Doping in XC skiing

[bambino]

Torebear,
The logic and suppositions you've been making these past few stages is stunning.
For one thing, you're talking as though not only are some of the athletes in the suspicious group probably clean, but that skiers below the threshhold for "suspicious" are almost certainly clean.

Here's the description for the article: "The baseline for abnormal is any score that has less than a one in 100 chance of being natural. Many athletes were far beyond that point."

Another way to say this is that if you have 50 skiers in a race and they all have blood values that have a 1 in 50 chance of being "not doping." NONE would be on the suspicious list. But if you couldd give them all truth serum, you would learn that (on a statistical average) 49 of the 50 had indeed doped, and just one skier had the abnormal values due to a natural cause. But your logic would say "this was a clean race."

The problem is I do not believe in the the numbers that they have. For example Sødergren said that before there was a standard, there were a lot of variations in how the test were conducted. Sometimes they would take a second test on the spot because they did something wrong, other times they used the average of the two readings.

Hence these numbers prior to 2004-2005 are worthless without their context. The context is likely not in the available data, but is available to Fis/Wada probably in other files.

Aditionally I have learned that the "experts" are far to sure about their own science. They do not understand how small a part of the human body sciences actually understands. IIRC there was a case where Sachenbacher Stehle had weird values. This started a case, with Saltin saying her values where impossible. Finally Saltin agreed to monitor Stehle while on training camp. And guess what the weird values reappeared. Meaning this was the result of something the experts had no idea about.

So in my mind I would say 1/100 group is within normal range. 1/1000 is deviation and 1/10000 is suspicious. Though this is specifically for interpretation of this data set.

There is nothing to see here guys, the Iraqi Information minister or Norway has told you all the truth and nothing but the thruth once again.

 

[bambino]

Getting aside of the hideous one eyed "there is nothing to see here" debate, let's look at something bit more dramatic.

CAS has rejected the appeal of all 47 Russian athletes regarding their ban from Olympics by IOC.

This means no Legkov, Vilegzahnin nor Ustiugov, among others, in Pyongchang.

The decision is again fairly interesting given CAS' last week verdict on the matter of doping and Sotshi, I guess this gives us precedent of IOC's ultimate right to decide who competes in Olympics or not, regardless of reason/evidence. In other words IOC seem to be able to shut the doors for individual athletes at their free will.

Wonder how this will, if in any way, affect the general status of Olympics as THE competition for all athletes...

 

[Barkintheeye]

Detailed summary of different doping schemes below. Without being a Medicine Doctor or a statistician it should be fairly safe to say that testing methods allows for a large grey zone and those athletes with confirmed abnormal values (way outside confidence intervals) are highly suspicious albeit not necessarily confirmed dopers.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-scientific-american-guide-to-cheating-in-the-olympics/

Arguing that exceptional values could (always) be coincidental or naturally occurring due to rare specifics will inevitably lead to the conclusion that
i) testing is meaningless as no test regime can be 100% conclusive (only 99.9%)
ii) science is meaningless since it also deals with probabilities and not absolute certainty. The example of the apple falling to ground proves with a high but not absolute certainty that Newton's stipulations on classic physics are true.

 

[ToreBear]

Torebear,
The logic and suppositions you've been making these past few stages is stunning.
For one thing, you're talking as though not only are some of the athletes in the suspicious group probably clean, but that skiers below the threshhold for "suspicious" are almost certainly clean.

Here's the description for the article: "The baseline for abnormal is any score that has less than a one in 100 chance of being natural. Many athletes were far beyond that point."

Another way to say this is that if you have 50 skiers in a race and they all have blood values that have a 1 in 50 chance of being "not doping." NONE would be on the suspicious list. But if you couldd give them all truth serum, you would learn that (on a statistical average) 49 of the 50 had indeed doped, and just one skier had the abnormal values due to a natural cause. But your logic would say "this was a clean race."

