Does Renato Canova TRULY Believe What He Says About PEDs?

I believe Canova is part of the problem in the sport. Either he makes the sport look bad by being one of the better coaches and yet appearing to be not very bright in doubting the value of PEDs. OR, alternatively, he appears to be shady and deceptive in denying the value of PEDs for Kenyans, for example, which is just a tad too convenient for somebody who has had his greatest successes in coaching Kenyans. I have lost some respect for him.

Weldon-ium wrote:

http://laaficion.milenio.com/masaficion/meldonium-droga-moda-producto-dopante-Maria_Sharapova-Juegos_Olimpicos_0_697730426.html

It seems as if he goes overboard to assert how useless these drugs are. There must be a reason...

I don't know what his thoughts are on other peds but he isn't outrageous about epo. He says the very top athletes that are born and raised in altitude (high altitude in kenya) are not affected by epo

hdhd wrote:

Weldon-ium wrote:http://laaficion.milenio.com/masaficion/meldonium-droga-moda-producto-dopante-Maria_Sharapova-Juegos_Olimpicos_0_697730426.html

It seems as if he goes overboard to assert how useless these drugs are. There must be a reason...

I don't know what his thoughts are on other peds but he isn't outrageous about epo. He says the very top athletes that are born and raised in altitude (high altitude in kenya) are not affected by epo

Yeah, but that is not true. It is so convenient to state that the athletes he coaches are not impacted by EPO. This is either a blatant lie or he knows not of what he speaks.

Dear Weldon-ium, if I don't believe in the effects of meldonium (drug I don't know) is due to the fact that athletes of 30 different sports, requiring different attitudes and totally different physiological processes, used it.

In the article (thank you for the link), there is also the hypothesis it can be used for changing the blood data used for the biological passport. But 95% of the sports where there were athletes positive for the substance don't have any biological passport (tennis, volley, basket, wrestling, figure skating, etc.).

If what it's written is correct, mendonium has an effect, on the use of glycogen by the body, that is exactly the opposite of what we need for long distances, for example.

This is the reason because I have some doubt, and my idea is the same of the Spanish scientist : taking meldonium is more as a "fashion" that as a real utility.

However, I don't agree the mentality of athletes, of every sport, who want to take something with the goal to enhance their performances, legal or not legal.

I'm against this mentality, I don't see any difference from assuming supplements AT THE MOMENT STILL LEGAL, or something already scheduled as official doping.

It's not true I don't believe in the effects of doping, but there is doping and doping. I pointed several times that, with the only training only, it's not possible to reach the same levels of muscle strength that it's possible to reach using steroids, and athletics, which is a sport with precise measures, is the best example : no WR in throwing after 1988, no WR in all the events for women connected with the muscle power (sprint, jumps, throws), and 1988 is the year marking the start of a more advanced antidoping for steroids (do you remember Ben Johnson ?).

But, when we go to BLOOD DOPING, frankly I think there are a lot of false ideas. The first thing is that it's not possible to think taking EPO can have the same effect, if taken on different level of training. For me, it's like to fill a glass with water : who is sick has his glass empty, and needs a lot of water for becoming normal ; who is in good health but without any training, has his glass full at 50%, and can reach his max level filling the 50% remaining ; but the top athletes have already their glass full, and if we add other water this go out of the glass, and can't add anything to the level already achieved.

How many times I said that there are not researches involving the best athletes of the world, all born, living and training in altitude ?

The researches are scientists of high level who has nothing to do with any kind of training. When there is a reserach, the subjects are generally described as "elite athletes" and "well trained". But the researchers don't hav any clue about who is an elite athlete.

They use the normal statistical approach, and look, for example, at a total field of Marathon runners (about 160,000 data) from the WR till 5 hours, after exclude the best 10%, and for them this is elite. Do you know which is the time for being considered elite by the researchers ? For men, 2:40.

When I speak about ELITE, I speak about the first 50, maximum 100 athletes all time in the world.

