Nick Willis calls TnF a 'complete joke'.

TLW gave the '90s performances as a basis to show that EPO is the most powerful endurance drug ever created.

HRE wrote:

Who ever said the massive drops of world records in the 90s can "only" be explained by EPO? It's almost never possible to explain any complex phenomenon by a single variable and certainly not when it's impossible to know when that variable was and was not applied.

Even if that's true it's still not saying EPO is the only reason for the drop in world records in the 90s.

It looks like a trick question. A performance enhancing drug can only be called performance enhancing if it is effectively performance enhancing. Of course, I don't doubt what is essentially phrased as a tautology.But don't mistake me for J.R., or wellnow (in any of his alter egos). If you are out of balance, and a drug helps strengthen a weakness, then it can improve performance. If you are a women, and take male hormones, that increase your strength, this can help you outperform other women. Training can temporarily put you "off balance", and some drugs can restore balance more quickly, allowing a higher volume of training (in the short term).For your information, I don't always doubt the efficacy of EPO. There are studies which measure the benefits of EPO, and for the "well-trained" subjects in the study, for the short duration the study is performed, EPO is undeniably and measurably effective. (One reason is that their training is not controlled for in the study).Maybe a different way to express my "faith" more clearly. For running events, I doubt that EPO can take you to a level of performance that couldn't potentially be obtained without it. The 11:00 runner who improves in 6 weeks to 10:30, with EPO, can also be trained without EPO to run 10:30. Train them to run 10:30 first, then the study will show smaller results. EPO can help the weak-minded, and can help the poorly trained. It might get you somewhere faster, but it cannot take you beyond your personal potential. Lombard could have achieved the same times, if he had possessed the right mentality, and had found the right coach with the right balance of training. For the same reason, EPO won't work for the strong minded, who are already well trained to their potential.Whether these things are true or not, I'm also victim to the same lack of ability to prove my ideas, but only able to provide arguments that I think support it. But I think this explains better why Americans, and Europeans, and Australians, and Russians could not manage to budge their own national or area records during the "EPO era", despite widespread use in cycling and lack of a test to detect it, and why they were unable to respond to the new challenge of East Africans, despite the availability of the "most powerful endurance drug ever created".

gurble wrote:

Do you dispute the efficacy of all performance enhancing drugs or just EPO?

OK replace "only" with "best" or "primary" or "major".

HRE wrote:

Even if that's true it's still not saying EPO is the only reason for the drop in world records in the 90s.

peformance enhancing is a funny term

so... at the crux of what you're sayiing about EPO, are you saying that because EPO ultimately spurs change within your mind/body, its effects are limited by the natural potential of that mind/body, just as are the ideal natural training situations and circumstances that change that mind/body? So when optimized, both yield comparable results?

"out of balance" is a weird one because I don't know where we draw the line of performance enhancing. You talk about the "right balance of training"... so couldn't that feature technological advancements that are akin to so-called peds... granted I know next to nothing of the science of these things but I do know that people better-versed in these things speak of 'high-responders' and 'low-responders'... so I wonder

I'm not sure I get your question. I put EPO in a category that cannot increase your innate potential. Other drugs (like steroids) can give superhuman results which would not be possible to achieve with training alone."out of balance" means one subsystem is not working well with the rest. Imagine one piston of an engine firing at 50% compared to the rest. If a drug brings it up to 100%, then you perform better. If training brings it up to 100%, then adding the drug cannot help more (could even make it worse, say if now you fire at 120%).The right balance of training is finding what best works for you -- what kind of training you respond well too, by strengthening any weakness, then leveraging your strengths. For example, some people respond well to interval training, while others do well with long tempos.That could mean technological advancements, so long as they aren't banned. For example, altitude tents, could replace hi-lo altitude training, and both are legal alternatives to EPO, promising similar benefits.

gurble wrote:

peformance enhancing is a funny term

so... at the crux of what you're sayiing about EPO, are you saying that because EPO ultimately spurs change within your mind/body, its effects are limited by the natural potential of that mind/body, just as are the ideal natural training situations and circumstances that change that mind/body? So when optimized, both yield comparable results?

