The Armstrong fallout: Thoughts and theories

The Lance Armstrong fallout - questions, denials and doping reactions

Friday last week saw Lance Armstrong release a statement that effectively ended his fight against the USADA doping charges, and accept the stripping of his seven Tour de France titles.  It was a significant day for the sport, if only because it forces a look back to the era of cycling that was so tainted by drugs that between 1996 and 2006, the sport has not had a single champion untainted by doping.  The timeline reads: Riis, Ullrich, Pantani, Armstrong, Landis, and here we sit, seven years later with a big asterisk next to the Tour!

The reaction to the USADA case, and Armstrong's statement, has however produced huge debate.  I've refrained from comment here, but have been discussing it at length over on Facebook and Twitter for those interested in the day-to-day thoughts that come up.

But it's time to address a few of the common questions and positions, hence this post.

Read more. . .




The polarized debate

The only thing one can say with certainty about Armstrong's decision is that he felt that he had no chance of winning an arbitration proceeding before the USADA.  That is unquestionably true.  The split happens because you can explain this in one of two ways.  The first is that he felt he had no chance of winning because the court is rigged, the verdict already decided, and the process unconstitutional.  A witch-hunt.  This is of course what he has said, through his statement, and the PR campaign that was launched when the USADA case was first announced.  In fact, it's the same message he has been throwing out for years, as Frankie Andreu pointed out with his reaction, saying it sounded like a "broken record".

The second explanation is that he had no chance of winning because the evidence that USADA had gathered was so convincing, so compelling that he could not explain it away.  There would be no brazen denial in the face of perhaps a dozen team-mates all alleging the same thing, plus the testimony of experts and officials who explained how he'd done it.  The blood values, possibly financial records, who knows what other evidence they had?  Circumstantial perhaps, but there was a mountain of it.  And make no mistake, Armstrong would have known what that evidence was - not specifically perhaps, but he'd know if the evidence existed, and would assume that those witnesses for USADA would have some pretty damning accounts, possibly backed with proof.

Your choice between those two options is largely a function of what you want to believe, or what you believed before the statement was even released.  If you want to believe the Lance Armstrong story, you're going for the former - he was just tired.

Let me state, upfront, that I would opt for the second one, that Lance Armstrong doped, and that his decision not to fight the charges is a tactical decision aimed at trying to keep the lid on that evidence, because he knows it's not worth allowing into the public.  For about 13 years, Lance Armstrong has fought the process, and now, for the first time, he faced evidence, and chose not to fight.  I interpret his decision not to fight as an admission that he can't, not that he shouldn't, and I don't buy the unconstitutional criticism that he has so cleverly sewn into the discussion (as evidenced by how many are outraged at the USADA case).

The problem is, if you choose to believe Armstrong, that it's a witch-hunt, then you are also a conspiracy theorist, because the only way you can explain all the witnesses who are willing to testify is to say that they are part of a massive conspiracy against him.  One that spans the Atlantic Ocean, includes former team-mates, journalists, doctors, administrators, soigneurs, strangers and mechanics.  A few people are "easy" to dismiss - Landis and Hamilton are not credible, that's easy.  But if USADA had ten more lined up, it becomes more and more difficult to dismiss.

The implication of Armstrong's decision not to fight the charges is that it denies a formal ruling on the matter, and also delays the emergence of the evidence.  This was expressed by David Walsh as disappointment, and it was best captured in this excellent piece by Anna Zimmerman, who, by the way, also provided the best coverage of the legal wrangling prior the Armstrong's statement.  She explains how the USADA cases was within its mandate, constitutional and not the 'witch-hunt' that people seem so willing to call it (with more than a nudge from clever PR people for Armstrong).

Two other pieces well worth reading on that particular question are Joe Lindsey's insights here, and this piece on FraudBytes, which I think address the question adequately.   The Joe Lindsey piece on Boulder Report is excellent because it explains how the evidence may still emerge, and why it matters.

Oh and if you have a lot of time, then this is a must-read - it's a four-part rebuttal of the argument that the USADA case is so unconstitutional by someone called "Nerdlinger".  Even if you just read Parts I to IV, it will take you through every claim and PR strategy that has been employed.  Quite brilliant.

Let me now turn my attention to four of the common questions and retorts that seem to have arisen:

1.  "Lance passed 500 tests.  He must be innocent"

This is straight from the press release, because it's been Armstrong's most used retort to the doping question.  Two things:

First, there is no way he was tested 500 times.  DimSpace has compiled a record of all the possible tests Armstrong may have been subjected to, with over-estimates, and it comes to 236. So there's more than a little hype in that number that started at 400, then hit 500, and just like that fish your uncle caught on his summer vacation in 1997 grew in size with every story-telling, ended up around the 600 mark.

Nevertheless, 236 is an impressive number to pass, so how is it possible?  Well, here's a list of names - Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery, Dwain Chambers, Ivan Basso, Jan Ullrich, Valverde.  That's just six names of athletes who also doped for very long periods without failing a test.  Some were caught eventually (Chambers & Montgomery) because a test was developed for a drug called THG based on a tip-off.  It then emerged that Chambers had doped for years, with everything, avoiding detection.  Ullrich went down because of good old-fashioned investigative work that discovered blood bags in a clinic.  Marion Jones was never caught.  The reality is that testing is limited, especially when it happens in-competition.  That's why people say that if you fail a drug test in competition, you have failed an IQ test - it's so simple to manipulate the timing and dosage of your drug use so that you are not tested when you compete.

And remember, the effect of doping lasts long after the drug is gone.  You can take EPO, get the benefit, and compete without the drug in the system.  Micro-dosing allows you to take the drug very close to the event without it being detectable.  In fact, you can dope 12 hours from your race, and as long as you get dosage right, you'll pass doping controls.  The authorities have to be very lucky to test you while you have the drug in your body.

The point is, passing the drug controls is not really all that difficult.

Another point about Armstrong is that his Tour victories spanned a period where the two most common doping methods were not detectable.  First, EPO was widely used without being detectable.  Once a test was developed for EPO, the practice changed, almost overnight, to blood doping, which was also very difficult to detect.  It was only with the introduction of the biological passport that it became possible, because they were looking for the effect of the drug rather than the drug itself.  Armstrong did not compete under that kind of scrutiny - his era was one where doping control was almost 'quaint' by comparison.

It is no co-incidence that upon his return in 2009, when the biological passport was being used, his values were immediately picked up as borderline suspicious (by Morkeberg, if you fancy a google search).  And, part of the USADA case is Armstrong's blood values which they say are indicative of doping - we are yet to see that evidence.  But again, this is a sign of a changing anti-doping landscape, that now catches what 12 years ago was impossible to detect.

So, we should not be too surprised at the fact that he never failed a doping test.  One that stuck, anyway - there is the pesky matter of that cortisone positive, and that inconvenient failed EPO test when research testing discovered that his samples were positive from the 1999 Tour (edit: I initially said 2001 - the 2001 samples were those alleged by Landis to have been covered up at the Tour of Switzerland.  It was on 1999 that the research testing was done - thanks to those who picked up my mix-up).  Here again, Armstrong escaped because doping control had not made the step up to where it is today - today, samples are kept for long periods so that any undetectable drugs can be detected in the future, when the test becomes available.  Had this been the case for the Armstrong era, in 2001 specifically, this claim of "never failed a test" would never have existed.  As it is, it's false because of those test failures, but the absence of a B-sample meant it did not stick.

And then there is also the allegation of bribes paid to cover up positive tests - if USADA has evidence in the form of testimony that can be backed up with records or documentation, then this more than answers the "500 test" myth - why beat the tests when you can pay to make them disappear?

Or why worry about beating them when you know when they're coming?  The latest report suggests that sources within the French lab (AFLD) say that Armstrong was routinely informed of when the tests would happen, allowing him ample time to manipulate the sample.  The "surprise" element of out-of-competition testing is 90% of their effectiveness, and so if this is the case, then you again get a clearer picture of why those 236 tests failed to discover anything.

