EPO Helps Mid D More than Long Distance?

Thank you, Renato. That is a very clear and concise post that sums up and clarifies all the things you have been saying on LRC. Regardless of the effect EPO may or may not have on certain athletes, I think the most important point you are making is how all the research to date is not being done with highly trained talented athletes, fails to take into consideration the effect of training, and the researchers in fact have little or no knowledge of training and the effects of training. Unfortunately, a properly designed and executed study of the subject is unlikely to ever happen. Still, there can be smaller scale research to establish certain principles, that can perhaps be used in deducing effects and creating new testing techniques.

I think everyone here greatly appreciates the information you share, whether they agree with it or not. Your experience and vantage point in the sport is unique and unsurpassed.

Let me simplify the issue. I speak of performance, so reject every measure that stops at RBC, or O2, or every discussion of physiology. These physiological things might change significantly, but the important aspect, and very much unknown, is to estimate the performance improvement.We have a study which measured 9% improvement in well-trained Scottish athletes, and a 6% in well trained Kenyan athletes.What figure can we use for the 7:30-7:40 elite runner? 6% is 27 seconds.What diminishing returns can we expect as we move towards elite athletes? Is there an asymptote as we approach higher levels of performance?I see two possibilities which can improve our knowledge of "clean" runners versus "EPO" runners:1) Of course, repeating the study on a group of sub-8:00 runners, and a control group, give us more representative data. Realistically this is problematic of course, if they are competing for a living.2) What about using a stronger definition of "well-trained"? Repeat the same experiment on a similar group of Scottish and Kenyan athletes, but use a 5-year preparation phase of individually personalized training to maximize their performance before the EPO phase. I suspect we will not repeat the same 6-9% improvement due to the addition of EPO.

D3_Nuts wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

Because the impact on performance has never been observed, and never been measured, for the elite athletes in question, in a way that supports the D3_Nuts's reality.

As related to my question specifically, your argument is an argument from ignorance and a slippery slope too. Here is your argument towards me broken down. Since, I can't prove they doped, then I cannot claim doping helped their performance and if they did dope they likely would have achieved the same level of performance, because there is no proof that doping would have helped their performance.

Increased blood volume is a known enhancer of endurance performance. An easier way to get this than injecting hormones for 4- 6 weeks is to run more, sweat more for 2-3 weeks. This will, guess what....?

Increase plasma volume, with RBCs unchanged.

The obsession with RBC volume is the most God awfully bad science. However, most fizzyologists believe it. Well they would wouldn't they?

Not sure your first comment is true about the rise of the East Africans and the fall of the West during the 1990 timeframe, when EPO was undetectable. OOC testing from the IAAF for EPO didn't begin until around 2002 timeframe.But I did want to address the value of the remaining statistics. While you think it is likely that the numbers would be higher with more testing, it's also possible that numbers drop dramatically. If you believe me, and Paula's suspicious values are easily explained by non-doping factors, like altitude training, or plasma volume loss, then all these statistics become much less meaningless, e.g. 1 in 7 athletes "trained at altitude" is not a very alarming statistic.

That is an argument from ignorance, you expect science to address the issue explicitly and it can't nor will it ever be able to address complex real-world situations with controls or at least controlled conditions that will lead to publication. So what do we use to address the issue? We can use applications and modeling to form a hypothesis around, is that 100% certain? No it's not, because it can't be tested against controls which match real-world scenarios.

You are trying to shift the burden of proof, when we do have evidence of around 28% of medal winners at major championships showing suspicious blood values at competition time compared to the total population sample of 13% showing suspicious blood values at the time of those major championships. I'll answer your concerns to this topic below.