"out of balance" is a weird one because I don't know where we draw the line of performance enhancing. You talk about the "right balance of training"... so couldn't that feature technological advancements that are akin to so-called peds... granted I know next to nothing of the science of these things but I do know that people better-versed in these things speak of 'high-responders' and 'low-responders'... so I wonder

rekrunner - what World Records do you think are clean?

can do naturaly if train ideally. lombard trains harder but his nat. hormones lower

his hct and nat. epo rise

runs 28.00

ventolin^3 wrote:

Deanouk wrote:Didn't the USTAF carry out doping tests in their athletes prior to the 84 Olympics, and didn't they then warn, rather than ban, dozens of athletes who tested positive? E.g Lewis

utterly clueless

wrong games you idiot

it was for '88

it was ephedrine/pseudo-ephedrine which is a nasal decongestant & legit by hugely strong laws of today

wada thinks under near 30y more research it is worthless drug, so to ban King in '88 for this crap wouda been a travesty

get a damn clue about doping

Actually it is well known that the USOC systematically covered up doping prior to the 1984 Olympics by a large number of athletes across sports. Reportedly that included at least 34 Track and field athletes. I do not know that the specific names have ever been released. USATF (it was actually TAC then) officials denied any knowledge. This is not about ephedrine in the 1988 positives that went unpunished, that is a totally separate episode. I do not expect Ventolin to admit he is wrong.

It's easier for me to say which ones I think could have been artificially aided:- Chinese records from the 90's- Women's records from the 80's- Men's and womens' field events, records from the 90's

TLW wrote:

rekrunner - what World Records do you think are clean?

Thanks for that Mr. Obvious. I'm glad you posted that as I often can't be bothered to respond to most of the nonsense that man writes. It would be a full time job.

I also saw on a recent documentary, I think the 9.79 one, that almost all the samples taken on the last day of T&F finals disappeared, and no one knows why!?

How can you seriously say women's world records from the 80's? Where is the proof of that? And including the Chinese, that is just western propaganda i'm afraid, any failed drugs tests? No, just supposition. I'd expect more from someone so articulate.

rekrunner wrote:

The problem is the confounding factors muddy the causes. We cannot say it was only EPO completely ignoring other relevant factors.

But if I never have before, let me consider it now. I have absolutely no doubt that EPO enabled him to change his training. But I think a big part of that was mental, overcoming a weakness of the mind. I also think he was training a wrong way, and that he found a significantly different and more effective training, under a new coach. I believe the mental and training changes could have happened without EPO, and would have brought significant performance improvements -- but I also agree that's something we will never know.

You are again trying to separate things out artificially without considering the most likely explanation that EPO was the physical driving force behind being able to train more intensely and recover as well as becoming mentally more confident in one's abilities to compete.

You focus on having a "weakness of the mind" but you don't consider that when EPO helps someone run a lot faster then for sure they would become much more confident in their abilities to perform well in a race as a consequence. Look at Armstrong in the 1994 Tour de France, he was obliterated by Indurain in the time trial and in the press interview afterwards he looked like a broken rider with a "weak mind". If only he could overcome his weak mind...

Well, fast forward to the 1999 Tour de France and Armstrong is utterly destroying everybody on most of the key stages and in post race press conferences he is brimming with confidence looking like a rider with an iron will who had gone through a huge mentally toughening battle with cancer a few years prior. Knowing only what we saw then, you would draw the conclusion that Armstrong had become mentally strong and was riding much faster as a consequence. Knowing what we know now, we see that EPO, carefully administered under Dr Ferrari's guidelines, raised his performance level in training and racing and he became far more confident in his abilities to compete at the top level.

Just imagine if you are a distance runner training for years on end and you run your regular session of 10X1K in around 3 mins, a level that you have maintained for the past few seasons. Now you decide to take some EPO and due to the physical effects of the drug after about 2 months, your times drop to 2 mins 55 secs, a level you have never attained before. This will be a huge confidence boost to any runner, and they will become mentally strong as you would put it. But this would be due to the effects of EPO and its action on its receptors in the bone marrow and other tissues and not due to the effects of the mind on improving performance.

rekrunner wrote:

OK replace "only" with "best" or "primary" or "major".

