It is very hard to believe he is clean, but if he isn't, then the others can't be either. Two sub 1:59 times in one marathon and a 2:00? What has driven such massive improvement? Norwegian singles method?
No, more likely they are running massive miles in doubles or triples.
Sawe is showing the drug testing is even easier to beat than we thought.
Not just Sawe. The first 3 in that race showed that.
Yeah I'm starting to lose interest. Testing can be beaten with drugs with short half lives, but then we have designer drugs, TUEs, whereabouts, etc. Anybody thinking sub-2 is possible without all of that is kidding themselves. Most of us just want to check out when it comes to sports & be entertained. In running, that means getting excited by fast times. It would be a lot easier to just be excited by sub-2, but I'm not.
Only a fraction are beating the rules? Since you don't use "fraction" in the popular sense of very few it is estimated to mean more than half of pro and elite athletes. If they weren't Howman wouldn't be concerned that antidoping is "ineffective".
If he was saying what you claim he is saying his address to the conference would have been that "a few dopers are getting away with it but doping control is mostly effective because most athletes aren't doping. So let's give ourselves and the sport a pat on the back." Strangely, he said pretty much the opposite of that. But not that you could understand that.
I didn't say "a fraction", but "the fraction". There is no wiggle room for intepretation here. "The fraction" is the exact fraction, regardless if its magnitude is small or large. The actual value of this fraction is unknown, even to Howman.
I'm making no claims about what he is saying, but provided his exact quote. Whether the fraction is "very few" or "more than half" doesn't change the fact that Howman very much qualified what he meant by "ineffective", contrary to your claim that he doesn't.
There is seriously something wrong with your reading comprehension, whether it is my posts, or Howman's speeches, or confidential surveys, etc., causing you to draw your own conclusions based on things never said, causing you to argue against arguments never made, not to mention causing you to repeatedly blatantly contradict yourself because you can't even comprehend things you wrote earlier in the day.
"Is Sabastian Sawe showing that the sport is cleaner than we thought?"
This is the most doped sport next to untested bodybuilding and we're using an inhuman performance as evidence against doping? You've got to be kidding me.
As I've always said, let them dope. This is an absolute FARCE to be gaslighting ourselves into trying to guess "Who is? Who isn't?"
They all are. Let's just stop pretending the reality is something it's not.
Only a fraction are beating the rules? Since you don't use "fraction" in the popular sense of very few it is estimated to mean more than half of pro and elite athletes. If they weren't Howman wouldn't be concerned that antidoping is "ineffective".
If he was saying what you claim he is saying his address to the conference would have been that "a few dopers are getting away with it but doping control is mostly effective because most athletes aren't doping. So let's give ourselves and the sport a pat on the back." Strangely, he said pretty much the opposite of that. But not that you could understand that.
I didn't say "a fraction", but "the fraction". There is no wiggle room for intepretation here. "The fraction" is the exact fraction, regardless if its magnitude is small or large. The actual value of this fraction is unknown, even to Howman.
I'm making no claims about what he is saying, but provided his exact quote. Whether the fraction is "very few" or "more than half" doesn't change the fact that Howman very much qualified what he meant by "ineffective", contrary to your claim that he doesn't.
There is seriously something wrong with your reading comprehension, whether it is my posts, or Howman's speeches, or confidential surveys, etc., causing you to draw your own conclusions based on things never said, causing you to argue against arguments never made, not to mention causing you to repeatedly blatantly contradict yourself because you can't even comprehend things you wrote earlier in the day.
If I didn't know better, I would say that he is the ultimate Trumper - facts are only a distraction to the narrative he has to follow, no matter what. He is a broken record, whose claims, while consistent, lose value when they are always the same, regardless of facts that might change someone's mind. I'm an even older geezer than him, but my mind isn't so made up that any facts won't change my opinion.
So he runs 3 minutes faster on a slower course than just a few months ago when he was getting tested 25 times before Berlin?
It's hard to believe that this guy is clean when Kipchoge at two minutes slower had almost certainly been consuming full throttle EPO for a decade before he even moved to the marathon.
Also, he made his breakthrough transformation coming out of lockdowns. 14:30 5000m in 2020 at age 25 to 27:09 10K in 2022.
"Is Sabastian Sawe showing that the sport is cleaner than we thought?"
This is the most doped sport next to untested bodybuilding and we're using an inhuman performance as evidence against doping? You've got to be kidding me.
