Coevett wrote:
Your whole 'scientific thesis' that EPO doesn't work rests on the absurd value judgement that it's raysheest to believe that there is a far greater doping problem in distance running in certain areas of Africa whose poverty stricken inhabitants have a far greater incentive to dope, as well as a lack of testing
You’ve got some things backwards and inside out.
One of my “theses” is that there is a great deal of mythology on this topic of EPO and its ability to enhance elite performance. When you express that you want “to believe” Africans dope (and non-Africans don’t) you are confirming that thesis.
The other thing I just got done saying was that you would have to ignore that, in the 1500m, Brits, Europeans, Americans, etc., were not that much better in the full throttle EPO era than Coe/Cram/Ovett in the ‘80s. You proved me right by ignoring it.
But my thesis isn’t that some Africans dope, or some countries have a doping problem — my thesis is that non-Africans seemed to have completely missed realizing these 4 to 6 to 8 seconds of benefit of EPO, in the full-throttle EPO era — especially when the lack of testing was universal, because no test existed.