rekrunner wrote:
Renato Canova wrote:
Do you continue to have the stupid idea that these results are produced by doping, or that the two most important factors (a part the individual talent) are the training methodology, and the pace during the competition ?
As you can see, most, if not all, people will continue to hold their previous ideas.
Some try to hold you to a standard of proof that they themselves have not met. Nor for that matter, has any scientist or study met that standard for observing the effects of EPO on any runner's (African or not, elite or not) best performances. WADA itself also publishes its applicable standard: "improve or potential to improve". This standard falls far short of allowing us to make conclusive statements about EPO's effect on fully trained elite distance runners. Note also that those scientists who have observed short term improvements in amateur athletes of an unknown state of training are careful to caution against projecting any findings onto elites.
We have seen an altitude study which showed improvements in a group of 9 men from training at sea-level (3.5%), then further improvement with hi-lo training at altitude (an additional 3%). The most relevant question completely unexamined by science is how much more EPO or blood transfusions would help those athletes who have already benefited from intense aerobic training at altitude. It is this kind of answer that should help us determine if 12:47 could be achieved by natural means, or must necessarily be artifically enhanced.
My favorite viewpoint is the poster who choses to expressly ignore the words of a coach with direct knowledge and experience, preferring instead to assume the worst and rely on his unproven ideas about cycling applying also to running, in order to compensate for ignoring knowledge about running.
Regardless of what science has shown, I tried to look at historical performances to see examples the large effects of EPO performances, predicting that over nearly three decades, we should see large quantities and quality of universal relative improvements in Africans and non-Africans alike, as EPO was universally available and largely undetectable. But, taking the example of 5000m women, among all non-African women world wide for nearly three decades, I found only 10 women (and now we have two more) running faster than Ingrid Kristiansen. Among countries highly suspected of doping, we find 3 Chinese women in Ma's Army, 3 Russians, 2 Moroccans (Africans), and 1 Romanian. These numbers look rather small compared to 32 women from Kenya and Ethiopia, running up to 12 seconds faster than Houlihan.
When Ingrid Kristiansen runs 14:37 in 1986, when women's distance events were immature, we should not be too surprised at Americans running 14:24 and 14:26 some 34 years later.
Similar patterns were observed for every event I looked at, except for the women's 1500m and 3000m, where the Chinese women dominated in just 2 events, based in China.
It is my experience that these kinds of looks at all time performances were not persuasive enough to get anyone to re-examine and change their own ideas about EPO effects that have not been reliably observed or proven by science.