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Doping In Athletics

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Did Kipchoge kill marginal gains? Tim Lewis (author the rather good Land of Second Chances) in the Oberserver:
Meanwhile, in marathon running, gains – both marginal and maximal – have been a hot topic. Last Saturday, in Vienna, Eliud Kipchoge became the first runner to complete 26.2 miles in less than two hours; the next day, another Kenyan, Brigid Kosgei, obliterated Paula Radcliffe’s 16-year-old women’s marathon record in Chicago. Both athletes were wearing a new shoe made by Nike called the Vaporfly Next%, which has a carbon‑fibre plate and deep, responsive foam cushioning. A previous version of the shoe was found in 2018 to improve the average time for a three-hour marathon runner by six minutes.

That is very far from marginal. Kipchoge – whose record attempt was sponsored by Ineos, which took over Team Sky this year – also benefited from a five-man, V-shaped pacesetter formation created by a sports scientist and aerodynamics expert called Robby Ketchell, who has also advised the cycling team. Ketchell believed that controlling and shaping the airflow around Kipchoge could trim up to two minutes off his time. (There’s no record of how often the Kenyan washed his hands before the race and what technique he used.)

Clearly, the search for gains of whatever size isn’t going anywhere, but perhaps now we are not so reverential towards the really marginal ones.
 
Three missed tests in what period? We've been through this before: more athletes stack up more missed tests than most people realise. Without extra detail, what are we actually looking at here. a coach who trips himself up with his own weak argument?
We don't know the time period. It may be 3 missed tests in her career, or 3 missed tests within a year. Thing is this quote isn't exactly a good look. That's the interesting part. The coach should be smart enough to not mention the missed tests, but he did. Of course there will be speculation then.
"She will never dodge a test" and then the next sentence is like "But she did 3 times". Inconclusive.
 
We don't know the time period. It may be 3 missed tests in her career, or 3 missed tests within a year.
Well it's not likely to be three in 12 months, now is it?

So we're agreed: it's a stupid coach saying something stupid. Interesting, yes. Amusing, yes. Damning? No.
"She will never dodge a test" and then the next sentence is like "But she did 3 times". Inconclusive.
Leaping to conclusions, some? If her wherabouts said place X between Y and Z o'clock and the DCO turned up after Z, it's the ADO's fault, not her's. And we do know that ADOs get this stuff wrong too.
 
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Just watched the Chicago marathon - wow.

Kosgei set the women's WR and Paula was there to congratulate her at the finish line, it'll probably be a long time before any woman comes close to beating the new WR.

It must be the shoes...
lol what?

Someone beat the most doped wr of all time?
Didn't think it would ever be beaten. Not even by the Transgendered ones.

Can't believe its been a week and its the first I hear of it.
 
Abraham Kiptum: Kenyan runner gets four-year ban for anti-doping violation

So what do you need to do to get popped for an ABP violation?


Well, a 20.1 g/dL HGB / 0.83% RET / 148.30 OFF-SCORE some days before competition followed by an 18.7 g/dL HGB / 0.53% RET / 143.70 OFF-SCORE a few days after the competition seems to be sufficient to get you on the "maybe needs further testing" list.

No wonder he broke the half marathon world record in that competition.

Ok. I may be completely mistaken, but this is worrying from Kiptum's health point of view.. unknown mid to late 20s runners - especially Kenyans - appearing out of nowhere to dominate has been happening a lot the past decade. Maybe the theory is that you can (mostly) get away with high hemoglobin if you first raise it sky high before the first ever test and then keep it there in perpetuity, so that the blood values appear to be naturally high? That would not seem particularly healthy for the athlete, but when has that ever stopped unscrupulous doctors, trainers, and managers?
 
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So what do you need to do to get popped for an ABP violation?


Well, a 20.1 g/dL HGB / 0.83% RET / 148.30 OFF-SCORE some days before competition followed by an 18.7 g/dL HGB / 0.53% RET / 143.70 OFF-SCORE a few days after the competition seems to be sufficient to get you on the "maybe needs further testing" list.

No wonder he broke the half marathon world record in that competition.

Ok. I may be completely mistaken, but this is worrying from Kiptum's health point of view.. unknown mid to late 20s runners - especially Kenyans - appearing out of nowhere to dominate has been happening a lot the past decade. Maybe the theory is that you can (mostly) get away with high hemoglobin if you first raise it sky high before the first ever test and then keep it there in perpetuity, so that the blood values appear to be naturally high? That would not seem particularly healthy for the athlete, but when has that ever stopped unscrupulous doctors, trainers, and managers?
Ask Genevieve Jeanson's management team. They apparently had no boundaries and committed child abuse. Fortunately all of them are out and legendarily known in Canadian cycling. Hard to say when the kid's father is involved and there's money to be made.
 
