catch insider trading, so it happens. But a key to making insider trading more successful is convincing a bunch of suckers that it's not happening. I'm curious if there's a term in sociology or game theory for when the rules aren't enforced, and this rewards those who break the rules.

So you have no reliable performance data at all.

Recall the question was specifically about EPO -- there were not several hundred Kenyans busted for EPO, or ABP, or more generally blood doping.

It's much more than interesting -- it completely undermines any performance conclusions. Had they included a control group, and double-blinded the participants, the flaws in the study design and execution would have been immediately obvious. Comparing the study design and execution and considerations to the care and planning in the Levin and Stray-Gundersen studies shows just how much is missing from the Pitsiladis time trials.

No one is asking if EPO will help you improve tempo-ing 3000m from marathon or half-marathon pace, to half-marathon to 10K pace.

No, the thread isn't just about EPO. Any kind of doping. Which is what Kenyans do. Altitude-trained athletes wouldn't dope if it didn't given them advantage - and Kenyans dope in their droves. Doping statistics are actually data but you will never find "data" that you will accept.

You accept no data.

Doping statistics are one kind of data, but they are not "reliable performance data". I have accepted for discussion the totality of all the available data, and stripped them of baseless conclusions, common fallacies, and other speculative rationalizations.

The thread isn't about Kenyans either. You only show you didn't follow the main thread, or grasp the nuance of the thread within a thread. You are not materially responding to anything in this thread. "Detective P" and I were talking about EPO and altitude, before you butted in like a bull in a china shop.

That thread within this thread went like this: "Detective P" commented about "3 to 6% improvement (from) safe amounts of EPO". I responded that "We have seen similar improvements from altitude studies." You replied "Altitude benefits don't match doping gains", failing to understand that we were only talking about EPO. To get you back on track, I asked you specifically if you had "reliable performance data showing any cumulative benefits of EPO + altitude training". Your response shows you have no data, just speculative rationalizations based on busts.

You make a good point. I was mainly thinking about post-collegiates in my hypothetical, but you’re right that the incentives are also strong for a 15:00 high schooler or a college runner trying to transfer into a top program. The stakes (scholarships, admissions, roster spots) are very real at those levels too.

What a ridiculous thread.

A lot of money for good girls.

Good analogy, and I think you are on to something with the “rules not enforced” part. In both finance and sport you get what people sometimes call regulatory theater: the authorities look the other way for a long time, then every so often stage a big, public bust to reassure the suckers that the system is fair.

Lance and Madoff are basically the same script in different costumes. For years there were obvious anomalies and lots of smoke: Lance’s performances and entourage, Madoff’s black box strategy and impossible returns. Insiders were openly suspicious in both cases, yet each guy was treated as a paragon of his field, showered with access, praise, and institutional backing.

Then, once they were no longer useful or the fraud became too obvious to plausibly ignore, the hammer finally dropped. The takedowns were loud and theatrical, meant to send a message: “See, the system works, we catch the bad guys.” But to anyone paying attention, it had been clear for years that Lance was doped and Madoff was running an unsustainable Ponzi.

The big bust is less about cleaning up the system and more about preserving the illusion that the overall game is still legitimate.

That's racist!

Thank you for that term "regulatory theater." A quick search shows it is used widely. I've heard "political theater" which is more broad.

As much as I think WADA and the AIU are a big step up from NCAA and American sports testing, I still think there's some regulatory theater going on. The primary biomarkers of the athlete biological passport can be manipulated with hydration. This could easily be resolved by using one of the secondary biomarkers. Also there are stronger biomarkers in the Holly Cox 2021 paper with double the detection time and allow non-refrigerated transport. Can't use that because it would catch too many dopers. The EPO testing update in 2022 was substantial but had a vague wording loophole. I think that was fixed in the 2024 update, but an EPO-like substance (pegmolesatide) that's been around since at least 2023 is finally being officially banned and tested for in 2026. And the minimum lab requirements for detecting molidustat allow microdosing every night if the athlete's 60-minute window is late in the day. And some HIF stabilizers are absent from WADA's document (but possibly may serve a different medical function).

This might be too much info for some, but these things are frustrating for me.

That quote is completely backwards and full of bro-science. Nandrolone doesn’t clear in a few days—studies show it can linger in the system and be detectable for up to 18 months, especially when injected as nandrolone decanoate. That’s not a maybe—it’s a documented fact from real doping cases. Meanwhile, EPO is the exact opposite of what he claims; it’s actually hard to catch because it clears fast, often within 2 to 4 days, especially when microdosed. So yeah, he flipped both drugs entirely. And the idea that you can “flush” your system or just pass because no drugs show up on a secondary test is outdated nonsense. Labs test for dilution, and high testosterone without a detected substance still gets flagged using isotope ratio testing, which shows whether it’s synthetic. You don’t just get to blame hydration or electrolytes—anti-doping protocols are miles ahead of that. This isn’t the early 2000s anymore.

You are right to see the flaws, and I think we can take it one step further. On paper the purpose of testing is to create a fair playing field. In practice it also works as a tool of control for the people who run the sport: big sponsors like Nike, federation heads, World Athletics, the IOC.

I am not saying every positive test is fake or every ban is political. But look at how the system is set up. Vague wording, loopholes, delays in banning obvious substances, selective enforcement. That is not just incompetence. It creates leverage. If you are useful and play along, you somehow skate by. If you become a problem, suddenly the full weight of “clean sport” can land on your head.

Lance is the template. For years he was a global cash cow who made everyone money and gave the sport a heroic face. The red flags were there, insiders were suspicious, but nothing stuck. Then he turned from asset to liability. Almost overnight the tone changed, investigations sharpened, people who stayed quiet for years started talking, and he was tossed aside as the great villain. Did the science suddenly improve in one season, or did his value to the system crash?

Even LetsRun sits inside that ecosystem. How many clicks and page views come from endless “Is X athlete doping” threads and moral arguments that never really get resolved? The current half effective, half theatrical anti doping structure keeps everything murky enough that there is always another outrage cycle, but never enough clarity to actually clean house.

That is why I see the Enhanced Games as a kind of brutal honesty. I am not pretending they are a utopia or that they fix every inequality. But they strip away the regulatory theater and say out loud what everyone already knows: enhancement is part of elite sport. Make it explicit, make it transparent, and you remove one of the main tools of selective enforcement.

So when the powers that be line up to denounce it, is that really about fairness and athlete health, or about protecting a system where they control who gets protected, who gets sacrificed, and when the big, public bust gets staged to reassure everyone that “the system works”?