Manangoi ban - tragic. Was he unjustly convicted?

His excuse for missed 2nd test was he was getting off a night shift as a policeman at 5-6am and was caught in a traffic jam.

Seriously?

Ghost1 wrote:

It seems Elijah genuinely has a case that should be reviewed. It also seems that most Kenyans agree that his failure to show up for the testing should not result in a two-year ban. Processing cases speedily is laudable but not until all avenues have been explored and due diligence accomplished. Reasonable doubt cannot be shown in this case, up until now. This is really tragic for this athlete.

How is this tragic ghost? I don’t care if he never doped (which I highly doubt), how do you miss 3 tests? It shows a complete lack of responsibility and professionalism. There is literally no excuse for missing that many tests. Even if he is clean, he should still be banned for pure stupidity/laziness. If you miss tests you are part of the problem even if you’re clean. Guys a disgrace

wutt wrote:

I'm interested in what you all think - do you think it was always like this (in recent memory anyway) or do you think it is more recent?

Since the 70s, yes. If anything, the 80s were worse with very rudimentary testing and hard core Cold War doping.

Steeplepursuit wrote:

Its not tragic. Whats tragic is the low number of athletes being busted.

An anonymous survey of track athletes at the 2015 world champiuonships suggested that 57% of the athletes admitted to doping before the championships

The figure of 57% was for the Pan-Arab Games, which included 27 sports, and only athletes from Arab nations.

Great thread, thanks wrote:

Coevett wrote:

Even the fastest 400m guy busted.

This is a lie.

I don't know if this is a lie, but he virtually lies in every thread he appears.

For sure he has no interest to correct his lies (he does them by purpose, his only intention is to back up his theories, regardless if true or not).

Steeplepursuit wrote:

Its not tragic. Whats tragic is the low number of athletes being busted.

An anonymous survey of track athletes at the 2015 world champiuonships suggested that 57% of the athletes admitted to doping before the championships

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/aug/29/sport-doping-study-revealing-wider-usage-published-after-scandalous-delay

So 57% of the athletes at the 2015 world championships?

And people wonder why conspiracy theories arise?

(People can't read/comprehend thus connect non-existing dots..)

If you bother to actually read the article you'll find that it was 43% and the World Championship in question was 2011 (South Korea)

Btw, the conclusion of the study was that at least 30% doped, but that the risk was on the upside of that number..

Not saying that survey wasn't shocking or anything, but why say it's even worse than it was?

Not sure why the Guardian rounds 43.6% to 43%, but this is what the original article says:

So, 43.6% estimated, unlikely less, straight from the horses mouth.

As for the 30 - 31%, that is under two conservative assumptions, which the authors themselves don't seem to like - but the IAAF likes to focus on that:

It may also be worthwhile to point out that we are talking about "past-year doping", i.e. in the 12 months before the championships, not during the championships (that number is likely lower) or during a whole career (that number is likely higher).

briswiss wrote:

Ghost1 wrote:

It seems Elijah genuinely has a case that should be reviewed. It also seems that most Kenyans agree that his failure to show up for the testing should not result in a two-year ban. Processing cases speedily is laudable but not until all avenues have been explored and due diligence accomplished. Reasonable doubt cannot be shown in this case, up until now. This is really tragic for this athlete.

How is this tragic ghost? I don’t care if he never doped (which I highly doubt), how do you miss 3 tests? It shows a complete lack of responsibility and professionalism. There is literally no excuse for missing that many tests. Even if he is clean, he should still be banned for pure stupidity/laziness. If you miss tests you are part of the problem even if you’re clean. Guys a disgrace

You’re right that missing three tests, no matter the excuses, shows a certain degree of irresponsibility. Manangoi denies the accusations of doping but he will remain under suspicion because of the missed tests obviously.

Really, it boggles the mind that these people, like Elijah Manangoi, would wish to dope, if that’s the case, because they have more than enough talent to be at the top of the world without doping, if that is the case. Greed may seem to be the culprit in this case and wanting to take shortcuts, similar to PhD students plagiarizing with the aim of producing their thesis at an earlier stage in their studies.

four mistakes wrote:

Great thread, thanks wrote:

This is a lie.

I don't know if this is a lie, but he virtually lies in every thread he appears.

For sure he has no interest to correct his lies (he does them by purpose, his only intention is to back up his theories, regardless if true or not).

