This is how deep is doping in Kenya

J.R. wrote:

You think "good of" is correct? Good grief.

He wrote 'could of', which is wrong. But you wrote 'good of' in your witty retort.

My point was that you have to make sure you're getting everything right if you're going to be a smug grammar nazi.

You failed.

As usual.

You still think Marita Koch wasn't helped by steroids?

trollism wrote:

He wrote 'could of', which is wrong. But you wrote 'good of' in your witty retort.

My point was that you have to make sure you're getting everything right if you're going to be a smug grammar nazi.

They're both wrong, DUH.

HAHAHAHAAAAAAA

Without drugs. MK would have had difficulties breaking 50.

It's like one goes to sleep and the other wakes up and takes over and the cycle repeats.

J.R. wrote:

They're both wrong, DUH.

HAHAHAHAAAAAAA

Yes dimwit. He was wrong, and then you 'corrected him' but you were wrong too.

How do you even make it through the day?

Marita Koch, steroids, waiting for an answer.

trollism wrote:

J.R. wrote:

They're both wrong, DUH.

HAHAHAHAAAAAAA

Yes dimwit. He was wrong, and then you 'corrected him' but you were wrong too.

How do you even make it through the day?

Marita Koch, steroids, waiting for an answer.

I wouldn't bother. Waste of time.

According to the Wikipedia the training system you use is the same as that used by Arthur Lydiard.

I consider Arthur Lydiard to have been the greatest coach in history. I do think that Lydiard altered his "rules" to fit the individual.

The Kenyans are supposed to have a saying, "Train Hard, Win Easy." But if this were true I would have run a 4 minute mile in high school along with probably a million other guys. It cannot be hurried and that is why doping does not "work." It may work for patient coaches, and runners.

Unfortunately some crimes are never solved.

Lies have speed, the truth has endurance. We will find out!!!

trollism wrote:

Yes dimwit. He was wrong, and then you 'corrected him' but you were wrong too.

Left Said Fred wrote:

I wouldn't bother. Waste of time.

OMG you still don't get it. I'm cracking up. Here's the original message.

Thedirty wrote:

You can't be sure shaheen didn't use it anyways, but if he was clean he could of gone WR with drugs. That's why they're called "PERFORMANCE ENHANCING" drugs buddy.

J.R. wrote:

Could have; not good of.

Get it????? Could have; not good of!!!!!!!!

J.R. wrote:

trollism wrote:

Yes dimwit. He was wrong, and then you 'corrected him' but you were wrong too.

Left Said Fred wrote:

I wouldn't bother. Waste of time.

OMG you still don't get it. I'm cracking up. Here's the original message.

Thedirty wrote:

You can't be sure shaheen didn't use it anyways, but if he was clean he could of gone WR with drugs. That's why they're called "PERFORMANCE ENHANCING" drugs buddy.

J.R. wrote:

Could have; not good of.

Get it????? Could have; not good of!!!!!!!!

Yes. I get it. You tried to correct and goofed up yourself.

fred said left wrote:

Yes. I get it. You tried to correct and goofed up yourself.

God you are stupid.

He told you what he did, and you still can't figure it out.

yes, it is an idiotic string and I am contributing to it.

thread, idiot.

Empty brain wrote:

fred said left wrote:

Yes. I get it. You tried to correct and goofed up yourself.

God you are stupid.

He told you what he did, and you still can't figure it out.

neither can you apparently

I want to put again the thread on the main road.

In other threads, I had sometimes a kind contender, with good specific knowledge and nice level of education, ARAGON, with whom I had good discussions, everybody explaining in polite way his position.

Today, in another old thread, I found a new post of Aragon, that can be very interesting.

" I haven't followed other Kenya-EPO-Renato-threads too closely, but as I have been in this thread one of Mr. Canova's opponents, I feel need to conclude my own contibution with a slight restatement of my earlier position with following claims (It is another story whether anyone actually reads this attempt to be devil's advocate):

1) There is a strong likelihood that the effect of blood doping (EPO) on perfomance of elite athletes is overstated.

2) There is a strong likelihood that the effect of blood doping (EPO) on Vo2MAX of elite athletes is overstated.

3) Apart from the prevalent use of EPO, there is still very little scientific data that the substance works on elite level Kenyan runners.

In the following parapraphs I will give the reasons for my restatement on the issue.

1.1) It is a scientific consensus that blood doping elevates Vo2MAX and direct performance of endurance athletes. For instance, a 1987 study found that reinfusion of 800 ml of blood cut the 10K time by 69 seconds (~3.5 %) while only elevating Hb by 5 percent. A Swedish study concluded that the actual performance was elevated by staggering 5.3 % with roughly similar increase in Hb.

