The actual question about EPO doping allegations

Don't forget that the ABP is individualized. You don't get banned for high hct, but for variations of it (and ret-% and off-score).

One trick is to start blood doping before competing and getting tested - then AIU/NADO thinks your hct baseline is higher than your natural baseline. But then make sure you never go off the dope.

True.

But, anyway, deviations above what's determined as naturally plausible are still failing a test.

My point is, and I'm dropping names just for the sake of clarity...

Genetic freaks training at very high volume/intensity at altitude such as Kipchoge, Kiptum, Kiplimo...

Should not be very close to that numbers, naturally?

In the mid 2000s an pro cyclist emerged as a major contender. He claimed that he was a genetic outlier, that his red blood cell levels were naturally abnormally high. He even spent two weeks getting tested at the cycling federation's official lab to verify the alleged abnormality. Yet within months he was caught using a new designer form of epo that he thought was untraceable. Turns out he was using epo since riding as a junior.

A. Kiptum actually tried this defense. Still got banned. IIRC his hemoglobin varied between 16 and 20 g/dl (hct above 60%).

No, not really. That is something dopers try unsuccessfully to argue when caught though.

I don’t know what the abnormal values would be, but I constantly have an hct between 50 and 54. I live at 5000ft and all my blood tests come back with the marker that my hct is too high. I’d be curious to see what would happen if I did a stint in flagstaff and really ramped up my mileage.

When reading about cycling especially in the 90s and 00s what amazes me is how unsophisticated but effective doping was.

We are talking about almost 100% of the sport using PEDs and hardly anyone tested positive. They weren’t going to crazy labs, it was more cat and mouse games with timing etc.

I can only imagine how easy it would be to evade the tests with a team around you that actually knows what they are doing.

US postal was doping AFTER the stages in the tour. Lances gardener followed the team through Europe on a motorcycle with drugs in a cooler!

Abraham Kiptum's Hb in his seven blood samples fluctuated between 18.4 and 20.3 g/dl, ie. only 10 %. It is a weird case where the most suspicious item is the very high Hb (and OFF-score) as such, because the Hb, ret-% and OFF-score fluctuations aren't strikingly suspicious.

There is one low ret-% and correspondingly a high OFF-score in one sample in which Hb is average (for Kiptum). Would be interesting to know if someone, who had same ret-% patterns and whose Hb fluctuated between 14.0 and 15.4 g/dl would've been sanctioned at all. I highly doubt.

20.3 sounds like straight up death hahahaha.

Since EPO is cleared so fast, and the only way to catch someone is APB, how do some people like Zane Robertson still test positive in competition ? Are they just the people who don’t care and do an injection days before a race ?
Would it be possible to develop a test that would clearly detect EPO use even weeks prior to a race in order to not just rely on abnormal blood values ?

Or is it scientifically impossible due to the short half life of EPO ?

First of all, thank you all for the info & insight.

If I understood you correctly, unless non-emergent athletes, but the ones with several years of track/road excellence since the modern era...

...had been doping since their first ABP readings...

...the "to the gills" accusations for Kipchoge, Cheptegei doesn't add up?

Because Chep should've been doping steadily, at least, since 2018, and Kipchoge for 10+ years?

Thanks.

Next on the block are the Rio samples from 2016. They are being retested right now, first with emphasis on the Rio athletes who are still competing and eyeing Paris.

If there are sudden strange veteran absences during indoors or early outdoors, it could be indication they have received word about their 2016 results.

There were more than 70 retest positives from London 2012. Several dozen medals were stripped or reallocated. But it undoubtedly won't be as high this time. Testing sophistication improved quite a bit. Also, the Russians fielded a sparse team in 2016, at least in athletics. There were Russians in full force in other disciplines.

If those retest results are made public prior to Paris and many Russians and Belarusians from 2016 were doping it will put even greater scrutiny on Thomas Bach's crusade to make Russia eligible for Paris.

The sample tests of retired 2016 athletes will follow. There is a 10-year window so they have to complete the 2016 revisit by early 2026.

Would be nice if all medal winners' samples would be retested after 8 - 9 years, not just those deemed especially suspicious by WA/AIU.

What seems crazy to me is a lot of people on here say El Guerrouj retired on purpose just when they started testing for EPO, but even when they retested all his samples 10 years later they never found anything. It is especially strange considering he probably wouldn’t have been very cautious and moderate in his use if the tests didn’t exist at his time.

Sorry for the bump, but I really want to understand the matter.

Thks

But how would you know that El G's samples were retested? The system isn't exactly transparent.

"to the gills" only works in corrupt systems, or in various countries with lenient (or corrupt) NADOs before the AIU came in. And then there is the "too big to fail" theory regarding Kipchoge.

E.g., there were no unannounced ooc tests in Kenya pre 2017, and the Uganda was a heaven until very recently. Even USADA has a history of given warning calls prior to and during ooc tests.

One doesn't need to be doping since the first readings, as long as one slowly moves up one's individual thresholds over time. Coming in high just makes that lot easier.

In the long run, once either the AIU has the means to test everywhere on a large scale, or athletes get tested by randomly assigned NADOs instead of their own, the system could start to work a lot better. Of course micro-dosing can never be eliminated as above-mentioned, but those improvements would at least provide for a more level playing field.

You're not going to get an intelligent answer from letsrun posters.

What you are supposed to believe is that more red blood cells = more oxygen delivery.

In other words a supernatural aerobic metabolism. But there is no such thing because that's not how metabolism works.

So you're asking people who have no understanding of basic biology and don't care to learn anyway. This includes most so called 'exercise physiologists'.

Institutionalised ignorance is here to stay.

I understand ABP threshold values keep being adjusted after every test, in order to improve accuracy.

But, I guess, the first readings are still used as the frame of reference to detect this kind of linear progression patterns.

So if my first values are X, and in my next 10 tests they keep going up (even if so slightly), once I'm Y% outside my initial readings, I'll pop.

True?

And yet, EPO doping obviously improves athletic performance, as Lance himself admitted.