A very simple question

You are correct in effectively saying that both positions are one of surmise rather than proven conclusion. However, although each position is subject to some of the same assertions - and difficulty of proof - I don't think they are equivalent. I say that because the body of knowledge we have of doping - its history, its practices, technology and likely incidence - favours the view that doping (including EPO) enhances performance, even if not in the same way or to the same extent in different athletes.

You have chosen - like Renato - to focus on the specific question of what effect EPO may or may not have on the best altitude-trained athletes. You may be right, that on that matter we don't have conclusive data. I incline to the view that what we know of EPO and the history of its use suggests there will likely be an effect, but that remains conjecture, as does the question of what is the extent of that effect.

This very quickly went from a great to terrible thread.

Renato,

If you have not tested various drugs and their effects on runners, there is absolutely no way you can say that drugs either do not work, or how much they work.

Secondly, if drugs don’t work, why have a banned substance list at all?

CheaterFlys

When a doctor has a patient with some disease, asks for investigating many parameters (from blood to hormons to vitamin to minerals etc...) in order to see the values and to have the possibility to compare them with the range of normal healthy people. If some parameter is out of that range (too high or too low) the doctor starts to prescript some medicine in order to bring the values inside the normal range.

This means that, not knowing the CAUSE of the disease, the doctor wants to go back to the disease itself from the EFFECTS.

If the effect of proper training in altitude, for many among the best runners, is to give somebody (of course very talented) the opportunity to be WR holder of Olympic Champion or World Champion or winner of a Major Marathon, we don't need any test for understanding that it's possible to achieve top results (maybe the best ever) in clean way. So, the real question is not to proof that with proper training in altitude is possible to be the best in the world, because this is a FACT that coaches training some of the WR holders already know ; but to prove that the same athletes, taking EPO, could still have a margin of improvement.

Since among ALL the athletes caught for EPO only one of the WR holders, Abraham Kiptum (now bettered of 17 seconds by Geoffrey Kamworor) was at the top of some event, while the other convicted doped were not the best, but only AMONG the bests (so, slower than the best), I don't see any reason for thinking EPO can give advantages (big or not big) to athletes with a lot of talent, training in altitude in the right way.

About Abraham Kiptum, he had a coach without any knowledge of training ; the only thing he did was a very hard training, without a real plan, BUT THE TALENT WAS UNBELIEVABLE.

I read he had Hct till 60 : can somebody really think this value can help a marathon runner ?

Less than two months before the record in Valencia, Kiptum was beated by one my young athlete, Daniel Kipchumba, in Copenhagen, but I was impressed by his body and his running technique. Kiptum used to compete almost every week in domestic road races in Kenya, and who had the opportunity to see him in these races had the precise idea he could better the WR of Zersenay Tadese, with a different training.

About Rita Jeptoo, I already explained several times that, for me, had already in 2006 (when was in training with me ALWAYS in Iten, before marrying and going to live in Mosoriot) the possibility to run well under 2:20 in Boston ; I don't want to repeat again the same explanation. However, Rita won already under 2:20 in Chicago 2013, and, if you believe in the Biological Passport, she never saw that time and that victory considered suspicious, so this means that she ran that time when clean (and I continue to explain that the examination of her BP didn't produce any suspicion about EPO, but her ban was due to the presence of the substance before winning Chicago 2014 in one of the worst marathon of her life, and only because it was not "ethic" give the Jackpot to a convicted doped WADA needed to find the escamotage to dqf Boston too).

It's not possible to have researches about the possibility to enhance performances with ALL the medicine produced in the World. Many medicines are created for helping against specific diseases : EPO was created for people needing the dyalisis for kidney problems, Meldonium for helping against Angina Pectoris, Winstrol against Anemia, etc...). Doping starts when an athlete in good health wants to use medicines created for people having the lack of something in their body, hoping to overtake the natural physiological personal levels in order to have unfair advantage against people competing with their natural levels.

Therefore, a lot of medicines are in the list of "prohibited substances" WITHOUT real tests showing the effects on performances, but because, if you are not sick, the fact you look at the assumptions of medicines clearly means your idea is to find some advantage using them.

Don't think that when a substance is in the prohibited list this means automatically can produce improvement in performances : for example, Lucy Kabuu was banned for use of Morphine, that is a substance against pain (used with people having cancer, for example), but that REDUCES the ability to run.

Armstronglivs wrote:

I don't think they are equivalent. I say that because the body of knowledge we have of doping - its history, its practices, technology and likely incidence - favours the view that doping (including EPO) enhances performance, even if not in the same way or to the same extent in different athletes.

You have chosen - like Renato - to focus on the specific question of what effect EPO may or may not have on the best altitude-trained athletes. You may be right, that on that matter we don't have conclusive data. I incline to the view that what we know of EPO and the history of its use suggests there will likely be an effect, but that remains conjecture, as does the question of what is the extent of that effect.

When we used your relaxed standard of examples of use and inferences, these are equivalently supported, as your relaxed standard does not give us the richness of understanding to make any distinction.

You keep referring vaguely to "body of knowledge" and "what we know of EPO". I think our body of knowledge and what we know about EPO, in real world athletes (elite or not) running their best performances in real world conditions is very little, and does not support your suggestions.

Part of our body of knowledge is the history of top performances. Your suggested exercise of probability and "watching the movement of the herd" clearly shows that the movement of non-African herds slowed significantly before the EPO-era, while in the '60s, 70s, up to mid-1980s, both African and non-African herds moved together.

My focus is on real world performances and looking for a rich, coherent model that explains all of our observations.