That is definitely a strong effect, especially for a Hb elevation so low. If we assume that further increases of Hb elevate performance almost linearly, when we take into account high amount of entry of talented Africans, developments in equipment, training methods and track material plus the entry of pacemakers, the speed increase from "clean" 1960s to the EPO-era has been significantly lower than what it should've been, only some 3-4 percentages.

In cycling, one could also point to the fact that the 1972 cycling one hour world record (49,431 m) by Eddy Merckx has been proven to be very difficult or nearly impossible to beat with similar equipment even after the wide range access to EPO and transfusions since 1980s.

2.1) "Most studies investigating the effects of EPO on performance have evaluated maximal oxygen uptake”, states a 2011 reserch paper on the subject, ”When haematocrit is increased from base values to around 50%, Vo2MAX is increased by 8–12%" (Lundby, Olsen, 2011). Due to conflicting data, there should be some doubt whether this effect is seen in elite subjects as the measured Vo2MAX values of elite athletes haven't been significantly higher in EPO-1990s than in earlier decades. For instance, the mean Vo2MAX of elite Swedish male XC-skiers increased only slightly from 1970s to EPO-1990s (85 --> 88, Finnish equivalents 83 --> 86). And one remembers easily Greg LeMond and his magical figure of 92.5 ml/kg/min from pre-EPO late 80s. Still one should keep in mind that the phenomenom could partly be explained by the fact that a bulk of the Vo2MAX data is from OFF-season.

2.2) It is highly unlikely that one could elevate hemoglobin concentration ad infinitum through EPO or blood transfusions with beneficial effects. Finnish Cross-country skier Eero Mäntyranta had hematocrit level of 68 and by plotting some other of his hematological data on classic charts showing the correlation between total hemoglobin mass and Vo2Max, his "theoretical" Vo2MAX should've been somewhere between 8 and 9 litres (ie. ~120 ml/kg/min). I've never seen a figure even close to this in the literature on him with a reliable source even claiming that his Vo2MAX could've been slightly below 5 litres (~72-75 ml/kg/min).

2.3) Apparently the use of EPO has been prevalent in some types of sports and there it was almost impossible to succeed without use of the substance (cycling). Even there it is possible that the positive mechanism has been more to counteract the stress-induced fall of hematocrit than through the hypothethical Vo2MAX turbo mechanism. This is exactly what cyclist Tyler Hamilton tells in his autobiography The Secret Race:

"Was it possible to win a professional bike race clean during this era?... The answer is, depends on the race. For shorter races, even week-long stage races, I think the answer is a qualified yes... But once you get past a one-week race, it quickly becomes impossible for clean riders to compete with riders using [EPO]... The reason is cost, in the physiological sense. Big efforts - winning Alpine stages, winning time trials - cost too much energy; they cause the body to break down, hematocrit to drop, testosterone to dwindle."

From the Vo2MAX elevating mechanism exactly the opposite should be true as one-day races are ridden in a speed much closer to the maximal oxygen uptake and lactate threshold. It is also interesting that speed of TDF didn't fall even after the hematocrit rule was introduced in 1997 and after maximal hematocrits fell significantly (>60 % --> slightly above 50 %).

3.1) I should share a word about the widely touted study on the effects of EPO on Kenyans (Wondimu et all, 2013). After going through the short summary, there were some questionable parts (no blind-protocol, the Scots were far slower athletes then the Kenyans, Kenyans weren't absolutely elite athletes while still had relatively high Vo2MAX mean of 66.0 ml/kg/min).

Then there is the main discrepancy, which the authors also notice - while there was a significantly different hematocrit response between Europeans and Kenyans, (+19.4 % vs. +8.4 %) the performance response in actual time was only slightly better in Europeans (5.7 % vs. 4.5 %). This is suspicious, as the speed increase of Kenyans is strikingly high in relation to the increase of the Hct. Were the response similar with hematocrits elevated still further, the Kenyan group would cut amazingly additional 54 seconds of their 3K time if their mean hematocrit had been elevated up to 60 %, which is hard to believe. The study is interesting, but unfortunately it hasn't been published fully, as far as I know.

(to clarify, Hct increases are in percentages [ie. 19.4 % = coefficient 1.194], not percentage points).

To summarize this post in one paragraph, my reading of the literature on the subject of EPO (blood doping) indicates heavily that the effect of blood doping on elite athletes is at least limited. And because some Kenyans are through their talents the best of the world, there could be the possibility - as Renato Canova points out - that their physiologal responce to elevated hematocrit is different from the rest of us.

I wouldn't follow the path that far, but at least we shouldn't dismiss Mr. Canova's opinion altogether. This is just additional thinking for everyone (including me) who have taken some ideas as granted, perhaps too easily.

