Was Noureddine Morceli the first African to use EPO in August 1992?

No.

Yes, I agree with my Moroccan friend here.

I think he decided to go on EPO after his defeat by Cacho in Barcelona (who was obviously on the stuff himself). He went to another level entirely almost immediately.

He likely stopped after winning the 96 Gold, and was soon after hospitalized with anemia, which is a sign his body had trouble now to produce red blood cells naturally.

https://www.cs.rochester.edu/~tetreaul/mor1997.html

He came from a family of middle distance runners and was trained by his two old brothers and they had in there eyes the Aouita model.

Note that Algerian were never able to replicate performances close to Morceli performances and most of the top times of the 90s remain unreached.

Aouita suffering hardly to get 7:29 in 1989, then you get some guy performing 7:25 (3000m) while smiling at the end in the middle of 90s.

Maybe.

Needed to surpass Coe and Cram who were possible users too

EPO or not, 3:27/3:44/7:25 is smokin'! Would love to see more times approaching these nowadays.

Sometimes it is difficult to estimate how much someone should've progressed simply by getting older from their teens to their mid-20s. Of his earlier performances, Morceli's indoor mile time of 3:50.81 when he was 20 years old show some talent, perhaps the second fastest indoor mile ever at that time.

Wait I'm confused - is the consensus here that it's preposterous to think that Morceli was possibly doping? (!!!)

I mean most sane followers of the sport now begrudgingly concede that El Guerrouj, who obviously superseded Morceli, was almost certainly doping (the telltale signs of HGH plus the era) - and yet it's inconceivable Morceli wasn't?

I mean sure EPO came to public awareness in track more towards the end of the 90's - but to think it was non-existent/not being used in endurance sport prior to then (especially in only a 5 year period) is completely ignorant.

The Spanish team in '92 were comically doped. The story of Cacho is pretty well known in track circles (wife finds out about it all in 99, tells him it's her or the dope and he goes from running 3.31 at age 30 to 3.42 at age 31) - and he famously was Morcelis greatest and only foil during that period.

End of the day not only did Morceli run 1.44/3.27/3.44/7.25 he also ran races like this...

Yeah that's 3.34.2 off a 50.6 last 400m. To put that in perspective we thought Centro closed fast in Rio - he ran 3.50 off a 50.9 last 400m... ^^

I'd like to see his hematocrit

In term of performances Cacho was the shadow of Morcelli, I don't know why you always bring him in the equation. There was the Burundi runner which was more talented.

We are talking of people that made big breakthroughs in the 90s, Morcelli, Haile Gebreselassi, Komen, El G.

It's Morcelli that started these magic breakthroughs... in September 1992.

Algeria was in full civil war at that time, add that to the equation.

He might have been doping. But the idea that some 21/22 year old is at a lifetime peak and they immediately started doping is pushing it. Dude ran fast a week after the Olympics. He ran a poor race tactics wise and had a slight fitness issue due to an injury. No need to go to doping to explain it.

I would bet against him starting doping after the Olympics. I wouldn't like betting he was a clean athlete after the Olympics anywhere near as much..

Ethiopia has been in a (maybe not full) civil war (Tigray) for several years now and some Ethopians are running faster than ever. Go figure...

He ran 3:30.75 at Zurich, a PB, then lost by over a second to William Kemei over a mile in Berlin. Then 18 days later he runs 3:28:86, taking over 1/2 second over Aouita's WR and just under 2 seconds off his own PB.

He might have been the first. He certainly wasn't the last.

This is the reason I always point my finger to Ethiopia and don't trust the statistics of WADA or AIU or their procedures of ranking countries.

That time was atrocious for Algeria. My self I have some family in Algeria and a close sibling caught diabetes while trying to defend his family while his village was attacked by drugged butcherers at night.

I don't think doping works like that, if you're suggesting he did EPO for 2 weeks mid-season and ran a WR. Probably would have been using the whole time.

Also, about Aouita-- remember when he got fired from coaching Australia for telling the team to dope? If we're giving anyone the nod as 1st African EPO user, I'd say Aouita is up there.

Why is it implausible that he decided to start using EPO immediately or very soon after the Olympics in which he was surprisingly beaten, and the winner had obviously started taking it and recieved massive benefits from it? Especially when that was the year when elite runners were likely starting to use it, as they became aware over the course of the season what it could do? His pb after the Olympics was 3:31.0, and 4 weeks later it was 3:28.6 He went from finishing 7th in the Olympic final to being over half-a-second faster than any human being in history. He certainly recovered from his 'fitness issues' from the Olympics very quickly.

EPO doesn't take months to see benefits like steroids or other peds sometimes require. One of the major studies into its performance enhancing effects showed that after 4 weeks it improved 3000m times by 6%.

runnersworld.com

Study: EPO Effective, Long-Lasting

Improves 3-K time by 6%; effects last at least four weeks.

Open link

This is the exact point to show that doping was very prevalent in this era because I believe there is this (false) narrative that the EPO era/doping in distance only really kicked off in the mid to late 90's and that somehow exonerates Morceli etc

If Fermin Cacho could run under 3.29 for 1500m (which he did) there was some fantastic gear out there. And to think that the WR holder who at one point was as dominant as any runner in history (we forget how dominant Morceli was because El G came along so quickly after him) was just doing it clean is just not plausible.

I think we are saying and agreeing to the same thing, somehow wires just got crossed in translation a little.

When did I ever write/say that he started doping after the Olympics? Seriously - you quoted something and wrote a response directly implying that's what I had alluded to. Never said that.

FTR I think that this era of MD running was just as dirty as the one after it - maybe not as sophisticated but also the late 90's wasn't as sophisticated as the mid 2000's etc with the advent of perfectly tailored micro-dosing/legal limit jostling that we saw start in pro cycling and end up being utilised by Salazar etc.

I believe Morceli was as juiced as anyone going into the Olympics and I do think he just had a very poor race (we don't need to be geniuses to deduce that because we can watch the race and see how awfully he ran). But, don't forget that this race was in Spain and it's likely that Cacho could have replaced his blood with jet fuel and had no issues for those Olympics and Morceli probably wasn't quite in such an equally "privileged" situation. If you get what I'm saying.