Here again, the evidence and testimony will either be believed or dismissed as hearsay.  Either way, the "never failed a test in 500" defense is irrelevant because it is a) exaggerated, b) shown up as meaningless by the anti-doping climate of the Armstrong era, c) possibly false anyway.

2.  "This is futile. What is the point of doping controls if they don't catch anyone anyway?"

An extension of the above is the realization that Armstrong was tested many times without failing the convenient test that we have created as a requirement for a doping positive.  People take that to mean that anti-doping is useless and irrelevant.

Not so, for a few reasons.  First, as I explain above, the anti-doping landscape has evolved, and this is a paradigm shift people need to make.  There was a time that we were looking for "smoking guns".  That is, to convict an athlete of doping, we needed a blood or urine sample with the drug in it.  It's the equivalent of needing to catch a thief on camera with his hand in the bank vault or cash register.

That was naive.  Those days are long gone.  The sophistication of doping has forced a rethink, and there has been a paradigm change which many people are sadly unaware of.  The paradigm change really began in the 1980s, when out-of-competition testing was first introduced.  Prior to this, athletes were tested only at events, which meant they could dope liberally until just before the event, and still get the benefit without the risk of being caught.

The advent of out-of-competition testing forced performances to drop almost overnight, and was the first illustration that doping control exists to deter doping as much as it does to catch it.  Take note of that - doping control is there not only to catch dopers, but to deter them from doping in the first place.

If that is working, then you'll see two things.  Fewer people will dope ("We can't get away with it").  And, those who do dope will dope less, with smaller doses ("We can still get away with it, but we have to be extra careful").  That is what brings the performance level down, and hopefully ensures that everyone has a realistic shot of competing without doping.  I'd go so far as to say that the best we can hope for is that doping control is so tight and difficult to avoid, that doping is squeezed to the point where it makes no significant impact on performance.  Even though it happens, it's ineffective.  That would be good enough, in my opinion.

You see this most strikingly in women's athletics - prior to 1987, there were no out-of-competition tests.  Once introduced, performances dropped instantly, and the current record books are dominated by those 1980s performances.  The poor female sprinters and power athletes of the current era cannot get close to their event world records, and that's thanks to better anti-doping control today.

But this doesn't happen overnight.  And in cycling, the 90s and 2000s were affected by a generation of "pharmacological fraud", because the deterrent value was not high enough.  Cyclists doped with EPO and blood doping because they could do so with relative impunity - it wasn't totally unpoliced, but it was certainly not effective.  As I explained above, the tests either did not exist, or were not frequent or powerful enough to catch dopers.

Then came the passport, and the paradigm shift that said "we will look for the effect of the drug, and not its presence".  Now, all of a sudden, it became feasible to catch athletes without finding a banned substance in their body.  Lance Armstrong's Tour wins did not have this obstacle to overcome - nobody did until 2007, and that's when the deterrent qualities of anti-doping became clear, as I explained in this post - when the EPO test was introduced, it "forced" a shift in behavior that saw blood doping take over as the method of choice.  Then the biological passport squeezed doping down to the point that the Tour slowed down.  It doesn't eradicate doping, but it changes the behavior, and that's what it must do.

This is so valuable because ultimately, the point of doping control is to protect those who do not wish to dope.  Those individuals, like Christophe Bassons, who wish to compete without doping, are the purpose of doping control, and so we should not look at catching people as much as deterring them.  Catching cheats is only part of it.

So to those who are saying that this current USADA-Armstrong case indicates the futility of the sport, I would ask that they recognize the bigger picture, and the history of doping control.  We cannot simply give up because we are not yet 100% perfect.  The biological passport is not perfect, and anyone who claims it is wrong.  But it's a step by step process, that has to catch up on years of cheating.  There was a time where the dopers were so far ahead that it was a mismatch.  The cynics may say it still is, but improved sophistication has narrowed the gap, and that has to keep the momentum going.

The short summary in response to that question is this: "Let's legalize doping, make it a free for all, and see what happens".  I don't want that, I don't know that many do, and so therefore, doping control has a crucial place as a deterrent, to protect the rights of those who do not wish to dope.

3.  "If Lance doped, it doesn't matter - everyone else was doping too, so it was a level playing field"

This is another common defence, and it leads to all kinds of bizarre justifications of Armstrong's success and why he should be left alone.  It's also frustratingly wrong, for three reasons.

First, remember that doping was illegal, which means that even though everyone may have been doing it, they were doing it with the pressure of a legal system on them.  That means that some will have been brazen enough to try more than others.  You are not seeing a level playing field because not every athlete is willing to risk as much given that there are penalties for cheating.  And while the testing may have been grossly inadequate, as I explained above, it still forced athletes to take risks and spend more money to get away with doping.  Therefore, the results of the race were strongly influenced by who was most successful at doing the illegal thing, who wanted to take the most risk, and who had the best systems to help them get away with the illegal action.  That in turn is a function of money and power, but nowhere in this does being the best cyclist factor in.  And yes, the playing field is never even, but when money, power and an appetite for illegal behavior affect results more than physiology and training, there's a problem.

Secondly, there is no doubt at all that drugs affect people differently.  You and I may take two aspirin for a headache.  Mine gets worse, you fall asleep 30 minutes later.  Individual differences mean that you cannot assume, even if everyone dopes the same (which they don't - see previous point), that the race is equal.

And third, it's irrelevant anyway.  I'm baffled by this pseudo-justification of Armstrong's doping because other guys were doping too.  They should be viewed as parallel cases, that have cross-threads linking them (they're all in the same race, for example), but how does Ullrich's doping make Armstrong's or Basso's any less wrong?  Surely the moral compass that is the foundation of all sport requires that everyone obey the rules that they have accepted in the first place?

If every single investment banker on Wall Street was dishonest and committing fraud, does that mean that none are in the wrong?  Are Madoff and Stanford less guilty because fraud is widespread?  If a student cheats on an exam to get into University, is that condoned as long as he's not the only one cheating?

Related to this is the idea that Armstrong's titles should be left alone because those who he beat have also been convicted of doping.  As this graphic illustrates, the list of dopers in the Top 10 of the Tour de France is long, and if Armstrong is not the champion, who is?  Ullrich, Zulle, Basso, Vinokourov, Rumsas are names on the podium with Armstrong.  It would be laughable to take Armstrong's titles away and award them to a known doper.

But this is not a reason to do something.  Perhaps the best action is to either leave the winner of those Tours blank, with the statement "No official winner due to doping controversies", or keep the names of the winners with a giant asterisk that acknowledges their place as champions of what was actually just a giant pharmacological experiment.

To defend Armstrong on this basis is symptomatic of the mindset that pushed cycling into this situation in the first place - cheating was condoned on the basis that it was a "necessary evil", "just to keep up".  And believe me, I'm sympathetic to the plight of cyclists who face this decision.  David Millar faced it.  Jonathan Vaughters faced it, and both have written of the conflict they faced.  Not everyone gives in.  I dare say I'm grateful I didn't have to make such a decision, because I don't know that I would've resisted.

That confession out the way, my point is that we know others doped too.  Many have been caught.  To allow an athlete to get away with it for that reason is just not good enough.  If there is a rule, then it must be enforced as many times as is necessary.

4.  It's 13 years too late, why does it matter now?

It matters now for a few reasons.  In fact, it's absolutely crucial now.

First, remember that this was never solely a case against Lance Armstrong.  Yes, he's the biggest name in the case, the media spotlight falls squarely on him, but there were other defendants in what was actually a "conspiracy to dope case".  Johan Bruyneel is the next biggest name, but so too, we care about the doctors, like Michele Ferrari, who oversaw the doping conspiracy.  Armstrong may have left the sport, at least as a competitor, but others are still there as doctors, managers, and if cycling is to move beyond its past, those people need to be removed from it.

