Lagat-holy shit!

Re: Confirmation?

i am sure he is innocent, someone must have spiked his toothpaste.

Re: Confirmation?

>http://www.asda.org.au/media/fact_sheets/repoxygen
>htm

It seems repoxygen is not a good choice
>for doping.

Same side effects as EPO. Easily countered.

Re: Lagat-holy shit!

So does that mean that there is absolutely no way to test positive for this stuff unless you haved doped yourself?

Re: Lagat-holy shit!

They're not measuring hematocrit (concentration of red cells); they're measuring chemical changes in the blood caused only by introduction of exogenous substance.

Re: Lagat-holy shit!

If that was the case wouldn't they all test positive? The majority train at altitude.

Re: Lagat-holy shit!

I am posing this question to someone who might truly know a thing or two about the whole EPO thing and about how the body works it general. Someone who knows Bernard Lagat fairly well has suggested to me that there could actually have been a mistake and that they believe he could be innocent. There reason for thinking is as follows: Supposedly if you go and train at very high altitude, say 10,000 feet, it will raise the number of your red blood cells dramatically. If you were to be tested soon after you came back from training at high altitude, this would make it look like you were doping when in fact you weren't.

I don't know if I explained this correctly or if it makes any sense but my question is is there any way that there could be any truth to this, or something like it?

[michael lewis]

Re: Lagat-holy shit!

"One who truely believes, has faith and is determined and confident will always have the advantage over those who sell their souls to performance enhancing drugs. For when it gets tough and all is on the line in fierce battle the one's who took drugs faith will falter and they will fail because they are not just, they are corrupt in their soul and the true warrior, the one who believes and has heart, will prevail for his faith in the Lord will have made him strong."

Right. And that's why godless drugged-up communist East Germany clobbered the rest of the world for nearly 2 decades.

[DentyCracker]

Re: Confirmation?

http://www.asda.org.au/media/fact_sheets/repoxygen.htm

It seems repoxygen is not a good choice for doping.

Re: Confirmation?

does this mean that lagat won't be the star of anymore nike commercials?

Re: Confirmation?

>Isn't epo a
>"dated" method of enhancement? Why wouldn't a
>cheater use one of the more undetectable
>synthetic substitutes now reportedly available?

I have also been wondering why we would be having these EPO positives with undetectable Repoxygen supposedly now on the scene. Assuming for the sake of discussion here that it is obtainable, and thinking out loud, these are the alternatives I can come up with:

(1) That availability of Repoxygen is still tight enough that not everyone can easily get it. (2) If the availability is tight, that might make it too costly for some. (3) Perhaps Repoxygen is still new enough that those using it, or wanting to, are still trying to figure out how to use it the best way, develop a dependable protocol for using, and it is still something of an unknown quantity unlike EPO. (4) Maybe Repoxygen doesn't work as well as EPO and people are willing to take the risk of getting caught using the latter if it has a decided advantage. (5) Maybe they somehow still think they can beat the EPO test, maybe by being able to simply avoid the random spot checks.

In general, now that there is an EPO test, the EPO positives are something hard to figure unless there just aren't hardly any other alternatives at the moment, or alternatively, people have thought they wouldn't be spot-tested or could dodge it, but then got surprised. You have to wonder about this because it isn't just Lagat and Chepchumba in Kenya, it's Boulami and Mourhit in Morocco, and maybe a few others I can't remember at the moment.

Interested in other observations...

Re: Confirmation?

One thing i completely believe- that he was too sick to his stomach to compete.

Isn't epo a "dated" method of enhancement? Why wouldn't a cheater use one of the more undetectable synthetic substitutes now reportedly available?

Re: Confirmation?

>To all the young athletes, and old fans, there is one true performance enhancer out there that is purely legal and far better than any drugs such as EPO.

>"With Jesus in my heart, I can do anything".

>Have faith, work hard and believe and you can do anything.

>"I command you: Be determined and courageous! Do not fear or lose heart, for the Lord your God is with you where ever you go!" Joshua 1:9

Man thats awesome!!!!! Thats the answer. Here's another one I live by:

I can do all things through God who strengthens me. Philipians 4:13

Re: Confirmation?

If everyone could believe that the next guy was clean then I could see the sport becoming clean. But the men and women who do this at the top level know what they are up against, they are "in the loop". As I said in another post, they do it to be competive because the next guy is on something. Remove that doubt and all is well..but that is the problem..there is doubt..lots of it.

[MJD]

Re: Confirmation?

>I would be a bit carefull expanding on this
>subject, if I were you all.

Although I know
>the source of the story to be very credible
>usually, the fact is there is still only one
>(internet) source on the matter available:

Not as of about 2 hours ago. Do a search on news.google.com now. Even the grey lady picked it up about an hour ago. Likely requires registration:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/sports/ ... Lagat.html

Re: Oops (was Re: Huh?)

>OK Steve: you're wrong.

Steroid explosion came
>in the '60s, when track was still a "shamateur"
>sport, but no different in terms of the
>under-the-table payment than it had been for many
>decades (see Paavo Nurmi). Athletes in all sports
>have long sought whatever edge was available, and
>roids provided it, in spades. Indeed, one could
>argue that lack of money in the sport led the
>juice catching on there first. Without money to
>fall back on, all the track athletes had was
>glory, so achieving the best marks became even
>more paramount.

All right, fair enough. But how many had a real choice in parts of the world with totalitarian regimes? And how many would have gotten away with it if not for inside information those regimes gained? And of those who had the choice, how many would have taken those drugs if they weren't (often correctly) convinced that their competitors were using them?

Drug use will never disappear. It will, however, fall off considerably when athletes have a reasonable expectation that both they and their competitors will be caught. Apologists for the dopers will only set our sport back.