Here there is a list of the number 100 all-time in athletics :

100m : 9.99

200m : 20.11

400m : 44.60

800m : 1:43.84 (M) - 1:57.49 (W)

1500m : 3:31.96 (M) - 3:59.90 (W)

5000m : 13:00.95 (M) - 14:50.15 (W)

10000m : 27:14.84 (M) - 31:10.02 (W)

3000SC : 8:12.25

HM : 59:49 (M) - 1:08:18 (W)

Mar : 2:06:33 (M) - 2:23:27 (W)

This can be considered ELITE.

Put in your mind that something working for a sick person, can only have a moderate effect with persons in good health, and more the body moves to the higher ability to work, LESS effect any external aid (when we speak about ENDURANCE) can have.

What I see, is a general idea that it's possible to transfer the benefit that a medicine gives to sick persons, to the performances of athletes at the top of their training. This is like to think that what a good mechanic can do with a normal car for enhancing the HP of 10% can have the same result if done with a Formula One, and also the most idiot of people understand that this is not possible, since hundred engineers work for searching the system to have from the engine, maybe 0,00001% of increase in the power.

NEVER any scientists had any proof that EPO can enhance top performances. They have the proof that EPO can enhance the level of Hct and Hb, but this is not connected with the performance, despite what the most part of people think (particularly the cyclists).

The blood values are EFFECT of training, not CAUSE of the performances, and this is very clear when we go to see what happens when CLEAN athletes improve their performances : their Hct and Hb go down.

We have a lot of data, for top athletes of different nationality, regarding the effects of training on blood values, and we can say that there are 2 very clear situations :

1) In everybody, the levels of Hct and Hb, when they are in better shape because of their training, are lower than when they are not in shape

2) Blood levels are an INDIVIDUAL FACTOR, and it's not possible to have numbers as "limit" for health or supposed doping.

In Italy, for example, we had athletes winning Olympics in Marathon (Bordin) with 39.7 Hct and 12.8 Hb in the last test, 10 days before going to Seoul, and athletes (Genny Di Napoli) with normal values of 18.5 Hb and 52 Hct, who, when had "only" 17 of Hb, had the symptoms of anaemia.

I know very well that my top athletes reached their results completely clean (while maybe some of the weaker athletes I had in my Group, out of my control, could look for something, because I don't have with them the same strict relation I have with the best). And these results are many WR and a lot of medal in WCh. And in many of them I didn't find exceptional talent, but only "normal" high talent (in other words, they were not "phenomen" like, for example, it was Stephen Cherono).

So, for which reason I have to believe in the effects of BLOOD DOPING on the best ELITE athletes ?

And, believe me, there are a lot of physiological explanations about the reason that for people training so hard, and Always staying in altitude, EPO doesn't work. But, I repeat, scientists and researchers NEVER had the opportunity (or the interest) to start a REAL research, staying for example in Kenya for 6 months, testing the athletes every week, not for discovering some doping (that there isn't), but for understanding the effects of training on the physiology.

Well, I'd like to believe Renato's explanation above. But I'm not sure I believe he is correct.

But the true believer in this sport that I am would love to believe he is correct.

I'm not convinced he is wrong, but not convinced he is right either.

Also, Glenn Mills could come on here and make the exact same claims about doping in the sprints not being helpful and have the exact same explanation behind that argument.

It would be exactly equally believe able to me. It would also be contradictory to half of what Renato says.

Unless the rest of us know exactly what those two know, we won't ever be able to know the truth, we just have to accept the situation as it is and continue to fight against people who would cheat by calling for much stronger penalties and financial punishment to those who would cheat.

In this way, it kind of doesn't matter if he is right or not. The end result is the same. If it helps the almost elite level athletes, it still should be banned.

If you can dope yourself to run a 13 flat 5000, the effects will not go away if you stop doping. Even if Renato's right it seems much easier to fill your glass by doping than by only training.

Renato

I follow what you're saying, and I think it has some validity. But you're also assuming that with elite athletes, the glass is 100% full. Assume it's not, and that's it's 95% full. No human being is ever "100%".

