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Leaked IAAf report on doping

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Comments

  • #62
    The_Kew_Tour
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,658 ✭✭✭✭The_Kew_Tour


    Chivito550 wrote: »
    http://m.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/olympic-400m-dope-cheat-lashawn-merritt-blames-penis-growth-pill/story-e6frexni-1225940685359

    Jaysus!

    If my mother tongue is shaking the foundations of your state, it probably means you built your state on my land.

    EVENFLOW



  • #63
    whenever
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 45 ✭whenever


    There was a discussion one night on Newstalk about the benefit of taking drugs early in a career then get caught and serve a short ban and come back stronger eg Gatlin. The question was asked - are banned athletes subject to testing when serving their ban?
    {If they are not then they have free rein to build muscle etc free from monitoring}


  • #64
    walshb
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 58,503 ✭✭✭✭walshb


    The_Kew_Tour wrote: »
    J

    I'm not referring to Gillick here, I'm talking in general.

    I was referring to Gillick.

    Merrit was caught. Gillick wasn't. I could apply the logic that many do, that Gillick (others) not getting caught doesn't mean he is innocent. Lump them all together and make it easier.

    Bottom line is that this breaking story has about as much significance and potency as a flat tyre!


  • #65
    Giruilla
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,595 ✭✭✭Giruilla


    <snip>

    No doping speculation.
    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055254160


  • #66
    Giruilla
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,595 ✭✭✭Giruilla


    Anyone who thinks this is a non story, and its all ifs and buts.. is simply wrong. Two different independent sports scientists analysed the data and said the blood values the saw for certain athletes had a one in a million chance of being natural.
    The reason your not hearing any athletes being named is that the source of the leak asked the ST not to name anyone who hasn't already failed a drugs test and been banned. The ST and German paper are honoring this.


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  • #67
    youngrun
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,477 ✭✭✭youngrun


    Giruilla wrote: »
    Anyone who thinks this is a non story, and its all ifs and buts.. is simply wrong. Two different independent sports scientists analysed the data and said the blood values the saw for certain athletes had a one in a million chance of being natural.
    The reason your not hearing any athletes being named is that the source of the leak asked the ST not to name anyone who hasn't already failed a drugs test and been banned. The ST and German paper are honoring this.

    These analysts worked for WADA and ICU and should have been doing their day job . ie checking out these profiles at the time. Who is to say this was not done??

    The Irish Times today nails it last paragraph

    According to expert interpretation of the leaked data, a third of medals won during that period (146 in all, including 55 gold) could now be considered suspicious of doping, taking in the last three Olympic Games, and six World Athletics Championships from 2001 to 2011. Yet none of the evidence is enough to enforce a ban, retrospectively or otherwise.

    This has a political overtone to it no doubt in my mind. I hope the IAAF come out and state that these profiles were investigated at the time. Which is what you would expect them to do . Also are top athletes likely to have better blood profiles than Joe Soap the man in the street?


  • #68
    walshb
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 58,503 ✭✭✭✭walshb


    Giruilla wrote: »
    Anyone who thinks this is a non story, and its all ifs and buts.. is simply wrong. Two different independent sports scientists analysed the data and said the blood values the saw for certain athletes had a one in a million chance of being natural.
    The reason your not hearing any athletes being named is that the source of the leak asked the ST not to name anyone who hasn't already failed a drugs test and been banned. The ST and German paper are honoring this.

    Yes, there are dopers in sport. It's a non story. WTF is a natural blood profile anyway? How is this at all pertinent to these athletes? If something isn't natural it then is what, unnatural? What exactly are these independent guys telling us?


  • #69
    walshb
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 58,503 ✭✭✭✭walshb


    What about joe soap athlete/runner who runs and trains and works hard and eats and sleeps and looks after his body? If this person did not ever intend on taking PEDs, just looked after himself and trained hard, what would his chances be of passing a PED test? Some of you fellas here, for example.


  • #70
    ultrapercy
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,621 ✭✭✭ultrapercy


    walshb wrote: »
    What about joe soap athlete/runner who runs and trains and works hard and eats and sleeps and looks after his body? If this person did not ever intend on taking PEDs, just looked after himself and trained hard, what would his chances be of passing a PED test? Some of you fellas here, for example.

    His chance of passing a test would be 100% if he had not taken any banned substances. His chance of passing if he had taken banned substances would decrease in direct proportion to the expertese of the doping programme he subscribed to.