Secondly, if you adopt the view that says "it's been 7 years, move on", then you are effectively saying to the current generation that "as long as you can get away with it for long enough, you can have it forever".  And I appreciate that there is a statute of limitations, and it does seem ridiculous at some point to go back.  But given the anti-doping landscape, even from a scientific perspective, if you know that drugs are used today that will only be detectable in ten years, fifteen years, you should recognize that such limitations should not apply.

Is it not a bit ridiculous to change the winner of a sport 12 years after the fact?  Yes it is, but that's still better than never knowing, and never understanding who the true champion is.  Valerie Adams was recently awarded the Olympic gold in the women's shot put after Nadzeya Ostapchuk failed a drug test.  Adams was denied her gold medal ceremony.  The woman in fourth was denied a ceremony at all.  But today, they both know that they are the rightful gold and bronze medalists, respectively.  Would you rather have a silver medal with a ceremony, or a gold medal even though your ceremony was denied?  I believe that a hard line on doping (which is fraud, after all) should see that dopers are told "If you dope, then it doesn't matter how long it takes us to figure it out, when we do, you will be sanctioned".

Take a rider in 2012.  If that cyclist knows with certainty that his samples will be stored for years, and if knows that his victories today will be questioned tomorrow based not only on new tests, but on "non-analytical positives" and the accounts of those who know his illegal actions and secrets, I'd like to think it's a pretty effective deterrent.  For all the negative attitudes in the sport, and the bizarre dismissal of anti-doping authorities' attempts to clean up the sport, those within cycling have to change their behavior when they know that cheating today will be punished, even if "tomorrow" is years away.

A no-compromise attitude to doping is exactly the reason USADA launched the case, and did exactly what they were mandated to do.  Aside from the fact that they were pursuing many people still active in the sport, they also represent an honest effort to clean up the sport.

And, on that note, the reaction from within cycling is very worrying.  This is the best article I've seen written on it.  It's a little difficult to read at first, because of the deliberate use of what I'll call "pirate spelling", but just give it a read and try not to let the spelling affect you (it will grow on your).  It makes the point that those in cycling are arguing that Armstrong has little to do with the sport now, and that it should be left alone.  That's not true - Armstrong is still involved, and his legacy pervades the sport, so it must be addressed.  Turning blind eyes is, to repeat, what put us here to begin with.  Sometimes you have to burn something right down to rebuild it.  Another good piece is written by Gerard Vroomen, who also points out the current nature of those so called "ancient history" actions, and calls for an opinion, any opinion.

Such a sad reaction, given that this was cycling's latest great chance to say "We condemn dopers, and if Armstrong doped, then this is a great day for cycling".  Go further - many of those in the sport KNOW that Armstrong doped, this is the ideal chance to say so, to add to the "image" of a sport that wants to clean itself up.

Yet, that opportunity was missed.  We get deafening silence and "no comments", and I struggle to see what might keep a genuinely clean sport from celebrating the punishment of its greatest fraud.  It is truly bizarre, and for all the hope that I have in the better testing, the media pressure, the sponsor pressure to clean up the sport, this kind of continued silence, the ongoing omerta, makes me very despondent.

And don't even mention the UCI, whose reaction to the USADA case has been nothing short of embarrassing.  Whatever happens next, whether it is the slow emergence of the evidence in the USADA case (which I do want to see more of), or the arbitration of Bruyneel, I hope that more information emerges on how the UCI might have been complicit in the Armstrong era.  Their bizarre, muddled response betrayed an organization at sea, and maybe their involvement in this will be exposed, making that the best possible result of the investigation.

Regardless, I don't see the issue going away.  It may be over for Armstrong according to his statement, but with the possibility that SCA and the Sunday Times are looking at legal action, and the slow trickle of new information, I'm sure the mountain of testimonies will only grow.

Once again, that either means you're going to have an even bigger conspiracy against Armstrong to blame, or you'll have more proof than ever that it was, to quote Betsy Andreu, perhaps one of the very first whistleblowers in this case, "this wasarguably the biggest fraud in the history of sport. Bernie Madoff would be proud. Maybe even jealous"

And, cue opinions! (and the "stick to science" bat!)

Ross

The 2012 Atherosclerosis egg study: Plaque decreased as LDL increased with consumption of 2.3 eggs per week or more

A new study by David Spence and colleagues, published online in July 2012 in the journal Atherosclerosis (), has been gaining increasing media attention (e.g., ). The article is titled: “Egg yolk consumption and carotid plaque”. As the title implies, the study focuses on egg yolk consumption and its association with carotid artery plaque buildup.

The study argues that “regular consumption of egg yolk should be avoided by persons at risk of cardiovascular disease”. It hints at egg yolks being unhealthy in general, possibly even more so than cigarettes. Solid critiques have already been posted on blogs by Mark Sisson, Chris Masterjohn, and Zoe Harcombe (, , ), among others.

These critiques present valid arguments for why the key findings of the study cannot be accepted, especially the finding that eggs are more dangerous to one’s health than cigarettes. This post is a bit different. It uses the data reported in the study to show that it (the data) suggests that egg consumption is actually health-promoting.

I used the numbers in Table 2 of the article to conduct a test that is rarely if ever conducted in health studies – a moderating effect test. I left out the “egg-yolk years” variable used by the authors, and focused on weekly egg consumption (see Chris’s critique). My analysis, using WarpPLS (), had to be done only visually, because using values from Table 2 meant that I had access only to data on a few variables organized in quintiles. That is, my analysis here using aggregate data is an N=5 analysis; a small sample indeed. The full-text article is not available publicly; Zoe was kind enough to include the data from Table 2 in her critique post.

Below is the model that I used for the moderating effect test. It allowed me to look into the effect that the variable EggsWk (number of eggs consumed per week) had on the association between LDL (LDL cholesterol) and Plaque (carotid plaque). This type of effect, namely a moderating effect, is confusing to many people, because it is essentially the effect that a variable has on the effect of another variable on a third. Still, being confusing does not mean being less important. I should note that this type of effect is similar to a type of conditional association tested via Bayesian statistics – if one eats more eggs, what is the association between having a high LDL cholesterol and plaque buildup?

You can see what is happening visually on the graph below. The plot on the left side is for low weekly egg consumption. In it, the association between LDL cholesterol and plaque is positive – eating fewer eggs, plaque and LDL increase together. The plot on the right side is for high weekly egg consumption. In this second plot, the association between LDL cholesterol and plaque is negative – eating more eggs, plaque decreases as LDL increases. And what is the turning point? It is about 2.3 eggs per week.

So the “evil” particle, the LDL, is playing tricks with us; but thankfully the wonderful eggs come to the rescue, right? Well, it looks a bit like it, but maybe other foods would have a similar effect. In part because of the moderating effect discussed above, the multivariate association between LDL cholesterol and plaque was overall negative. This multivariate association was estimated controlling for the moderating effect of weekly egg consumption. You can see this on the plot below.

The highest amount of plaque is at the far left of the plot. It is associated with the lowest LDL cholesterol quintile. (So much for eggs causing plaque via LDL cholesterol eh!?) What is happening here? Maybe egg consumption above a certain level shifts the size of the LDL particles from small to large, making the potentially atherogenic ones harmless. (Saturated fat consumption, in the context of a nutritious diet in lean individuals, seems to have a similar effect.) Maybe eggs contain nutrients that promote overall health, leading LDL particles to "behave" and do what they are supposed to do. Maybe it is a combination of these and other effects.

Ancestral Health Symposium 2012: Evolutionarily sound diets and lifestyles may revolutionize health care

The Ancestral Health Symposium 2012 was very interesting on many levels. Aaron Blaisdell and the team of volunteers really did a superb job at organizing the Symposium. Boston is a great city with an excellent public transportation system, something that is always great for meetings, and a great choice for the Symposium. Needless to say, so was Harvard. Even though the program was packed there were plenty of opportunities to meet and talk with several people during the breaks.