The problem is I do not believe in the the numbers that they have. For example Sødergren said that before there was a standard, there were a lot of variations in how the test were conducted. Sometimes they would take a second test on the spot because they did something wrong, other times they used the average of the two readings.

Hence these numbers prior to 2004-2005 are worthless without their context. The context is likely not in the available data, but is available to Fis/Wada probably in other files.

Aditionally I have learned that the "experts" are far to sure about their own science. They do not understand how small a part of the human body sciences actually understands. IIRC there was a case where Sachenbacher Stehle had weird values. This started a case, with Saltin saying her values where impossible. Finally Saltin agreed to monitor Stehle while on training camp. And guess what the weird values reappeared. Meaning this was the result of something the experts had no idea about.

So in my mind I would say 1/100 group is within normal range. 1/1000 is deviation and 1/10000 is suspicious. Though this is specifically for interpretation of this data set.

There is nothing to see here guys, the Iraqi Information minister or Norway has told you all the truth and nothing but the thruth once again.

The corollary to that would be:" There is nothing to see here, all the data is fine, there were made no mistakes in acquiring the samples, and all the information we need is in these files. Additionally our methology in analyzing the data is flawless."


About the Russians not being allowed into the Olympics. It's quite simple. The National Olympic committee decides who gets to go. The Russian OC is banned, so it is up to the IOC to be the inviting authority. And they can set any criteria they want(within reason).

 

[ToreBear]

Re:

Detailed summary of different doping schemes below. Without being a Medicine Doctor or a statistician it should be fairly safe to say that testing methods allows for a large grey zone and those athletes with confirmed abnormal values (way outside confidence intervals) are highly suspicious albeit not necessarily confirmed dopers.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-scientific-american-guide-to-cheating-in-the-olympics/

Arguing that exceptional values could (always) be coincidental or naturally occurring due to rare specifics will inevitably lead to the conclusion that
i) testing is meaningless as no test regime can be 100% conclusive (only 99.9%)
ii) science is meaningless since it also deals with probabilities and not absolute certainty. The example of the apple falling to ground proves with a high but not absolute certainty that Newton's stipulations on classic physics are true.

We are not talking about samples taken today or analyzed today. They were taken 18-8 years ago. Additionally in approximately 40-50% of the time period, there was no established standard in how to acquire samples. How do you calculate probabilities of a set of samples indicating something beyond the normal range when you can not be sure the samples are confirmed to indicate abnormal values?

Additionally how in any way would one be seeing top athletes falling neatly within normal ranges? They are already 1/100 1/1000 etc in many areas. We don't really have a normal range applicable in all cases with an abnormal population. Also how many normal people exercise in different altitudes in different ways? Not many, but for skiers it is probably all of them. How many of the normal population takes blood samples at varying altitudes? Not many. For skiers it is all of them.

That is why FIS has to do a lot of investigating to rule out other causes than doping. For example Fis might communicate with the national Anti doping agency of the country of the athlete, and they might have taken additional samples. The Files that have the current data set is likely from Fis. Their database is or at least was not automatically connected. Or the IOC might have some samples of interest since they also do testing.

This is not simple today but when these samples were taken it was much more complex. Additionally you have to remember that FIS were cutting edge. The UCI for example only started collecting HGB, RCT and RET in 2006 IIRC. Then again, they had a better testing methodology from the start thanks to FIS/WADAs work on establishing testing standards(those are continuously evolving btw).

I'm not sure I see how your points one and two are relevant since I'm not arguing either of them. I am talking about these specific samples. And your points fall more within the realm of philosophy.

The article was interesting with nice pictures . I think the glow time is a lot longer than a few ours for micro dosing EPO today than it was in Lance Armstrong and Tyler Hamiltons days in the early 2000s. I'm also pretty sure information about glow time is protected information, so that dopers will have more difficulty in planning their doping programs.

 

[python]

Re:

Getting aside of the hideous one eyed "there is nothing to see here" debate, let's look at something bit more dramatic.

CAS has rejected the appeal of all 47 Russian athletes regarding their ban from Olympics by IOC.

