Another 8 Kenyans busted

It's quite interesting how Letsrun have changed in the last three months.

Your opening post here ("Another 8 Kenyans busted...") currently stands at 55 : 60 votes, and the one back then ("Another 26 Kenyans busted...") had 141 : 18 votes. Quite a change.

I wonder why... are more and more posters ok with all the Kenyan doping now? One could think that Rekrunner/Hoady/Thoughtsleader voted much more, maybe so, but you also got fewer upvotes.

Huh? Coevett said Kipruto was a prominent track runner and I said he was primarily a road runner to which you agree. Maybe work on your reading comprehension. You didn’t disagree with a word I said, you just confirmed my point and argued against a straw man.

Classic Coevett coming up with fantasies dreaming Kenyan runners do unrealistically well so you can feel better about your obsession without proof that everything comes down to doping.

As for Passant, I guess every runner should get better every year on a routine schedule. I suppose I missed that.

It is what has always happened.

Just enjoy the show, people.

So what about the others which did require substance abuse.

What about them?

All the same questions are there: Was it intentional? Who is providing the drugs? What do these drugs do for elite marathon athletes? Some of these drugs have existed for more than 50 years. Why haven't some non-Africans run these sorts of times, e.g. the Russians?

Important questions which - as far as I know - havn't been adequately answered.

How can you deny that he is a 'prominent track runner' when he won a bronze medal in Doha just five years ago? This is classic Rekrunner.

If Kenya isn't banned, and if Athletics Kenya continues to NOT test athletes on the grounds of insufficient money, then believe me, we will start to see some crazy times again from Kenyans next year.

And yes, you would be using all those excuses for them.

First of all, you need to fact check yourself. Save yourself from wasting another chunk of your life in posting over a million words here over the next 20 years. Nobody thinks that whereabouts failures have nothing to do with doping. Nobody thinks that EPO doesn't work. Except for a few cranks. You're like a Flat Earther telling people to fact check themselves.

You claim that doping doesn't work, on the grounds that Russia isn't as successful as Kenya at distance running.

So East African dominance of distance running has nothing to do with doping, according to you.

But wait a moment. That means that some countries are just better at distance running than other countries, and it has nothing to do with doping.

So in that case, why does Russia not being as good at distance running as Kenya prove that doping doesn't work??

Huh? Work on your reading comprehension. I didn't argue against anything, I just found your rekrunneresque downplaying of Kipruto's success hilarious, especially after Coevett mused that you may be her, and added facts that conveniently you left out.

You: "In 2023 he ran on the roads twice."

Added facts: he "set the World Record over 10K in 26:24 *while doped* and ran the half in under 58 minutes *while doped*."

And: "he got suspended early May 2023"

I said he was a prominent track runner who became more of a road athlete. Considering 90% of his races were road, that is pretty uncontroversial.

The 2 races in 2023 was just indicating he was a roads guy, I don’t doubt he was a big deal as a road racer from 2020-2023. We were talking about prominent athletes who raced frequently on the track.

I know you know the rules. There is a minimum of testing for Kenyan athletes. If ADAK doesn’t get its act together due to lack of funding, Kenya simply wouldn’t be able to send athletes to Worlds. They still have the athletics funding, so we’ll see how this goes as there would be outrage if Kenya is unable to send prominent athletes to competitions.

I’m not sure what you think are crazy times but Kenya had several sub-1:42.5/1:58 800m runners including Wanyonyi 1:41.1 and Moraa 1:56-mid, two sub-3:29 guys/ Faith WR, several sub-3:58 women, two sub-8:57 women, a few sub-8:07 men in the steeple, many sub-13/27 men/59 men, Chebets 10K WR and several sub 14:40/29:40/66:00 women.

It’s weird to dream over this bizarre hypothetical of Kenyans running video game times because of lack of testing that would stop them from entering global meets.

Yes, you started this side discussion about track for whatever reason, although the athletes highlighted in the first cited article are road runners. Not sure why you asked for "prominent" track runners, but you got one answer. Kwemoi would be another one (sub 27 at worlds in 2019, 7th in Tokyo 2021), banned in 2024. And Aprot, African Games 10,000 m winner, banned in 2023. World champion Manangoi, banned in 2020, was already mentioned.

Shall I go on? May I throw in a couple, or ten, prominent road runners too? Or Kenyan-born pro forma Bharainis?

Note that none of these athletes were busted for EPO, according to your link. Some fact checks about your link: Kipkoech was not a World Half Marathon champ. Her performance is not top-20 all time. Her peak was around 2012 -- it is not likely that deflazacort in 2024 helped her in 2012.

As compelling is what "nobody thinks" seems to be, this answers no questions. Scientific inquiry is not a popularity contest among the unlearned.

It is frequently said that EPO works on East Africans the same way as everyone else (which curiously disregards the effect of living at high altitude). I'm just wondering who were these "everyone else" athletes in elite distance running? Lombard? Fagan? Hellebuyck? Hesch?

I'm never trying to prove that "doping doesn't work", but always asking for evidence that it does work.

Kenya and Ethiopia were already dominating the world back in the 1980s. Where is there any evidence of any Kenyan doping problem, say before 2012? Sunday Time reporting suggest that Kenyan and Ethiopian blood doping "suspicion" among IAAF athletes was below the worldwide average between 2001-2012. Official investigations show that Kenyan doping is a problem of exploitation from both foreign agents and local chemists.

Coevett also thinks "rekrunner" and "casual obsever" are the same poster, so you should consider the source here.

You also accused "Thoughtsleader" of being a "doping apologist" when 1) he didn't post about doping, 2) no one accused of "doping apologism" actually "apologizes" for Kenyan doping, and 3) he is a firmly in the camp that says athletes are doping because it works.

Russian middle-distance women destroyed everyone including the Kenyans. Then the Russians all got busted for doping. A Russian woman marathon runner was also destroying everyone until she was busted for doping. This absolutely conclusively proves that doping does not work on the Russians. The EPO was causing too much iron to be produced by their bodies which was weighing them down as iron is a heavy metal - basic physical chemistry. They will run obviously faster when their ban is lifted.

Rekkie ignores a lot of things, including facts like the success of Russian middle-distance women, or that Russia and the Soviet Union are not the same country.

He also can't grasp that state sponsored doping is a different dynamic to rampant individual doping. Russia, like the GDR, want to dominate medal tables. Why put resources into trying to win a medal against hordes of doped to the max East Africans in the 10000m or marathon, when you can focus on events in which you can compete? Why spend your resources on your best 10000m runner with little chance of medalling, when your most talented female 1500m runners can roid up and EPO full throttle and win medals?

But in any case my criticism of his 'logic' still stands.

He claims that Russians not dominating the marathon means that EPO doesn't work, on the grounds that Russia doped as much as East Africans.

So therefore, doping can't explain the difference, so East Africans, for whatever other reason, are just better at distance running than Russians.

Which completely invalidates his starting premise, that Russians being less successful at distance running 'proves' that EPO doesn't work.