Blood Doping Study Broken Down by Country (Interesting Findings)

Should note this is from the 2011 and 2013 World Championships. It seems like a lot of people's long-held beliefs about doping countries are further backed by the data. And perhaps the notion of the East Africans being on par with the worst offenders (Morocco, Russia) is overblown.

Is Prevalence the percentage of tests that were doped? So 0.14 for USA means 14% of samples taken were doped?

Why aren't there a ton of suspensions? Ukraine at 89% is ridiculous.

It's estimated. Assuming they can't suspend you unless they can go from likely doping to definitely doping based on a too fishy to be a coincidence ABP. Lower standard for an estimated prevalence.

Is prevalence the percentage of failed? wrote:

Is Prevalence the percentage of tests that were doped? So 0.14 for USA means 14% of samples taken were doped?

Why aren't there a ton of suspensions? Ukraine at 89% is ridiculous.

It's a population based calculation based on how the distribution of blood values are distributed from low to high, compared to pre-determined distributions.

A doped country's curve will be shifted to the left, and the percentage is a measure of how much it is shifted, with a small range for errors.

Since it is a population distribution calculation, they cannot identify individuals in this calculation, just that on the whole they are too high.

But these athletes would have been subject to the ABP, and if there was enough evidence to build a suspicious profile, some of them should have been sanctioned.

The other thread is here:

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=9857056#9857429

The percents might be higher than this in actuality -- their training data was trained on "clean" athletes versus athletes that tested positive. If nobody (or few of them) was clean then how powerful can the model really be?

These are also in-competition data, so the careful out-of-competition blood-dopers aren't included.

And of course, HGH and roids and stimulants aren't included.

THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:

Should note this is from the 2011 and 2013 World Championships. It seems like a lot of people's long-held beliefs about doping countries are further backed by the data. And perhaps the notion of the East Africans being on par with the worst offenders (Morocco, Russia) is overblown.

I'd rather go by actual numbers of doping busts, which have rocketed just as testing has risen to the level of barely adequate in these places.

I thought it was widely accepted (and basic common sense) that the ABP hadn't been able to give a true picture of East Africans because of the lack of testing? And there hasn't been two cases recently of Kenyans getting busted off of the ABP (likely as a result of more testing and quicker analysis due to the new WADA lab in Nairobi)?

USA has as much blood doping as Kenya? I'm surprised the likes of MindWeak haven't already been in this thread screeching that it proves how dirty and corrupt British athletics is, led by the evil Seb Coe and Gary (Rekrunner).

Coevett wrote:

USA has as much blood doping as Kenya? I'm surprised the likes of MindWeak haven't already been in this thread screeching that it proves how dirty and corrupt British athletics is, led by the evil Seb Coe and Gary (Rekrunner).

To avoid future surprises, please note that I have absolutely no link to British Athletics, UK Athletics, any elite British athletes, foreign or domestic, nor any official British organization in any capacity or domain.

With respect to dirty British track athletes, every official or unofficial listing I've seen generally lists the United Kingdom, or Great Britain, as one of the cleanest nations.

Others may rationalize this saying UK and UKA and UKAD are also dirty and corrupt, but I do not.

For doping busts by country, I have pointed and will continue to point you and others to WADA published reports, and the official websites of various ADAs and ADOs.

While you'd rather go by absolute number of busts, prevalence is usually measured as a percentage of the total athlete population, and larger athlete populations will be at a disadvantage when measured by absolute numbers.

rekrunner wrote:

It's a population based calculation based on how the distribution of blood values are distributed from low to high, compared to pre-determined distributions.

A doped country's curve will be shifted to the left, and the percentage is a measure of how much it is shifted, with a small range for errors.

Since it is a population distribution calculation, they cannot identify individuals in this calculation, just that on the whole they are too high.

But these athletes would have been subject to the ABP, and if there was enough evidence to build a suspicious profile, some of them should have been sanctioned.

I should add, since the measure is a cumulative distribution function of the whole population for that country, many athletes gaming the ABP by raising their values within limits in order to avoid ABP detection, will still impact this measure, as the higher values will shift the country curve.

Coevett wrote:

I thought it was widely accepted (and basic common sense) that the ABP hadn't been able to give a true picture of East Africans because of the lack of testing?

Yes, but this wasn't based on the ABP, but on testing during the championships, making all nations equal in that regard:

This study estimates the prevalence of blood doping ... measured at two international major events (2011 and 2013 WA World Championships)

Coevett wrote:USA has as much blood doping as Kenya?

Yes, in percent of the top athletes. It does suggest, in combination with the fewer busts, that not relatively fewer athletes dope here, but that the athletes mostly (have to) respect the boundaries of the ABP.

In other words, we dope with one arm behind the back, whereas the Kenyans could go crazy, but now are paying for these habits, exactly as I predicted.

Interesting to note in that context is that Ethiopia is actually worse than Kenya. If they ever start serious ooc testing, it will get really exciting.

Looking at the trends is also interesting. If the assignments of nations is correct, then the following holds true:

Country 2011 2013

Ukraine 89% 25% wow

Ethiopia 19% 30%

Kenya 19% 13%

USA 14% 17%

GB 4% 18%

Australia 0% 4% very nice

Japan 0% 0% awesome!

For context, average was 18% in 2011 and 15% in 2013.

