casual obsever wrote:
ISBN wrote:I'm not going to pretend to completely follow the technical and scientific data in your post. I don't know as much as you on those areas. But what I don't understand is why the IAAF would go out of their way, as you claim, to protect Radcliffe on several occasions?
Actually, no, I didn't claim that. From what the IAAF told us, they followed their own (self-given) rules in 2003 and 2005. Until 2008, the ABP tests served three purposes:
1) to establish the baseline of the athlete,
2) to verify the reliability of the method,
3) to find suspicious athletes and then target-test them.
So that's apparently exactly what the IAAF did in 2003 + 2005, after catching Paula with these suspicious values: they performed extra EPO tests on her (detailed in the IAAF response the Ashenden's claims), which turned out to be negative.
See here for example for Ramzi at the same time (same story):
"The Sunday Times noted that blood samples collected from Ramzi on 10 and 14 August 2005 had OFF-scores of 157.8 and 148 respectively. In accordance with the IAAF regulations then in force, in each case those abnormal values triggered the immediate collection by the IAAF of a urine sample from the athlete on the same day, but no rEPO was found in either urine sample. The IAAF also collected two blood samples from Ramzi in Helsinki and had them tested for evidence of blood transfusions, but again with negative results."
Says a lot about the reliability of this procedure, doesn't it.
In 2012, again as far as we know the IAAF followed their own rules. After catching Paula with these values, she was asked to explain them to an expert chosen by the IAAF. Said expert then considered these explanation to be implausible, as discussed. Unfortunately that is - per IAAF rule - not enough for a ban. Two more experts have to join the first one to form a panel, and only if those three agree on a ban, it will happen.
Why did not all of them (allegedly, according to the IAAF) agree on a ban? I don't know; thanks to Paula's and the IAAF's anti-transparency attitude, we'll likely never learn. Would be nice to read the experts' written, detailed conclusions.
Hypothetical possibilities:
1) One expert really believed Paula.
2) One expert was a Paula fan.
3) Saugy was one of the experts.
4) The President Diack - known to accept bribes - chose the right expert.
5) The Vice President Coe - known to be her buddy - chose the right expert.
6) They actually banned her, but to avoid her suing them, they agreed to keep it secret, if Paula would stop competing (which she actually did, but that might be a coincidence).
7) ? ....
Now, personally I believe the Aden story complements the above: the rules (and thresholds) are way too soft. Considering that his group has been investigated by the IAAF (among others) and that EPO was a prominent choice of his, it is saddening that only Driouch was flagged with suspicious ABP values. What happened to Driouch? Well, that case was covered up for 24 months...