'It doesn't bother me if I was beaten by a Kenyan doper'

rekrunner wrote:

Given the high profile busts of the likes of Cathal Lombard, Martin Fagan, Steven Colbert, Marie Davenport, Geraldine Hendricken, Paul Quirke, etc., not to mention the rich history of Irish doping culture in boxing, football (soccer), rugby, horse-racing and jumping, swimming, and cycling, combined with the dismal doping detection rate (0.4%) of an estimated 10-18% by Irish anti-doping, plus the unexplained world class domination of the likes of Sonia O'Sullivan and Catherina McKiernan, in the heyday of the uncontrolled EPO-era, I can understand why Barr would not want to cast any stones and ripple the waters.

Not that it has much relevance at all to the discussion, but how did you determine that boxing in Ireland has a 'rich history of doping culture'? Is that from one case of an Irish amateur boxer? Do you think it's any different to other countries (regards boxing)? If you want to claim that boxing is rife with doping everywhere in the world (probably true), how do you explain that amateur boxing is the one sport other than distance running in which Kenya does reasonably well in? Oh, and the other sport is rugby.

YMMV wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

One thing it says is that there are much fewer Irish track athletes than Kenyan athletes, performing at a level that is tested for doping.

For example, looking at all male athletes in the alltime list for the men's 1500m, 5000m and the marathon:

- I can list 26 "elite" Irish athletes by name in one paragraph

- If I did the same for the more than 910 Kenyan elites (not counting exports), I could also put it in one paragraph, but the paragraph would be much longer

If I take these 6 named athletes from Ireland, and scaled it by 910/26, that would be 210 Kenyans.

If there had been testing at anything equivalent to the Irish level fifteen years ago in Kenya, there would easily be 500 Kenyans busted by now.

Is rekrunner really claiming that athletes in Ireland 15 years ago were being given advance warning of tests via text, and that dirty athletes were given the opportunity to pass if they paid their 'tea money' to the testers? Or does he think that that sort of thing became endemic in the Kenyan anti-doping system only in the last couple of years?

What I understood is that you said 5% of 7:30 is 33 seconds -- mathematical nonsense. You did not say 7% or 8:00, and in any case these Kenyans in the study ran about a minute slower than 8:00.

In case you missed it the first half-dozen times, what this Kenyan study showed is that Kenyan runners improved from marathon pace to half-marathon pace, with the very fastest running about 10K pace, for a 3K time trial. You don't need to take EPO to run a 3000m time trial at your 10K pace. For runners who had already run performances equivalent to 8:00 or better, improving from 9:20 to 9:00 (times that high school girls have run) tells us very little about how much faster than 8:00 EPO could help them improve. The Kenyan study was simply not designed or controlled enough to be able to draw the conclusion you want to for elite sub-8:00 Kenyans in 3000m.

With respect to "beyond doubt that doping with EPO is near universal", of the 138 Kenyans busted, only 131 were from athletics (the remaining from other sports, like boxing, bodybuilding, aquatics, cycling and weightlifting).

Of these 131, there were only 16 busts from EPO, compared to 50 for Nandrolone and 18 for Cortico-steroids.

Let me repeat that for emphasis -- 16 busts from EPO between 2004 and 2018, or a little more than 1 bust per year.

Forgive me if I don't yet agree with "beyond doubt that doping with EPO is near universal", based on 16 EPO busts.

The problem with repeating the absolute numbers also neglects that there are a very large pool of Kenyan athletes. I think everyone vastly underestimates, or is simply unaware, just how big that pool really is. Even at 10% prevalence, the absolute numbers will be much higher than other nations, e.g. 35x higher than Ireland, all else being equal.

When I said 910 Kenyans, I actually only counted the domestic Kenyans (because that was easy to filter and count) that were fast enough to appear on all-time lists. This did not count the Kenyan exports to the USA, Japan, Bahrain, Qatar, etc., nor the lower tier Kenyans (slower than 3:38, 13:30, or 2:10:30), nor did this count include any Kenyan women, nor did I count 400m or 800m or 400m hurdles or Steeple. The 131 doping busts would come from all of these other pools too, from a pool much larger than the 910 Kenyan athletes I counted.

If we count all of the Kenyans subjected to doping controls over all time, men and women, faster and slower, the pool of athletes could be 3000 athletes or more. 150 athletes from a pool of 3000 is still only 5%, far below the 11% figure that was measured biologically from a leaked database 12 years of blood tests, and far below 30% for Russia, and far below "near universal".

I think it is premature to express things in terms of "beyond doubt that doping with EPO is near universal".

Coevett wrote:

YMMV wrote:

If there had been testing at anything equivalent to the Irish level fifteen years ago in Kenya, there would easily be 500 Kenyans busted by now.

Is rekrunner really claiming that athletes in Ireland 15 years ago were being given advance warning of tests via text, and that dirty athletes were given the opportunity to pass if they paid their 'tea money' to the testers? Or does he think that that sort of thing became endemic in the Kenyan anti-doping system only in the last couple of years?

If you want to see what I claim -- it is sufficient to just read the text that you quoted.

Are you suggesting these things were happening in Kenya 15 years ago? They sound like fabricated beliefs that would be hard for me to comment on without any facts.

rekrunner wrote:

Coevett wrote:

Is rekrunner really claiming that athletes in Ireland 15 years ago were being given advance warning of tests via text, and that dirty athletes were given the opportunity to pass if they paid their 'tea money' to the testers? Or does he think that that sort of thing became endemic in the Kenyan anti-doping system only in the last couple of years?

If you want to see what I claim -- it is sufficient to just read the text that you quoted.

