agip wrote:
Dope Hard, Win Easy wrote:Maybe Kenyan success isn't ENTIRELY based on dope, but it's also impossible to say exactly how good they "really" are. We don't know when the rot set in. There seems to be a common argument that the Kenyans may be doping, but they'd be the best runners anyway if everyone was clean, so it doesn't make much difference. But what if almost all the examples of fast Kenyan runners from the last 20 years, on whom we based that reasoning, were doped? What if the use of EPO, etc, is as widespread in Kenya as some claim? Then the same argument looks kind of circular: Kenyans may be doping, but they'd be the best anyway, because look at all the really fast doped runners they had in the past.
It'll be interesting to see if this latest news amounts to anything.
Question: How many top Kenyan men have tested positive? I believe the answer is zero.
Question 2: How many top Kenyan women have tested positive? I believe the answer is one.
Sure out of competition testing isn't as rigorous over there, but come on - let's not make giant assumptions here that they all dope.
Just because you believe it doesn't make it true. Let's not go through this whole thing again...
A kenyan held the 5000m and 10000m world record before the invention of EPO. And yes, a world record holder on EPO is still a naturally talented athlete. We understand that East Africans are predisposed to running success.
That doesn't mean they're predisposed to not doping. Compare the national records before and after the EPO era, and you see the same inhuman drop in performances as other nations. Kenyans are good. Kenyans on EPO are better.