Is the sport cleaner than ever?

casual obsever wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

But, despite all the added support for things that were not in question, you have done nothing to show how Al Jazeera and David Howman help answer the original question — is “the sport” cleaner today.

Well, I have shown, with direct references/citations from various experts for the current time, with the ABP in full force:

- how dirty the sport in 2011 was ("estimated prevalence of doping during the past year at 43.6% for Daegu 2011")

- how few were caught ("1-2% identified by blood and urine tests carried out by the World Anti-Doping Agency ")

- how easy it is to beat the ABP ("The passport software did not flag any subjects as being suspicious of doping whilst they were receiving rhEPO. ")

- that 2017 wasn't exactly better than 2011 (" there is no particular reason to think the rates of doping in 2017 would be any different")

Now the question was:

"Is the sport cleaner than ever?"

To answer this with yes, one would have to show that during all other times, more than say 43.6% doped. Significantly more, to be on the safe side.

My answer is no. The 50s were cleaner, as steroid doping was just starting, and blood doping didn't become widespread before the late 60s:

casual obsever wrote:

So, what's your answer to the thread question, based on what evidence?

Another limitation of the current protocol was the absence of a washout period. Extending the protocol by a further 3–4 weeks was deemed to place an unwarranted burden on participants, and primacy was instead given to extending the treatment phase for as long as possible. This trade-off almost certainly diminished the sensitivity of the ABP component monitoring OFF-hr score, since it has been well-documented that a nadir in OFF-hr score is reached 10–14 days after rhEPO injections cease (Gore et al. 2003). We assume this signature would have held also in our subjects, whose OFF-hr scores would have increased markedly and most likely been flagged by the software as being abnormal during the weeks after injections ceased. Similarly, we speculate that the sequence analysis used by the ABP software, which explicitly evaluates variations in the data, would have yielded greater sensitivity if washout data had been included as these data would have varied substantially from both baseline and treatment phases.

The next case also involves cycling and is credited to Jacques Anquetil, who was, as we all know, a vocal defender of the rider's right to medicate. While Anquetil did engage in a form of blood manipulation, it would probably be incorrect to refer to it as a transfusion. What he was actually playing with was super-ozone therapy, whereby a small amount of blood is extracted, treated with ozone and immediately re-injected. The ozone is said to increase the amount of oxygen carried in the blood. Some people believe it does. Others believe it's baloney.

That Anquetil was using this treatment is no secret, Pierre Chany, in a couple of articles in Miroir des Sports during 1967, wrote about it, and how Anquetil had used the treatment during the Giro d'Italia and intended using it during his assault on the Hour record later that year. A doctor, Jean Bidet, had written to Anquetil's directeur, Raphaël Géminiani, and explained the process. Gem was intrigued enough to find out more and, after using himself, Anquetil and Jean Stablinski as guinea pigs, was able to convince Maître Jacques of the benefits of the procedure.

rekrunner wrote:

casual obsever wrote:

Well, I have shown, with direct references/citations from various experts for the current time, with the ABP in full force:

- how dirty the sport in 2011 was ("estimated prevalence of doping during the past year at 43.6% for Daegu 2011")

- how few were caught ("1-2% identified by blood and urine tests carried out by the World Anti-Doping Agency ")

- how easy it is to beat the ABP ("The passport software did not flag any subjects as being suspicious of doping whilst they were receiving rhEPO. ")

- that 2017 wasn't exactly better than 2011 (" there is no particular reason to think the rates of doping in 2017 would be any different")

Now the question was:

"Is the sport cleaner than ever?"

To answer this with yes, one would have to show that during all other times, more than say 43.6% doped. Significantly more, to be on the safe side.

My answer is no. The 50s were cleaner, as steroid doping was just starting, and blood doping didn't become widespread before the late 60s:

So, you were not able to make the point with Al Jazeera and David Howman?

Some fact based observations about what you have shown:

- ABP may have been in full force by 2011, but not yet in full enforcement — the first sanction was publicly announced in 2012

- Let’s be honest. 43.6% was the result of an anonymous survey, which may or may not accurately estimate doping prevalence; a guarantee of survey anonymity is not a guarantee of survey compliance; the peer reviewed opinion is that more work needs to be done to prove the method is accurate; in the study they gave many reasons to doubt the survey results, introducing many models of non-compliance, and concluding that the study needs to be refined; one subsequent study has cast serious doubt on the accuracy of the specific random response technique used (finding 60% >> 20%) for sensitive questions like doping

- 1-2% positives from WADA tests is not an apples to apples comparison: testing is not uniformly distributed across all athletes, and is generally a measure of when the athlete is “glowing”, for those few athletes who get tested, at the instant they are tested.