Canova is definitely right in his claim that the subject is simultaneously very under- and overresearched as there has been little or no studies on elite athletes and a bulk of the existing literature doesn't even use any blind-protocol at all. Thus German exercise physiologist Dieter Böning points out in a research paper as late as 2010 that "[a]stonishingly we could find only few true double-blind investigations on ergogenic effects of blood transfusion and Epo".

Hopefully we know one day better.

Lundby, Olsen (2011):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...MC3082090/

Wondimu (2013):

http://journals.lww.com/acsm-m..._.107.aspx

Read more:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=6669078&page=4#ixzz3uhtOxcBm

If we open the two sites at the bottom of the previous post, you can find some interesting scientific explanation, whuch supports my opinion.

When we go to see the chapter regarding "EXERCISE CAPACITY", for example, we can find these results of the investigations :

"Exercise performance is the result of multiple factors, Most studies investigating the effects of EPO on performances have evaluated maximal oxygen uptake (VO2 Max). When haematocrit is increased from base values to around 50%, VO2 Max is increased by 8-12% (many authors).

The performance-enhancing effects of EPO on VO2 Max at different altitudes has been investigated and it was demonstrated that EPO provides the greatest advantage at medium altitude (1500-2500m) (different authors).

One study has assessed the performance gains at submaximal exercise intensity, and demonstrated improvements of more than 50% in a time to exhaustion test (Thomsen and al. 2007).

Exercise performance could be increased by factors other than those attributed to changes in red blood cell volume.

In subjects haemodiluted isovolumically (Lundby and al. 2008), i.e. restoring blood parameters to pre-EPO treatment values following 13 weeks of EPO treatment, however, VO2 max was similar to the values obtained prior any injections. Since in this study the EPO dosages were probably too small to cross the blood-brain barrier, and since EPO induces the perception of superior physical fitness (Ninot et al. 2006), Rasmussen and co-workers (2010) injected 30,000 IU in three consecutive days to test whether EPO crossing the brain-blood barrier, and hence potentially interacting with the CNS, could increase submaximal exercise poerformance. Analysis of spinal fluid revealev a massive increase in EPO following the injections, and hence proved that EPO had in fact crossed the blood-brain barrier.

Also in this study, however, NO CHANGES IN EXERCISE PERFORMANCE WERE NOTED, AND SURPRISINGLY THE RATE OF PERCEIVED EXERTION DURING THE EXERCISE BECAME WORSE.

Also in this regard, it was elegantly demonstrated that the O2 kinetics during the onset of exercise ARE NOT ALTERED BY EPO (Wilkerson et al. 2005), something that had been proposed a few years earlier (Connes et al, 2003).

Thus, THRE IS NO EVIDENCE INDICATING THAT EPO SHOULD INCREASE EXERCISE PERFORMANCE BY MECHANISM OTHER THAN INCREASING OXYGEN TRANSPORT CAPACITY.

ONE COULD SPECULATE THAT AN INCREASE IN HAEMOGLOBIN MASS (nHb) MAY POSITIVELY INFLUENCE REPEATED SPRINT PERFORMANCES BECAUSE OF INCREASED BUFFER CAPACITY, BUT THIS REMAINS UNEXPLORED".

rekrunner wrote:

Mourhit was certainly more talented, and a much better example of a top athlete.

Why do you think Mourhit was a more talented athlete?

What about angiogenesis?

Renato Canova wrote:

Also in this regard, it was elegantly demonstrated that the O2 kinetics during the onset of exercise ARE NOT ALTERED BY EPO (Wilkerson et al. 2005), something that had been proposed a few years earlier (Connes et al, 2003).

Thus, THRE IS NO EVIDENCE INDICATING THAT EPO SHOULD INCREASE EXERCISE PERFORMANCE BY MECHANISM OTHER THAN INCREASING OXYGEN TRANSPORT CAPACITY.

I responded to Aragon in the other thread, but a short summary here:

Points 1 do not demonstrate that EPO has no effect on performance. Even if the effect is 0.1%, it is a problem. Point 2 discusses that EPO effect on VO2 Max is overstated. That may be true, but it is not relevant if it improves overall performance. Training doesn't improve VO2 max either (in a meaningful way)...

I get your point Renato. But until you can prove that highly trained athletes training at altitude are at their absolute ceiling, you cannot say that EPO won't improve some parameters. Because the evidence to the contrary, while anecdotal, is overpowering: elite athletes who make huge performance gains after turning to EPO or getting caught with EPO. (Many of the examples come from cycling, but that is the only sport where at least a few athletes have discussed their drug use openly).