The emperor has no clothes: Jemima Sumgong has tested positive for EPO!!!

rekrunner wrote:

I have a MALE colleague at work, decent local runner, who has won money and prizes at international races, with PBs of 1:14 in the half, and 2:36 in the marathon. These times are not international class elite for females.

Hesch's listed 2:21.28 marathon PR would put him the top 40% of the starting grid of "international elite division" of the 2012 Boston Marathon. Your friend's time wouldn't have made it. Don't think too hard on this one 🤔

I won't. Do you mean a Christine Hesch? 2:21:28 would make her an international class athlete, putting her in the top-50. 2:21:28 isn't even national class for men. This makes him a good local or regional runner.

Real World Analysis wrote:

Hesch's listed 2:21.28 marathon PR would put him the top 40% of the starting grid of "international elite division" of the 2012 Boston Marathon. Your friend's time wouldn't have made it. Don't think too hard on this one 🤔

rekrunner wrote:

I won't. Do you mean a Christine Hesch? 2:21:28 would make her an international class athlete, putting her in the top-50. 2:21:28 isn't even national class for men. This makes him a good local or regional runner.

I'm using the Boston starting grid as an example where his PR would be about 40th fastest of the elites that showed up. Not surprisingly, the Kenyans have the top spots. Hesch would be ahead of about 80 other elite participants who are from other countries as well as the U.S. (I think the slowest time is 2:27 at #115).

Secondly, if you use the standard age-grade tables for his time, the 2:21.18, calculated for the prime running years (and not age-adjusted) grades out at 89.78%, which is top-end national class and just a smidgen under world class - 90%. So, if he's not world class, wouldn't he be top-end national class for his marathon PR?

You are using a wrong definition.

Is the best example of EPO working at the top, a guy who would place 40th at the Boston marathon?

rekrunner wrote:

Is the best example of EPO working at the top, a guy who would place 40th at the Boston marathon?

There are lots of examples, some among people much faster than Christian Hesch. You are well aware of all of these examples, including Brahim Boulami, Rashid Ramzi, Jemima Sumgong, and many others.

Somehow you find problems with all of them and dismiss them as irrelevant.

Mr. Obvious wrote:

There are lots of examples, some among people much faster than Christian Hesch. You are well aware of all of these examples, including Brahim Boulami, Rashid Ramzi, Jemima Sumgong, and many others.

Somehow you find problems with all of them and dismiss them as irrelevant.

10/10

Mr. Obvious wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

Is the best example of EPO working at the top, a guy who would place 40th at the Boston marathon?

There are lots of examples, some among people much faster than Christian Hesch. You are well aware of all of these examples, including Brahim Boulami, Rashid Ramzi, Jemima Sumgong, and many others.

Somehow you find problems with all of them and dismiss them as irrelevant.

They are all innocent victims who actually ran slower when on the dope.

Oh, and Lombard....oh wait...he dropped 2 minutes off his 10k time when he started.

trollism wrote:

Oh, and Lombard....oh wait...he dropped 2 minutes off his 10k time when he started.

This story on Lombard said it was over 3 mins off in his 10k:

"In the past 18 months, the 28-year-old runner from Cork has improved his 10,000 metres personal best by three minutes and two seconds, clocking an Irish record of 27min 33.53sec in Stanford, California, earlier this year, and qualifying for the Olympics at both 5,000m and 10,000m."

If you go back one page, what we are talking about comes from my observation that "we don't see these synergistic effects of PEDs, even in combination, across the board in distance running, like we did in cycling." Hesch was given as a counter-example.By "across the board" I mean both inside and outside of Africa. When I say "like we did in cycling", I especially mean outside of Africa. When we look outside of Africa, for examples of "EPO working at the top", we have to dig down deep to find counter-examples like Hesch, and then find creative ways to consider Hesch elite, so he can be included in this conversation. Hesch 2:21:28 doesn't even beat Ingrid Kristiansen's women's 1985 world record.On the side of the men:- We can come up with several examples of Africans, busted for EPO, that ran fast.- We can come up with many more examples of Africans, not yet busted for EPO, running as fast, in many cases much faster.- In the same era, we can come up with several examples of non-Africans who took EPO, yet ran comparatively much slower, closer to 1985 pre-EPO times, then the current world record at that time.- We can also find many more examples of non-Africans not yet busted for EPO, running equally slow.It seems obvious, that when looking at top world class times, the correlation to Africa (East and North) is high, and the correlation of top world class times to EPO still needs to be established, preferably without invoking conjecture, new hypotheses, speculation, or faith.On the side of the women, the picture is less clear. We can start to see a similar pattern, but to a lesser degree, with some exceptions, due to several factors unique to the women.I did not consider the examples of Africans you gave relevant to the point being made at the time -- exploring the net impact of the "game changing" effects of EPO on "top times" for non-Africans of any nation, for the two decades of the EPO-era. The motivation then was to evaluate the statement that EPO works on Kenyans, like it works on everyone else, by providing a context. Do we really know how much it works "on everyone else" "at the top"? If "working" for everyone else, as a group "at the top", only produced a dozen or so athletes able to break 1985 pre-EPO world records, then from claims that "EPO works the same for East Africans", we should expect similar magnitudes in terms of quantity, and quality.

