EPO Does Work on Kenyans! Surprise!

old news

you think all these european agents and cycling doctors didn't know this 20yrs ago like??

when they first started pumping the EAs full of EPO in the early 90s

just sayin like

So if I ran a 9:00 3k all the sudden I'd be down around 8:35? That's awesome. I need some...

thats how it work buddy

only letsrun didnt hear the news yet like

no sh!t. Canova is full of it; part of the problem, not the solution.

ya canova said cyclings benefit more from steroids than epo

and epo don work on the top kenyans (like tergat? lol)

i got nothin against the guy but i work in cyclin and its BS

to be fair, this is apples to oranges - canova is only talking about the very very top kenyans not being affected by EPO. I'm sure he agrees that garden variety 13:30 guys will be helped by EPO.

agip wrote:

to be fair, this is apples to oranges - canova is only talking about the very very top kenyans not being affected by EPO. I'm sure he agrees that garden variety 13:30 guys will be helped by EPO.

Of course he has no mechanism to explain this phenomenon. It's as though he thinks the fastest guys are not made of the same flesh and blood as all the rest.

This is good evidence and all, but once again nobody seems to understand what Canova was saying (for the record I think he's wrong, but at least read what he writes). He has been very clear that he's talking only about top runners. How do you interpret top runners to mean "I dunno, Kenyans or something"?

The author even mentions that he was talking about top runners only, then brushes it aside.

WOW are you brainwashed. Apples to oranges? NO, it's apples to apples! The top top guys do not have a different physiology.

Also, please notice the magnitude of the effect.

FIVE PERCENT! For an 8:00 3000m runner, that's 24 seconds! After a decade of elite running, seeing what I have seen, I can tell you that this is not an exaggeration or if it is, it's still a reasonable estimate, even for elite runners. 15 to 20 seconds in a 3000 is exactly what I would expect for someone on a top-flight doping program.

They were also 3 percent faster 4 weeks after they stopped doping. For an 8:00 3k runner, that's 15 seconds. Also in line with what I have seen.

The sh!t works!

What everyone forgets over and over is that Canova has admitted he has no proof. It's his informed opinion, take it or leave it.

Reading from a couple of sources, it looks like the Kenyan runners in the study went from 9:30 to 8:55 on average for a 3000 m time trial which isn't an elite athlete by Canova's standards.

Mind you, I disagree with his position and would expect a smaller but not insignificant benefit to even the most elite of runners, but this study doesn't directly prove that.

not exactly startling wrote:

no sh!t. Canova is full of it; part of the problem, not the solution.

No, this is proof that the majority of people who posted on this thread are idiots. READ ON:

"The runners in this study weren't as fast as those Canova coaches, but there's no published research showing that world-class Kenyans don't improve after doping; this study showed a significant improvement in Kenyans with hemoglobin and hematocrit levels similar to those of world-class Kenyans"

In other words, runners that aren't very good will improve by using EPO because they haven't already maximized their potential. Those world-class athletes that have maximized their potential through WORLD-CLASS training have nowhere to go because they are already there.

This is the point that Canova had made from the beginning. Go back to your villages, idiots. Someone is missing you.

not exactly startling wrote:

WOW are you brainwashed. Apples to oranges? NO, it's apples to apples! The top top guys do not have a different physiology.

Sit down, will you? I was just pointing out that canova would disagree with the study because he believes at the tippy top blood profiles and blood carrying systems do differ.

I have no bloody clue if canova is right or not, although I doubt he is correct.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote:

"The runners in this study weren't as fast as those Canova coaches, but there's no published research showing that world-class Kenyans don't improve after doping; this study showed a significant improvement in Kenyans with hemoglobin and hematocrit levels similar to those of world-class Kenyans"

In other words, runners that aren't very good will improve by using EPO because they haven't already maximized their potential. Those world-class athletes that have maximized their potential through WORLD-CLASS training have nowhere to go because they are already there.

This is the point that Canova had made from the beginning. Go back to your villages, idiots. Someone is missing you.

It appears that you don't understand how EPO makes people faster.

If someone is doing what you call "world class" training, sure, they may have maximized their clean ability. BUT, if you give them EPO, now they recover from that "world class" training much more quickly. They are now ready for "galaxy class" training which is even harder than your "world class" training. Once they do EPO and "galaxy class" training, they have now maximized their dirty potential, which due to this harder "galaxy class" training, is faster than their clean potential.

As in any constrained optimization problem, if you relax one of the constraints, you have to re-solve the problem. EPO relaxes one or more of those constraints and a new optimum appears.

so

doping up a bunch of middle-aged kiganjo road-sweepers is an an extrapolable study to likes of kiptanui/komen/kipketer/tergat/cherono

right up there with doll-hill...

Whats interesting to me is that the amount of improvement was the same for both the Kenyan and Scottish groups. However, I suspect that everything else being equal, the doped Kenyans would still dust the doped Scots, which means (if I'm correct), that other factors are contributing to the success of the EA runners.

not exactly startling wrote:

WOW are you brainwashed. Apples to oranges? NO, it's apples to apples! The top top guys do not have a different physiology. ...

well, it's just a guess, but I've a hunch that the "top top guys" [sic] actually DO have a different physiology.

Do the math and you'll see that it's unlikely that the 5% advantage scales to elite performances. Let's take the fastest time possible for a clean runner -- I'll be conservative and say 13:10. If EPO gave him a 5% advantage, he'd be running 12:30. Given that we hardly see any performances near that level, we have 3 options: 1) Very few people are doping; 2) Blood doping's benefits decrease at elite levels; 3) There are only a few runners who can run low-13s clean.

Canova's writing about this is hard to follow, but that's what I gather his point is. I don't agree with him that there is NO benefit for top athletes, but would agree the benefit is probably small. It'd be interesting to see a study on elite athletes.

There's also a secondary benefit of EPO, though, which is also important. Long races like Tour de France, or intense racing schedules like you might find racing the European circuit, or crazy training, tend to deplete your RBC count. Athletes could blood dope to allow them to recover from weekly races and maintain peak fitness for longer.

As an armchair sports physiologist [i.e. someone that reads various blogs and books like Lore of Running etc], I find Canova's argument somewhat convincing, although I certainly admit the evidence doesn't lean in that direction (such as elite cyclists benefiting from doping).

But, seeing as talent is largely the ability to respond to training stimulus and optimize performance via physiological changes (e.g. blood parameters, neuromuscular modifications...etc), it would seem like the best of the best already have the optimal blood profiles for performance and trying to manipulate one parameter would negatively impact others in regards to efficiency (e.g. increasing blood viscosity). There are, after all, responders and non-responders to altitude training which offers many of the touted benefits of EPO.

That being said, I see it more as an interesting research question/problem to be addressed [and maybe it has already been answered in the literature].