'We Can Now Estimate the Effect of Blood Doping'

Subway Surfers wrote:

Would you concede that a basic 1% increase at elite level in a massive changer? 3:33 to 3:31, 13:01 to 12:53

From athlete's viewpoint, 1 % is enough to move him/her at most a few positions in the final standings and a good motivation for many athletes to dope, but I wouldn't call it a "massive game changer", because the boost isn't even remotely comparable to - say -steroids in the 1970s/1980s female shot put.

Also in time series of seasonal best times of a group of athletes or individual dopers, 1 % would pretty much vanish into all the other noise affecting the results.

Perhaps the boost is the 4 %, but I haven't seen any data indicating that the boost is uniform in males and females across all levels of baseline performance, quite to the contrary, there is falling expexted gain the faster the athlete is to begin with.

And if Iljukov is right about the high total hemoglobin explaining the low response of males vs. females, it is plausible that the high total hemoglobin athletes are even lower responders to blood doping.

Of course those with a higher hct will be lower responders. The upper limit for performance is around 60% no matter if you're starting at 40% or 50%. Going from 40% to 60% is vastly different than going from 50% to 60%. Although both of those would be very significant, nobody can get away with being at 60% anymore.

Because Iljukov uses term "total hemoglobin" and not "hemoglobin concentration", I think his view is that females tend to have more functional capacity in their lungs, muscles etc. to take advantage of the extra RBCs whereas males have used almost full capacity of their diffusing systems etc with more hemoglobin already flowing in their bodies .

My recollection is that there is not that much difference in how blood doping affects performance in relation to baseline Hb level and Swedish researchers pointed out in one of their papers that a subject with Hb of 178 g/l was as responsive to a transfusion as subject with Hb of 123 g/l.

1% in middle distance can be the difference between 1st and nowhere. 2 seconds in the 1500 can be 8 places or more.

rekrunner wrote:

physics defiant wrote:

Go all in on data if it fits your theory, reject it entirely if it disagrees.

The data fits my theory.

But only the data that fits.

Aragon wrote:

Because Iljukov uses term "total hemoglobin" and not "hemoglobin concentration", I think his view is that females tend to have more functional capacity in their lungs, muscles etc. to take advantage of the extra RBCs whereas males have used almost full capacity of their diffusing systems etc with more hemoglobin already flowing in their bodies .

My recollection is that there is not that much difference in how blood doping affects performance in relation to baseline Hb level and Swedish researchers pointed out in one of their papers that a subject with Hb of 178 g/l was as responsive to a transfusion as subject with Hb of 123 g/l.

Iljukov may be right that females have more to gain than males with blood doping just as they have more to gain using testosterone than males do. However, to even think for a moment that males have used almost full capacity and thus will see little gain tells me you have no firsthand knowledge of what you're discussing. I'm not trying to be rude, but that much is crystal clear.

Would you happen to have the study you're referencing? I know you said it's just your recollection so no big deal if you can't remember a title to search for. I always like reading these types of studies. I would be interested to see if they stated how large the transfusion was and what their response to it was.

My main point though was that if you give one unit to the guy at 178 g/l and one unit to the guy with 123 g/l then sure they'll both get a solid bump. But the difference is you could give about 4 units to the guy with 123 g/l and he would be absolutely flying, like suddenly your mile pace feels like 5k pace. You can't give the guy at 178 g/l four units.

casual obsever wrote:

Lol, yes. One would think that - if the benefits were negligible - all these blood-doping running studies wouldn't consistently result in benefits between +1 and +5% but rather scattered between -2 and +2%.

Plus, with recent papers demonstrating some 44% being drug cheats, and 15 - 20% blood dopers, enabled by the corrupt IAAF, we know what scientists and athletes have learned. And yes, this includes high altitude super stars from Kiprop to Jeptoo to Sumgong and Aden's athletes.

Maybe one could have had this discussion in 2010, but in 2020? Ridiculo.

In a 1997 altitude training study, all of the subjects gained 2.3% (3.5% for the hi-lo men) from a 6-week control training phases at sea-level, *before* anyone went to altitude.

Any study without a similar pre-training control phase could have skewed results by as much as 2-3%.

Any study without a control group would be unable to see this difference.

To illustrate the impact on the conclusions, the altitude, the researchers measured 1.3%-2.8% benefit from hi-lo training, but with a different study execution, researchers would have concluded 4.6%-5% benefit, to as high as 6.5% for the men only.

Compare these figures from legal hi-lo altitude training in 1997 to your figures from blood doping studies.

In 2011, many of these drug cheats were Russians, and it seems that Russians scientists also concluded from research way back in the 70s that both steroids and transfusions works much better for women than for men.

Armstronglivs wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

The data fits my theory.