Mr. Obvious wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

Is the best example of EPO working at the top, a guy who would place 40th at the Boston marathon?

There are lots of examples, some among people much faster than Christian Hesch. You are well aware of all of these examples, including Brahim Boulami, Rashid Ramzi, Jemima Sumgong, and many others.

Somehow you find problems with all of them and dismiss them as irrelevant.

Real World Analysis wrote:

trollism wrote:

Oh, and Lombard....oh wait...he dropped 2 minutes off his 10k time when he started.

This story on Lombard said it was over 3 mins off in his 10k:

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/i-took-epo-to-have-an-equal-chance-says-athlete-51094.html

"In the past 18 months, the 28-year-old runner from Cork has improved his 10,000 metres personal best by three minutes and two seconds, clocking an Irish record of 27min 33.53sec in Stanford, California, earlier this year, and qualifying for the Olympics at both 5,000m and 10,000m."

No wonder he said plyometrics, when you improve that much every stride feels like a gigantic leap.

So Fagan and Eddy H did not improve? Lombard did not improve? Or are they not good enough or are there no stats on when they took? It's hard to keep up with this.

Honesty, It's hard to know what you are talking about. Cycling had very systematic doping across several teams. Running has had doping but it's less systemic and different in execution for a number of reasons. The main ones being the sport culture (less teams, racing frequency) and differences in testing systems. You are ignoring these differences, creating numbers that sounds like statistical analysis,and trying to make everyone disprove your hypothesis based on this nothing-analysis. You might as well argue that PEDs don't improve sprint times because,

All counties have sprinters.

Look at PED use in foot ball and baseball and pick a statiscit

then look at the national records of countries x,y, and z.

And, voila, now everyone must disprove this let theory or they are not serious.

Fixed the end of other post below. The point is that Rekrunner and Canova are the ones making huge assumptions here. There are certainly people making assumptions in the other direction but this stuff is no better!

Fixed.

-All counties have sprinters.

- Look at PED use in football and baseball and pick a statistic showing improvement in records.

- Then look at the national sprint records of countries x,y, and z that did not improve.

And, voila, now everyone must disprove this pet theory or they are not serious.

Rekrunner has some kind of religious fait that the best athletes can not be improved.

Humanity is, fortunately, from an evolutionary perspective not equipped with a hematocrit level optimal for athletic performance. In the long run, a more modest level (35-45%) is a better tradeoff between aerobic power and risk for blod clots, heart attacs and other vascular diseases.

A few people are born with naturally high hematocrit (50-60%). Very few are born with both high hematocrit and at the same time optimal genetics for other aspects of running: Slim lower legs, high elasticity of leg muscles, natural stride, talent for high stroke volume, vessel elasticity, high blood volume, lung capacity, high mithocondria concentration, efficient cell combustion.

A man with a very favorable selection in all other parameters than hematocrit, would be an elite without any drugs (assuming the best training), but could be a WR holder with a high hematocrit.

You can improve your running efficiency and aerobic efficiency alot by training, But in the end there is a ceiling, you are limited by your aerobic power, your ability to pump and circulate oxygen. Athletes not born with a natural high hematocrit can lift this ceiling by about 5-15% with EPO or other blood doping.

Statistically the perfect human is never going to happen. Therefore there will unfortunately always be potential for artificial improvement. Denying or limiting knowledge, does not help in antidoping or any other way. Let people make informed decisions.

Exactly. He shifts arguments, frames of reference, etc. whenever it suits his argument. Extremely inconsistent and intellectually dishonest.

Despite proclaiming over years and years that statistics support his point, he has yet to provide a single statistic to back up his point.

Mr. Obvious wrote:

Exactly. He shifts arguments, frames of reference, etc. whenever it suits his argument. Extremely inconsistent and intellectually dishonest.

Despite proclaiming over years and years that statistics support his point, he has yet to provide a single statistic to back up his point.

Maybe he's just having fun with everyone...you know keeping the debate lively. It's no different than on some cycling forums people will argue to this day that Armstrong could have won those 7 TdFs without doping. After listening to their reasoning, it becomes apparent that they're just trolling to liven up things a bit 😀

I used the description "almost instant". It takes a few days, but when your body starts to produce the extra RBCs, your speed should rise in tandem with your hematocrit. That is it, even when more is more, there is no mystical four week time period nor any hematocrit level which should be surpassed before the effect is seen. As the article states, it took "two years" before his performances showed "drastic improvement". Last time I took a look into from my calendar, two years was a longer time period than four weeks, that what I was referring to.