- even if it easy to beat the ABP, we have seen that the ABP acts as a deterrent and at the very least, has reduced excessive blood values

- you said yourself we have no data for 2017 — Harrison Pope also didn’t give any particular reasons they would be the same, and in any case, he is wrong: there are particular reasons to think the rates would be different; here’s another more obvious one — the largest known doping country, Russia, was banned in 2017; Harrison Pope loses credibility by not being aware of particular reasons.

casual obsever wrote:

So, what's your answer to the thread question, based on what evidence?

It’s an interesting question, but one I find would need further clarification. My evidence will be combined with some rationale.

Exactly how do we measure dirty? What I mean is, if prevalence is the same, but the dosage is reduced, or less effective alternative drugs are used, is that “cleaner”?

What sport exactly? We surely have different answers looking at sprints versus middle distance versus long distance versus race-walking versus field events, and even men versus women.

Harrison Pope doesn’t really help us here, merging all these widely varying sports with varying histories into one figure at one event.

Maybe “the sport” is not cleaner than “ever”, but it is the ‘80s and ‘90s which has a reputation for being dirty.

We can think that testing, that can result in sanctions, even if it catches very few, has a deterrent effect.

We saw a reduction of extreme blood values in cycling, when the 50% hematocrit limit was introduced, when the EPO test was introduced in 2003, and then when the ABP was introduced.

You say “1-2%” now from WADA tests; how many were busted in the ‘80s and ‘90s, before WADA? More than, less than, or about the same? I would say “less than”, for two reasons: 1) some countries were not testing, and 2) some countries were testing and using that to warn the athletes.

Assuming dosage is a factor for clean, my answer would be that “the sport” is cleaner today, than it was in the ‘80s and ‘90s, thanks to anti-doping efforts.

Even if testing is not catching very many, the threat of testing and sanctions acts as a deterrent, either by reducing the prevalence, the dosage, or both.

Anti-doping may also force the doped athlete to search for less effective drugs not on the anti-doping list.

The “default” ban has recently been raised from 2 years to 4 years, increasing the cost of getting busted, shifting the cost-benefit balance even further.

Aragon wrote:

Out of curiosity, have you ever read more than the abstract of the 2011 paper by Ashdenden et al? Just asking, because despite the dismal sentence from the abstract you seem to like so much, the scientists write also the following in their "limitations"-section at the end of the paper:

Another limitation of the current protocol was the absence of a washout period. Extending the protocol by a further 3–4 weeks was deemed to place an unwarranted burden on participants, and primacy was instead given to extending the treatment phase for as long as possible. This trade-off almost certainly diminished the sensitivity of the ABP component monitoring OFF-hr score, since it has been well-documented that a nadir in OFF-hr score is reached 10–14 days after rhEPO injections cease (Gore et al. 2003). We assume this signature would have held also in our subjects, whose OFF-hr scores would have increased markedly and most likely been flagged by the software as being abnormal during the weeks after injections ceased. Similarly, we speculate that the sequence analysis used by the ABP software, which explicitly evaluates variations in the data, would have yielded greater sensitivity if washout data had been included as these data would have varied substantially from both baseline and treatment phases.

Here is another opportunity for you to update update your list of quotations from your drawer. Because you seem also to like so much what exercise physiologist Michael Joyner writes about prevalence of blood doping in the late 1960s, here is an evaluation of evidence by a journalist/historian Feargal McKay about "[t]he first alleged use of blood boosting in sport was in the 1960s, when a French four times winner of the Tour de France (1961–1964) was named as one of the first cyclists to use the technique":

The next case also involves cycling and is credited to Jacques Anquetil, who was, as we all know, a vocal defender of the rider's right to medicate. While Anquetil did engage in a form of blood manipulation, it would probably be incorrect to refer to it as a transfusion. What he was actually playing with was super-ozone therapy, whereby a small amount of blood is extracted, treated with ozone and immediately re-injected. The ozone is said to increase the amount of oxygen carried in the blood. Some people believe it does. Others believe it's baloney.

That Anquetil was using this treatment is no secret, Pierre Chany, in a couple of articles in Miroir des Sports during 1967, wrote about it, and how Anquetil had used the treatment during the Giro d'Italia and intended using it during his assault on the Hour record later that year. A doctor, Jean Bidet, had written to Anquetil's directeur, Raphaël Géminiani, and explained the process. Gem was intrigued enough to find out more and, after using himself, Anquetil and Jean Stablinski as guinea pigs, was able to convince Maître Jacques of the benefits of the procedure.