This means no Legkov, Vilegzahnin nor Ustiugov, among others, in Pyongchang.

The decision is again fairly interesting given CAS' last week verdict on the matter of doping and Sotshi, I guess this gives us precedent of IOC's ultimate right to decide who competes in Olympics or not, regardless of reason/evidence. In other words IOC seem to be able to shut the doors for individual athletes at their free will.

Wonder how this will, if in any way, affect the general status of Olympics as THE competition for all athletes...

this decision in my view points to the multi-level mess the ioc - and the professional sports governance in general - have fallen to...
1st. the cornerstone principle of 'zero tolerance' is utterly false. from a noble principle to strive for it has become (and is used as such) a feel-good political asylum for all sorts of sporting bureaucracy. where such bureaucracy managed to accumulate power and resources, they act not just arbitrarily, but in clear contradiction to their own declared principles. such as the individual athletes human rights. for instance, many russians (posters like bullsfan can probably count them better than i) have NEVER been found/suspected or involved in any sort of doping. yet their human right for competing at the olympics was denied and abused. moreover, another cornerstone principle - the transparency of sanctioning decisions - is simply defalcated on. to this moment, any attempts of the athletes like ustiougov trying to find out the reasons for their non-invite t are left unanswered.

the ioc imposed a collective punishment, not exactly but reminiscent of a nuke dropped on a city full of civilians.

2nd. the declarations that all this is done to protect the clean athletes is another feel-good nonsense. i do still believe that the majority of athletes want to compete clean. how many of them will compete clean is a matter of opinion, but that a significant number will dope is an indisputable fact based on common sense. so, what the ioc have done (and i dont subscribe to some anti-russia plot) was essentially to skew the medal count toward the sophisticated doping and/or the semi-legal doping - like the anti-asthma abuses for instance. the sophisticated doping guaranteed success is due to the holes in the anti-doping science, while the semi-legal doping is the very wada creation of those messy gray zones.

if anyone wants to tell me that most informed wada/ioc insiders are NOT aware of the mess i will lauph at them.

but that 'zero tolerance' aint bad at sustaining an army of anti-doping functionaries and talking heads

 

[Blaaswix]

Let's look at these figures from Tore Bear:

The actual comparable numbers are 16 Norwegians vs 12 Sweedes in the 1/100 range. And 3 Norwegians and 2 Swedes in the 1/1000 and/or the 1/10000 range.

And let's bear this from Barkintheeye's post in mind:

Arguing that exceptional values could (always) be coincidental or naturally occurring due to rare specifics will inevitably lead to the conclusion that
i) testing is meaningless as no test regime can be 100% conclusive (only 99.9%)
ii) science is meaningless since it also deals with probabilities and not absolute certainty. The example of the apple falling to ground proves with a high but not absolute certainty that Newton's stipulations on classic physics are true.

What is the likelihood of 3 skiers on a team producing suspicious blood results and it being caused by a random, natural, non-doping event? Where 1 is the absolute likelihood of something happening (think death and taxes) and 0 is an event that will never happen (such as an elite athlete noticing the warning sign for doping on a packet of medicine for for example).

The probability 1 in 10 000 can also be expressed as 0.010%. 0.01 x 0.01 x 0.01 = 0.000001

There is 0.000001% chance that a team could have three skiers producing suspicious blood results due to random, natural causes and not doping. Or, if you prefer, one in a million.

The same calculation with a 1 in a 1000 probability, 0.10%, is 0.001%, or 1 in 100 000.

My calculator is not Swedish.

 

[ToreBear]

Sorry Blaaswix but i'm not following, it seems because you are not following me. My quote was not related to how probable something is. It is about 1/100 group should be compared to 1/100 group. For all I care we could call it 1/1000 000. It's not really relevant. Putting it another way group Xno should be compared to Xse. Not Xno compared to Zse.

 

[meat puppet]

I am. Especially the definition of impossible events was brilliant.