So what do you need to do to get popped for an ABP violation?


Well, a 20.1 g/dL HGB / 0.83% RET / 148.30 OFF-SCORE some days before competition followed by an 18.7 g/dL HGB / 0.53% RET / 143.70 OFF-SCORE a few days after the competition seems to be sufficient to get you on the "maybe needs further testing" list.

No wonder he broke the half marathon world record in that competition.

Ok. I may be completely mistaken, but this is worrying from Kiptum's health point of view.. unknown mid to late 20s runners - especially Kenyans - appearing out of nowhere to dominate has been happening a lot the past decade. Maybe the theory is that you can (mostly) get away with high hemoglobin if you first raise it sky high before the first ever test and then keep it there in perpetuity, so that the blood values appear to be naturally high? That would not seem particularly healthy for the athlete, but when has that ever stopped unscrupulous doctors, trainers, and managers?
This is an interesting case with an altitude native and first ABP ban of a Kenyan athlete (The new WADA-approved "PLK" lab in Nairobi came on online in 2018 and started more thorough testing for the ABP-ADAMS system. There are also 3 more Kenyan runners provisional-suspended for ABP violations with Tribunal hearings still pending).

Kiptum's very first sample taken was already at the 99.99% specificity level (1 in 10,000 chance of being undoped) for extremely high Hgb (20.3) and Off-score (148.30) taken a few weeks before the HM world-record at the Valencia Half Marathon on 28 October 2018.

Sample #2, taken 3 days after Valencia, was also flagged for high Hgb (18.9) with low RET% (0.57) and a very high Off-score (143.70).

The expert panel said the extremely high Hgb was "massive erthrocythosis" consistent with a diagnosis of "polycythemia" or "congenital erthrocythosis." However, the panel noted those pathologies are associated with high RET% and not the low RET% observed in Kiptum's profile - so any pathological reasons for the anomalies was ruled out. The expert panel is said to also have ruled out the effects of altitude in contributing to the high HGB values (this was one of Kiptum's main defenses as an altitude native training at ~2300m).

The Tribunal noted that sample #1 (20.3/0.83/148.30) would be accepted as an ADRV. However, it is important to obtain more samples over a period time particularly in connection with the athlete's competition schedule to prove a doping scheme (sample #6 taken 2 two days after the Abu Dhabi marathon, 9 December 2018, was flagged for elevated Hgb (18.7) with very low RET% (0.48) and an extremely high Off-score of 145.40).

In reference to his very high Off-scores the expert panel noted:

"The probability of a male athlete recording an OFFscore of 145, even in the
worst case at altitude, is less than 1 in 10,000 (i.e., 99.99% specificity)"

The huge 61% drop in RET% (1.25/0.48) from Dec 2 to Dec 9 (2018) while maintaining elevated Hgb (18.4/18.7) is classic "off-phase" use of an ESA.

The ABP worked extremely well in detecting blood doping with an altitude native in a situation where anti-doping countermeasures were apparently used very effectively in avoiding a positive drug test for an ESA. Not only did sample #1 trigger a "red flag," but it independently could have been used for an ADRV.

Here's a paper co-authored by Dr. Schumacher, who's a member of the IAAF's & UCI's anti-doping expert panel, that goes into detail on the ABP's detection process:

 
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FWIW there is a nice thoughtful radio drama currently available on the BBC Sounds

A timely retelling of the Julian Mason scandal, one year on from the closure of Project Hermes, the controversial doping program that enabled Mason to run the 100m in under nine seconds. What drove the scientists at the heart of the project? What made the athletes sign up? And who was to blame when things went wrong?
 

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This is really, really bad news for the IAAF. Their horrible covering up of all the blood tests is corruption on an immense scale. They did this to protect sponsors and money I'd imagine. Disgusting. What are the bets that the UK top endurance athlete is Mo?
 

From that article: "he repeatedly denied to United States anti-doping investigators receiving injections of a controversial supplement before the 2014 London Marathon, only to later alter his account and say he had initially forgotten."

Ha! Mo: "Yes, I forgot because I got so many damn injections i couldn't keep straight what they were loading into my system, and they kinda all blur together." :);)
 
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I think his injection days started years before. I'd say around 2010/2011, when he turned into a world beater. Slow pace, fast pace, staccato pace, front of the pack, back of the pack, didn't matter, he started beating guys that he had very little success against before. I hope for the sake of anti-doping actually being pragmatic, consistent and without double standards that all the Salazar pupils (clients) are investigated and it gets to the bottom of everything.

Tired of people like Radcliffe, Coe, Tygart, etc going after other countries while being quiet on countries like the UK. Of course Radcliffe and Coe will be silent, they are Brits and they likely have a lot to hid themselves (past or present)...
 

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