They're not looking for a massive benefit; even a tiny, negligible difference in performance is a huge benefit to a professional athlete. You're arguing, effectively, that they receive zero benefit, and I'd suggest it's more likely that while they might receive a smaller benefit, even a very small benefit, they'd still receive SOME benefit. And in the world of elite athletes, even the tiniest of margins is worth pursuing.

IMO.

In all of the sports involved, increased endurance will be an advantage.

It is improbable that the athletes caught will have been taking ONLY meldonium. They will likely have been taking other PEDs as well. The "doping mentality" in doctors/coaches/athletes will have been the underlying factor in this.

This is a big mistake when you differentiate elite athletes from sick people. Elite atheltes are not in perfect health because they are pushing their bodies to extremes. If you look at the best athletes of all time such as Bekele, Haile, Coe, or Radcliffe you will see that they have had much more health problems than the average person - the "average person" in their 20s or 30s is not going to be having multiple surgical operatons on their legs or to be suffering from asthma, anemia, toxoplamosis etc etc .. Furthemore any slight health problem that an elite athlete has will be amplified because they are training so hard. The argument becomes instead is that anything that can keep an elite athlete able to keep training hard will be of tremendous benefit. And this is why things like massage, physio, extra sleep, and yes the use of PEDs can all help considerably.

This has been done to death several times before. Because the use of EPO is illegal in sports you cannot have a research study on the effects of EPO in elite athletes.

There are however some cases of Olympic athletes who have been caught which give some interesting information. You can look for example at this athlete of Kenyan origin who was born at altitude and who tested positive for EPO:

He made quite big improvements relatively late in his career and was selected for the 2012 Olympics in the marathon. At the Olympic training camp, French doctors saw that his blood values were not normal and monitored him to ensure that his Hb and HCt were within normal levels otherwise he was not going to be allowed to compete in London. During this time his training perfomance level dropped dramatically and he dropped out of the marathon. Then, no longer under medical sureveillance he improved again and ran 2h 08:33 mins to win the Daegu marathon. I know you will say that 2h 08 is not elite but it is 1.5% than your 2h06 min threshold for elite (and your threshold is actually 2.4 % slower than the world record) - but this means you are arguing that, due to a 1.5% difference, the athlete is completely different. A few months later he was tested positive for EPO and this was no surprise and it was made public that he was competing in the Daegu Marathon while not under medical sureveillance by the French federation.

So you have an Olympic athlete who was born at altitude, who trained at altitude, and whose performance level dropped when he was forced to get his blood parameters within "normal levels". When his blood parameters were not under surveillance his performace rose dramatically again but he was soon after tested positive for EPO. With this in mind you are saying "believe me there that there a lots of physiological expalnations that EPO does not work .etc ...".

The thresholds you consider for "ELITE" are not really useful at all. For example none of the medalists in the Olympic marathons of 2000 or 2004 would be elite by your definiition. Also as I indicated above, you are trying to say that someone with a marathon PR of say 2h07min is physiologically completely different from someone with a PR of say 2h 06 min even though the 2h07 min is closer to the 2h06 min that the 2h06 min is to the world record.

These are just some of the reasons why scientists look at a larger body of data - it is not because they do not understand elite performances.

Again, this is far too simplistic thinking when we consider what you are trying to argue. Yes training and altitude will affect blood values (because of changes in plasma volume etc) on their own and athletes will have individual variation but all this is not the issue. The question is that for any given athlete at a given level of training, if you you increased their Hb/Hct by a certain amount while keeping everything else equal then would their performance improve?

wtfunny wrote:

Renato

I follow what you're saying, and I think it has some validity. But you're also assuming that with elite athletes, the glass is 100% full. Assume it's not, and that's it's 95% full. No human being is ever "100%".

They're not looking for a massive benefit; even a tiny, negligible difference in performance is a huge benefit to a professional athlete. You're arguing, effectively, that they receive zero benefit, and I'd suggest it's more likely that while they might receive a smaller benefit, even a very small benefit, they'd still receive SOME benefit. And in the world of elite athletes, even the tiniest of margins is worth pursuing.

