London Marathon won 7 times in 12 years (24 races - men and women) by athletes with suspicious blood values

The blood values were measured from WC and Olympic medalists, right? Now who among the London marathon winners has medalled in WC or Olympics? Kipchoge?

lurkinF wrote:

The blood values were measured from WC and Olympic medalists, right?

Wrong.

The London Marathon was won 17 times in 12 years by athletes who have *NEVER* recorded suspicious blood values!

Maybe blood doping for marathons isn't as effective as many people believe, including the few athletes who won 7 times.

Where is "wejo's" thread about this leak actually being good news?

rekrunner wrote:

The London Marathon was won 17 times in 12 years by athletes who have *NEVER* recorded suspicious blood values!

Maybe blood doping for marathons isn't as effective as many people believe, including the few athletes who won 7 times.

Where is "wejo's" thread about this leak actually being good news?

You're drinking Canova's kool aid, eh: EPO doesn't work on top Kenyans nor on top Kenyan marathoners. Tell it to Rita Jiptoo.

rekrunner wrote:

The London Marathon was won 17 times in 12 years by athletes who have *NEVER* recorded suspicious blood values!

Maybe blood doping for marathons isn't as effective as many people believe, including the few athletes who won 7 times.

Where is "wejo's" thread about this leak actually being good news?

I know you're trolling, but, just because they're not on that particular list doesn't mean they weren't doping. Given what we're learning now about the current state of the sport, I would be surprised if London has ever had a clean winner and certainly not in the last 20 years.

"The London Marathon was won seven times in 12 years by an athletes who recorded blood scores that indicated they could have used doping, the Sunday Times says"

http://news.sky.com/gallery/1532606/sundays-newspaper-front-pages

Once the dust settles, I doubt we will here more about this nonsens of

Canova.

There is this RaceRadio guy, https://twitter.com/theraceradio — quite knowledgeable as far as cycling and doping goes, who many times brought up Paula's R name... not sure what to think about that.

Link wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

The London Marathon was won 17 times in 12 years by athletes who have *NEVER* recorded suspicious blood values!

Maybe blood doping for marathons isn't as effective as many people believe, including the few athletes who won 7 times.

Where is "wejo's" thread about this leak actually being good news?

I know you're trolling, but, just because they're not on that particular list doesn't mean they weren't doping. Given what we're learning now about the current state of the sport, I would be surprised if London has ever had a clean winner and certainly not in the last 20 years.

Honest question: If you dope and your blood values are NOT abnormal, than what was the benefit of doping? Is there another benefit besides changing blood composition?

Let's play along with your assumption that all the other London winners doped. If they have no abnormal values we assume they microdosed, yes? But if their microdosing is so subtle that it produced no change in blood values, then why dope at all?

rekrunner wrote:

The London Marathon was won 17 times in 12 years by athletes who have *NEVER* recorded suspicious blood values!

Maybe blood doping for marathons isn't as effective as many people believe, including the few athletes who won 7 times.

Where is "wejo's" thread about this leak actually being good news?

Marathoners aren't tested like track and field athletes, just one test after competition. They are of course forced to do more since the recent leak, so they're increasing it.

long sox wrote:

Do they count the ones that have already been banned?

In which case Liliya Shobukhova is one of the seven.

But I don't know why more people haven't been calling out Mikitenko. She runs for an eastern european country before transferring to Germany. Then in 2008 she skips the Olympics and runs a PB in the 10k (road) of 30:57 and two weeks later the Berlin marathon in 2:19:19.

No hate for Mikitenko, I would much rather pee than take a blood test since I hate getting stuck with a needle as well. If she medaled in the Olympics, she would have had to take a blood as opposed urine for the roads.

jewbacca wrote:

Link wrote:

I know you're trolling, but, just because they're not on that particular list doesn't mean they weren't doping. Given what we're learning now about the current state of the sport, I would be surprised if London has ever had a clean winner and certainly not in the last 20 years.

Honest question: If you dope and your blood values are NOT abnormal, than what was the benefit of doping? Is there another benefit besides changing blood composition?

Let's play along with your assumption that all the other London winners doped. If they have no abnormal values we assume they microdosed, yes? But if their microdosing is so subtle that it produced no change in blood values, then why dope at all?

That's a reasonable question. For a practical answer, look at Mark Daly's article.

He experienced a very significant (and lasting) improvement in performance level even though his blood scores came out clean enough not to raise red flags under the bio profile test.

There are several reasons for this. One is that the profile is generous in setting a theoretical "natural" hemoglobin volume limit and EPO (or transfusion) is very useful in allowing you to approximate that limit. Microdosing properly avoids raising red flags on the ratio scores that catch people who are clumsy in going on and off EPO (or in blood doping).

We have advanced beyond simply testing for EPO as a substance but still far from preventing its use to drastically improve performance.

