Was Deena Kastor clean?

she was coached by joe vigil in her prime and she was very consistent across all distances in her steady increases in performance. nothing to see here.

oh really, are you super bored at quarentine? building theories without proof and to slander someone is far worse then EPOGEN!!.

She has blonde hair and blue eyes.

These types of threads are moranic. Do think a LRer has a copy of a PED order form with her signature or a picture of her injecting herself with a huge syringe that says "steroids" on it?

ronald mexico, esq wrote:

she was coached by joe vigil in her prime and she was very consistent across all distances in her steady increases in performance. nothing to see here.

EOT/

First, you are just flat out wrong on your facts. In the early 2000's Deena already was in Mammoth training under coach Vigil when he and coach Larsen were collaborating on the training of Deena and Meb. I don't know about her college running at Arkansas, but after that she never was in the same group as Teddy Mitchell. Starting in the late 90s I was going to Mammoth in the Summers and ran with Deena and others a number of times. Second, anyone who has known Deena would say that your post is a good candidate for GOAT stupid post on LR.

A lot of ad hominem attacks.

Can we all agree that EPO use was rampant at the time? If Deena was clean, she may have been the only clean distance runner of that era to perform at such a high level. Forgive me, but I have to wonder.

And, yes, she trained in the same group as Teddy Mitchell. I didn't make it up.

https://www.runnersworld.com/advanced/a20785467/deena-drossin/

colorunner123 wrote:

A lot of ad hominem attacks.

Can we all agree that EPO use was rampant at the time? If Deena was clean, she may have been the only clean distance runner of that era to perform at such a high level. Forgive me, but I have to wonder.

And, yes, she trained in the same group as Teddy Mitchell. I didn't make it up.

https://www.runnersworld.com/advanced/a20785467/deena-drossin/

Why do you have to wonder? If you think about it for hours and hours the answer will be "maybe". Mine would be, "I doubt it." Who cares besides you?

YES

Impugning someone’s reputation without any evidence is pretty awful.

She was always the best of her era. That’s why she went to Arkansas when Arkansas was the power house. It’s why she did so well while there. It’s while she set an AR and what she set the AR for masters women.

If she had a flash in the pan career, maybe the doubt in your mind would be more reasonable; but it would still be irresponsible to slur someone like that without anything other than “hey, you can’t prove me wrong.”

real truth wrote:

She has blonde hair and blue eyes.

I don't think hair and eye color are that important. I'll say this: Westerners seem to feel doping is something that only happens "somewhere else." We saw a similar unconscious bias the other day when Rojo professed shock that a Harvard graduate would be accused of doping.

Smoove wrote:

Impugning someone’s reputation without any evidence is pretty awful.

I didn't cite zero evidence. I linked to several articles stating that Epo use was rampant in the mid 2000s. As it happens, this was the time period in which Deena was in her prime. How realistic is it to believe that all the top runners except Deena was using Epo? Why are people's minds so closed to even entertaining this possibility?

SDSU Aztec wrote:

These types of threads are moranic. Do think a LRer has a copy of a PED order form with her signature or a picture of her injecting herself with a huge syringe that says "steroids" on it?

We speculate all day long about PED use by other runners, especially runners who ran fast during the mid 2000s. While there is no definitive evidence one way or the other, skepticism is justified.

RUN LOVER wrote:

oh really, are you super bored at quarentine? building theories without proof and to slander someone is far worse then EPOGEN!!.

I am open to having my mind changed, but so far nobody has explained to me how it came to be that Deena was perhaps the only top-ranked runner of that era who ran spectacular times without any PED assistance. As a matter of logic, isn't it more reasonable to suspect that all of the top runners of that era were on an equal playing field (i.e. all were using PEDs)?

I think colorunner123 makes a fair point. There is no particular reason to suspect Deena other than the era she was active, and the fact that she was very good. Is that fair? Well, that's debatable...but we know with reasonable certainty that it was an "EPO era". Numerous people got caught, and presumably many more used EPO without getting caught. Most people find it reasonably likely that "greats" of the era such as el Guerrouj, Geb, Tergat, Komen, etc used EPO, even though there is no evidence against them other than the time frame of their greatest successes. I don't see why Deena should be exempt. I'm not saying she DID use EPO, but just that I don't see any reason she should be exempted from suspicion.

But in her defense, if Jordan Hasay, with her mediocre collegiate times compared to other elite runners, can run a 2:20 marathon, I see no reason why Deena couldn't run a 2:19.

I will admit I am biased since I was fortunate to spend some time with Deena in the late 90s. I would be shocked if she were doping.

Her Olympic medal came under brutal conditions that so many other runners were not prepared for. The USOC folks in COS gave her and Meb incredible data and support in terms of how to prep for the race. It was apparent few others did. They both ran tactically smart races.

I would rate the odds as being pretty low.

colorunner123 wrote:

I am open to having my mind changed, but so far nobody has explained to me how it came to be that Deena was perhaps the only top-ranked runner of that era who ran spectacular times without any PED assistance. As a matter of logic, isn't it more reasonable to suspect that all of the top runners of that era were on an equal playing field (i.e. all were using PEDs)?

Nor have you explained that "it came to be that Deena was "perhaps the only top-ranked runner of that era who ran spectacular times without any PED assistance."

Your suspicions are misguided for several reasons:

1) Was EPO use rampant in the marathon?

2) Would EPO lead to the fastest marathon times?

A Sunday Times summary of leaked blood values showed that high blood values were not important (only 1 out of 9 were from athletes labelled as "suspicious" once in their lives) in order to win Olympic or World Championship medals in the marathon.

3) Given that someone had already run 2:15:25, and another had run 2:18:47 and another 2:19:12, can we call 2:19:36, 4 minutes slower than the current record, a "spectacular time"?

You mean she is an America and there for a clean athlete, if she was any other nationality she was on PEDs and dirty.

Can we end this nonsense, if you are an elite you are taking additional “supplements” to be there, she was just as dirty as the rest of them. A number of posts mentioned the training aids....

Weather they are currently banned or not, it’s not natural to take this supplements and especially the volume.

If you want to argue that Kastor wasn't that good, that's your prerogative. Here are the T&FN world rankings in 2005 and 2006:

2005

1............. Paula Radcliffe (Great Britain)

2.................. Catherine Ndereba (Kenya)

3..................Jeļena Prokopčuka (Latvia)

4................. Constantina Dita (Romania)

5................................ Deena Kastor (US)

6........................ Mizuki Noguchi (Japan)

7................... Susan Chepkemei (Kenya)

8......................... Derartu Tulu (Ethiopia)

9...........................Chunxiu Zhou (China)

10...........................Yumiko Hara (Japan)

2006

1................................ Deena Kastor (US)

2..................Jeļena Prokopčuka (Latvia)

3.............................. Rita Jeptoo (Kenya)

4..................... Berhane Adere (Ethiopia)

5............... Galina Bogomolova (Russia)

6............................ Gete Wami (Ethiopia)

7......................Tatyana Gladyr (Ukraine)

8.................. Catherine Ndereba (Kenya)

9...........................Chunxiu Zhou (China)

10................. Lyudmila Petrova (Russia)

At least two of the runners ranked behind Kastor -- Chepkemei and Jeptoo -- were subsequently busted for PED use. Not EPO in Chepkemei's case but (in response to your question) we know definitively at least two female marathon runners were using PEDs. There are other runners on those lists who come from countries known for widespread PED use in that era.

Let's not forget that Kastor also excelled in the 10,000 meters. Even if one believes EPO was not widely used in the marathon, it presumably was widely used among those who performed well in the 10,000 meters in that era.