I believe it was their female 400m runner in 2015 (50.71).

rekrunner wrote:

Steeplepursuit wrote:

Its not tragic. Whats tragic is the low number of athletes being busted.

An anonymous survey of track athletes at the 2015 world champiuonships suggested that 57% of the athletes admitted to doping before the championships

The figure of 57% was for the Pan-Arab Games, which included 27 sports, and only athletes from Arab nations.

Correct. The number who admitted to doping at the 2011 world athletics championships was 43%. It likely means Arabs are more honest. The actual number is closer to 60%

Steeplepursuit wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

The figure of 57% was for the Pan-Arab Games, which included 27 sports, and only athletes from Arab nations.

Correct. The number who admitted to doping at the 2011 world athletics championships was 43%. It likely means Arabs are more honest. The actual number is closer to 60%

It's premature to talk about "actual number" as if anyone can say what that is with any certainty.

The survey method of this study (UQM) has yet to be shown that it can give accurate results for sensitive questions like doping prevalence in sports.

In another similar study, UQM was compared to three other models. UQM estimated 58% for doping prevalence of British and Irish club athletes, while the other three models estimated +/-20%.

The same model comparison for a non-sensitive question on herbal supplements did not show any significant difference. This suggests a reluctance of survey respondents to be honest to sensitive questions, even when they have not doped.

Random response models (like UQM) can guarantee anonymity, but cannot guarantee compliance with the survey instructions, and cannot detect non-compliance.

This instant study concerned itself greatly with non-compliance, developing no less than 8 models of different forms of non-compliance, showing how such non-compliance would alter "the actual number".

Unfortunately, the main weakness of UQM is the inability to detect non-compliance and the inability to assess the likelihood and magnitude of the various forms of non-compliance.

The models are currently of little use because they require an input that the researchers could not measure and do not have.

Independently of these non-compliance models, the researchers measured survey response times, observing a large positive bias in the fastest responses, recommending to eliminate this observed bias by discarding the fastest 30% of the responses, because the slowest 70% were stable, resulting in an adjusted lower bound estimate of +/- 31.4%. While eliminating the bias from the fastest 30% looks like an obvious and justifiable correction, the authors still have no way of assessing the remaining degree of non-compliance in the slowest 70%.

The above mentioned UQM comparison study suggests that even 31.4% could be higher than the "actual number".

The authors spent little energy on explaining the source of such a large bias, but it is best explained by "automatic yes" responses, combined with a significant number of non-dopers switching to the unrelated birthday question. They could find no obvious explanation for non-dopers to lie, because they ignored social factors like apathy for doping research goals or the nuisance of taking the time necessary to fill out surveys.

More research:

Objective: "not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts"

Being busted for "whereabouts failures" is not "confirmed objective" evidence of an athlete using a banned doping substance to enhance performance.

Every objective observer would make the clear distinction between the fact of failures to be tested, and the fact of a failed test, without making a subjective connection between the two distinct rule violations.

Whereabouts system is unprecedented in human history and one day will have to come to an end as a control system too far.

casual obsever wrote:

Jackoo wrote:

You think it is a confirmed objective fact that most of the top Kenyans dope.

I have to agree with Coevett here. This is a direct conclusion of two facts:

1) In the only comprehensive study to date, likely more than 44% of world championship athletes were reported to dope. Almost half, or more.

2) Kenya is ranked as one of the four most likely to dope countries by the IAAF. Much worse than average.

Noting that almost half or more of the world championship athletes dope, and Kenyans are among the worst offenders, clearly more than half of them dope.

You take great risk aligning yourself with Coevett.

Despite your stated agreement, it remains true that his claims are subjective.

I note first that a rule violation of "whereabouts" is not the same as a rule violation of taking a banned substance.

Both of your facts are tenuous, as is the resulting conclusion.

1) While it is true that a survey of athletes self-reporting doping produced some results, it is not necessarily true that the survey results accurately indicate true doping prevalence.