East Africans did not start their current domination in the mids until the mid 1990s and even then it wasn't like they dominate those events today. After 1996 you start to see a clear a delineation starting to separate the East Africans from their European / North African peers. That trend line follows a similar curve to their distance running dominance. Which didn't really start until the mid 90s either. Call it coincidence if you want, but the rise of EPO started to take root around 1992-1993 in the cycling world and shortly thereafter in the world of athletics. Spain, Italy, and North Africa were the starting points in both cycling and athletics and it spread from there and it is not until after 2000 that we really start to this dominate shift. Where there is smoke there is fire. East Africa is the place train and dope, much like Tenerife was and still is. Altitude camps in places like Mexico City and Colombia offer relative safety from blood testing of EPO at these sights as well due to lack of facilities. Much easier to just take Urine samples at these places. Again where there is smoke there is fire.

The sample size per individual is too small, and this is an assumption, but it is also an assumption that holds a lot of weight. Each of the medalists is one of the athletes to be tested multiple times. That the medalists had greater suspicious values can only lead a logical person to the conclusion that one of two things is in play, either doping plays a small but significant role in determining medals or there is perhaps a greater doping problem than originally presumed. Either the range stays between 14-28% or that as we test more we a find a greater number of dopers. I wish I had access to all the actual data so I could present statistical analysis.

Most athletes are at least a week away from training at altitude to produce the results they are producing in their tests.

Paula's values are not easily explained away. She's sitting at the upper limit in all of them. If you adjust the 103 top end for 1 in 1000 to the 110 for 1 in 1000 due to altitude she stills at the borderline. She says 29C for the Portugal race when historical data has a high of 24C. 75 degree weather is nothing to write off for a distance runner, but a whole world different than 85. Please understand sitting at the threshold of mutant category makes it more likely than not you are doing things to make you a mutant which have nothing to do with training and more to do with pharmacology.

Huh? I'm not so much arguing or drawing conclusions, as asking an open question. For the 7:30 3000m "clean" runner, is 27 seconds reasonable? 15 seconds? 5 seconds? 0 seconds? What is the right model to show the relationship between "clean" and "EPO" times between 10:20 to 7:20 runners? If this can never be answered, then I am right when I point out that no one has answered it yet. This scientific limitation doesn't give anyone the right to go forward with their own hypothesis as a foregone conclusion. If you say "form a hypothesis" that is not "100% certain" -- that's all I'm saying -- is that any conclusions about EPO improving performance for elites are still speculative, because at the moment we have only formed a hypothesis which has not been confirmed/measured by real world observations. I'm not shifting the burden of proof, but saying we must always keep in mind that it has not yet been reliably observed.

A lot of people are saying things like "EPO caused the decimation of world records in 1990", and "anyone who doesn't see the obvious trend in the EPO-era is either naive, simple-minded or part of the problem". I'm not invoking some "argument by ignorance" fallacy to force or exclude any conclusion. I don't exclude the possibility, but, like you, just say that it is only hypothesis. I also say, in my unproven opinion, a globally available and undetectable drug is unlikely to explain a local domination by one narrow class of altitude dwelling athlete (particularly from poor countries where, in the 1990s, things like money and electricity cannot be taken for granted).

Not sure why you say mid-1990's was the start of the East African domination. If I look at 1993 for example, when EPO use was increasing in cycling:

- Kenya and Ethiopia teams took 1-2 in World Cross Country in both the men's senior and junior events, and they swept all the 5000m and 10000m medals in the World Championship.

- In the mens Senior Cross country race, the first non-African was in 12th place, 50 seconds behind the winner. 6 Kenyans and 3 Ethiopians and 1 Moroccan form the top 10.

- In the mens Junior Race, the first non-African was in 12th place, 50 seconds behind the winner. 5 Kenyans and 5 Ethiopians form the top 10.

- For the women juniors, Kenya took 5 of the top 6 places.

- In the 10000m final, the first non-African was 4th place, 25 seconds behind the winners.

- In the 5000m final, the first non-African was in 9th place, 25 seconds behind the winner.

Are you saying that that is NOT East African domination?

I find it unlikely that so many Kenya and Ethiopia were taking EPO in 1993 (including the junior women), to produce that kind of depth of domination at world level competitions, while the rest of the world were not. IMO "Genetics + environment + weight + escape from poverty + opportunity" looks like a stronger hypothesis than "EPO + lack of controls".

