Is UK anti-doping more interested in protecting reputations than investigating doping.

Back in the 80's and the early days of 'professional' athletics, athletes didn't have to rely on shoe sponsorships because there was that much money in the sport through packed stadiums and TV money. The reason that's all gone and UK athletics is almost bankrupt is because our athletes haven't been able to compete on a level playing field with full throttle Africans for several decades.

I'm pretty sure few countries in the world would be asking these questions on the basis of so little evidence.

Not that there likely isn't some doping in UK athletics, but it's probably small compared to most countries, especially certain African countries, where we get bust after bust (despite limited and shady testing), and evidence of the level of corruption in their society every day.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55092387

I think we remember history differently.

I thought this thread was about UKAD, not the good old boys of UKA, nor Seb Coe.

I didn't say it had "nothing to do with Seb Coe", but asked what is UKAD supposed to do about an issue between the IAAF and Russia?

To this day, I remain puzzled what the value added of the British Parliamentary Committee was, beyond supplying newspapers with more headlines. Seb Coe answered the Parliamentary questions -- what additional evidence did he fail to provide?

Radcliffe and Farah were not exonerated, as they were not accused of any wrong-doing. "No case to answer" means there is not enough to request the initial response from the athlete, before a charge is issued.

In the case of Farah, it is not clear from the Fancy Bears leak that it ever went to three specialists. My guess is that we see the results of the software algorithm, using lower thresholds to flag more potential drug users, and one specialist who said we need more data.

In the case of Paula, we can only speak about 2012 -- the high hemoglobin value was dismissed by the IAAF expert panel, noting 2400m altitude was a plausible cause. Furthermore, the WADA IC (see their second report) reviewed all of the data provided by the IAAF (and not the incomplete leaked samples), and could find no pattern of suspicion that was not followed up and addressed in a reasonable way.

This is important enough to re-iterate: WADA has full visibility, and also the right of appeal. A special investigation team did an intense review of the timeframe with data from 2001-2015. For what concerns Paula, her data was reviewed by the IAAF, by WADA and the WADA IC, by UKAD, and by an expert she hired -- all arrived at the same conclusion. They are not all British.

It's tempting to blame everything on Nike shills, allegedly infiltrating expert panels doing anonymous evaluations of data packages, when you have nothing concrete -- but that doesn't change that you have nothing concrete.

As for UKAD refusing a request, they made clear at that time that nobody had yet requested any samples. I haven't seen any followup that says the samples were requested from UKAD -- was there ever any such request?

Finally, with Radcliffe, did push ever come to shove? All of the bad values in the leaked database were published. We know the high, the low, and the threshold of suspicion , so we can be reasonably certain where the range of the unpublished "leaked values" lie. I recall her saying she would make her test results public -- the blood values are not test results, especially before 2009.

Coevett wrote:

Back in the 80's and the early days of 'professional' athletics, athletes didn't have to rely on shoe sponsorships because there was that much money in the sport through packed stadiums and TV money. The reason that's all gone and UK athletics is almost bankrupt is because our athletes haven't been able to compete on a level playing field with full throttle Africans for several decades.

I'm pretty sure few countries in the world would be asking these questions on the basis of so little evidence.

Not that there likely isn't some doping in UK athletics, but it's probably small compared to most countries, especially certain African countries, where we get bust after bust (despite limited and shady testing), and evidence of the level of corruption in their society every day.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55092387

You really don’t do yourself any favors here with how extremely you speak, but I will admit that is getting pretty old being sold the “hardworking potato farmer or otherwise very poor African” narrative when in reality they are incredibly obvious walking test tubes.

There are plenty of threads to talk about doping in Kenya.

How about staying on topic here?

Thanks.

I agree with HRE's take on this one. The main interest is to defend UK athletics.

Yes probably. The same could probably be said if the iaaf and every governing body under the sun.

The UK authorities could not care less about catching dopers. Instead they decided to look the other way and have sent the greenlight to their athletes. You need look no further than the Tour De France to see the results. And the UK is just following a well trodden path.