I was out of the country for six weeks this summer and missed the flurry of comments on this subject. I've now caught up, and I'd like to add a few comments of my own.
First, I'm going to respond directly to remarks several list members made about what I've written in the past. Here are some examples: Randy Treadway, August 17: "In years past, on this very list, any time questions were brought up about the Africans, people who had spent time with them dashed into the conversation like lightning to claim that cheating was simply against the nature and motivation of the Africans they'd spent time with. Where are those people now? The silence is deafening." John Molvar, August 19: "There was always an angry, vicious outrage against anyone who dared to suggest the Kenyans would even consider using drugs. . . Anyone remember when John Manners told us all that the Kenyans were morally incapbable?" Philip Ponebshek, August 19: "For many years, there has been a STRONG assertion from those who work with African athletes that there is no drug use. That's not a statement of "we don't know". It's a statement of "we know - there is none." For example, quoting from a review of the TAFNews Press book "Train Hard, Win Easy" Jim Kornell writes: 'Two issues come up when talking about the Kenyans (and Ethiopians): drugs and genetics. As for drugs, John Manners writes a forceful preface about Kenyan drug use. His conclusion: there isn't any. This is highly credible. . .' There have been . . . countless defenses of East Africans mounted on the same premise to date - that Kenyans would never use drugs." Kurt Bray, September 7: For years and years, John Manners, James Templeton, and other insisted on this forum that, for a long tiresome list of reasons, it was absolutely IMPOSSIBLE for any Kenyan to be doping." Bob Kunnath, September 7: "I dont think it was ever stated that it was IMPOSSIBLE for the Kenyans to cheat." Dan Kaplan, September 7: "Yes, it most definitely was, and in very clear and passionate terms by those closely involved with top Kenyans. Search the list archives if you don't believe me." OK, Dan, I searched -- my own posts, anyway. And here's what I found: John Manners, October 24, 1997: "Now, all of this is not to say that drug use by Africans is inconceivable. Frankly, the prospect worries me, because . . . I can imagine, given the temptation of so much money and the likely availability of, say, EPO from some "doctor," that one of these days some second-class road runner is going to try to take a shortcut to the top. But I know of no evidence that it has happened yet." John Manners, August 24, 1998: "This is not to suggest that no African will ever try the stuff. For all I know, some already have. But I follow this pretty closely, and I know of no credible evidence to that effect." John Manners, August 28, 1998: "Of course even if this is so, it's no guarantee that some African, seeing marked improvement by Europeans rumored to be using EPO, might not want to try it." As for the review of Train Hard, Win Easy, I'm afraid the quoted passage oversimplifies my position. What I actually wrote (in December, 2000), in the middle of a long discussion of my reasons for disbelieving the common drug accusations, was: "[This] explains why I think practically all the Kenyans are clean and will probably stay that way." It seems to me these statements don't quite rise to the level of knee-jerk dogmatism I've been accused of. And for what it's worth, I'm no longer prepared to talk about Africans, in general, when discussing accusations of drug use. I have no direct experience with North African athletes and have always been a little uneasy about lumping them together with East Africans, of whom I do have some first-hand knowledge. So I'll confine my comments to Kenyans. In any case, the misrepresentation of my position is hardly the central point here. It's the blanket accusations against the Kenyans that need to be examined. On August 16, John Molvar posted an article by Omulo Okoth that had appeared in the East African Standard on July 24, introducing it with this comment: "This calls [into question] everything the Kenyans have done from Yobes Ondieki's 26:58 onward." Does it? Let's consider the article. It starts by announcing that Pamela Chepchumba, who tested positive for EPO in March, has chosen to remain silent and will be summoned as a witness by a Commission of Inquiry being set up by Athletics Kenya. [The Commission is now seeking subpoena power in the hope of forcing Chepchumba to open up.] Okoth then asserts that "her account will certainly lead the Commission to unmask what is emerging as an infamy of monumental proportions." And what does Okoth adduce in support of this rather sweeping claim? The testimony of three or four unnamed athletes, presumably Kenyans, about the practices of two or three unnamed European agents. One of the athletes says an agent urged him (her?) to dope but he declined and thereafter witnessed a few of his "colleagues" (no nationality specified) occupying hotel rooms