Any sane person would question how accurate the opinion of Joyner about "widespread use among endurance athletes"after 1968 is if his "patient zero" never had the artificial surplus of red blood cells via blood doping...

spilled wrote:

why do you ask? wrote:

Who are you arguing with? Me or Peter Weyand?

So you know more about Oxygen Kinetics than Jack Daniels

You know more about Endocrinology than Nicky Keay

And more about Biomechanics than Peter Weyand?

And you're going to spam the boards with thousands more posts to show us all?

Do really think air and oxygen are the same thing?

Oxygen uptake and air intake isn’t the same thing.

You mention oxygen kinetics because you think it makes you sound smart. However it really just makes you look stupid. Because oxygen kinetics is literally all about how the body can extract different amounts of oxygen from the same amount of air in response to exercise intensity.

Why do you think VO2 is measured? Why do VO2 maxes differ. Why is anemia so bad for runners.

You’re too dumb to know how wrong you are.

Aragon wrote:

Out of curiosity, have you ever read more than the abstract of the 2011 paper by Ashdenden et al? Just asking, because despite the dismal sentence from the abstract you seem to like so much, the scientists write also the following in their "limitations"-section at the end of the paper:

Another limitation of the current protocol was the absence of a washout period. Extending the protocol by a further 3–4 weeks was deemed to place an unwarranted burden on participants, and primacy was instead given to extending the treatment phase for as long as possible. This trade-off almost certainly diminished the sensitivity of the ABP component monitoring OFF-hr score, since it has been well-documented that a nadir in OFF-hr score is reached 10–14 days after rhEPO injections cease (Gore et al. 2003). We assume this signature would have held also in our subjects, whose OFF-hr scores would have increased markedly and most likely been flagged by the software as being abnormal during the weeks after injections ceased. Similarly, we speculate that the sequence analysis used by the ABP software, which explicitly evaluates variations in the data, would have yielded greater sensitivity if washout data had been included as these data would have varied substantially from both baseline and treatment phases.

Here is another opportunity for you to update update your list of quotations from your drawer. Because you seem also to like so much what exercise physiologist Michael Joyner writes about prevalence of blood doping in the late 1960s, here is an evaluation of evidence by a journalist/historian Feargal McKay about "[t]he first alleged use of blood boosting in sport was in the 1960s, when a French four times winner of the Tour de France (1961–1964) was named as one of the first cyclists to use the technique":

The next case also involves cycling and is credited to Jacques Anquetil, who was, as we all know, a vocal defender of the rider's right to medicate. While Anquetil did engage in a form of blood manipulation, it would probably be incorrect to refer to it as a transfusion. What he was actually playing with was super-ozone therapy, whereby a small amount of blood is extracted, treated with ozone and immediately re-injected. The ozone is said to increase the amount of oxygen carried in the blood. Some people believe it does. Others believe it's baloney.

That Anquetil was using this treatment is no secret, Pierre Chany, in a couple of articles in Miroir des Sports during 1967, wrote about it, and how Anquetil had used the treatment during the Giro d'Italia and intended using it during his assault on the Hour record later that year. A doctor, Jean Bidet, had written to Anquetil's directeur, Raphaël Géminiani, and explained the process. Gem was intrigued enough to find out more and, after using himself, Anquetil and Jean Stablinski as guinea pigs, was able to convince Maître Jacques of the benefits of the procedure.

Any sane person would question how accurate the opinion of Joyner about "widespread use among endurance athletes"after 1968 is if his "patient zero" never had the artificial surplus of red blood cells via blood doping...

Aragon wrote:

Out of curiosity, have you ever read more than the abstract of the 2011 paper by Ashdenden et al? Just asking, because despite the dismal sentence from the abstract you seem to like so much, the scientists write also the following in their "limitations"-section at the end of the paper:

Another limitation of the current protocol was the absence of a washout period. Extending the protocol by a further 3–4 weeks was deemed to place an unwarranted burden on participants, and primacy was instead given to extending the treatment phase for as long as possible. This trade-off almost certainly diminished the sensitivity of the ABP component monitoring OFF-hr score, since it has been well-documented that a nadir in OFF-hr score is reached 10–14 days after rhEPO injections cease (Gore et al. 2003). We assume this signature would have held also in our subjects, whose OFF-hr scores would have increased markedly and most likely been flagged by the software as being abnormal during the weeks after injections ceased. Similarly, we speculate that the sequence analysis used by the ABP software, which explicitly evaluates variations in the data, would have yielded greater sensitivity if washout data had been included as these data would have varied substantially from both baseline and treatment phases.

Aragon wrote:

Out of curiosity, have you ever read more than the abstract of the 2011 paper by Ashdenden et al?

Aragon wrote:

Any sane person...