We had our panel “New Technologies and New Opportunities”, which Paul Jaminet moderated. The panelists were Chris Keller, Chris Kresser, Dan Pardi, and myself. The first photo below, by Bobby Gill, shows Chris Keller speaking; I am on the far left looking at the screen. The second photo, by Beth Mazur, shows all the panelists. The third photo, also by Bobby Gill, shows a group of us talking to Stephan Guyenet after his presentation.

I talked a bit toward the end of the panel about the importance of taking nonlinearity into consideration in analyses of health data, but ended up being remembered later for saying that “men are women with a few design flaws”. I said that to highlight the strong protective effect of being female in terms of health, which was clear from the model I was discussing.

There is a good evolutionary reason for the protective effect of being female. Evolution is a population phenomenon. Genes do not evolve; neither do individuals. Populations evolve through the spread or disappearance of genotypes. A healthy population with 99 men and 1 woman will probably disappear quickly, and so will its gene pool. A healthy population with 99 women and 1 man will probably thrive, even with the drag of inbreeding depression. Under harsh environmental conditions, the rate of female-to-male births goes up, in some cases quite a lot.

I was able to talk to, or at least meet briefly face-to-face with, many of the people that I have interacted with online on this blog and other blogs. Just to name a few: Miki Ben-Dor, Aaron Blaisdell, Emily Deans, Andreas Eenfeldt, Glenn Ellmers, Benjamin Gebhard, Stephan Guyenet, Dallas Hartwig, Melissa Hartwig, Paul Jaminet, Chris Keller, Chris Kresser, Mathieu Lalonde, Robert Lustig, Chris Masterjohn, Beth Mazur, Denise Minger, Jimmy Moore, Katherine Morrison, Richard Nikoley, Dan Pardi, Kamal Patel, David Pendergrass, Mark Sisson, Mary Beth Smrtic, J. Stanton, Carlos Andres Toro, and Grayson Wheatley.

It would have been nice to have Peter (from Hyperlipid) there, as I think a lot of the attendants are fans. I attended Jamie Scott’s very interesting talk, but ended up not being able to chat with him. This is a pity because we share some common experiences – e.g., I lived in New Zealand for a few years. I did have the opportunity to talk at some length with J. Stanton, who is an inspiration. It was also great to exchange some ideas with my panelists, Miki Ben-Dor, Emily Deans, Stephan Guyenet, Chris Masterjohn, Kamal Patel, and David Pendergrass. I wish I had more time to talk with Denise Minger, who is clearly a very nice person in addition to being very smart. Talking about a smart person, it was also nice chatting a bit with Richard Nikoley; a successful entrepreneur who is in the enviable position of doing what he feels like doing.

I could not help but notice a tendency among some participants (perhaps many, judging from online threads) to pay a lot of attention to how other people looked in a very judgmental way. That person is too fat, his/her face is too red, she/he looks too old etc. So was this supposed to be the Ancestral Health Pageant 2012? There is nothing wrong with looking good. But many people adopt an evolution-inspired lifestyle because they are quite unhealthy to start with. And this includes some of the presenters. It takes time to change one’s health, relapses occur, and no one is getting younger. Moreover, some of the presenters’ ideas and advice may have much more dramatic positive effects on people other than themselves, because of their own pre-existing conditions. The ideas and advice are still solid.

A message that I think this Symposium conveyed particularly well was that an evolutionarily sound diet and lifestyle can truly revolutionize our health care system. Robb Wolf’s talk in particular, based on his recent experience in Nevada with law enforcement officers, made this point very effectively. The title of the talk is “How Markets and Evolution Can Revolutionize Medicine”. One very interesting idea he put forth was that establishments like gyms could expand the range of support activities they offer their customers, officially becoming the beginning of the health care chain. There are already health insurance plans that offer premium reductions for those who go to gyms. Being part of the health care chain would be different and a significant step forward - diet and exercise are powerful "drugs".

One thing that caught me a bit off-guard was Robb’s strong advocacy of the use of a drug, namely metformin (a.k.a. glucophage); even preventively in some special cases, such as with sleep-deprived law enforcement officers. I have to listen to that talk again when it is up online, to make sure that I understood it correctly. It seems to me that changing the nature of shift work among law enforcement officers, at least partially, may be a better target; current practices appear not only to impair the officers’ health but also their effectiveness in law enforcement activities. Besides, I think we need to better understand the nature and functions of cortisol, which is viewed by many as a hormone that exists only to do us harm.

Sleep deprivation is associated with an elevation in cortisol production. Elevated cortisol levels lead over time to visceral fat accumulation, which promotes systemic inflammation. Systemic inflammation is possibly the root cause of most diseases of civilization. But cortisol itself has powerful anti-inflammatory properties, and visceral fat is generally easy to mobilize through intense exercise – probably one of the key reasons why we have visceral fat. I think we need to understand this situation a bit better before thinking about preventive uses of metformin, which nevertheless is a drug that seems to do wonders in the treatment of type 2 diabetes.

Beth Mazur was kind enough to put up a post with links to various Ancestral Health Symposium 2012 summary posts, as well as pictures. Paul Jaminet has a post with an insightful discussion of our panel at the Symposium.

London 2012: Live Men's marathon analysis

London 2012: Men's marathon live analysis and splits

Gold for Uganda, as Kiprotich steals the show

Stephen Kiprotich of Uganda is your 2012 Olympic marathon champion.  In a stunning result, the unheralded 23-year old from Uganda surprised the fancied Kenyans to win the Olympic track and field programme's final medal.

His reward is a gold medal, to be handed out at the closing ceremony.  You'd be forgiven for not knowing much about the new Olympic champion, because his credentials coming in said nothing of what he was about to do.


Kiprotich, at only 23, is relatively new to the marathon, but his last three performances told little of his potential.  He has a 2:07:20 PB in the marathon, run in Enschede in 2011.  He ran a 2:07:50 in Tokyo this year, and was 13th in the IAAF World Championships marathon last year (2:12:57).

His track credentials are nothing special (27:58), but that is likely because he's never run seriously for track times.  His half marathon PB is "only" 62:52, also nothing to scare the sub-60 min Kenyans into thinking he would be the man to beat them today.

That he was, however, and he pulled off a huge surprise to win Uganda's first gold.


An intriguing race

The race was intriguing throughout, set up by early Kenyan aggression, but it became a race of attrition.

Consider for example that the halfway split was 1:03:15 for early leader Kipsang, with the chase group (including Kiprotich) 16 seconds back.  Their split was therefore 1:03:31, and the winning time was 2:08:01.  That means that Kiprotich ran a 1:04:30 second half, a minute slower than the first and he was closest to running an even pace of the early leaders (I'll check later to see if a strong finish was closer, but I doubt it.  Keflezighi, for example, was a very strong finisher, but he went through halfway in 1:04:30 and finished in 2:11:06 (1:06:36))

The rest collapsed under the pressure, and in the conditions. Abel Kirui, a proven championship runner, was second, 26 seconds behind, and Kipsang finished third, a full 1:36 down.  Other big favourites were totally blown away.  The Ethiopian challenge is perhaps best exemplified by Abshero, who was in the chase group until after halfway, but then got dropped and went backwards at an incredible rate.  Having gone through 25km in 1:15:05 with the chase group, he went through 35km in 1:49:22, which included a 5km segment of 19:03, before he stepped off the road.  The other Ethiopians also didn't not finish, with Sifar actually losing contact as early as 10km before he stopped.

A terrible day for Ethiopia, then, and a disappointing day for Kenya, despite getting two men onto the podium.  After what has been a disappointing Games for them, they'd have been hoping that their most dominant event, the Marathon, would at least provide some desired gold, to defend the title the late Sammy Wanjiru won in Beijing.

It was not to be, though they raced much more aggressively than we've seen so far in the distance races in Beijing.

The race as it unfolded

There were echoes of Wanjiru in the race today, because Kipsang took the race lead as early as 10km, with an aggressive 14;12 split from 10km to 15km, and opened a lead that got up to 16 seconds.

