The response to hard training is not the same for everybody. The most part of the top runners are able to raise their total volume of blood of 20% - 25%. With this type of athletes, I'm practically sure EPO doesn't give any advantage, instead can reduce their performances, due to a big increase of blood viscosity.
One of the parameters I found with all the top class athletes I coached, is the very low viscosity. It's possible to verify this situation with a very simple test :
ask an athlete (also top level) to run, at sea level, one test lasting between 1 minute and 1'30" at his max speed, climbing with a gradient of about 5%. At the end, control his HR (for example, he's able to reach 220 beats).
Go altitude over 2000m, and repeat the same test. Nobody among these athletes is able to go over 200 beats, because of the lack of Oxygen. With the hypoxia, muscle fibers are not able to have O2 enough for removing lactate in fast way, and for that reason they ask to make faster the circulation, but this is an "overload" for the work of the heart, which, on the other side, has less possibility to work because is itself a muscle, needing O2 for recovering.
So, what happens in altitude for athletes normally at sea level is that the heart loses about 10% of the ability to work at max intensity, but also loses about 10% of the basic HR when resting, for the higher request of O2 by the muscle fibers (for example, 40 - 220 at sea level becomes 50 - 200 in altitude).
Instead, if we do the same test with athletes born, living and training in altitude, we can see the values in altitude and at sea level are prtactically the same. This means the athletes of altitude have more Oxygen at their disposal, and don't need any increase in the velocity of blood circulation.
This happens because they have a blood with very little viscosity. In this situation, to increase the ability to transport oxygen, and at the same time the viscosity, not only doesn't produce any advantage, but frequently can reduce the level of the performances (also if this seems absurd to people looking at blood parameters only).
I don't know if I was able to explain what happens in the physiology of top African athletes (born, living and training in altitude), compared with what happens in the physiology of top athletes born and living the most part of time at sea level, since for me is difficult to explain in English Language in a way that can be clear for everybody. It's a fact I have clear ideas of the problem, looking at the big mass of data I collected during the last 30 years, with Italian at sea level, Italian in altitude, African in altitude, African at sea level for short time, African at sea level for long time, Chinese in altitude, Young and old athletes, males and females, etc....
I don't want to put in doubt the comment of the two Australian scientists.
However, the numbers can't explain any situation : if there were 12,000 tests for 5,000 athletes, the average is 2,4 tests for each athlete, and with this number is ABSOLUTELY not possible to have some info about the individual NORMALITY.
It's evident that, for speaking about ABNORMAL data, before we need to know which are the NORMAL data, and, how I explained before, the normality can be only INDIVIDUAL, not considered inside the average of 5000 athletes. For Bordin winning Olympics with 12.8 Hb and 39.7 Hct, we have Genny Di Napoli who was in anemia when his values were under 18 and under 52.
This means that the only way is to have longitudinal tests, both OOC and IC, for not less than 6-10 times in a period of time of 2-3 years, and this is not what happened, looking at the numbers we had (12,000 test for 5,000 athletes).
The last thing is about the cost. Yesterday we had here in Cantalupa a task force of IAAF coming from Switzerland for testing (blood and urine) the best Chinese athlete, Ding Changqin, winning Chongqin Marathon in 2:26:54 and finishing 16th after 6 days only in WCCCh.
How much can be the cost for this test : about 400 Euros for the travel by car (the two doctors came together, but many times they come individually from different places), 150 Euros for two days of accommodation in the same hotel of the athlete, of course something for them (I don't know how much can be their salary), plus the real cost of the test. This means not less than 1200 - 1500 Euros for testing an athlete who is not in the top in the World. We have in athletics (speaking about the top 20 in the world only) about 700 athletes in the whereabouts regime. Supposing to have 5-7 tests each one every season (the minimum for having data enough for building a biological passport), we need to have about 5000 tests, with a supposed cost of almost 10 millions Euro, only in athletics (but Wada is in charge of all the sports). We need to add the cost of maintainance of all the labs officially recognized for antidoping, plus the cost for the central organization. The final cost, in this way, becomes very high, and I don't think there is all this money for increasing the number of tests dramatically.
On the other side, I can't agree that in the sport we have to use more money for antidoping than the money we use for promoting the activity.
For that reason, I continue to think we have to change the message we send to normal people about sport and doping. We need to give , more emphasis to the educational values, at the same time putting doping (I speak about blood doping) in a different perspective : with the absolute best it doesn't work, and also for athletes of medium level the advantages they can have are not so high to justify this choice, that, I repeat, produces the final effect to make more rich pharmacological Companies and not honest doctors, cheating the athletes.
For really knowing what happens with doping, we need to approach the data without any idea already in our mind (in one or another direction), and we can't study the effects without knowing the real effects of training.
The fact, instead, is that ALL people of antidoping starts every research, and every action, with the idea that doping produces incredible results, that is not possible to be competitive without doping, and so everybody is guilty.
I know this is not true, and for that reason I ask to change approach, studying what happens with proper training, not only in the body, but also in the mind of the top runners.