full of drug p araphernalia. He also saw the "colleagues" urinate twice before producing a sample for testing in the hope that the sample thus produced would pass. He says two were eventually caught. A second athlete claims to have declined an injection from his (her?) agent supposedly intended as protection against a malaria attack. He says another of the agent's clients (no nationality specified) told him the injection made him feel "like running like a horse" and later died. A third athlete says his (her?) agent gave his African athletes injections "against a cold," as well as injections with iron, "Russian stuff," and, before marathons, "a mix of a lot of things. No athlete knows what it is." He also cites a liquid "more clear than water" administered orally before races that gave many athletes stomach problems. OK, all this is certainly disquieting, but what does it amount to? A few unnamed athletes talking about a few unnamed agents and a few "colleagues" of indeterminate nationality. The athletes quoted seem woefully ignorant about the substances they mention -- "Russian stuff" that "changes women's hormones into men's," etc. -- and Okoth does nothing to clear up the confusion. He offers no responses from the agents themselves and only one quote that faintly offsets the alarmist tone of the piece -- an athlete who concludes, quite plausibly, that the mysterious concoctions his (her?) agent administers before races must be legal simply because if they weren't, the athletes taking them would have been caught. The only concrete information in this whole nebulous mess is a list of pharmaceuticals found in the refrigerator of one of the agents. Here's the list, copied straight from the article: "One was Ferrlecit (Iron-Natrium- gluconat- komplex). Another one 2mjl > Aktobetnh-80ml Amiyibi and 2ml Infekt I - Injektopas. Others are Cefaktivon Novum > 1ML, Engystol and Thioctacid Etylendianinsalz der a liponsaure." Sounds pretty scary, but it's actually hard to tell. Okoth certainly didn't bother to find out if any of these contain anything on the banned list. I've asked around a little, and it seems the first item is a simple iron supplement, and the fourth, Engystol, is a homeopathic cold remedy. If anybody has access to a German Physician's Desk Reference, I'd be curious to know what the others are. It's my guess that they'll turn out to be equally innocuous, which will be a further indictment of Okoth's sloppy journalism and the overreaction it inspired. In fact, unless one or more of the items on the list does contain a banned blood booster, the whole article can be dismissed as little more than rumor mongering -- not exactly a sign of "an infamy of monumental proportions," and certainly no reason to call into question ten years of achievement by the greatest national cohort of distance runners in history. Sadly, the Okoth article wasn't the only development this summer to prompt rampant speculation about Kenyan drug use. There was also Bernard Lagat's EPO positive. To me, this was shattering news -- not because it somehow disillusioned me about Kenyans in general, but because it may well destroy the career of a brilliant athlete whom I know to be a sterling character, and because it was sure to give rise to just the sort of broad inferences that have been drawn in this forum. James Templeton's statement on Lagat's behalf was posted on the list on September 3 and deserved better than the derisory reception it got. Of course, the categorical denial was predictable, and of course a group like this can hardly be expected to withhold judgment until the B sample results are in. But there are a couple of points in Lagat's favor that ought to be borne in mind, at least until the case is fully resolved. First, he's not claiming to have taken EPO by mistake or against his will or without his knowledge. He's saying he hasn't had a needle under his skin since the Madrid World Cup a year ago, when he was blood tested for EPO. Second, to quote Malmo with reference to Butch Reynolds (September 20), Lagat's "demeanor . . . was that of an innocent man." He flew his parents to Paris for the World Championships -- the first time either had ever been outside Kenya -- something he's hardly likely to have done if he dreaded the public humiliation of a positive test. When I saw him the day before the 1500 heats, his only concern was figuring out how to get seats for his parents in the athletes section of the stadium. There was certainly no sign that the sample he had given two weeks earlier was weighing on his mind. OK, this kind of evidence doesn't count for much, and if the B sample confirms the positive (the sample is to be opened on the 29th), I suppose, for the sake of intellectual consistency, I'll have to believe the result, as I do in the case of the Europeans and North Africans. But if Lagat did, in fact, succumb to the pressures to dope that are so often talked about on this list, I think it's worth pointing out that he is by far the most Westernized of all big-time Kenyan athletes, having lived