Three more Kenyan runners busted

I really don't want to go around on this forever. Your point about steroids working is a good one but isn't air tight. I actually mostly agree with you but we don't know how effective that fight against steroids is so we don't know for sure that people in the events you mentioned aren't still using them and just being better at not getting caught. I'm not saying that is or isn't so. Also, I think the popularity of many of these events has gone down so much that there may not be as big a talent pool participating in them. Again, just an idea. But stagnation of world records is a piece of evidence, not a proof.

Obviously there will be a point of diminishing returns for distance runners using EPO and maybe, just maybe, someone can get so fit that EPO improves nothing. But we have no actual studies that I've seen confirming that. Again, I can't say it's not true but just saying it's true doesn't make it so. And this still doesn't address the business of the guy just below the top level getting to that level with something like EPO.

The other point here is that even if world records are clean it doesn't mean there's not a big problem with EPO use. We've had armies of what we call "B" level Kenyans here in North America winning second tier road races and marathons and making decent money doing it. If they're doped people behind them are being cheated. If they're doping back in Kenya and getting attention and help from agents instead of clean athletes finishing behind them those clean athletes are being cheated. Most of the athletics world doesn't just revolve around world records.

HRE -- that's a lot of "ifs", effectively arguing "there are no studies proving the unproved allegations are wrong".

At some point, after three decades of EPO use by elite athletes in cycling, running, walking, skiing, swimming, etc., seems like there should be more affirmative substantiation by those making strong claims about the relation between doping and performance, when challenged, that goes beyond cherry picking the tiny intersection of the set of those caught doping with those who win.

Much of what we believe about EPO comes from cyclists in the '90s. Since testing professionals is problamatic, the next interesting question is, can EPO help "B-level" cyclists? There was a recent study on that: "a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial" on a group of 24 cyclists given EPO for 8 weeks, against another group of 24 controls, and a time trial up the Mont Ventoux. Although many other physiological parameters improved as predicted, their time trial performance was about the same (the EPO group was actually slower, but considered insignificant). What happens when you apply "diminishing returns" to these athletes who did not trial faster?

Does Kenya have a big problem with EPO use? Of course any doping above zero can be considered a problem at several levels. We have "unofficial" evidence for this too. The Sunday Times famously published a summary of 12 years of IAAF blood data, obtained by Seppelt and analyzed by two Australian anti-doping scientists. In a table of "suspicious" blood values by country, Kenya's rate was 11%, and Ethiopias was 8% -- both *below* the global average. Kenya was ranked 13th, behind 12 other countries. The IAAF itself has published three studies on its own complete population of large samples of collected blood data, and some sleuths here were able to de-anonymize the countries, again confirming East African blood doping to be around average. While Russian doping has been dealt with, I don't see any proportional "letsrun" concern for some of the remaining countries where the blood doping is "unofficially" as bad, or worse, than Kenya.

Yes, there are loads and loads of "ifs." You cannot run control group studies to measure results. You'd have a hard time isolating for variables if you did. If you're looking for the affect of EPO on performances of elite distance runners you can't know where to look because none of them will tell you they're using it. But if you find such people using EPO it's not unreasonable to think their usage is part of why they're as elite as they are.

And this is all kind of irrelevant and overly complicated. The people who have looked at this think EPO aids performance and banned it. Maybe they're wrong. But the drug was not developed for use on athletes. It's illegal to use so there should be consequences for those who do.

That study on 'well trained' amateur cyclists that Rekrunner quotes has had a lot of criticism, which he obviously ignores.

I've seen some of the criticisms, maybe all of them, but none of them explained why the EPO group was not faster as predicted, despite physiology changes.

But criticism on reddit -- must have missed that. Can you elaborate?

Sure -- consequences for breaking the rules. No one disagrees, and these threads are never about that.

Lacking gold standard studies, there are indirect ways to see the effects across large populations, looking for outliers or trends, and attempting to establish correlations (even if correlation doesn't mean causation). This is precisely why most people believe East Africans started taking EPO in the 1990s -- based on performance alone, lacking evidence of EPO. This is also what I was looking for in all non-African populations over the last three decades, to see if I could find any precedence, or any replication, anywhere, anytime, of a similar performance jump among non-Africans, where EPO was also available, and undetectable for a long time among humans with their human nature. We just saw a similar universal effect with the shoes.