But only the data that fits.

That would be all of the data.

Here is the paper, they gave 3-5 units but didn't want to go much above 200 g/l (Hct c:a 60 %):

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3565043/

And of course my most sincere apologies for knowing next-to-nothing about the subject, my knowledge originates almost fully from what rekrunner, Renato and Jon Orange told me here and re-reading regularly the Dutch Mt. Ventoux paper where do EPO-induced boost was seen.

Subway Surfers wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

It doesn't have to be 1%. In the Doha men's 1500m final there were 6 runners who finished within the space of a second, from 2nd place to 7th, at 3.31x-3.32x. That's a margin of less than 0.5%. What runner wouldn't ask for another second - at least - if it meant the difference between a medal and nothing?

Exactly 1 second consistently over 1500m is massive yet Rekrunner, Jon Orange, Renato and Aragon all play down the gains but any gains are a game changer.

I don't dispute that 1% or even 1 second, can make a big difference.

A 1%, or even 1 second, gain from banned doping, that is not possible with legal methods, at that level, is still hypothetical.

Armstronglivs wrote:

1% in middle distance can be the difference between 1st and nowhere. 2 seconds in the 1500 can be 8 places or more.

I am not accusing you of this logical fallacy, but do realize that with emphasizing the significance of 0.5 or 1.0 % boosts, you are undermining the widespread claim that the blood doping boost must be like 3-5 % otherwise athletes wouldn't use it?

From viewpoint of athletes' decision making process and known prevalence of blood doping, it could even be that the expected boost would be almost zero with like 30 % possibility of 1 % boost, and very many athletes would've blood doped and would continue to do do in absense of a reliable detection method

Armstronglivs wrote:

I'm willing to bett he wouldn't have won without it.

https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1092191/tsegu-receives-four-year-ban-epo-test

Yes, I was wondering if this had been on the boards here. A 27-flat Ethiopian caught on epo, the mind boggles at the implications of that one. There goes Rekrunner's hypothesis from circa 2016-17 that it was only a few sporadic East African women being busted and not elite men ?

Subway Surfers wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

I'm willing to bett he wouldn't have won without it.

Yes, I was wondering if this had been on the boards here. A 27-flat Ethiopian caught on epo, the mind boggles at the implications of that one. There goes Rekrunner's hypothesis from circa 2016-17 that it was only a few sporadic East African women being busted and not elite men ?

That doesn't sound like my hypothesis. By 2016-17, there were already several elite men busted.

Aragon wrote:

Here is the paper, they gave 3-5 units but didn't want to go much above 200 g/l (Hct c:a 60 %):

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3565043/

And of course my most sincere apologies for knowing next-to-nothing about the subject, my knowledge originates almost fully from what rekrunner, Renato and Jon Orange told me here and re-reading regularly the Dutch Mt. Ventoux paper where do EPO-induced boost was seen.

$49 for the article is a little steep for me, but thanks for digging it up.

In the 800m or 1500m 1% is often the difference between being narrowly eliminated in the heats and being in with a chance of a medal.

rekrunner wrote:

Subway Surfers wrote:

Yes, I was wondering if this had been on the boards here. A 27-flat Ethiopian caught on epo, the mind boggles at the implications of that one. There goes Rekrunner's hypothesis from circa 2016-17 that it was only a few sporadic East African women being busted and not elite men ?

That doesn't sound like my hypothesis. By 2016-17, there were already several elite men busted.

Oh coronavirus must have given you amnesia because your common response was to the busts were that it was only women. Renato also weighed in claiming it was just washed up women who had left "proper" coaching and were now being coached by their husbands.

Blood doping according to the experts gives a boost of up to 3% or 4%; the current paper states 1-4%. The difference is that a range is provided, not just an upper limit. Qualitatively there is no contradiction here. Evidence: DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0156157:

Malm: up to 3%

Sunday Times 2015, advised by Ashenden + Parisotto:

Ashenden/Parisotto: up to 4% (rounded)

CAS Karamasheva hearing:

Schumacher: up to 4% (rounded)

DOI 10.1123/ijspp.2019-0643:

Iljukov/Schumacher: 1 – 4%

Ijukov according to Hutchinson:

Not disputing any of this material, but you don't look particularly intellectually honest when you fail to mention the lower estimates of c:a 1 % by Ashenden and Randy Eichner you must be fully aware of.

But of course blood doping can improve performance by up to 4-5 % depending on distance, gender, baseline performance etc. I have been more interested in whether the factors that cause women to benefit more from blood doping can cause high total hemoglobin men to benefit less than low total hemoglobin men.

physics defiant wrote:

round and round and round with the bs wrote:

Does thermoregulation work?

Yes, but not like you think it does, Jon.

But you don't even know what thermoregulation is.