IMO.

Completely agree.

Anyway, EPO can increase the amount of haemoglobin in the blood past natural levels, until it gets so high you risk death by cardiac arrest. This is not possible by altitude training or other natural methods. I am not entirely sure that increasing haemoglobin levels in an elite athlete will improve their performance, but it certainly has the potential to do so.

Lots of major coaches have "blind spots" about one or two things. For example, Lydiard wrote in one of his books that altitude training was of no special value and conferred no benefits that could not be obtained by training correctly at sea level. The vast majority of endurance athletes across a range of sports would strongly disagree with this point of view.

Likewise, I have not heard of any endurance athlete who has been busted for/admitted taking EPO who has not noticed a significant improvement as a result of taking the drug. Of course the gains could be purely psychological and there could be countless others who took the drug, saw no improvement at all and so did not come to the attention of the testers so their transgressions remain hidden - but is this likely?

Until several top performers come forward and admit using EPO to no effect i think we are safer to assume that the stuff does work!

I think a very good point has been made on this thread

A counter-argument to renatos claims

"Has there ever been an elite athlete busted for EPO who didn't benefit from its use"

Where it falls down is the lack of positives for East Africans which Renatos assertions pertain to

It is a known fact that EPO works on North Africans specifically the Morrocans

They are mostly all blood doping and have been shown to benefit from its use

Are there any east Africans known to benefit except rita jeptoo

Mr. Canova, I appreciate your coming on these boards under your own name to share your wisdom. Few are willing to do that any more and I think it is a loss to all of us.

Respectfully, I'd like point out what I see as a flaw in your reasoning about EPO in elite athletes. You argue that because correct training at altitude changes certain blood values in the opposite direction as EPO use that EPO therefore does not improve these athletes' performances. This reasoning only proves that if EPO works, it works differently than training.

One possible explanation for this is that increased blood volume and increased absolute volume of Hct both improve performance. Thus, as you describe, it is possible for training to increase blood volume so much that Hct% actually decreases while performance increases. However, I see no reason that this should mean that increases in Hct% (for example by taking EPO) would not be helpful. In fact because high Hct% impedes performance due to increased blood viscosity and talented athletes trained at altitude tend to have lower Hct% than normal athletes, this would appear to leave open a larger window for EPO use since there is more room to raise Hct% before blood viscosity becomes too high. It would seem that talented, altitude-trained athletes may have more to gain by EPO use than the ordinary athletes that are typically studied.

1) It's true, in any sport to increase endurance can give advantage, in some case DIRECT (when we speak about endurance events), in the other cases as increased base for doing more specific training.

However, it's not possible to compare the "general endurance" which it's possible improve using meldonium with the "specfic endurance" which a Marathon runner needs for his event.

It's like to use electrostimulation : if you are a person not doing any activity, or some activity of long endurance (for example a Marathon runner) and are weak under the side of muscle strength, with electrostimulation you can increase your strength, but if you are a shot putter of top class, using to lift more than 300 kg of squat, electrostimulation is completely useless.

This means that meldonium probably doesn't work for increasing the endurance in athletes already with high level of it. It's not a case that Russian scientists asked WADA to produce data about some research, that probably never was done.

Maybe doped athletes used some other substance, maybe not. The fact is that 490 athletes of different sports using the same drug produces in my mind the convinction this is a "fashion", with placebo effects, but very little (or not at all) real effects, on the side of endurance.

2) You do a big mistake, not me, when speak about athletes as "sick people". I accept the idea athletes, after several years, can be "injured people", since the problems they face are 95% connected with the consumption of their body structure (muscles, tendons, cartilagin), while I don't see statistical any problem connected with the organic engine (and here we are speaking about blood doping, not something else).

Who can have problems in that direction are the athletes using doping, since when somebody abuses of external pharmacological aids the reaction of the body is to reduce the endogenous ability to produce all the chemical substance our body is able to build. These people can have problems under neuroendocrinal and hormonal sides, not clean athletes only pushing training at the limit.