The banning of EPO is an interesting precedent, because the decision was really precautionary and based on very little solid evidence. Unlike with the ban on steroids (1974), transfusions (1985) and stimulants (1960s), there existed no published studies with even recreational athletes when the IOC banned EPO in 1990 (one non-controlled study was in the publishing process). There was also no indirect or anecdotal evidence about the benefits, because there didn't exist a single confirmed case of an athlete using the substance.

Interestingly the International Ski Federation had banned EPO way back in 1988 with even less information about its effects on athletes, because only a few hundred patients had been treated with the substance by then.

But EPO almost certainly would've been banned even had they waited for more robust studies and evidence of misuse accumulating by the mid-1990s. It is another - albeit interesting - question if every athlete indeed could benefit from using the substance or whether there are groups of non-responders.

I have the impression they banned Meldonium the same way, largely on the premise that many athletes were taking it, so it must be doing something they don't know yet. Or possibly to better target Russians and Ethiopians.

There is also the logic that some athletes take drugs because they are banned. After all, if WADA banned it, it must "work".

You didn't show anything. First, you assume that all cultures would take EPO equally, ignoring the fact that some countries have much greater doping problems than others (including Kenya, which is why it is one of four countries on the AIU category A watch list). The countries now on the AIU watch list nearly 30 years later, such as Kenya and Morocco, DID see a massive jump in performance, as well as a massive decline in performances once EPO testing was introduced.

Now of course you'll say that this is unscientific, and doesn't constitute any kind of proof, yet your ad hoc manipulative cherry picking of stats does somehow constitute proof.

No, the criticism (by experts) is clearly referred to and name checked in the comments. Don't worry, I'm not like you - claiming that El G was scientifically proven clean because a poll on LetsRun found a slight majority of anonymous IPs voted him clean.

It is worth noting though that not a single person in that (cycling) subreddit defends the study or advocates for the legalization of EPO on the basis of it. I strongly suspect that is the same in all cycling forums. Yet EPO clearly (to most rational people) has almost brought our sport to its knees, playing a huge part in the massive decline in spectators, broadcasters, and media and public in general (unlike cycling, probably because professional cyclists always doped, and this was understood).

Yet on the 'famously anti-doping LetsRun', you get an apparent majority of commentators endorsing the study as proof that EPO doesn't work, and that those busted as EPO cheats have been victims of unscientific witchhunts.

That is also more-or-less also my impression about mildronate / meldonium. In defense of the EPO ban by the FIS in 1988 from the performance viewpoint, there was at least an intuitively sound and logical mechanism for the potential performance benefit (and later mostly confirmed), which was never that evident with meldonium.

It is funny that my post managed to get a few thumbs down despite being in essence only a list of undisputed chronology of events in 1988-1990. A series of events perhaps not known for most of the LR readers.

Defender of the guy who set us down the path of middle distance runners doping, Seb Coe

I didn't say I showed anything, but I looked for something by taking a closer look at all of the fastest performances across 6 distance events for men and 5 distance events for women.

I only adopted the popular assumptions of many others who strongly argue that doping is both widespread across all cultures and highly performance enhancing for the best athletes of all cultures, and only then to predict what I should expect to find by looking. Whether a culture dopes or not, did not impact the sample I chose to take a closer look at.

It's a fact that cycling in the '90s told us many things about doping culture and big doping problems worldwide. Seems you are the one ignoring that fact.

I haven't seen the massive decline in performances you suggest are linked to increased testing.

I'm not going to do your homework by searching for points you are unable to bring here. The fact is that 8 weeks of EPO did not make these 24 cyclists faster than the control group, despite a range of physiological changes.

That doesn't sound like me -- I never claimed that El G was scientifically proven clean. I think what I claimed is that the idea that El G is clean is not so extreme according to a recent letsrun poll.

Where there’s smoke there’s fire. Jamaica, Russia, East German, now Kenya.

I don't know anyone who advocates for the legalization of EPO on any basis. What an odd irrational thing to say.

It's also odd how you always put yourself in the "most rational people" camp. Do "most rational people" make the same claim about you?

You think Letsrun is famously anti-doping? And that a majority of Letsrun endorsed the Dutch study? That hasn't been my experience.