 

[Random Direction]

Tore bear seems to be arguing that since perfect sample collection wasn't used that statistics and probabilities do not apply. I could teach a few lessons (and have professionally) about data compilation using data sources of different quality, controlling for biases and errors and when to throw out anomalous data. The key is that the data is inherently good, and that only a few data points are flawed, not the other way around.

FIS cutting edge???? Perhaps at hiding positives for their stars through the years.

Full disclosure. This calculator is Canadian, with potentially a bit of Sami blood and a Swiss - Scottish- Alaskan dog.

 

[Shardi]

Not the best norwegian start. Weng/Östberg abit behind. Tired from the long season on top?

Ebba!

 

[ToreBear]

Re:

Tore bear seems to be arguing that since perfect sample collection wasn't used that statistics and probabilities do not apply. I could teach a few lessons (and have professionally) about data compilation using data sources of different quality, controlling for biases and errors and when to throw out anomalous data. The key is that the data is inherently good, and that only a few data points are flawed, not the other way around.

FIS cutting edge???? Perhaps at hiding positives for their stars through the years.

Full disclosure. This calculator is Canadian, with potentially a bit of Sami blood and a Swiss - Scottish- Alaskan dog.

Whats the probability of me dying in a buss accident based on car accident data?

Yes of course they'we been hiding positives. They must be since there always is some conspiracy...

 

[John de Savage]

The UG documentary singled out 30/2000 skiers from an entire decade (2001-2010) of rampant blood doping. Of those thirty, seventeen are not russian. Of the seventeen non-russians, two are swedish. One man and woman. Both are still active in the national team. The man is either Markus Hellner, Daniel Richardsson or Emil Jönsson. The woman is either Charlotte Kalla or Anna Haag.

 

[Discgear]

Re:

The UG documentary singled out 30/2000 skiers from an entire decade (2001-2010) of rampant blood doping. Of those thirty, seventeen are not russian. Of the seventeen non-russians, two are swedish. One man and woman. Both are still active in the national team. The man is either Markus Hellner, Daniel Richardsson or Emil Jönsson. The woman is either Charlotte Kalla or Anna Haag.

What was said in the documentary and later confirmed was that it was a still active "landslagsakare". That could mean still active in the national team or still active skier, former in the national team. The team doctor thought it meant a skier still in the national team but didn't know any names. My best guess (and many with me), especially when looking on the diagram showed in the documentary, is two skiers (male and female) who left the national team long ago, but who are still active in the marathon cup. None of the names you are mentioning.

 

[Barkintheeye]

No, the Swedish team doctor clearly stated that the suspicious skiers are both active and still on the national team.

On a side note Kalla looked substantially lighter than in a long time. Loosing weight is an obvious way to gain an advantage given that the skier doesn't loose power. Norwegians looked paler than ever.

 

[John de Savage]

Re: Re:

The UG documentary singled out 30/2000 skiers from an entire decade (2001-2010) of rampant blood doping. Of those thirty, seventeen are not russian. Of the seventeen non-russians, two are swedish. One man and woman. Both are still active in the national team. The man is either Markus Hellner, Daniel Richardsson or Emil Jönsson. The woman is either Charlotte Kalla or Anna Haag.

What was said in the documentary and later confirmed was that it was a still active "landslagsakare". That could mean still active in the national team or still active skier, former in the national team. The team doctor thought it meant a skier still in the national team but didn't know any names. My best guess (and many with me), especially when looking on the diagram showed in the documentary, is two skiers (male and female) who left the national team long ago, but who are still active in the marathon cup. None of the names you are mentioning.

You're free to believe what you want to believe. Ignore what several swedish journalists have reported (and no one from the NT denied) if it makes you feel better.

 

[Discgear]

The heat is on. Norwegian TV reveals that the Norwegian medical team has brought – apart from a truckload of asthma medication earlier mentioned – the dynamite drugs Kenacort and Celeston to the Olympics. The medical leader Mona Kjeldsberg comforts that generally speaking its not used that much by their athletes. https://www.tv2.no/sport/9669801/

 

[Robert5091]

First, second and third ... mmm ...

