Your nickname is Retard or Retarded ? Because it seems the second is more right for you.
Marathon runners are tested exactly how all the other athletes, out of competition. Not exactly, are tested MORE than the other athletes, because there is a blood test in ALL THE MAJORS that is a must (the organizers of any Major Marathon pay the cost of these tests, directly to the antidoping agency).
Before every bi
Marathon, all the top athletes follow the same antidoping regime of the Championships, with blood tests (before the race) and, of course, test of urine after the race.
Put in your mind that blood tests can only give the info that there is some suspicion for the athlete, but, if you want to search the illegal substance, you need to use the test of urine.
This is also one of the reasons because the top Marathon runners are, of sure, not doped : among all the athletes, they are the one having the higher number of blood tests, and this means they can have all the elements for a very precise individual profile, which is the requirement for the Biological Passport.
I don't want to defend the IAAF, but all the Attacks received about the fact to "cover" athletes with suspicious values come from people not knowing how the antidoping works.
You can ban an athlete for two reasons only :
1- You find in the urine illegal substances. In this case, the athlete is doped without any doubt (after controlling the second sample too), and is guilty.
He can explain the reasons, can find some excuse, but at the end of the day is banned, because the fact he used something illegal is not an opinion, but is a fact.
2- You see some suspicious value in the blood tests, and can use the biological passport. This action is very much more complicated :
a) You need a high number of tests, for determining many points for each parameter you want to consider, in order to create a curve called "profile". The tests are not less than 8, but in the case of contestations can be better to have 10-12 points, showing big fluctuation in the parameters.
The problem is legal : since in the urine never it was possible to find any illegal substance, the banned athletes go to some court and start legal actions against IAAF. The IAAF must have a big number of tests, enough for winning the trila in the cort, and this requires TIME.
People must understand that the decision to ban an athlete from his activity
can't be something based on "suspicions" and emotional : this is a LEGAL problem.
This is one of the points because the accusations are "instrumental" and not in "bona fide" : if the two Australian had access to 12,000 tests regarding 5,000 athletes, THERE IS NO POSSIBILITY THIS IS ENOUGH FOR BUILDING THEIR BIOLOGICAL PASSPORTS, and don't forget that in the urine of these athletes NOTHING was found.
I understand that it's a shame the possibility to know the real "official result" of big Championships only after 4-5 years, and that the new winners, meantime, are stripped of the benefits they could have if already medalled athletes : but there is no way to act in different way, if in the urine it's not possible to find DIRECTLY the illegal substance.
That's the reason because, in the case of the documentary of Seppelt, THERE IS NOTHING SCIENTIFIC : when the two "scientists" speak of "abnormal values", they consider as "norm" the average of the values of the athletes, and this is a statistic work without any scientific base, since ther'is a great variety between the basic and normal values of different individuals.
I repeat again : ONLY LONGITUDINAL STUDIES REGARDING ANY ATHLETE CAN SHOW WHICH ARE THE NORMAL VALUES FOR ANY SUBJECT.
And don't do the mistake to think that "abnormal values" are related with very high hematocrit and hemoglobin, Always : there are a lot of values, very far from the norm, that are abnormal because very much lower than the average.
I continue to repeat the same "mantra" : before speaking about the effects of doping, we need to know the effects of training, and these "scientists" about training don't know absolutely anything.
How Einstein said, "Theory is when somebody knows everything, but nothing works. Practice is when something works, but people doesn't know why".
The most part of people thinking of doping and antidoping (scientists, journalists, letsrun posters...) are able to combine theory and practice :
nothing works, and they don't know anything.