  • #71
    average_runner
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,881 ✭✭✭✭average_runner


    walshb wrote: »
    What about joe soap athlete/runner who runs and trains and works hard and eats and sleeps and looks after his body? If this person did not ever intend on taking PEDs, just looked after himself and trained hard, what would his chances be of passing a PED test? Some of you fellas here, for example.


    Depends if he has a Spanish doctor


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  • #72
    Pherekydes
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 16,247 ✭✭✭✭Pherekydes


    Giruilla wrote: »
    Anyone who thinks this is a non story, and its all ifs and buts.. is simply wrong. Two different independent sports scientists analysed the data and said the blood values the saw for certain athletes had a one in a million chance of being natural.

    Just checked the ST there. It says 'one in a thousand'. Why exaggerate?

    Regardless, 'one in a million' or even 'one in a billion' doesn't prove anything. It's called the prosecutor's fallacy.


  • #73
    KielyUnusual
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,900 ✭✭✭KielyUnusual


    youngrun wrote: »
    These analysts worked for WADA and ICU and should have been doing their day job . ie checking out these profiles at the time. Who is to say this was not done??

    The Irish Times today nails it last paragraph

    According to expert interpretation of the leaked data, a third of medals won during that period (146 in all, including 55 gold) could now be considered suspicious of doping, taking in the last three Olympic Games, and six World Athletics Championships from 2001 to 2011. Yet none of the evidence is enough to enforce a ban, retrospectively or otherwise.

    This has a political overtone to it no doubt in my mind. I hope the IAAF come out and state that these profiles were investigated at the time. Which is what you would expect them to do . Also are top athletes likely to have better blood profiles than Joe Soap the man in the street?

    This is exactly what I think.

    The wording around the accusations is so ambiguous as to be ridiculous.

    What is suspicious and what is highly supiscious? Where is the glossary of terms?

    Drug taking in athletics is a huge issue and while articles like this might help to create the controversy to route out the cheating, I don't think the statistics should be taking at face value.


  • #74
    menoscemo
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,915 ✭✭✭✭menoscemo


    Giruilla wrote: »
    Anyone who thinks this is a non story, and its all ifs and buts.. is simply wrong. Two different independent sports scientists analysed the data and said the blood values the saw for certain athletes had a one in a million chance of being natural.

    Pre 2009 you couldn't be done for a blood profile just for testing positive for a banned substance (which they clearly didn't). From watching the documentary it seems you can't go back and ban them for something in today's rules.....


  • #75
    Giruilla
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,595 ✭✭✭Giruilla


    Pherekydes wrote: »
    Just checked the ST there. It says 'one in a thousand'. Why exaggerate?

    Regardless, 'one in a million' or even 'one in a billion' doesn't prove anything. It's called the prosecutor's fallacy.

    One in a thousand was said specifically about the top UK athlete, who is
    -female
    -vocally denied doping, and hence been accused
    -called for more money to be put into anti-doping
    -is a national hero, squeaky clean image.
    -is possibly the biggest hypocrite in the history of athletics

    The paper pointedly points out it isn't jessica ennis.


  • #76
    average_runner
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,881 ✭✭✭✭average_runner


    Giruilla wrote: »
    One in a thousand was said specifically about the top UK athlete, who is
    -female
    -vocally denied doping, and hence been accused
    -called for more money to be put into anti-doping
    -is a national hero, squeaky clean image.
    -is possibly the biggest hypocrite in the history of athletics

    The paper pointedly points out it isn't jessica ennis.

    If it is who I think your aiming at, I will stop watching athletics for good, as it be the final straw.


  • #77
    walshb
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 58,503 ✭✭✭✭walshb


    average_runner wrote: »
    If it is who I think your aiming at, I will stop watching athletics for good, as it be the final straw.

    You'll stop watching it because of this whiff of suspicion surrounding the athlete?


  • #78
    Giruilla
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,595 ✭✭✭Giruilla


    Pherekydes wrote: »
    Just checked the ST there. It says 'one in a thousand'. Why exaggerate?

    Regardless, 'one in a million' or even 'one in a billion' doesn't prove anything. It's called the prosecutor's fallacy.
    The test for blood-doping involves cross-referencing the numbers of new and old red cells in an athlete’s blood. The result is called an off-score. Any score above 103 is abnormal for female athletes; the Russians were way above that.