As I've always said, let them dope. This is an absolute FARCE to be gaslighting ourselves into trying to guess "Who is? Who isn't?"
They all are. Let's just stop pretending the reality is something it's not.
All the Kenyans and East Africans are. You have zero evidence that ALL Western athletes are, and who have a fraction of the incentive to.
Not just Sawe. The first 3 in that race showed that.
Yeah I'm starting to lose interest. Testing can be beaten with drugs with short half lives, but then we have designer drugs, TUEs, whereabouts, etc. Anybody thinking sub-2 is possible without all of that is kidding themselves. Most of us just want to check out when it comes to sports & be entertained. In running, that means getting excited by fast times. It would be a lot easier to just be excited by sub-2, but I'm not.
All you need is the correct political atmosphere and likely shoe company backing. The way Carl Lewis and many of Kersee’s athletes were popped and yet allowed to compete without a word to the public. This is no different.
There are lots of individualized arguments about why a specific runner might be clear or dirty, like their coach/agent/training partners, their progression, or of course a positive test. But ultimately, the reason a doping cloud hangs over the sport isn't that each runner is individually suspicious, but that the whole sport "must" be dirty. The argument goes as follows:
Suppose a marathoner runs 2:02, and that doping helps 4 minutes. Either he is a doper who would run 2:06 clean, or he's clean and would run 1:58 dirty. We know there are guys with 2:06 talent; probably some of them dope. We've never seen anyone run close to 1:58, and if this guy has 2:02-talent, shouldn't there be a bunch of 2:03 or 2:04-talent guys, some of whom will dope and run 1:59-2:00? Since this doesn't happen, the 2:02 guy must be doping. In other words, the performance level alone is suspicious.
Needless to say, this is an absolutely toxic argument for trust in the sport. It's why (in my opinion) most sports pretend doping doesn't exist. It's why one runner testing positive casts a shadow over everyone else.
But the contrapositive is true too: if we can prove that the 2:02 runner is clean, then one of my assumptions above is wrong. Maybe doping doesn't help 4 minutes. Maybe there are lots of guys with 2:03 talent, but they don't run 1:59 because they're actually clean. Maybe neither of those things are true, but the 2:02 guy is able to get to the top of the sport off transcendent talent and hard work anyway. Any of these explanations would highly encouraging!
Now, taking a bunch of extra tests certainly can't prove that Sebastian Sawe is clean, nothing can do that for certain. But why would a doper want to sign up for all that, even if they're confident they can beat the tests, it just adds an extra hurdle, and the prize money is the same either way. No one was clamoring for this, few other athletes do anything like it, and we celebrate them just fine. It doesn't even have *that* much upside for Sawe; now every time his name comes up we start talking about doping.
So I do think that Sawe's testing regimen has to count as good evidence that he might be clean (although far from certain). And like I said above, the sport rises and falls as one. If Sawe is clean then it is possible to run 2:02 clean, and so other top marathoners might be clean. If top marathoners can be clean, the same goes for champions of all events.
I don't know how many people actually believe that "everyone is doping"; it certainly seems to be believed by a lot of forum posters. And I do think that (while not dispositive!) Sawe's project casts a blow against that very depressing worldview.
Have the various tests Sawe went through over the last several months been made public for folks to scrutinize and make sure they're all legit? I'm not going to point fingers one way or other, but with this being such a monumental moment in the history of human performance I feel like I need to have experts from all over analyze and give their insights into the findings to know that what happened this morning is legit.
Adidas can say they spent $100k in drug tests to show that it's all legit, but that's a general marketing budget for new super shoes.
Berardelli currently has six athletes under suspension for drug use - that we know of. Sawe is radioactive, so are teammates Wanyonyi and Phanuel Koech and everyone else under Berardelli.
Some important quotes from Brett Clothier of the AIU: “[Marathon runners] are, even at the moment, the highest-tested athletes in the world, and the anti-doping systems we have operating in Sabastian’s country in Kenya is the best testing that’s going on anywhere in the world,” Clothier said. “That’s the situation, but people are still wanting to do even more if we can, as an industry." “It’s really encouraging for our sport that this special program has taken place. It’s an athlete that initiated it, supported by his management team and his sponsor…We hope it can be an example that spurs even more investment in anti-doping so that the fans can have faith in the outcome of these great races.”
The upshot is Sawe/Adidas are putting up $50K again for him to get 25 unannounced tests throughout the season (this was the AIU's decision to more efficiently use the funding...it could also pay dividends as his second marathon is likely to be a World Record attempt again).