The chasers eventually reeled him in, but not before huge damage had been done to most of the field. By the time the race re-formed at the front, around the 27km, there were only three men left - Kipsang, Kirui and Kiprotich. The Ethiopian challenge had been seen off, as first Sifer, then Fekele and then Abshero were blown away.

The three were left to sort out the medals, and there was a moment, around 35k, where it seemed that the Kenyans had broken the resistance of their East African neighbour.  Kiprotich dropped off, not substantially, just by about 10m, but it seemed that it was the first sign of his impending slow down, because it co-incided with the slowest interval of the race (15:48).  However, he was well in control, caught up at 37km, and then went straight past.

At that moment, the Kenyan response simply did not come.  The pre-race favorites, having dealt with the Ethiopian threat, now found themselves trailing a man who they must surely have discounted as a serious challenger.

But Kiprotich was the man on the day, and his final 5km were unchallenged.  He is not the first man from Uganda to win Olympic Gold, but this is surely their greatest triumph.

The entire race, as it unfolded, is in the post below, where I made real-time comments.  Feel free to relive the final event of the London Games' athletic programme

Live splits

Welcome to the London Olympic marathon.  The race is underway, and over the next two hours, I'll post the 5km interval times and some thoughts on the race as it unfolds.

5km - 15:23, projecting 2:09:49
10km - 30:46, so another 15:23 split for the last 5km
15km - 44:58, the last 5km in 14:12. The chase pack is 13 secs back (45:11)
20km - 59:57. Last 5km in 14:59.  Chase pack is 14 seconds behind
Halfway - 1:03:15, with 16 seconds to the chase (1:03:31)
25km - 1:14:58, a 15:01 for the last 5km, and the gap is now 7 seconds
30km - 1:30:15, all together. Kipsang did 15:17, the rest 15:10 for last 5km
35km - 1:46:03. Last 5km in 15:48, the slowest of the race.
40km - 2:01:12. Last 5km in 15:09, and Kiprotich makes the gold-winning move
Finish - 2:08:01.  Last 2.2km in 6:49 (3:06/km)

Finish

Uganda have gold in the men's marathon, courtesy 23-year old Stephen Kiprotich.  The Ugandan made the race's decisive move at 37km, and ran the final 5km on his own, with the favored Kenyans in his wake.  His winning time was 2:08:01, quite a lot slower than the halfway split suggested, but it was a race of attrition and Kiprotich was its best survivor!

His final 2.2km were not spectacular (6:49, 3:06/km), but they didn't need to be - he had a substantial lead and managed to increase it to 26 seconds on the line.

Second went to Abel Kirui, proven championship runner, in 2:08:27, with bronze to early aggressor Kipsang in 2:09:37.

Incredible result, huge surprise, and Kenya finish the Games with only two golds, having expected so many more.

40km

Stephen Kiprotich is now 19 seconds ahead of Kirui, with Kipsang a further 32 seconds back.  With only 2km to go, that's the gold medal for Uganda, barring an absolute disaster.

His last 5km were run in 15:09, a significant jump in pace from the preceding interval, run in 15:48.  Kiprotich looks good enough to extend that lead, let alone defend it, and Uganda are on their way to their most celebrated Olympic medal ever.

38km

Stephen Kiprotich now was a lead that looks to be decisive, it's around 100m, and he shows no signs of coming back.  Amazing story.  Here's some information on the Ugandan:

He has a 2:07:20 PB in the marathon, run in Enschede in 2011.  He ran a 2:07:50 in Tokyo this year, and was 13th in the IAAF World Championships marathon last year (2:12:57).

His track credentials are nothing special (27:58), but that is likely because he's never run seriously for track times.  His half marathon PB is "only" 62:52, also nothing to scare the sub-60 min Kenyans into thinking he would be the man to beat them today.

He is only 23 years old, so new to the marathon, but this is just a remarkable run, one which has certainly taken me by surprise.  This will be one of the big surprises of the Games, if not Olympic marathon in recent memory, though this is a race that does tend to produce surprises.

37km

Kiprotich has come back.  Incredible!  Having dropped off by 10 m at 35km, he has come back and made all those early projections look foolish.  He moved past the Kenyans at the 37km mark and soon opened a big, big lead.

Kirui is trying to give chase, but the response is slow.  If Kiprotich can hold this, he'll win gold for Uganda, and what an amazing story that will be.  Did anyone pick this?

36km

As I typed that, it was Kipsang who moved clear again.  It's not a surge as much as a subtle increase in pace, but it was enough to gap Kirui, who is now running 5m back.  The elastic has not broken, but was certainly stretched.  They've now come back together.

35km

The last five kilometers have been covered in 15:48, the slowest of the race by a considerable amount.  Yet despite that, the pace seems to have dropped Kiprotich of Uganda, and so Kirui and Kipsang, who have been talking to one another for most of the last five kilometers, seem to have sorted out gold and silver for Kenya.

Unless Kiprotich can claw his way back, that's how the final 7km will play out.  The pace is not likely to stay at that 15:48 level, it should get faster, so it will be a difficult ask.  Kipsang looks very fluid and may be the favourite now.

30km

The "catch" came at about 27km, and Kipsang's "lonely vigil" suddenly became a threesome, as he was joined by Stephen Kiprotich and Abel Kirui.  The pace then held firm, which is not a surprise.  It's not as though Kipsang was cracking to allow the chase to catch him - his pace has held constant since the 15km mark, and they continue to run around 15km per 5km.

The medals will certainly come from these three, Abshero has continued to drop back, and is 46 seconds behind.  dos Santos of Brazil is another five seconds back and will probably take fourth place soon.  If anything happens to the front three, he's the likeliest other medal winner, but the three in front seem to have this race controlled and will probably fight out gold, silver and bronze.

If people think Kipsang has made his move in this race, they're wrong - he'll be a factor in the final 5km, I'm sure of it, because what he did is not much different to anyone else, and so he's in a good position right now.

Kirui looked spectacular in London when he surged, and then he exploded and finished terribly.  His turn of speed is perhaps the big danger for gold now.  I'd make him the favorite of the three.

The last 5km, from 25km to 30km, were run in 15:17 (for Kipsang, the chase is a little faster - 15:10).

The projected time, meanwhile, is 2:06:56, which means the Olympic record may still be on, but is slipping away right now.  If there are surges, they'll go quicker.

26km

Abshero is gone!  So Ethiopia has lost its final medal contender before the 30km mark, and that is a surprise.  The chase is now Kirui and Kiprotich, with Kipsang ahead.  As expected, it's East Africa to the fore, but possibly, without Ethiopia.

Abshero's chance here relies on the pace dropping once Kipsang is caught, which looks like within the next few minutes.  A lull in the pace may allow him back, as we saw in the women's race where Arkhipova looked off the back a few times, but came back and fought for bronze.

25km

Kipsang is still holding the lead, but the urgency in the chase group has begun to erode it.  It's now 7 seconds, and the last 5km were run in 15:01 by Kipsang, which means the chase group have run a 14:54.

What the chase has done is fragment, and it's now down to only three.  They are led by Stephen Kiprotich, who has been largely responsible for the increase in pace from behind.  The others are Abshero, the lone Ethiopian, and Abel Kirui.

23km

The chase group is now starting to split too.  Stephen Kiprotich took the group through Leadenhall market very aggressively, and the compact group was suddenly stretched.  This is the pressure of Kipsang now filtering its way back to the chase, who have presumably recognized that they need to respond to bring that gap of 16 seconds down.

If anything, the gap is growing.  Perhaps Kipsang has done what he did in London earlier this year, surging at the half marathon mark.  The next split will be interesting.

Halfway

Halfway has been reached in 1:03:15, with the chase group at 16 seconds down.  It's now a chase group of six, as Eritrea's Asmerom has also fallen off the pace.

The chase is now made of Feleke and Abshero of Ethiopia, Kirui of Kenya, Kiprotich of Uganda, dos Santos of Brazil and Mokoka of South Africa.  Although as I write that, dos Santos has begun to drop off the group and so it's down to five.