3) Please, don't be ridiculous using Abraham Kiprotich as example since he was an "Olympic athlete". The limit for going to Olympics in Marathon is 2:18, and every Country without tradition and strong athletes in this event can find somebody going to Olympics, so the fact Abraham was in Olympics doesn't qualify him as "elite athlete".

We are speaking about an athlete who was in the French Foreign Legion, training in France, with the following PB : 3'45"91 (1500), 8'03"25 (3000), 13'59"63 (5000), 28'29" (10 km road), 8'36" (steeple) and 63'17" (HM).

With his doped 2:08:33, Abraham Kiprotich is in the position 434 in the world in the list all-time.

Abraham Kiprotich DIDN'T TRAIN IN ALTITUDE. He had the permission to stay in Kenya one month only every year, so you used a wrong subject for demonstrating something that never happened.

4) When we speak about track distances, the PB are very significative about the position of the athletes in the world. When we speak about Marathon, the situation changes. For example, Stefano Baldini has the NR in Italy with 2:07:26, that absolutely is not is effective value, because NEVER was interested in fast times, since Always had the competition in full summer for some Championships (Olympic Champion, two times bronze in WCh and 2 times European Champion). However, your consideration can only give more strength to my position : of course Olympic Champions were elite athletes who, if not in top 100 all-time, must be added to the list.

This doesn't have anything to do with a lot of athletes running faster than them, in a fast and paced Marathon, may be arriving in position 7 or 10 (in Dubai 2012, the 11th athlete (Mulugueta Wendimu) ran 2:07:28 and went home with a t-shirt as prize....

Of course the physiology of an athlete running 2:07 is not very different from the one of an athlete running 2:06. But this is the problem of every limit : who is very close the limit, in any case is not in the same Group.

If you continue with this type of thinking, 2:08 is not fasr from 2:07, 2:09 from 2:08, and at the end we become like the reseraches who consider "elite" athletes with 2:40 of PB....

I want to ask you one question : if an athlete has 2:07, and after this (may be one year later) is able to run 2:06, which was the reason of the improvement ? Only an increase of doping ? Or it's possible to improve BECAUSE OF BETTER TRAINING ? And in this case, which is the difference inducted by better training between the two Marathon ?

Are you able to understand some effect of training, or not ?

Because we can't continue to speak about performances connected with training, with people that don't know anything about it.

Please, answer.

And explain because in ALL THE ATHLETES improving their performances the level of Hct and Hb goes down.

I'll give Renato this much, he is great at obfuscating the argument. If he was not so diligent at this, I would say he is simply naive, but with this level of sophisticated word play it seems obvious he is a part of the whole scheme.

People who think you take a pill and all of a sudden get faster are mistaken. Almost all doping allows for harder work and more complete recovery from that work. So the answer is yes, you get faster from training....and yes, doping allows for more improvement from that training.

Consider this. Find a high school coach that is heavily influenced by the Canova method. Their athletes are frequently hurt, the teams themselves are mediocre, but they have one or two that survive the system and end up pretty good. With doping, their entire team would probably do great because the system does not work unless you have certain "advantages."

The whole thing about elites not benefiting from doping is not only a smokescreen, it is entirely opposite. A non elite has a million ways to improve. By changing any one of these factors the non elite will see improvement. When you get to the point where you are at 3:55 for the mile or 28:00 for 10k or 2:08 for the marathon, you don't have much room to improve naturally. You are on the cusp of human potential. It is this population that benefits the most from being made "super-human."

If some guy out on the street says drugs don't help, there is a chance he is simply naive. When anyone around the best of the best say they don't help, you can bet the farm they have first hand knowledge of exactly how much doping helps and don't want to much of a push into making sure the push the sport is clean.

Renato Canova wrote:

I don't believe in the effects of meldonium (drug I don't know)

You don't know the drug but you have an opinion about it regardless?

