A longer deeper look at all-time top performances

Is this the real rekrunner and what is the hidden agendaÉ

rjm33 come out, come out wherever you are.

Doped to the Max wrote:

It's difficult in trying understand your thesis on this. Comparing historical trends with certain nations vs the rest of the world and all that is confusing.

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Take Morocco - a country known for a high prevalence and culture of doping. For this illustration I'll use the 5000

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during this time period from 1997 to 2006

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And still to this day, Moroccans continue to get busted for EPO....

I didn't really offer much of a "thesis" in this thread, but mainly provided summary data dating back to the 1960s.

If you want to better understand what I look for in the data, you should look for contradictions, not confirmation.

Take your Moroccan example in the 5000m: with only 1 exception, the sub-13 performances stopped after 2006, yet "still to this day, Moroccans continue to get busted for EPO".

What we see in the data is that post-2008, the (top-5) North Africans are running about as fast as they did pre-1992.

While you are impressed with a 1% improvement, compared to their peak in 2000, there was a significant 2% slowdown over the whole period from 2009-2018.

Yet "still to this day, Moroccans continue to get busted for EPO".

There must be other factors to consider.

Yes...the 1% improvement is impressive when you consider it's compared to Aouita's time of 12:53.39 - the fastest pre-90s time ever and the only sub-13 of that era. There's also another factor here and that is the suspicion surrounding Aouita (see Coevett's info on this). If Aouita was doping with the PEDs & methods of that era (androgens, GH, transfusions, etc), then the time becomes faster than it should be - influenced by PEDs - which makes the seven (7) Moroccans who ran faster in the EPO-macrodosing era even more remarkable.

The slowdown you keep harping on is expected once testing improved after 2005 and the implementation of the ABP in 2009. That shifted the strategy with dopers from "Macrodosing" to "Microdosing" or smaller amounts that would try to keep hematological values from flagging the ABP software. So, with microdosing and smaller dosages you're not going to get he faster times you saw in the full-throttle era, but there would still be some measurable effects in performance, and of course would vary on individual response. And just because a doper's hematological levels don't meet the levels needed to initiate an ABP case (99% specificity) doesn't mean there isn't some suspicioun aroused that would warrant target testing on the athlete in question. And with much better testing on EPO these days (~18 hrs now on the window for microdosing) they're going to get more positives on OOC target testing.

On the "other factors" to considered you would think the Moroccans would have "considered" that before resorting to doping. It's uncanny when you examine the number of their top-performing athletes that have been banned for the use of EPO and ABP-hematological violations (Ramzi, Mourhit, Laâlou, Boulami, Bouramdane, Gourmi, Selsouli, etc.). And this is just for O2-vector doping and doesn't include the many more that were busted for androgens, who just as well could have been combining the androgens with EPO - which is a popular stack with dopers. So, it seems to me the other factors to improve performance above & beyond their natural limits would have been tried by the Morrocans as opposed to the embarrassment, shame & wrath brought on to them by getting busted for doping.

Take Boulami's WR SC performance in 2002 which was a clear case of macrodoping. The annulled time (7:53.17) would stand today as the fastest ever! But an IC positive wiped everything out and his moment of glory was flushed away. If there's other factors here - why didn't he use them instead of resorting to doping consequently getting caught?

The other factors are that talent still matters, not everyone responds to drugs the same way, and testing has made it harder to go full throttle.

So, your new personal hypothesis is that the difference between macro dosing full-throttle, and micro dosing measured throttle is 2%, causing a near complete regression to pre-EPO era times.

The next step then is to work on observing, or otherwise confirming these new hypotheses. For example, since you say "measurable effects", has anyone measured these effects?

We also encounter the next set of contradictions. Outside of Africa, there was no large effect observed during the full throttle EPO-era years, and then there was an improvement in the era of improved testing.

Outside of African, 4 runners ran sub-13 in the full-throttle era, and 4 runners ran sub-13 post-2005 and post-ABP.

This leads to absurd conclusions like no talented non-Africans ever full throttle doped in the EPO era, despite the potential to improve by some 15-20 seconds, and the complete lack of testing, or the ease to beat the first tests.

Or, it suggests that non-Africans have less talent than the best Africans.

We can again come up with a new set of explanations, but then the next step is to work on observing, or otherwise confirming these new hypotheses.

I'm well aware of the many competing drug effect theories that apparently only Africans could leverage and get away with.

But I would be more interested in expanding the discussion regarding these "other factors" with more specificity.

Can you elaborate on what these "other factors" are for Morocco, and why they can be dismissed so easily?

You didn’t respond to my post, but...

1. Testing has not been and continues to not be at the same level in each country. This changes overtime and is not the same across the board. Kenya is just now getting better testing from almost zero.

2. The epo era is not the same timeframe for each country. For several reasons, one of which is testing. Another which is doping infrastructure and availability of drugs. Theses things are not the same everywhere. A handful of top runners might have access at one point, later it might be systemic and available all the way down. Later it might only be top runners again as testing improves in that country.

3. Talent still matters. If you have a small pool of athletes you may or may not have that high natural talent that is also a high responder to doping.

Of course talent matters, as does the infrastructure to nurture that talent with training, nutrition, and recovery.