I guess by drop off, you mean less 59 / 66 HMs and 2:05 / 2:20 marathons. My guess has been that some depth is due to doping but others can run that fast clean. Anyway, it looks like it's a PED. VOX has a good explainer on it and cites to studies showing improved endurance. I can't paste the study from my phone. It seems like more than aspirin. I think a lot of people just did not know about this because it's not sold in US or Western Europe. I am pretty surprised by this. I don't recall any rumors about its benefits. Yet a bunch of athletes are on it and Boone here knew. Plus, it sounds like officials acknowledged that some Ethiopians tested positive for other PEDs. Hermens quotes were interesting too.
rekrunner wrote:
Not my performance standard but "This drug finally banned!"'s. He says it will be interesting if we see a drop off in performance -- I guess it's also interesting if we don't.
I'm not trying to be contrarian (at least not now). So far, I'm only asking questions about a drug I never heard of and any known connection to performance. As I said, WADA's reasons were that athletes were using it. (They rejected thyroid medicine and L-carnitine despite the same reasoning.) Clerk gave an informative response. I saw Jake Shelley's post about which kind of athletes take it.
Looks like there is a legitimate medical use in Eastern Europe and Russia. And that many athletes also take it, like they would take aspirin.
Why wouldn't athletes be able to get a TUE? Not in the US of course, but in Eastern Europe?
Bring back the 660 wrote:I guess that is fair but no one is getting a TUE for this. I would like to hear a plausible reason for being on the drug but I guess it's nice to be contrarian.
Your standard of not improving performance should be clarified. I guess you are saying if Aregawi returns to being a world champ or a 3:56 runner, then no improvement. Or if the 2:04 Ethiopians runner another one, then no impact.