- UQM may lead to significant over-estimates (e.g. as much as 300% discrepancy was observed in a similar study)

- the "likely more than" was a suggestion, as you just showed: "Sensitivity analyses ... *suggested* that we were

unlikely to have overestimated"

- any suggestion of "unlikely overestimate" of "likely more than", even from Harrison Pope Jr., is also subjective, as likelihood of any form of non-compliance was not detected or measured

- "likely more than 44%" remains unsupported and unsupportable by the paper -- the only way it arguably makes sense, as the study did not objectively measure or even estimate the likelihood of any form of non-compliance with the survey, is to follow the logic used in the paper of addressing and attempting to arguably eliminate all positive biases, to arrive at the conservative lower bound estimate (+/- 31.4%), and "suggest" that this conservative lower bound is unlikely to be an over-estimate, and that the remaining errors would only serve to increase the estimate.

- even this conservative lower bound may be high, according to one of the authors (see above)

2) This looks like an over-interpretation of the dumbed down phrase "most likely to dope". The IAAF initially described it, not in terms of likelihood, but in terms of risk "most at risk of doping". As later clarified in "insidethegames":

"To determine a National Federation’s doping risk, the AIU considers two factors."

"The first is the absolute doping risk posed by the federation’s athletes or athlete support personnel, with the second considering the country’s current or potential success at international level."

- While it is tempting to interpret this as the countries the IAAF believe have the highest prevalence, the initial list excluded proven high prevalence countries like Russia and Morocco and India and China.

- This suggests that the Category A federations list is not complete.

- The high degree of success of a country like Kenya would more likely put them into Category A even if the prevalence was average or below average.

- The remedy of improving out of competition testing suggests that the list is a combination of significant prevalence and a high risk of non-detection from anti-doping organizations.

- Since 2018, the AIU added Morroco, Bahrain, and Nigeria

- Nigeria was moved from Category B to Category A, not for high prevalence, but for failing to report on compliance (Rule 15), again suggesting the focus is also on anti-doping detecting compliance and not prevalence alone.

Your conclusion:

Points 1 and 2 tries to combine apples and oranges.

- Point 1) aggregates men and women and mingles distance events with sprints and field and race-walking, while Point 2) for Kenya is primarily connected to distance events.

- The estimated doping prevalence for distance events alone was not determined

- Russia was, by all estimates, by far the most prolific doping country. If we eliminate Russian speakers from the survey, the figures in the UQM survey drop significantly: 43.6% becomes as low as 37.9% and the conservative 31.4% becomes as low as 24.5%

- Repeating that exercise for more non-Kenyan countries like Morocco, Ukraine, and Turkey, (countries we deduced the IAAF identified as high blood dopers in 2011 Daegu) and the estimated prevalence for the remaining countries drop even further.

rule reader wrote:

Whereabouts system is unprecedented in human history and one day will have to come to an end as a control system too far.

Whereabouts system is generally popular with the athletes, and supported by athletes unions.

As you already know, your legal theory has been tested in the European Court of Human Rights, and was dismissed.

Not every element was tested in Court and there are many other countries where it may get challenged.

Now that you have to comply fully 24/7 adds and other element of control.

rule reader wrote:

Not every element was tested in Court and there are many other countries where it may get challenged.

Now that you have to comply fully 24/7 adds and other element of control.

You are not really reading the rules, are you.

You had to comply 24/7 before -- nothing changed with respect to the athletes' obligations.

After human rights, what other possible element is there?

Athletes, sports organizations, national federations, and countries, are all WADA signatories, and have agreed to the WADA rules, to be bound by the WADA rules, and to enforce WADA rules.

Athlete's unions were also involved and have agreed on the result as an acceptable compromise to the freedom of movement of athletes, and making themselves available for unannounced testing.

It seems highly unlikely that any element will be tested in any court, and survive.

rekrunner wrote:

rule reader wrote:

Not every element was tested in Court and there are many other countries where it may get challenged.

Now that you have to comply fully 24/7 adds and other element of control.

You are not really reading the rules, are you.

You had to comply 24/7 before -- nothing changed with respect to the athletes' obligations.

After human rights, what other possible element is there?

Athletes, sports organizations, national federations, and countries, are all WADA signatories, and have agreed to the WADA rules, to be bound by the WADA rules, and to enforce WADA rules.

Athlete's unions were also involved and have agreed on the result as an acceptable compromise to the freedom of movement of athletes, and making themselves available for unannounced testing.

It seems highly unlikely that any element will be tested in any court, and survive.

Nothing changed with the rules ... yes. But if you seek to apply them in a particular way then functionally they have..

What athletes unions?

The PFA in soccer in uk have not.