For the conspiracy theorists, you now have to believe that Clothier is virtue-signaling and lying through his teeth as it's constantly invoked by some that road runners aren't tested, the tests in Kenya are made-up, or that athletes are being left off the hook. That's an interesting take considering the number of athletes large and small in stature being busted, especially in road racing.
Now, I'd wish Rosa/Kiplimo/Nike would do the same thing for him, but I am not holding my breath.
You know the best chemists are always ahead of the testers though right?
If you know the drugs you're taking aren't going to be detected, because they've not created a test for it yet, then of course you're going to invite more testing.
It's the old magic trick: the magician tells YOU to pick a card, to give the farce some legitimacy, but there's no actual jeopardy.
Some important quotes from Brett Clothier of the AIU: “[Marathon runners] are, even at the moment, the highest-tested athletes in the world, and the anti-doping systems we have operating in Sabastian’s country in Kenya is the best testing that’s going on anywhere in the world,” Clothier said. “That’s the situation, but people are still wanting to do even more if we can, as an industry." “It’s really encouraging for our sport that this special program has taken place. It’s an athlete that initiated it, supported by his management team and his sponsor…We hope it can be an example that spurs even more investment in anti-doping so that the fans can have faith in the outcome of these great races.”
The upshot is Sawe/Adidas are putting up $50K again for him to get 25 unannounced tests throughout the season (this was the AIU's decision to more efficiently use the funding...it could also pay dividends as his second marathon is likely to be a World Record attempt again).
For the conspiracy theorists, you now have to believe that Clothier is virtue-signaling and lying through his teeth as it's constantly invoked by some that road runners aren't tested, the tests in Kenya are made-up, or that athletes are being left off the hook. That's an interesting take considering the number of athletes large and small in stature being busted, especially in road racing.
Now, I'd wish Rosa/Kiplimo/Nike would do the same thing for him, but I am not holding my breath.
You know the best chemists are always ahead of the testers though right?
If you know the drugs you're taking aren't going to be detected, because they've not created a test for it yet, then of course you're going to invite more testing.
It's the old magic trick: the magician tells YOU to pick a card, to give the farce some legitimacy, but there's no actual jeopardy.
do you know how an athlete biological passport works?
All the Kenyans and East Africans are. You have zero evidence that ALL Western athletes are, and who have a fraction of the incentive to.
Really? Fraction of the incentive to do so? Do you realize Armstrong became friends with multiple US presidents? Ingebrigtsen's wedding was a nationally televised event? Oh, and Coe turned his 2 gold medals into a gig as the World Athletics president.
These posts are from butt hurt people who assume he’s dirty because it’s way above what they could do. the guy was tested enough to convince me he’s clean. If you think the testers are dirty, or don’t trust the tests, or want others to double check the testers, then it’s a sorry, cynical life you lead. Tin foil hats all round please.
You know the best chemists are always ahead of the testers though right?
If you know the drugs you're taking aren't going to be detected, because they've not created a test for it yet, then of course you're going to invite more testing.
It's the old magic trick: the magician tells YOU to pick a card, to give the farce some legitimacy, but there's no actual jeopardy.
do you know how an athlete biological passport works?
These posts are from butt hurt people who assume he’s dirty because it’s way above what they could do. the guy was tested enough to convince me he’s clean. If you think the testers are dirty, or don’t trust the tests, or want others to double check the testers, then it’s a sorry, cynical life you lead. Tin foil hats all round please.
Lance Armstrong couldn't have said it better himself.
P.S. I'm pretty sure he said the same thing - almost word for word - whenever he was accused of doping.
So he runs 3 minutes faster on a slower course than just a few months ago when he was getting tested 25 times before Berlin?
It's hard to believe that this guy is clean when Kipchoge at two minutes slower had almost certainly been consuming full throttle EPO for a decade before he even moved to the marathon.
Also, he made his breakthrough transformation coming out of lockdowns. 14:30 5000m in 2020 at age 25 to 27:09 10K in 2022.
You say it's "hard to believe" because you are looking at this like it is all a religion, rather than applying the higher standard you use for "Western athletes" of "evidence".
Please hold yourself to your own standard, and provide for us all the evidence supporting Kipchoge was likely on full throttle EPO for a decade, that no Western athletes were or are, and for extra credit, that full throttle EPO would even help anyone run the marathon faster.
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