It's only a needle? I'd be more off-put by the urine test where the tester has to witness your secretion...

Link wrote:

I know you're trolling, but, just because they're not on that particular list doesn't mean they weren't doping.

This is an important point. As the cyclists say, drug tests are really IQ tests, since you have to be pretty dumb to fail one.

It would be interesting to know if the data show any time trends. For example, does the % of abnormal results fall over time? I would expect that people would get more careful as testing became more common and effective, Or maybe the % of abnormal results falls in some countries and not others.

(Of course, the converse of Link's point is also true: Just because you are on the list does not mean you WERE doping.)

Do we know what the effect of a world-class marathon is on somebody's blood values? Do they test before, or after?

It's been known for a long, long time that a hard session can deplete your white blood.

Not beyond the bounds of possibility that some people record high off scores, which are explainable or expected if you know the details. But the Sunday Times isn't interested in that; they are selling papers.

Well I guess you can always take comfort that, no matter what happens, someone will always be able to say: "that doesn't mean they weren't dirty".Doping or not, my only question here is: is blood doping effective for marathons? The general public believes doping is effective, and even necessary, to win. Many athletes dope, because they believe, or some coach believes, that doping is effective.But if non-suspicious athletes (athletes who never raised suspicion even once over a 12 year period) can win 17 times out of 24, that's not a very strong case for the effectiveness of blood doping for marathons. Raising your blood parameters doesn't seem to be necessary to win, at least the London marathon.

Link wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

The London Marathon was won 17 times in 12 years by athletes who have *NEVER* recorded suspicious blood values!

Maybe blood doping for marathons isn't as effective as many people believe, including the few athletes who won 7 times.

Where is "wejo's" thread about this leak actually being good news?

I know you're trolling, but, just because they're not on that particular list doesn't mean they weren't doping. Given what we're learning now about the current state of the sport, I would be surprised if London has ever had a clean winner and certainly not in the last 20 years.

rekrunner wrote: Raising your blood parameters doesn't seem to be necessary to win, at least the London marathon.

Again, a fundamental misinterpretation. Read (and understand) the Daly article. You can raise hemoglobin volume enough to have a substantial effect on performance and still be below the limit that will register as "abnormal". And if you are careful enough with your micro-dosing, you will not fail the ratio tests.

I don't need Canova to tell me that science falls short of explaining the effect of doping on performance.Here's an easy claim that should be easy for someone to disprove:To date, there is no known drug or method, that is proven to be effective for any athlete, top, middle, or bottom, for running their personal best in a marathon.I feel for Rita, but I will tell here she was just a victim of scientifically unproven mythology. She can run 2:19 in the marathon with a placebo, but not without an aggressive pacesetter like Shalane Flanagan in Boston.If any drug or method really worked, for the marathon distance, we would see more evidence of doping in the men's top 100, and we would see more women below 2:18.The obvious conclusion to draw, is that you can win London with or without measurable abnormal blood profiles. In fact the winner is more than twice as likely to have a non-suspicious profile.

WAKE UP, BABY wrote:

You're drinking Canova's kool aid, eh: EPO doesn't work on top Kenyans nor on top Kenyan marathoners. Tell it to Rita Jiptoo (sic).

for our eyes wrote:

That's a reasonable question. For a practical answer, look at Mark Daly's article.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-32983932

He experienced a very significant (and lasting) improvement in performance level even though his blood scores came out clean enough not to raise red flags under the bio profile test.

There are several reasons for this. One is that the profile is generous in setting a theoretical "natural" hemoglobin volume limit and EPO (or transfusion) is very useful in allowing you to approximate that limit. Microdosing properly avoids raising red flags on the ratio scores that catch people who are clumsy in going on and off EPO (or in blood doping).

We have advanced beyond simply testing for EPO as a substance but still far from preventing its use to drastically improve performance.

I saw his BBC bit, and while I thought it was interesting, it isn't good science to apply his results to elites. Mark Daly isn't representative of an elite, and his preparation for his experiment isn't representative of an elite's training. Not to mention he's a sample size of 1.

And I find it odd that, if dodging a positive test is so easy, you have almost a third of the London winners with "suspicious" results.

And if the purpose of microdosing is to approach the "upper limit" of the theoretical natural, and lots of athletes are microdosing, then shouldn't you have a lot of athletes in the upper range? Given the wealth of data that has suddenly become available, it should be easy to see if there are.

I'm skeptical of what's being reported. I like the transparency, but there are some tougher questions that need to be asked.

For example, a "suspicious" result is being defined as a 1 in 100 chance of occuring naturally, correct? If an athlete is tested 100 times over a period of time, doesn't statistics say we should expect the athlete to have a suspicious result at some point? In fact, wouldn't it be unusual for the athlete NOT to have a suspicious result?