Exactly, Nutella. What I know is from Wikipedia :

" A December 2015 study in the journal Drug Testing and Analysis argued that meldonium "demonstrates an increase in endurance performance of athletes, improved rehabilitation after exercise, protection against stress, and enhanced activations of central nervous system (CNS) functions".[50]

However some experts question whether the effects of the drug actually improve athletic performance. Grindeks said in a statement, that it did not believe meldonium’s use should be banned for athletes. It said the drug worked mainly by reducing damage to cells that can be caused by certain byproducts of carnitine. Meldonium “is used to prevent death of ischemic cells and not to increase performance of normal cells,” the statement said. “Meldonium cannot improve athletic performance, but it can stop tissue damage in the case of ischemia,” which is lack of blood flow to the heart.[51]

The inventor of meldonium Ivars Kalviņš has criticized the ban, saying that WADA had not presented scientific proof that the drug can be used for doping. According to him, meldonium doesn't enhance athletic performance in any way, and was rather used by athletes to prevent damage to the heart and muscles caused by lack of oxygen during high-intensity exercise. He claimed that not allowing athletes to take care of their health is violation of human rights, and that decision was made either out of bias against Eastern European athletes or to take out competition.[52][53] The head of Anti-doping department of Latvian Sports medicine center Liene Kozlovska rejected claims that the ban is in violation of rights, saying that meldonium is dangerous in high doses, and should only be used under medical supervision to treat genuine health conditions. She also speculated that Russian athletes may not have received adequate warnings that the drug was banned — due to the suspension of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency in late 2015.[54]

Anesthesiology professor Michael Joyner, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who studies how humans respond to physical and mental stress during exercise and other activities, told Forbes that "Evidence is lacking for many compounds believed to enhance athletic performance. It's use has a sort of urban legend element and there is not much out there that is clearly that effective. I would be shocked if this stuff (meldonium) had an effect greater than caffeine or creatinine (a natural substance that, when taken as a supplement, is thought to enhance muscle mass).”[55] Ford Vox, a U.S based physician specializing in rehabilitation medicine and a journalist reported "there's not much scientific support for its use as an athletic enhancer ".

I have an idea, and it seems I'm not the only one having this idea, if also professor Michael Joyner, who is not Russian and has anything to do with the Company making the pharmac, says "there's not much scientific support for its use as an athletic enhancer", while the statement of the Company (Grindeks) seems to me very clear.

The fact is that I try to understand, and for example Meldonium is an inhibitor of the fatty acids, that are instead very important part for the fuel in Marathon. So, I believe with Meldonium MARATHON RUNNERS CAN RUN SLOWER, not faster.

But, of course, if people starts with the idea that everything is doping, and every doping can help athletes to enhance their performances, and every athletes id doped, is not possible to have any discussion.

For your info, every weak I have in Iten one meeting with all my athletes (plus somebody else that join the Group, and whom I don't know) lasting about two hourse, where I explain why doping doesn't work, with my "naive scientific explanation". My last conclusion is :

"Who uses doping must be banned from athletics, and may be go to jail.

But put in your mind that the only effect of EPO is not to enhance your performances, but is to fill the pocket of doctors and pharmacists abusing of your ignorance. Doping can't allow you to reach the same level you can reach with hard and proper training, can only be a shortcut for reaching the 90% of your aerobic efficiency, but doesn't have any influence when you have to move from 90% to 100%".

Maybe this is naive, but I prefer to give these infos than to say that with doping everybody can improve opf 1 minute in 10000m and 4 minutes in Marathon, because I don't want to lie, and I know possible to be the top completely clean.

Mr Canova, what of my concern that your blood value arguments about EPO only prove that EPO enhances performance through different mechanisms than altitude training?

hdhd wrote:

Weldon-ium wrote:http://laaficion.milenio.com/masaficion/meldonium-droga-moda-producto-dopante-Maria_Sharapova-Juegos_Olimpicos_0_697730426.html

It seems as if he goes overboard to assert how useless these drugs are. There must be a reason...

I don't know what his thoughts are on other peds but he isn't outrageous about epo. He says the very top athletes that are born and raised in altitude (high altitude in kenya) are not affected by epo

Is Rita Jeptoo not a top athlete who was born at altitude?