HRE wrote:

Even if that's true it's still not saying EPO is the only reason for the drop in world records in the 90s.

I don't know exactly what you're looking for here but maybe this is it. No drug will ever be the primary or major reason someone wins a major race or sets a world record.You could have given me so much EPO that the letters vanished from the alphabet and I was still not going to do either of those things. Training, innate ability, motivation, etc. are always going to play the main roles in attaining great performances. What drugs can do is make those great performances a tad greater.

On the other hand, if your real quibble is with the idea that EPO is the most powerful endurance drug ever synthesized, if you disagree with that premise, logically you should have another drug that you think is an even more powerful endurance drug. If we're ranking endurance drugs as a group from most to least powerful one of them needs to sit at the top of that list and another at the bottom.

You misunderstand what I mean by "weak mind". The 1999 Lance, brimming with confidence, still had a "weak mind", because he lacked the confidence to find a way to train and compete without drugs.You also assume that Cathal Lombard actually increased his overall training load. He cut his mileage in half.I'm convinced EPO was a major factor in his improvements, but I just disagree with "the most likely explanation that EPO was the physical driving force". I considered it, but do not consider it "most likely" that EPO "physically" enabled him to make the changes in training.

rekrunner wrote:

But I think this explains better why Americans, and Europeans, and Australians, and Russians could not manage to budge their own national or area records during the "EPO era"

But that's not true. See for example Baumann and Radcliffe.

Also, people had to use less steroids (because of the testing) than in the 80s, and instead had EPO. So you see no new records in the 400 or 800, but in the 5000 and the marathon. This might also explain why the East Africans (less serious/professional doping in the 80s) could advance so much more than the Europeans and Americans from, say, 1990 - 2005.

As for the current days, I am not convinced that Kenyans have a doping advantage over Americans. Yes, less testing, but also fewer doctors and fewer own testing labs and less access to advanced, non-testable drugs. So (assuming athletes dope), let's compare for simplicity all-out out of competition EPO in Kenya doping with EPO micro-dosing + some unknown cocktails in America. It depends on the cocktail as well as the responder, which "method" is better.

HRE,I don't know why you are struggling to provide me answers -- I'm not really asking anything from you. I was asking TLW his basis, and then asking him to defend his basis, as for me it raises many questions, and logically leads to ridiculous conclusions. I'm not expecting you to tell me that TLW is wrong. I don't need to participate in that discussion. I will agree without question or hesitation that the world record track times from the '90s have more to do with the innate talent and training of the few individuals that set them, rather than the coincidental timing of grand tour cyclists abusing EPO as one small part of a sophisticated multi-drug cocktail regime.Do I think something is more powerful than EPO? That's a good question -- once again, you caught me off guard. My angle more was that EPO has not been proven effective at all at helping set world record track or road times, over a period spanning three decades, so how can it be considered the most powerful?If we say that setting record times are the measure of the power of a drug, I think, based on the observation that most of the world struggles to compete with their own pre-EPO era national and area record times, that a powerful endurance drug doesn't even exist. Indeed you suggested that blood doping up until the mid-80s explains why America didn't see a drop in world record times since. No drug is more powerful than the blood doping, as it was practiced in the 70's and 80's.

rekrunner, in all events, male and female, track and field, neuromuscular efficiency is the key. There is no drug that can give a person these skills, only training and emotional response.

So you think steroids make people superhuman? There is no such thing, the best sprinters have to be moving more efficiently just like the bes distance runners do. And if steroids help women more, then why are they still 10% behind the men in the sprints, actually more these days?

He asked me what I thought, and I answered what I thought could have been. As it's a direct answer to the question, I offer an insight to my personal thoughts without any proof that these are really my thoughts.Regardless if all the records are clean, or all the records are aided, those are the records that make me ask questions.

Evidence please wrote:

How can you seriously say women's world records from the 80's? Where is the proof of that? And including the Chinese, that is just western propaganda i'm afraid, any failed drugs tests? No, just supposition. I'd expect more from someone so articulate.