    The winner, Tatyana Tomashova, who was the world champion and Olympic silver medallist, had an extraordinary off-score of 129 on the day of the race. Yuliya Chizhenko-Fomenko was even higher with a score of 140. She finished second but was disqualified for pushing and her silver medal went to Olga Yegorova — who in 2001 had tested positive for EPO but got off on a technicality. Yegorova’s off-score at Helsinki was 124. Yelena Soboleva, who came fifth, scored 136.
    Athletes sometimes argue that their high off-scores are natural, particularly if the tests are taken after a race. The probability of Tomashova’s and Yegorova’s results being natural were close to one in 100,000, however. And when an off-score is over 131 — as it was for the other two Russians — there is just a one-in-a-million chance of it being due to natural causes, according to one of the biggest scientific studies of elite endurance athletes undertaken, which was published two years before the Helsinki race.
    The odds against all four teammates in the same race having naturally high off-scores was in the trillions. There could only be one conclusion: the experts believe they were cheating.
    Ramzi had had an unremarkable career but his fortunes had changed when he went to Bahrain to train alongside Brahim Boulami, a Moroccan world record holder who had been caught using EPO. Steve Cram, the British former 1500m world champion, would later write of Ramzi’s triumphs in Helsinki: “He almost embarrassed his competitors with his ease of victory. New-found ability in your mid-20s has the odour of North Shields fish quay on a warm day.”

    There was certainly more than a whiff of scandal about his doping test results, which can now be revealed. For men, any off-score over 119 is regarded as abnormal. On the day that Ramzi cruised to victory in the 1500m, his off-score was 158. When he won the 800m it was 148. Both results had a one-in-a-million chance of being natural. He too was competing with a dangerously viscous blood that should have put him in hospital.
    In 2009, Ramzi tested positive for CERA, a previously undetectable successor to EPO, following his gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The four Russian women were caught substituting their urine with someone else’s in tests designed to detect EPO. But all five were allowed to keep their world championship medals from 2005.
    .. I think an off score with a one in a million chance is a pretty accurate indicator of doping actually


  • #79
    menoscemo
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,915 ✭✭✭✭menoscemo


    Giruilla wrote: »
    One in a thousand was said specifically about the top UK athlete, who is
    -female
    -vocally denied doping, and hence been accused
    -called for more money to be put into anti-doping
    -is a national hero, squeaky clean image.
    -is possibly the biggest hypocrite in the history of athletics

    The paper pointedly points out it isn't jessica ennis.

    Kimmage said that she threatened to sue the Newspaper if they published anything and then a few weeks later appeared on a celebrity TV Programme.


  • #80
    clear thinking
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 558 ✭✭✭clear thinking


    youngrun wrote: »
    Yet none of the evidence is enough to enforce a ban, retrospectively or otherwise.

    As an aside from the ranting and raving, I understood from the report that as a whole, the stats provided to the scientists for review were 0.1% likely to be 'natural'.

    But the issue seems to be that each of those individual test stats would have to register as abnormal for an athlete which relies on multiple tests over time.

    Obviously, the individual test results therefore can be gamed, but when collated they are riddled. So micro dosing and building up to mad levels gradually is possible.

    The one in a million thing does matter, the standard in science for evidence is 1/3.5m going on the 5 sigma proof for the Higgs Boson. 1/3.5m chances would convince me, as does 1/1000.


  • #81
    average_runner
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,881 ✭✭✭✭average_runner


    walshb wrote: »
    You'll stop watching it because of this whiff of suspicion surrounding the athlete?

    I stop watching if she is found guilty


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  • #82
    walshb
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 58,503 ✭✭✭✭walshb


    average_runner wrote: »
    I stop watching if she is found guilty

    Okey doke. But 'guilty' of what? Having a not so natural blood profile? Because that is all that seems to be getting reported at the moment.


  • #83
    average_runner
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,881 ✭✭✭✭average_runner


    walshb wrote: »
    Okey doke. But 'guilty' of what? Having a not so natural blood profile? Because that is all that seems to be getting reported at the moment.

    Providing the tests results aren't from the time she was pregnant, then her blood levels should stay within a certain percentage as with her other tests. Anything different needs explanation. But why block the media if nothing to hide?

    Also remember she had her blood samples frozen for future testing so they are there to be retested


  • #84
    Myles Splitz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,306 ✭✭✭Myles Splitz


    average_runner wrote: »
    Providing the tests results aren't from the time she was pregnant, then her blood levels should stay within a certain percentage as with her other tests. Anything different needs explanation. But why block the media if nothing to hide?