At the front, Kipsang stops to go back for his energy drink, which means he lost a second or two at the 22km water point.

20km

Kipsang has relented only slightly, running the last five kilometers in 14:59.

That has helped him defend his lead, which now stands at 14 seconds.  That chase group is now down to seven, with Emmanuel Mutai dropping off the back.  He was the reserve added to the team after the withdrawal of Moses Mosop.  Many felt that Geoffrey Mutai would have been a better pick. Hindsight is easy of course, but I suspect those calls now seem a little insightful.

Meanwhile, the stretch from 17 to 18km claimed two of the three Americans in the race.  First Ryan Hall stopped, holding his right hamstring, it seemed.  Then Abdirahman stopped, so only Keflezighi is left now.

15km

Wilson Kipsang, winner of the 2012 London marathon, has opened a lead of 13 seconds over a chase group of 8.  All the main protagonists are there with the exception of Dino Sefir, who fell out of the group at about 10km.  The chase thus comprises two Ethiopians (Abshero & Feleke), two Kenyans (Mutai and Kirui), an Eritrean (Asmerom), a South African (Mokoka), a Ugandan (Kiprotich) and a Brazilian (dos Santos).

The last 5km were run in 14:12, which explains that huge explosion in the race from 10km onwards.  The time now projects a 2:06:29, but don't expect the next 10km to be run at the same pace, of course.  The Olympic record of Wanjiru is probably still on, however.

Fascinating battle here, because the pressure has been applied by the race favourite.

The pressure has put paid to everyone else - Ryan Hall and Keflezighi are off the back, and they'll hope to run their own race for something in the range of 2:08, and hope that the early pace claims some victims.

12km

Kipsang has actually created a small gap, and we are only at 12km.  Amazing early aggression.  It was expected that Kenya would try to assert control on the race, but to do it this early is very surprising.  They took the lead shortly after 10km, once De Almeida had been caught, and the field split almost instantly.  Sefir and Ryan Hall were the first casualties, but now many have been dropped.

The front of the race has been trimmed to just over a handful, but Kipsang has pulled Abshero clear and there are gaps.  Kipsang is 10m clear of Abshero who is 5m clear of the chase group of maybe six.

Abshero has now fallen back into the pack, and there are now 7 men chasing the leader Kipsang, whose lead has grown to perhaps 7 or 8 seconds.

11km

In the battle of Ethiopia and Kenya, it's first blood Kenya, and that's because Ethiopia's Dino Sefir is off the back of the group.  And so is Ryan Hall.  That's very surprising, because we're only at 11km, and the pace is "only" 2:09:49, yet two of the pre-race favourites are already off the back.

At the front, Kenya have again assumed the lead, with Kipsang pressing the pace.  It certainly seems to have gotten faster, because the front group has been cut to about 12 men already.

10km

There is a breakaway leader, about 50m off the front of the main field.  It's Brazil's De Almeida, but the time for the main group is 30: . That's a 15:23 for the last 5km, identical to the first 5km.  So even paced as can be.

Remember back to the women's race - the pace was very steady for the first half, and then when it picked up, it didn't reach the same kinds of speeds we are used to seeing in the city marathons.  That's a function of the tight turns on the course, and the change in surfaces, which let some of the athletes to call it the hardest race they'd ever run.  That will be a significant factor in the second half of this race.

Right now, it's all rather sedate.

5km

The 5km mark is reached in 15:23, and the Africans are already showing at the front.  Maybe the Kenyans are borrowing from Beijing, where Wanjiru's aggression perhaps changed the way marathons are run.  They're at the front, but the group is big, because the pace is respectable, but not super fast.  Right now, it's projecting a 2:09:49.

Start and preview

The race has been billed as a clash between Kenya and Ethiopia.  2011 was of course Kenya's year - all  20 of the top times were run by Kenyans in an unparalleled show of dominance by one nation.  That included the winners of every single major city marathon, and the world record.

2012 has been more evenly matched - Ethiopia stole the Dubai marathon with a host of fast times, and then also won Rotterdam, and set this race up beautifully.  More on the protagonists as the race unfolds, but it seems that most are forecasting this as a Kenya vs Ethiopia showdown, with Abshero and Kipsang their likeliest champions.  The Americans, in the form of Hall and Keflezighi in particular, may disrupt the battle in the same what that Arkhiopova did in the women's race.

My initial thought is that Ethiopia should be favoured, because their athletes last raced in late January in Dubai, compared to the Kenyans who raced in April in London's city marathon.

For example, Ayele Absehero and Dino Sefer of Ethiopia have had 198 days since their last marathon, whereas Wilson Kipsang has had 112 days.  Those 86 days matter in a race this competitive.  (Thanks, by the way, to Wayne Do Rego for the numbers - I'll do a proper post with his analysis after the race!)

This, plus the fact that it has been a very poor Games for Kenya lead me to think that Ethiopia hold the cards here.  Kenya's athletes have, to me, seemed over-done and tactically poor.  They've been run out of medals in the women's 800m and men's 1500m and 10,000m races, and have seen their big favourites settle for minor medals.  Turning that around will be difficult.

We are coming up to five kilometers, however, in a big group, so let's get the projections going!

Ross

Women's 800m: Analysing Semenya & other insights

London 2012: Women's 800m perplexity, analyzing Semenya's race 

On Thursday night, David Rudisha led home the greatest 800m race we've ever seen - he pulled the field to a world record for every single finishing position, 7 personal bests and three national records.

Tonight, Mariya Savinova led home the women's 800m final, but it leaned more towards the curious and peculiar than the spectacular.  That is primarily because of the manner with which Caster Semenya, South Africa's flag bearer, ran to win the silver medal.  Savinova was, as usually, tactically superb, fast and timed her effort perfectly.  She won in 1:56.19 to add to last year's World title.  The real story, at least for me and all those discussing it on Twitter, was Semenya, and so let's talk about that a little.

If you saw the race, you'll know what I'm referring to - she dropped into 8th place by 300m, and stayed there for the next 300m.  At the bell, she was 1.38s behind the leader.  Down the back straight with 280m to go, when Pamela Jelimo made the race's first move, Semenya was perhaps 12m back, in last place, and not even close to responding, as you can see in the screenshot below.

With 200m to run, Semenya had moved into 7th, picking up a tiring Niyonsaba, but was still well off Jelimo, a pre-race favourite.  Meanwhile, Savinova had by now begun to make her move too.  This was the move that Semenya must have known would determine gold and silver, and in her semi-final, she'd shown the ability to respond to those tactics.  Tonight, in the final, she was distant from the action.

With 140m to go, Savinova was making the race's decisive move, but still Semenya had not responded - she was by now up to 6th place, however, picking off the fading Jepkosgei.  I kept waiting for a move, because she'd shown in her semi that she was not tactically unaware, but it just never came.

Savinova would go on to open a commanding lead, and with 50m to go, the race was over.  Only Poistogova and Jelimo went with her coming off the final bend, while Semenya was still in 6th.

Jelimo's legs imploded around 60m from the line and she went backwards.  By now, finally going forward was Semenya who would move incredibly rapidly through the field and close down everyone in front of her with the exception of Savinova.  Semenya ended with a season's best of 1:57.23, marginally faster than the 1:57.67 she ran to win her semi-final, but it was a race run in a totally different manner.

This led Sports Illustrated's Tim Layden to tweet the following immediately after the race - Semenya was "disengaged".  He's not accusing her of anything, but it's not difficult to see where the next step lies, and that's exactly what has happened since the race.

History repeating itself with Semenya - a common allegation

Unfortunately, this kind of speculation is becoming all too familiar for Caster Semenya.  Last year in Daegu, the race strategy was different, but the result was identical (Savinova-Semenya), and the speculation after the race was the same.  There, Semenya was attentive and ran near the front, before moving into the lead with 180m to go.  Savinova followed, but Semenya looked strong enough to win until the final 30m, where she suddenly slowed and Savinova swept by to win.  The forums were soon buzzing with allegations that Semenya had lost on purpose.

