Renato Canova wrote:
My proposal is not for showing my theory about EPO is correct, but for cleaning the widespread opinion that ALL THE BEST KENYAN are doped.
Of course, maybe that some other, weaker than the athletes in the list I wrote, can dope, but this is a different issue. In this case, people can start to think "if the bests are clean, why who is weaker does assume PEDs", that is the contrary of what happens today "why some athletes take EPO, if doesn't work ?".
I think that the only way for fighting EPO is to show that the number ones are the best without using.
Remember that the final performance depends on the balance of several factors. So, I don't have any doubt EPO can enhance the ability to transport oxygen, this is true for every human being. What I say is that IS USELESS FOR IMPROVING PERFORMANCES, of course if the training is proper, correct and with continuity, high volume and high intensity, because at the same time we reduce the ability of the body to work at its best in some other direction.
All my discussions are not if Kenyans dope or not (years ago of sure not, today there is evidence many of them dope), and are not if EPO works with Kenyans (how Kenyans is a special category...). The specific category are KENYANS TOP RUNNERS, who are different from normal Kenyans BECAUSE OF THEI TALENT AND THEIR TRAINING.
At the end, I can say what follows :
a) EPO can help athletes with LITTLE training, compared with their possibilities, to reach better aerobic level
b) The same athletes, increasing their training "clean" to the same level of their training "doped", achieve the same performances
c) Don't tell me doped athletes train more because with EPO can recover better and can avoid injuries. They recover better, compared with were able to do before, BECAUSE MENTALLY NEVER WANTED TO TRY THE SAME LEVEL OF TRAINING, THINKING NOT TO BE ABLE TO RECOVERY. So, it's not doping allowing athletes to recover better, but it's training, and you can become able to recover in very short time with proper training, when you use continuity, graduality and right methodology.
d) Using EPO, athletes can reach an aerobic level very close the maximum level they can reach with proper training, with little volume and intensity. When I see athletes running at high level and for long time very hard lactic sessions, continuing increasing their performances, they need to have a wide and strong aerobic base (otherwise in short time their shape goes down). For having this wide aerobic base, there are two ways only : or athletes run high volume of km, many of them very fast (Shaheen ran 37 km in Iten in 2 hr 01' in the month of July 2005, one week after winning steeple in Golden Gala (Rome) in 7'56", and 3 weeks before winning WCh), or they use EPO if their long and aerobic runs are 40' easy (for example, Brahim Boulami in Maroc).
A top athlete is like a Formula One : his engine is already at the top, and it's not possible to manipulate the engine for having some more HP. But, also, there is another factor : the winning car is the one which has more balance between the power of the engine, and the aerodinamic. If the engine is very strong, but the aerodinamic not good for certain circuits, the final result is not the best. In the balance of the human engine, when we speak about the top runners in the world, if we improve one function (for example, the ability to transport oxygen) but we make worse another correlated function (for example, the velocity of blood circulation), the final result is not ameliorative.
We must Always think that athletic performances depend on several combined factors, and to look at one of them as the exclusive source of every result is something not only limited, but also wrong.