all but a few weeks a year in the US and Europe since 1997. In fact, if you were to choose an exception to prove the rule of Kenyan drug-free-ness, he would be a prime candidate. One more point about Lagat. Nothing in his career before the positive test gave any indication of doping -- unless you simply assume a priori that 3:26 can't be run unaided. His yearly progression, starting in 1996, goes like this: 3:37.7, 3:41.19, 3:34.48, 3:30.56, 3:28.51, 3:26.34, 3:27.91, 3:30.55. The three- and four-second yearly improvements come in his first two seasons of rabbited races in Europe. His times in Sydney and Edmonton, where there was in-competition EPO testing, were 3:32.44 and 3:31.10 in unrabbited races, and in the Madrid World Cup, where there was also EPO testing but the race was not, strictly speaking, unrabbited, he ran 3:31.20. This is the kind of pattern Ed Grant is talking about when he says it's important to view performances in the context of a whole career in trying to judge their credibility (September 3). Lagat's career makes an entirely credible pattern. Contrast it, for example, with Brahim Boulami's steeple progression, starting in 1995, when he was 23: 8:20.64, 8:18.49, 8:10.84, 8:11.30, no result in 1999, 8:02.90, 7:55.28, 7:58.09, doping ban in 2003. He makes the huge leap from 8:10 - 8:11 to 8:02 at age 28 in 2000, his sixth year on the European circuit. Then in Sydney, where there's EPO testing, he runs 8:24.32 for 7th place. The next year, he runs 8:07.28 in Monaco in July and 8:21.95 for 10th two weeks later in Edmonton, where there's EPO testing. Nine days after that, he runs 7:58.50 in Zurich and a week later 7:55.28 in Brussels. This is not a credible pattern. What's more, there was a good deal of "street talk" of the comparatively plausible sort -- athletes saying they'd seen him with drug paraphernalia, as opposed to fans saying he must be doping because he runs fast. No such thing in Lagat's case. All right, almost done with this topic, but while I'm at it, I want to point out that, contrary to the assertions of a couple of list members, Yobes Ondieki's career pattern, including his 26:58.38 in 1993, is entirely credible. Here's John Molvar on August 19: "When Ondieki ran his 26:58 . . . it was absolutely shocking and also inexplicable. He had been on the Pro circuit for years and was very good, but he had done nothing to indicate he was capable of anything close to this type of barrier shattering performance. Even more surprising was his rapid exodus from the sport despite being at the top so briefly. Long time fans were stunned." Ondieki was primarily a 5000 runner; the 26:58 was only his second track 10,000. But that certainly doesn't mean "he had done nothing to indicate" etc. At the time of the record, he was the reigning World Champion at 5000, and four years earlier he'd been the first man to beat Said Aouita at the distance in 10 years. He had three of the top nine times on the all-time list (13:01.82, 13:03..58 and 13:04.24) and had run the year's top mark in 1989 and 1991, and #2 in 1992. He didn't generally run the 10,000 because he didn't like it, and with 3:34.36 (1990) 1500 speed, he figured he was better suited to the 5000 -- but he clearly had no trouble adapting!. He had been "at the top" (i.e. top 10 of the world list) for five years when he set the record and continued to run on the circuit for two more years before retiring at the age of 34 after 16 years of competitive running. What the hell were "long time fans" stunned about? One more point and I'll stop. Here's John Molvar again on August 19: "EPO did not become widespread in cycling until about 1990. Shortly thereafter I believe it invaded our sport via an agent for the Kenyans who was a former cycling agent who got banned from that sport for drugs." And later in the same post, ". . . the biggest Kenyan agent was banned from pro cycling for providing drugs to athletes." I believe John is talking about Dr. Gabriele Rosa, an Italian sports medicine specialist who coaches a large number of athletes, mainly Kenyans, under the sponsorship of Fila. I've defended Rosa against doping accusations a couple of times in the past on this list (October 24, 1997 and August 28, 1998), so I'll try to keep this short. He's not an agent; he's a coach. He left cycling in 1985 on his own initiative because doping had become so endemic. He's never been named in any of Italy's repeated doping exposes and has never been banned from anything. (Perhaps Rosa is being conflated with Prof. Francesco Conconi, who was at the center of the big doping court case in 2000, but Conconi has never had anything to do with Kenyans.) On what secret evidence John has come to "believe that [EPO] invaded our sport" through Rosa and his Kenyans I have no idea. Interestingly, a persuasive defense of Rosa and his operation is inadvertently offered by Alan Tobin (August 28), who compares the doctor's success with the Kenyans and the Americans he has coached and concludes, "The fact that the US program was plagued with injuries and the Rosa Kenyan program has done well gives even more light to the rumor that Rosa is a druglord." In a second post, he elaborates: "So FILA/Rosa start up a US program using the above [weeks of high intensity, high mileage training of the sort he uses in Kenya] and the athletes procede to get injured or slide down the slippery slope of chronic fatigue. So, the question is asked 'Why?'