E.g., GB was only cleaner than the rest in 2011, but worse than average in 2013. Too funny. Good morning El K!

casual obsever wrote:

Country 2011 2013

GB 4% 18%

This is quite alarming, it represents a 300% increase. The relatively small sample size, 16 and 14 respectively may be a factor but I don't think it can explain it all away. The weakness with anti doping measures is the enforcement is left to the national bodies. The national body is in a conflict of interest, the shame of busted cheats versus the glory of international medals. The 1980s were a dark period with a don't ask, don't tell attitude from the authorities. The LA Olympics in 1984 were probably the dirtiest ever given what has come out since the Games.

The recent article about Dr Robin Chakraverty, then UKA's chief medical officer, UKA's head of distance running Barry Fudge, and former UKA performance director Neil Black all being present in 2014 when Mo Farah was injected with L-carnitine makes me worry that we have gone back to that culture. The increase may be a function of athletes getting the message that you will only be busted if you are blatant about it. The recent UKAD refusal to release Farah's old samples for reanalysis just adds to the suspicion.

People celebrate the stream of busts from Kenya, and rightfully so, but it also seems that Kenya is the only nation that is actively trying to catch people. Whether this is due to international pressure or that they have such a depth in runners that they can afford to ditch potential medalists as they have plenty of others ready to take their place is beside the point.

Jamaica not in the study, it's a joke

Raddison wrote:

casual obsever wrote:

Country 2011 2013

GB 4% 18%

This is quite alarming, it represents a 300% increase. The relatively small sample size, 16 and 14 respectively may be a factor but I don't think it can explain it all away.

If you calculate the number of athletes we talk about, it looks less alarming (to me).

GB grows from 0.64 athletes in 2011 to 2.52 athletes in 2013, with some small margin of error due to the small numbers.

300% increase sounds alarming, but maybe going from maybe 1 to maybe 2-3 seems less alarming.

The country list makes this study a lot more interesting to review, assuming it's accurate.

In addition to the stats listed above, I noted that Russia seems to have greatly reformed by 2013:

2011: 74%/M =75%/W=73%

2013: 9%/M=10%/W=8%

Compared to the average:

2011 average: 18%/M=15%/W=22%

2013 average: 15%/M=17%/W=12%

From this, one might understand why the athletes are miffed at a nationwide ban.

Morocco did not reform, but got worse, with a huge increase for the men, and a small drop for the women:

2011: 47%/M =51%/W=41%

2013: 61%/M=83%/W=24%

Also Kenya seems to be right about average or below average, except the men in 2011:

2011 Kenyan: 19%/M=27%/W=10%

2013 Kenyan: 13%/M=17%/W=09%

If we remove Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Morocco, to get a "rest of the world" prevalence, the number drops significantly from the average in 2011, and slightly from the average in 2013, with 2013 slightly higher than 2011:

2011: 10.3%/M=10.5%/W=10.1%

2013: 13.5%/M=14.8%/W=11.3%

blindedbyfame wrote:

Jamaica not in the study, it's a joke

I believe the study was more focused on blood doping, though, wasn't it? If so, and if blood doping is more of an endurance athlete thing than a sprinter thing, that would tend to skew the results. If Jamaica is in fact a dirty nation, they might still have come up clean on a blood doping study. And some countries (like Ethiopia) are pretty much just distance runners, so their values might appear somewhat inflated compared to more balanced teams.

casual obsever wrote:

These are also in-competition data, so the careful out-of-competition blood-dopers aren't included.

And of course, HGH and roids and stimulants aren't included.

...or SARMs (osterine/LGD-4033), GW501516, GHRP-2, etc.

So USA/Kenya look virtually the same? I'm sure that'll slow people down on these boards.

Orange Joe wrote:

blindedbyfame wrote:

Jamaica not in the study, it's a joke

I believe the study was more focused on blood doping, though, wasn't it? If so, and if blood doping is more of an endurance athlete thing than a sprinter thing, that would tend to skew the results. If Jamaica is in fact a dirty nation, they might still have come up clean on a blood doping study. And some countries (like Ethiopia) are pretty much just distance runners, so their values might appear somewhat inflated compared to more balanced teams.

Those data are exclusively on blood doping in endurance events, see for example:

"TABLE 3 | Prevalence of blood doping along with 95% confidence intervals

...

The prevalences for the countries are given for endurance athletes only."

So, no inflation for Ethiopia for example, and no inclusion of Jamaican sprinters.

Btw, most of you noticed that of course, but for the few new ones to the sport: this paper analyzes the same data published in October 2018 (doi: 10.1002/dta.2526) with overlapping authors:

"In total, 3683 athletes were tested in Daegu (n = 1808) and/or in Moscow (n = 1875) with at least one observation per athlete for each event."

The newer analysis (doi: 10.3389/fphys.2020.00160):

"This study estimates the prevalence of blood doping based on hematological parameters in a large cohort of track and field athletes measured at two international major events (2011 and 2013 WA World Championships) with a hypothesized decrease in prevalence due to the ABP introduction. A total of 3683 blood samples were collected and analyzed from all participating athletes originating from 209 countries."

So, exclusively data directly from these two championships, meaning the different ooc strategies of the various NADOs are irrelevant.

Also, this might explain why Russia looked so good in Moscow: having everything under control, they cheated with their own samples in their own country.

There will never be a high prevalence of doping amongst Brazilian track athletes cause I doubt they can afford it lol

Kenya was able to dope with few limits prior to World champs in those years, so it's not surprising that they'd not be extraordinarily higher than the U.S. at the World's, where they'd need to be clean.

Ethiopia still faces little testing. The Soviet Bloc dopes systematically and has done so since the 1970s. Russia certainly hadn't done anything to stop doping in 2013. In fact, 2013 was the year they held World's in Moscow! And in 2014 they were caught breaking in and replacing the Russian samples in the testing lab at the Winter Olympics in Sochi.