What on earth are you talking about, did you even bother to read the article? It states clearly the following:

The article is quite lacking in many of a detail, but I read it that the first regimens didn't give him any 6 % speed boost à la Durussel study and I seriously doubt if the latter one did either.

It is pretty much semantics of English language how one uses the word "international elite". I'd actually acknowledge that his recorded mile and 1500m PBs are competitive at national level. Even his half marathon performances look pretty decent, but regardless of any Boston marathon classifications, I would have difficult in describing anyone with marathon record of 2:21 "an international elite" if on the road he has a few miles still to run when the first runner has crossed the marathon finish line.

I should add that even the alleged performance-boosting effects he got from his program isn't all that obvious, other than some anecdotal stories, I had difficulty in finding much of an evidence to back up the claim.

While it is difficult to compare different routes, if you believe Hesch in that he succumbed to rEPO use in 2010, his improvement at half marathon is only 63 seconds, from 1:04.56 (20/01/08) to 1:03.53 (6/10/11), ie. 1.6 %. It is totally true that the post rEPO track mile PB of 3:58.68 is actually a good time, but if you compare it to his pre-rEPO 1500m record (3:40.73) ran some decade earlier, there is no improvement at all.

Again, this is based on combining the data on the two websites mentioned, and I have no idea to know if the record is complete, but at least there is no magical transformation that was recorded in the times he clocked when succumbing to rEPO-use.

Yeah and he states that 1 month after his initial program his Hct went from 44 to 51.7. Last time I checked my calculator that's about a ~17% increase 😉

.

Yes...I read it and he's ambiguous about any specifics on a % of improved road times that he ran. And how do you know what his improvement was, or lack there of? Were you with him? I'm simply surmising that his Hct % gain was similar to the average Hct % gain seen in Durussel et al, where the test subjects experienced an average improvement of ~6% in 3k TT.

I find it interesting that Hesch said he experienced a "dramatic" improvement in his performance. "Dramatic" = extremely severe or extensive. His word not mine. And from the article, Hesch also goes on to describe that rocket fuel made him experience some kind of euphoria like he's a "Kenyan" floatng down the road or something 😁 (all after just a couple of weeks into his cycle): "Your running feels like what you imagine when you see all those Kenyan runners floating down the road,” Hesch said about competing with the aid of EPO. “And two to three weeks in your cycle, you start feeling like that yourself."

You didn't read the rest of my comment to rekrunner. Throwing the "international class elite" description to the side, I'm suggesting this:

If you use the standard age-grade tables for his time, the 2:21.18, calculated for the prime running years (and not age-adjusted) grades out at 89.78%, which is top-end national class and just a smidgen under world class - 90%. So, if he's not world class, wouldn't he be top-end national class for his marathon PR?

That's because Hesch doesn't want to go into more detail about his performance improvements. It's not as clear cut like the Lombard case where rocket fuel improved his 10k time by over 3 mins in 18 months. That one still has my head spinning.

And we don't really know when he may have actually started using PEDs, other than what he said in the article. He never tested positive to give us a time reference to work backwards from. He was found to have rHuEPO at one of his races which was the impetus of the investigation. Then he confesses, doesn't give specifics and seems to undermine his use of dope. Typical with most dopers these days.

I'll appreciate that you agree with me that Hesch was from the hematological perspective a high responder to rEPO and didn't gain any enormous 6 % boost, if we are to believe him. I have never questioned the elevation of his hematocrit and precisely that makes his story weird.

I'll wrap up the case briefly now and leave it for readers to decide who has the best arguments. I'll do so, because I have better things to do and I honestly can foresee that we are just one step away from the flood of never-ending and barely relevant references to the seven-year-old OFF-scores of some never-heard Russian runners with names reminiscent of Doperova Eponshki from page 369 of some report.

To summarize: We have a rEPO user, who was an OK national level runner. We don't know when his regimen started. We don't know anything about his rEPO-fueled improvements. We can't even believe that anything he tells is necessarily true. I am wondering why anyone hasn't yet written a research paper "Durusselish Magical Improvements Associated with the Use or Recombinant Human Erythropoietin: A Case Study" based on his story.

Just one anecdotal illustration of why I occasionally find your logic not the best. I haven't done the math and rEPO isn't even the most expensive product in the market, but if you honestly believe that the guy kept his hematocrit in low 50s for several years in row, I wouldn't be surprised had he ended up spending most of his $40,000 price money to just to finance his regimen.