. My answer is hGH or a synthetic steroid, something that enhances protein synthesis so recovery is quickened so that Rosa's Kenyan athletes can handle such intense workloads week after week after week." Whoa! Rosa dopes his Kenyans, but gives nary a drop to the Americans? Let's think about this. Rosa and Fila began their US program because, successful as their Kenyans were, they weren't doing much to boost Fila's bottom line. What was needed was runners with whom prosperous Western consumers could more readily identify. The US has a huge talent base and scores of millions of well-to-do runners -- the ideal place to develop a couple of new superstars. So, with a per capita investment orders of magnitude larger than what they spend in Kenya, Fila and Rosa set up camp three years ago for about a dozen promising young distance runners at 6000 feet in Mount Laguna, CA. In addition to the anticipated commercial benefits for Fila, the program gave Rosa a chance to further establish his brilliance as a coach. If only one or two world-class marathoners emerged in California, he would have proved that it was his methods, not just natural talent, that had produced his success in Kenya. Now, with so much riding on the US program and Rosa knowing the only way his Kenyans survive his full-throttle training is through the use of "hGH or a synthetic steroid," are we to believe that he would withhold these vital elixirs from his US athletes? Come on. So what does explain the fact that the Kenyans don't seem to suffer the injuries or chronic fatigue that has afflicted the Americans? First, some of Rosa's Kenyans do get hurt or worn out, and they simply wash out of the program. But there are so many who are so good that losing a few doesn't matter. And the survivors tend to be tough. Remember, they grow up, for the most part, without cars, without public transportation, without bicycles, without shoes. A tired cliché, I know, but all those barefoot miles over all those years must have some effect, and I suggest one is to condition kids to the rigors of the training they'll do later. There may be innate differences, too. Bob Kunnath (August 28) referred to findings of a Swedish (actually Danish) study that point to lower ammonia levels and "less muscle breakdown" -- qualities that may be genetic. In any case, while Rosa's comparatively modest success in America (lots of PRs but no world-class athletes) may have failed to confirm his brilliance as a coach, it most certainly demonstrates that he's no "drug lord." And I think we can generalize a little from this example. Most European athletics managers have clients from several countries. Does it make sense to assume that those with Kenyans would dope only the Kenyans when a European or American who could perform at the Kenyans' level would earn himself and his manager many times as much money? Indeed, with world-class Kenyans a glut on the market, does it make economic sense to dope them at all? One manager I quoted long ago (September 1, 1998) put it this way: "It would be a lot more worthwhile to go back to Kenya and find a better runner." OK. All of this notwithstanding, it's clear that at least a few Kenyans are now doping. It was bound to happen. I fervently hope Lagat's B sample proves he isn't one of them. I'm also curious to hear what, if anything, Chepchumba has to say in her hearing. Athletics Kenya expects her evidence to demonstrate the unique circumstances of her involvement in doping. The federation is convinced that these cases are anomalies and wants to keep them that way. Several of the posts this summer that gleefully (and inaccurately) derided the defenders of Kenyan (or African) athletes referred to the defenders as "people who had spent time with them" or "those who work with African athletes" or "those closely involved with top Kenyans." The implication, I suppose, is that such people have some kind of vested interest to protect or have otherwise had their judgment clouded by their close involvement. But the defenders include rival athletes, visiting journalists and expatriate teachers and aid workers -- practically anyone who is interested in athletics and knows the athletes and the circumstances of life in Kenya. I know of no such person who believes drugs are a significant factor in Kenya's running success. Even Omulo Okoth, in spite of his unseemly eagerness to hype his own story, is confident that the vast majority of Kenyans are clean. Are we to dismiss all these people as deluded and instead take the word of the long-distance clairvoyants who just know, never mind how, that Kenyans are all doped to the gills? I think not. John Manners [EMAIL PROTECTED]