Are you suggesting these things were happening in Kenya 15 years ago? They sound like fabricated beliefs that would be hard for me to comment on without any facts.

No, you answer the question I put you.

Do you think anti-doping in Kenya was so much better 15 years ago than the last few years (confirmed text warnings of 'unannounced tests' and tea money bribes), or do you think that it was as bad as that in Ireland 15 years ago?

You claimed that anti-doping testing in Ireland was no better than Kenya's 15 years ago. Answer the question.

rekrunner wrote:

- If I did the same for the more than 910 Kenyan elites (not counting exports), I could also put it in one paragraph, but the paragraph would be much longer

Yes, don't count all the Kenyan exports to places like Bahrain and Quatar who have been busted for doping, You're indeed a master of selective statistics.

Coevett wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

- If I did the same for the more than 910 Kenyan elites (not counting exports), I could also put it in one paragraph, but the paragraph would be much longer

Yes, don't count all the Kenyan exports to places like Bahrain and Quatar who have been busted for doping, You're indeed a master of selective statistics.

The under-estimation was conservative, and works in your favor.

I used it to estimate the ratiio of Kenyan elites versus Irish elites, finding a factor of 35x. Counting exports would make that number higher, let's add 10% and say 38%. That means if we adjust the 6 Irish athletes, we now arrive at expecting 228 Kenyan athletes to be busted for doping, just to be equivalent to the level of known doping Ireland. That is, once we arrive at 228 Kenyan athletes busted, we can say that Kenyan's proven doping is as bad as Ireland's proven doping.

To be fair then. 910 severely underestimates the total pool of Kenyan athletes which have been controlled for doping, which could be as high as 3000 when we factor in sub-elites, women, exports and events I did not count. 150 out of 3000 is 5%, EPO busts form a small fraction of Kenyan doping busts, so the number of known EPO busts is something quite small, like 0.8% -- a figure for you that puts it beyond doubt that EPO usage is near universal.

Let me know if you need help breaking down these figures, in order to understand why "beyond doubt" and "near universal" are inaccurate.

broken elbow wrote:

No, you answer the question I put you.

Do you think anti-doping in Kenya was so much better 15 years ago than the last few years (confirmed text warnings of 'unannounced tests' and tea money bribes), or do you think that it was as bad as that in Ireland 15 years ago?

You claimed that anti-doping testing in Ireland was no better than Kenya's 15 years ago. Answer the question.

I don't recall ever getting a question from "broken elbow". In any case, I've already answered these questions. It should be sufficient to click the previous pages and find out for yourself what I have already claimed.

Anti-doping has progressed a lot in the last 15 years worldwide, meaning it was not so advanced 15 years ago, for anyone, including Ireland.

The Kenyan anti-doping testing "issue" started in 2009, and is only connected to OOC blood tests.

15 years ago, it was urine tests only. Urine tests do not have the short time restrictions like blood tests.

18 years ago, it was in-competition only urine tests for EPO, for everyone world-wide.

20 years ago, there were no EPO tests, world-wide.

Lacking evidence, I don't believe there were text warnings of unannounced tests 15 years ago.

Lacking evidence, I don't believe there were tea money bribes 15 years ago.

Lacking evidence, I don't believe the tea money in Kiprop's case was meant as a bribe. Furthermore Kiprop's AAF in urine is evidence that both the 6 days advanced text warning and the tea money was not intended to cover-up a doping positive. 6 days is more than enough time for an experienced doper to avoid the presence of synthetic EPO in urine.

What I wonder about Kiprop, although I don't dismiss personal stupidity, is if his case is similar to Irish sprinter Steven Colvert, where expert doubts were raised about the lab properly interpreting the results of urine tests which showed evidence of bleeding from neighboring lanes with EPO controls.

Men or women? Kenya had a 400m male runner, Simon Kemboi, test positive for steroids way back in 2000:

On the women's side, both of their NR holders in the 400m hurdles & 400m (Zackary & Koki) tested positive at the 2015 WC in Beijing:

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I think Kenya has had at least one doping positive in every event, both men & women, from the 400m up through the marathon - amazing.

Doped to the Max wrote:

Men or women? Kenya had a 400m male runner, Simon Kemboi, test positive for steroids way back in 2000:

On the women's side, both of their NR holders in the 400m hurdles & 400m (Zackary & Koki) tested positive at the 2015 WC in Beijing:

This thread is about an article posted about Thomas Barr in the mens 400m hurdles, an event dominated by the USA, with Kenya out of the top-150 performances.

You literally said that 5% of 7:30 is 33 seconds. Children would laugh at you.

rekrunner wrote:

Doped to the Max wrote:

Men or women? Kenya had a 400m male runner, Simon Kemboi, test positive for steroids way back in 2000:

On the women's side, both of their NR holders in the 400m hurdles & 400m (Zackary & Koki) tested positive at the 2015 WC in Beijing:

This thread is about an article posted about Thomas Barr in the mens 400m hurdles, an event dominated by the USA, with Kenya out of the top-150 performances.

Quit being a jerk rekrunner...enough is enough. You said "nothing suggests Kenyan doping for 400m Hurdles." I pointed that the Kenyan women's NR holder in the 400 hurdles is a doper. On the men's side there isn't a 400m hurdler busted per se, but Kemboi, one of their fastest 400m runners, is a convicted doper (where there's one...there's others). This shows there's doping at the sprint level in Kenyan athletics - I guess you can't accept that fact or something (you keep running damage control for the Kenyan doping problem like you're going to represent them at CAS hearings or something. Lol). And what the heck does "out of the top-150 performances" have to do with Kenyan sprinters doping?

I'm not being a jerk.

Nothing suggests Kenyan doping for the men's 400m Hurdles.