This year, the same has happened basically every single time Semenya has run in the European meetings.  At Diamond League meets, she was often seen languishing at the back, looking "disinterested" but running solid 1:59 to 2:00 times while her major rivals - Jelimo and Fantu Magiso in particular - were running 1:56 to 1:57.  People were accusing Semenya of running slowly on purpose, so that she avoids too much scrutiny, that she is 'scared' to win because of the intense allegation it may bring.

Semenya - evaluated differently because of her past

You see, Semenya is not "judged normally" in athletic circles, and that has everything to do with the sex verification controversy involving her after she exploded onto the world scene in Berlin.  Since being questioned, she spent nine months away from the track, before returning amid much secrecy and with slower times than before.  The speculation bandwagon kicked off, and when she was winning, she was accused of cheating, when she was losing, she was accused of not trying.

She was, and remains, in an impossible situation, because every result and every move is looked at through a filter.  It is a filter that colors her performances according to male vs female, cheating vs throwing it on purpose, and when she produces racing performances like tonight, that filter is rather vivid.

The prevailing "allegation", ever since her return in 2010, is that she is running slowly to stay under the radar, avoiding winning and the questions this would undoubtedly bring.  If that's the plan, then it sure isn't working, because what we saw today (and in Daegu) draws more allegation than a "typical race", in my opinion.  But more on that shortly.

Possibility # 1: Semenya may simply not have the speed

The current speculation (and before accusing people of ignorance and stoking the fires of controversy, just have a look at the forums and Twitter to see the reaction to Semenya's race) is thus fueled by Semenya's history.  Within the ten minutes of the race finishing, I got 34 tweets asking whether she'd "thrown it", or "tried to avoid winning gold".  One person demanded a full investigation into why she was jogging. Another said that he'd never seen someone look so "aerobic" at the finish of an 800m race.

Of course, this may all be a totally misplaced accusation.  Maybe Semenya just didn't have the physiological capacity to run the race tactics people are accustomed to seeing.  Maybe she was just not good enough to go with that early pace, and to respond to those surgest.  Perhaps there is nothing to her performance other than that she runs a more even pace than her rivals.

A comparison between her semi-final and this race is interesting in this regard.  In that semi, she went through 400m in just over 58 seconds, 600m in about 1:28 and then closed the final 200m in 29.5s, looking like she had something in reserve.

Tonight, she went through 400m in 57.69s, then through 600m in about 1:27.1, and then closed in a touch over 30 seconds.  My point is, her performance in the final was slightly faster at every stage than the semi, until she closed slower over the final 200m.  To finish SLOWER than she did in the semi implies that she has little reserve and that she is closer to the limit than she looks.  She wasn't actually that fast over the final 200m, it's just that everyone else was very slow!

It's possible that she doesn't have the speed (or psychological capacity and confidence) to be able to run a 56-second first lap, or a 28 second 200m split, regardless of when in the race it happens.  If you look at Semenya, her running style is very laboured - the commentator described her as "lumbering" and that's about right.  She lacks a knee lift, and her heel-flick is also very limited, so it is possible that she lacks the ability to change pace much, and so I have to put forward the possibility that she may not actually have the capacity to respond to surges, and maybe a 28-29-29-30 race breakdown is as fast as Semenya can go.

The rest of the race, incidentally, went 27s to 200m, then 29s to 400 (56.3 at the bell), and then 29.2s for the next 200m, and closed, for the most part, in 32s.  So, you have Semenya with a 28-29-29-30 (57.69s & 59.54s), running against everyone else with a 27-29-29-32 (Jelimo, for example, was 56.66s & 60.93s).  In this regard, Semenya actually didn't finish the race fast, as much as everyone else finished it really slowly.  The one exception of course was Savinova, who closed the final 200m in just under 30 seconds (57.29s and 58.90s halves).

The rest, Jelimo in particular, were terribly slow over the final 200m.

Not that I'm trying to say that Semenya ran a good race - you simply cannot allow the moves of your two main rivals to go completely unnoticed, but I am saying that it's possible that Semenya does not have the ability to run the race any other way - she may well be at her limit and unable to run those 28s 200m splits mid-race.  The fact that she looks so easy doing it is neither here nor there.  Go on YouTube and look up her race at the World Junior Championships in Poland in 2008.  She finished second last in her semi-final, and looked the same as she did today.  That was long before any controversy, or any need to avoid scrutiny.  Semenya is just a very 'casual', disengaged runner.

The other speculation - let the guesswork begin

That said, there is still much to be debated about the case.  Once you have dealt with that possibility that her apparent "throwing it" and "sandbagging" tactic may just be that she can't match the speed of the first 600m in the race, then you get on to dealing with the other speculation.

I'm going to simplify my answer as much as I can, and then try to go into detail to explain some thoughts and insights.  The simple answer is "I don't know what happened.  Your guess is as good as mine.  And I understand the questions, but there are no answers, we just do not know".

Right, now, having dealt with that, let's discuss the current discussion!  For this, a brief history lesson on her case, which most of you will know, so jump ahead a section.  If you're new, read on.

The history and secrecy fuels speculation

Since day one, Caster Semenya has presented an insoluble problem for the sport.  The biggest problem, aside from the resolving the obvious debate about her performance, is the secrecy which has surrounded her story since the case first broke.  I suspect there is no satisfactory answer to this story, at any level.  Even going back to 2009, when debate first began, it was impossible to say what should be done.  Did she have an intersex condition?  That part would be easy to find out - the science and biology is not that complicated.  In 2010, I wrote a scientific review paper on the subject with geneticist Prof Malcolm Collins, summarizing the history, the physiology and performance implications of sex verification in sport, for those interested.

But, does the condition provide an advantage?  And if it does, should that be the basis for excluding her from competition - it's a natural advantage, after all?  That's a whole lot trickier, and it's an ethical, moral and social debate for which I think there is no consensus.  Each will have their own opinion.

However, the debate still exists, and rather than allowing radical speculation, I hope it is helpful to consider the story in a thoughtful manner, hence my thoughts below.  

A point on context - being in South Africa, I'm exposed to more news and speculation about Semenya than perhaps most, and so my views are kind of informed by years of conversation with people, reports, information from people connected to the case etc.  But I want to stress upfront that just like the rest of the world, with maybe a few exceptions, we are all guessing here.

If you were to right the summary version of this history, it would go as follows:  Q:  "What happened to Semenya in 2009/2010 to allow her to compete?"   A: "We don't know".  Next question: "How do we explain the huge variability in Semenya's performances in 2011 and 2012, where she goes from the back of the field in a Diamond league event and struggling to break 1:59 to being utterly dominant in the major championships?"  Answer: "We don't know.

The short version is that we just don't know anything about anything, and so we speculate as much as possible, maybe in an informed way, weighing the possibilities, but very few people know the truth, and they are not talking.  Should we speculate at all?  Probably not.  We should, in theory, "trust" the IAAF, who were involved in the process from Day 1, and say that if they have cleared her to run, then we should just accept that.  And officially, that would be the correct position to take.

Significant improvements in a short time ask the questions

However, the reality is that just as we SHOULD question performances that we regard as suspect, I think it's naive and 'deliberately ignorant' to ignore the questions that arise from Semenya's case.  Here, it is her performance that asks the questions, not the history of her case.  That history tells us that the IAAF worked with Semenya, cleared her, and she should be treated as any other athlete.  The case is closed, it was resolved and is in the past.  The problem is that the performances re-open that door, and because nothing is known, it leads to speculation and accusation.  The root cause is the secrecy around the case.

The first problem arises out of the sudden improvements Semenya makes at championships.  Or put differently, it's how well off the pace she is in European races, before she arrives to championships looking close to unbeatable (by all but Savinova, it turns out).  This year, Semenya had been "stuck" in the 1:59 to 2:01 range since April, and had run half a dozen races where she was unable to get faster.  Then suddenly, she runs 1:57 looking rather easy, and it is going to cause questions.  