What would an EPO program cost that puts so many East Africans in the top 10 of both men and women, senior and junior events? Why wouldn't even one single American, European, Australian (man) be able to penetrate the top 10 by taking the undetectable yet globally available EPO?

A quick glance at the 1990 World Cross Country championship, before EPO was popular in the cycling peloton (and a year Greg LeMond won), Kenya and Ethiopia are similarly dominating the top 10 individual finishers, and both countries dominate the medals. This makes the EPO hypothesis even less likely, unless you think East Africans "pioneered" and popularized EPO use (including Kenyan junior women), and the rich sport of cycling followed in their footsteps.

Also not sure why you say "at competition time". When the Sunday Times reported it, they said things like "suspicious at some point in their careers." The one-third figure (or your 28%) is inflated two ways: 1) "at least one of the experts found to have had a suspicious test at some stage in their career" (not at medal time) and 2) the analysis of the values did not account for non-doping factors (like altitude, dehydration, and bias due to pre-2009 rules) when forming suspicion. The statement could easily be "one third of all medal winners trained at altitude". (Elsewhere they say "more than half" at medal, bringing your 28% medal winner figure much closer to your 13% general population figure).

And on the contrary, Paula's values are easily explained by altitude (as shown by low RET) and dehydration. The 103 and 110 values are 1 in 100 (not 1 in 1000) thresholds. (Putting aside, only for the sake of argument, that these pre-2009 values collected for a different purpose should not be judged with post-2009 rules) when you reasonably account for both, as a trained ABP expert would, when interpreting the results in light of supplementary data on the doping control form, then she is no longer a mutant at the top end. 10-20% plasma loss can be 7-15 points in the Off-HR score. A RET value from 0.47 to 0.7 can be 9 points in the Off-HR score. Even if 2003 Portugal was 24 deg C, assuming a 5-10% plasma loss doesn't look unreasonable. 4 points from 5% plasma loss puts her below the altitude cutoff, and 9 more points (from the low RET value we know) puts her below the normal cutoff -- and that's for the worst blood value in her whole career. These are the kinds of external factors an ABP expert needs to consider when making a determination of doping from the ABP profile.

As the 2013 Wada research has been referred many times, the actual data on caucasians in that particular study hints to the direction that better-trained athletes react less to EPO. The researchers had separated the groups into runners and others (who were in good form but not runners). Vo2MAX of the ”runner” group improved by 6.8 % (60.3 -> 64.4) whereas it increased by 10.5 % (51.6 -> 57.0 ) in the ”not running” group. The Kenyan data has some discrepancies which I've outlined in page six of this thread.

Unfortunately the researchers haven't separated the hematological changes for the groups, so there is always the possibility that the Hct levels of ”runners” were elevated less, which could explain the phenomenom. As Renato has already pointed out, the actual running data is somewhat quite questionable in every study with no control group, but Vo2MAX should be pretty independent of placebo effect.

The 1987 review article (Sawka et. all) on the combined data of four independent blood doping studies (equilevalent of ~900 ml whole blood reinfused) hints also to this direction:

rekrunner wrote:

Why didn't EPO help non-Africans participate in the world record decimations of the 90's?

It seems unusual that only East and North Africans had access to and/or benefited from synthetic EPO.

+1

Because every body cheats always at all times and anyone who ever ran faster than my 23 min 5K was obviously doping!!

i am pretty upset with this wejo, of all people i would think you would have listened to rekrunner

EPO doesnt WORK (say it out loud in a chant like a cheerleader over and over, it will eventually become true!)

einstein knew physics

mozart knew music

rekrunner knows EPO....and it DOESNT WORK!!!!

You rekrunner's stalker? Or are you wejo having a good laugh?

For males:

400 meters is ~45aerobic

200 meters is ~28% aerobic

100 meters is ~21% aerobic

For females, the aerobic contributions are higher.

EPO can truly help at all distances. On a perhaps unrelated note, many bodybuilders use EPO. We do not think of them as aerobic athletes - or athletes in general.

pointless thread

EPO DOESNT WORK!!!! i know for a fact cause rekrunner and renato said so!!!!