 

[glassmoon]

Re:

First, second and third ... mmm ...

yeah... those sick/ill people dominating the field

 

[Discgear]

The heat is on. Norwegian TV reveals that the Norwegian medical team has brought – apart from a truckload of asthma medication earlier mentioned – the dynamite drugs Kenacort and Celeston to the Olympics. The medical leader Mona Kjeldsberg comforts that generally speaking its not used that much by their athletes. https://www.tv2.no/sport/9669801/

Sorry for quoting myself, but this article actually is quite disturbing and sensational. It opens up a worm hole of thoughts concerning the way TUEs are handled. Kenacort and Celeston were drugs central in the Wiggins scandal and Kenacort was found in Armstrong positives. Michael Rasmussen is quoted saying: Those are monsterdopes in terms of performance enhancing. He continues: Celeston is as powerful as Kenacort. It was used a lot both at Rabobank and CSC. Both Kenacort and Celeston are frequently used as performance enhancing drugs in cycling.

The article quotes another three bicyclists and dopers all witnessing about the enormous effects with the drugs, putting both Testosteron and EPO in the shadows.

Now to the sensational part where the head of the Norwegian medical team, Mona Kjeldsberg, between the lines reveals quite a lot. She defends use of the drugs because they can be used for allergic reactions, and Tendinitis. She also talks about putting a syringe in the muscles with a TUE granted by IOC or ADAMS. She continues to say that the drugs generally speaking are not used that much by their athletes and points out: Celeston is normally just used for tendons, bursals and joints. When asked if the athletes have had TUEs in competitions the last years she’s silent due to professional secrecy.

I find it truly incredible that it is allowed to compete with such drugs in the body just if you have a TUE. When you know how wide the conscience in the Norwegian medical team is (calling 15000 microgram of Salbutamol normal and just a mistake not asking for a TUE, handing out Clostebol to treat lips, putting a smorgasbord with asthma medication free to use without a prescription in the wax trailer, bringing 10 Nebulizers to the Olympics), this article – as said – opens up a worm hole with nasty questions.

 

[Blaaswix]

Are TUE's a declaration from a team doctor that an otherwise banned substance is being used, or must an application be made to use a substance? In which case, are they ever refused?

 

[Discgear]

Are TUE's a declaration from a team doctor that an otherwise banned substance is being used, or must an application be made to use a substance? In which case, are they ever refused?

Not so difficult to find ways using those monster dopes. Just a medic with liberal conscience.
From WADA guidelines:

ASTHMA
Systemic glucocorticoids:
The systemic use (e.g. oral or intravenous administration) of glucocorticoids is prohibited incompetition only and requires a TUE if the athlete competes before the drug has ceased to be identifiable in his/her urine. In emergency situations, a retroactive TUE application should be submitted as soon as possible to the appropriate anti-doping organization if the athlete intends to compete while taking the systemic GC or soon afterwards.

MUSCULOSKELETAL CONDITIONS
Systemic glucocorticoids:
However, it should be noted again that the use of GCs invokes the TUE process only when these agents are administered via oral, rectal, intramuscular or intravenous routes and are taken just prior to or during a competition. GC administration via all other routes is permitted without a TUE at all times.

 

[Lyon]

Re:

The heat is on. Norwegian TV reveals that the Norwegian medical team has brought – apart from a truckload of asthma medication earlier mentioned – the dynamite drugs Kenacort and Celeston to the Olympics. The medical leader Mona Kjeldsberg comforts that generally speaking its not used that much by their athletes. https://www.tv2.no/sport/9669801/

Limited hangout. Nothing new, nothing sensational - it's just Sky-type gray area ***. What is interesting is that they felt the need to talk about this at such an early stage. Times have changed.

 

[Blaaswix]

Very informative, Discgear.

These things shouldn't be 'grey areas'. They shouldn't be happening.

 

[Kokoso]

Very informative, Discgear.

These things shouldn't be 'grey areas'. They shouldn't be happening.

What shouldn't be happening?