Renato Canova wrote:

Since among ALL the athletes caught for EPO only one of the WR holders, Abraham Kiptum (now bettered of 17 seconds by Geoffrey Kamworor) was at the top of some event, while the other convicted doped were not the best, but only AMONG the bests (so, slower than the best), I don't see any reason for thinking EPO can give advantages (big or not big) to athletes with a lot of talent, training in altitude in the right way.

About Abraham Kiptum, he had a coach without any knowledge of training ; the only thing he did was a very hard training, without a real plan, BUT THE TALENT WAS UNBELIEVABLE.

.

"Abraham had a coach without any knowledge of training " . Interesting that you say this.

How did you come to that statement? Did you talk to the coach many times and did you discuss

training with him? Based on the little that emerged from Kiptum's training I can't see something wrong with the workouts he did.

To me it looks like you have a tendency to dismiss training methods that don't follow your way of looking at what's `proper training`. Just a thought.

You won't find what you are looking for; there isn't a model that will explain everything. Doping is like a country; there is no way you will understand it simply through a theory.

Armstronglivs wrote:

You won't find what you are looking for; there isn't a model that will explain everything. Doping is like a country; there is no way you will understand it simply through a theory.

I guess you can really only speak for yourself, and you don't need to worry about my search.

I find and have already found a great deal of what I am looking for. Scientific progress is a never-ending search, so building such complex and coherent performance models continue to evolve as more information becomes known.

rekrunner wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

You won't find what you are looking for; there isn't a model that will explain everything. Doping is like a country; there is no way you will understand it simply through a theory.

I guess you can really only speak for yourself, and you don't need to worry about my search.

I find and have already found a great deal of what I am looking for. Scientific progress is a never-ending search, so building such complex and coherent performance models continue to evolve as more information becomes known.

The one thing we can be sure of is that messy reality won't intrude in your model.

Once again, I guess you can really only speak for yourself.

We don't need to speak with the coach, for understanding there was not a strategy.

It's enough to see competitions every week during the last two months, always trying to run fastest possible (so, not competitions used for training, but at 100% of effort), winning sometimes with more than one minute of gap. Clearly, everybody uses similar plan in Kenya looks at winning money only, without a methodological strategy. But the talent of the athlete was very high, and his training very hard.

hispy wrote:

Renato,

If you have not tested various drugs and their effects on runners, there is absolutely no way you can say that drugs either do not work, or how much they work.

Secondly, if drugs don’t work, why have a banned substance list at all?

Drug testing was introduced in 1965 to protect cyclists from the massive doses of Methamphetamine they were taking. Some wise men knew that it wasn’t enhancing their performance because they understood basic physiology. However the vast majority of people have no clue whatsoever that aerobic capacity is limited physiologically. These posters here epitomise this ignorance.

Renato, your extension philosophy is the correct one. when we improve our performance we are using less ATP, not more. Tinman understands this. So should you.

rekrunner wrote:

Once again, I guess you can really only speak for yourself.

No, my subjectivity doesn't quite match yours. No one - including you - is going to understand the world of doping through a single model, or better brains than yours would have done so long ago.

Armstronglivs wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

Once again, I guess you can really only speak for yourself.

No, my subjectivity doesn't quite match yours. No one - including you - is going to understand the world of doping through a single model, or better brains than yours would have done so long ago.

Maybe. As I said above, my focus is on real world performances.

Renato Canova wrote:

We don't need to speak with the coach, for understanding there was not a strategy.

It's enough to see competitions every week during the last two months, always trying to run fastest possible (so, not competitions used for training, but at 100% of effort), winning sometimes with more than one minute of gap. Clearly, everybody uses similar plan in Kenya looks at winning money only, without a methodological strategy. But the talent of the athlete was very high, and his training very hard.

That I think was a strange comment from you Renato. Of course there was a strategy, to win as much as possible and on the other hand develop . And developed he did to a 2:04 marathon and a world record at half marathon ! Better strategy is hard to find. The only problem that he was doped, but there was nothing wrong with the methodological strategy . As I said , you have a tendency to dismiss training methods that don`t follow your way of looking what's `proper`

training.

With all due respect to coach Canova, whose insight I always appreciate, absence of proof doesn't equal proof of absence.

I believe you believe what you're saying, but we can't logically accept that EPO won't benefit a top talent with top training at altitude just because caught EPO dopers weren't at the very top of the sport. We would need to see the effects or lack thereof of EPO in some of those top talents with top training at altitude. Until then, we can only guess.

We can only guess.

Does anyone think "Tin foil"'s guess can be as good as Canova's? Seems logical to think direct experience should count more than indirect or no experience.

Who here has direct experience with helping world record holders achieve fast performances?

Who anywhere, with direct experience at producing world record holders, makes the opposite claim that EPO can still help these highly altitude trained athletes?

Even anti-doping experts (without real experience in developing performance) do not go that far, often couching their statements with words like "can" and "up to", and often more directly cautioning against projecting observations of amateur gains onto elite athlete performances.

Even without direct data, there is still a great deal we can do logically with the data and information that we already have.

We know from studies that training at altitude provides comparable performance benefits. Depending on how you count, one group of 17:00 runners improved by about 6.5% over the course of an altitude study.

The question becomes, how much further can we expect EPO to help from those who have already made significant gains from high altitude?

Logically, we can think if EPO effect as an optimization problem, rather than a maximization problem, being subject to the law of diminishing return. These are logically sound positions:

- too much EPO will create too many red-blood cells, turning the blood to syrup, hindering the free and rapid flow of oxygen to the muscles (not to mention blood clots, heart failure, and death)

- high altitude works by stimulating EPO production -- high altitude athletes are already benefiting from EPO

- we should expect the magnitude of effects that we observe in 17 minute runners to decrease for runners of significantly higher quality. By how much has not been well modelled.