    Also remember she had her blood samples frozen for future testing so they are there to be retested

    JTG actually did a piece on this

    http://jumping-the-gun.com/?p=9746
    Though the readings were suspicious, they were not enough to register an anti-doping rule violation at the time because before 2009, such tests were only used to spur target testing for EPO.

    In response to the allegations of doping, the athlete said last week that their levels had been elevated due to dehydration after running a race in summer temperatures. “They didn’t come back to me because there isn’t anything to show,” they said.

    The athlete’s second abnormal test, years later, did spark an IAAF investigation, but the athlete said 11 out of 12 experts who viewed the data concluded that the reading was consistent with an athlete training at altitude.

    Experts agreed that dehydration can affect natural blood values, but the British athlete’s off-sc0re, the measure used to determine if an athlete has blood doped, was 40pc higher on the day of the race compared to two days earlier.

    The athlete, who cannot be named due to the inconclusive nature of the evidence and threat of legal action, firmly denied cheating and swore to reporters on the lives of loved ones that they had never blood doped.


  • #85
    rovers_runner
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,720 ✭✭✭rovers_runner


    Giruilla wrote: »
    One in a thousand was said specifically about the top UK athlete, who is
    -female
    -vocally denied doping, and hence been accused
    -called for more money to be put into anti-doping
    -is a national hero, squeaky clean image.
    -is possibly the biggest hypocrite in the history of athletics

    The paper pointedly points out it isn't jessica ennis.

    You forgot
    -often stops to relieve herself during races
    -set records by using members of the opposite sex to pace her

    I can't f*cking wait for the day she is outed as a cheat, it will happen, just as it did with Lance. Patience is a virtue.


  • #86
    Darkest Horse
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 497 ✭✭Darkest Horse


    pconn062 wrote: »
    I'm not sure what is the point of listing known drug offenses in athletics is? You seem to be missing my point, it's a good thing that we know about all these doping violations, it means that the system for catching cheats in athletics is working. Are you really naive enough to think that athletics is worse than other professional sports? So rather than bash athletics constantly, why not ask ourselves why do we not hear of big scandals like this in other sports, where unlike athletics, the rewards for doping are much greater in terms of monetary value?! The more I hear about drug offenses in athletics makes me sad for the genuinely clean athletes in the sport, but it also makes me glad that more cheats are being caught.

    This is a ridiculous point to make. If my car is chugging along at 5mph with smoke coming out of the engine, it is still technically "working". Very poorly, but it's still working. I don't tend to get my nose so out of joint with drug use in sport as some here but at the very least, logic is required when speaking about the issue.


  • #87
    Darkest Horse
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 497 ✭✭Darkest Horse


    Can someone please PM me the name of the suspected athlete? Blink once if she is "long in the tooth", blink twice if not!


  • #88
    dna_leri
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,623 ✭✭✭dna_leri


    The problem with incomplete leaks of "data" is that the suspicion falls on the clean as well as the dirty athlete.
    The description given so far can fit at least two british female athletes.


  • #89
    Pherekydes
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 16,247 ✭✭✭✭Pherekydes


    clear thinking wrote: »
    The one in a million thing does matter, the standard in science for evidence is 1/3.5m going on the 5 sigma proof for the Higgs Boson. 1/3.5m chances would convince me, as does 1/1000.

    This is the prosecutor's fallacy exactly.

    Why stop at one in a thousand?


  • #90
    average_runner
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,881 ✭✭✭✭average_runner


    dna_leri wrote: »
    The problem with incomplete leaks of "data" is that the suspicion falls on the clean as well as the dirty athlete.
    The description given so far can fit at least two british female athletes.

    Thought only two women in UK hold a world record and they ruled out Ennis.

    At first I thought it was an 800m runner or 400m runner. But they Don't hold a wr


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  • #91
    RayCun
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 15,704 ✭✭✭✭RayCun


    Pherekydes wrote: »
    This is the prosecutor's fallacy exactly.

    It isn't really the prosecutor's fallacy.
    That refers to the probability of a random match between x and y.

    The blood off-score doesn't vary randomly, it follows a normal distribution. Most scores should be within a fairly narrow range. The further you get from that narrow range (up or down), the less likely it is that the results are 'natural'.

    (That doesn't rule out reasonable explanations for the off-score to increase. Training at altitude and racing at sea-level is not 'natural')


This discussion has been closed.
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