Remember, this is exactly the same thing that was done for Ye Shiwen of China and for Makhloufi of Algeria - they improved significantly in a short time, it was deemed "peculiar" and the speculation of doping began.  Semenya's improvement is similar, if not larger in magnitude over a shorter period, and so the same logic leads to questions.  The difference is that once asked for Semenya, the question will not have us zoning in on doping as has happened for Ye Shiwen or Makhloufi, it will return to the gender controversy, and we will unfairly make accusations about gender, all over again.  Is it right?  No.  It is understandable?  Yes.

The secrecy - the root cause of speculation

And the reason it's going to happen is because of the failure in management of the message, not only by the IAAF, but by Semenya's camp.  To explain, the two key points, which I think are more important than the performance:

1)  The case should never have been leaked in the first place.  Obviously.  That was a mistake for which Semenya will "pay" for the rest of her career, and it has exposed her to the most invasive scrutiny I think anyone can imagine.  I think it is remarkable that she has continued to compete, and how she has stood up under that kind of pressure.  Most would not cope at all, let alone resume their athletic careers.  She's done that, and she was rightly given the honor of being our flag bearer, and the courage and character she shows to run at all is amazing.

2)  Having said this, once the story broke, and the athletics world knew there was a question, then in my opinion, it had to be followed through to its conclusion and made known what the outcome was.  And simply clearing her to compete many months later is not the same as saying that the matter was concluded.  People are notoriously mistrusting of sports governing bodies, and they're even more mistrusting of athletes.  There are too many dishonest athletes to believe what we see with no small dose of skepticism.  So, when Semenya resumed her career in 2010, I felt that it would be important for her to make some kind of announcement to say that the matter had been resolved, and how.  Perhaps this should have been done by the authorities.  But it should have been done by someone, to at least control the message.

But what happened instead was that a veil of secrecy fell over the story, and all of a sudden, nobody was saying anything.  The secrecy grew and grew, until she began running again.  But she was not dominating - having destroyed the best in the world in 2009, she was now 4 to 5 seconds slower, looking sluggish and losing races.  Her subsequent performances was gone up and down wildly and it has been absolutely impossible to predict what is coming next.

Everyone can see this unusual situation, they know that they are seeing 'abnormal' variations in performance, but nobody can say why.  And so they speculate.  The problem is that when you fail to tell people the truth, they tend to make up the truth.  And the made up truth is almost always worse than the reality.  And so now, we sit in a situation where people will either allege that:

1. Nothing happened in the first case, and she is still a man (this is ignorant, because that clearly was never true to begin with - the biology of sex is far more complex than this), or 
2. She got treated but it's not working, or
3. She got treatment but is able to manipulate it to optimize her performance whenever she wants to - it slows her down in a predictable way, so she can use treatment as she pleases to find those improvements, or
4. She is deliberately losing races to avoid suspicion, as is happening after the Olympic Games

To repeat, we simply do not know what transpired, and therefore we cannot know whether any of the above options is true.  If I were forced to give my thoughts, I'd say that option 1) is impossible - we know something happened.  Reading between the lines, based on the time it took, I'd fairly confidently speculate that she received medical treatment, and probably still is.  Thus, the next three options are possible.  I don't know what treatment might involve, or whether she can manipulate it.  I suspect that it would be possible, just as any doping is possible.  But I'd be surprised if it was this simple.  

I simply cannot see option 4) being true - why would you try to avoid detection by going from last to first?  The contrast in performance is just so enormous that people will notice it EVEN MORE!  If you are going to fly under the radar, then your approach would be to look as normal as possible.  Going from nowhere to dominating is not "normal", and so if they are deliberately slowing down to lose races, then it's a strategy that is not only bizarre, but also foolish.  I just can't see it as being possible.

Unfair, but understandable suspicion and speculation

There is also a fifth option, namely that nothing is wrong, and that she's just getting her training right when it matters, and that her "bizarre" race strategy is nothing more than typical even-paced running, as I explained above.  But people won't make that allegation.  Why?  Because they don't know anything, and they are driven by mistrust.  Therefore, they will settle on one of the four options that 'feeds' their mistrust.  

So they'll go with option 3 or 4 as most likely, and Semenya will face accusations that she is either cheating by manipulating her "advantage" through medical means, or she has been deceiving everyone for months leading up to the Games, and continues to NOT win on purpose. 

Both are unfair, and, I suspect, incorrect.  As I explained earlier, I think it's plausible that Semenya is running as fast as she can, and that 1:57.2 is the "limit" for her, in a more or less even race.  Maybe with a little more confidence, she'll be able to get her fast lap down into the low-57s range and break 1:57 for the race this year, but it's not impossible that a 57.69s and 59.94s is Semenya at her limit.  The sudden improvement in performance is more difficult to explain, but like any other debate based on performance, we must recognize that performance alone is not sufficient to reach a verdict!

It's also not difficult to see why people think differently - they don't know any better.  And that's because of the secrecy around the whole thing, and it forces people to speculate.  We shouldn't.  We should accept the control of the IAAF and trust that they have identified and managed a potential problem. In an ideal world, that would happen.  But I think it's naive to expect that of people.  Until people know, they'll make it up and everyone loses in that equation.  

If Semenya is to win people over, as she should - look at her interview after winning silver in Daegu, and tell me that this is not an athlete who is warm and genuine and worthy of positive sentiment - then the secrecy must be lifted.  Easier said than done, of course.  But what the future holds with these wild variations in performance, given the history of Semenya in the sport, is just not something to look forward to.

The marathon to close it down

The marathon tomorrow - join me at 11am London time for live splits and comments as it unfolds.  It's Kenya's last chance to rescue what has been a miserable Games, highlighted (in a big way, of course) by Rudisha's golden world record and Kemboi's gold.  They'll want gold in the marathon, but Ethiopia will be a stern test.

My money is on the Ethiopians - I think the Kenyans, who raced more recently, will struggle on the twisty course, and Kenya will regret not picking Geoffrey Mutai.

But join me tomorrow to see what transpires!

Ross

London 2012: Spectacular 800m

Rudisha lights up London with a world record. And more 800m thoughts

The London Olympics saw its first World Record on the track tonight, and not surprisingly, it came from David Rudisha, who ran from the front, gun to tape, to become the first man in history to break 1:41.  His time was 1:40.91, and he pulled the other seven men to the fastest, most spectacular 800m race that we have ever seen.  More on that below, along with some other thoughts on his race.

1)  Rudisha's race strategy

The question ahead of the race, for many, was not whether Rudisha would win, but what the margin of victory would be.  There has been no greater favorite in an athletic event at these Games than Rudisha. His form this year has been spectacular, he has won paced and unpaced races, he has run from the front and looked peerless.

The biggest question was perhaps around the tactics he would employ in the Olympic final.  Front-running is the logical choice to most, because when you're about two seconds faster than the next fastest guy, you would want the pace to be beyond them.  Why allow a final 200m sprint, where a different type of physiological attribute can determine success, when you have such dominance over the whole race?  The problem in a final 200m sprint is that when the spread of runners is relatively narrow, the first 600m does enough "damage" physiologically that the person who is running with the greatest "reserve" is not guaranteed to win.  The ability to close in say 25 seconds is not a function of that reserve, which means that a 1:44 man can beat a 1:41 if they both get to that position together.  In Rudisha's case, I suspect he is so superior that he'd win anyway, but it becomes a far more open race than it might otherwise be.

So front-running was the option, and Rudisha was wise enough that he actually started to do this in his European races leading up to London.  We have seen many times how athletes become so accustomed to paced races on the circuit that they seem all at sea during a tactical race - the Kenyans in the 1500m looked this way earlier this week.  But Rudisha seemed ready, he had familiarized himself with the front-running pattern in a few races, including the Kenyan trials, and so everyone expected this approach.  Once he led after the break at 100m, it was clear that he was going for it.  It is easier said than done, however, largely for psychological reasons - putting yourself out as a pace-maker is never easy in an Olympic final.

It takes confidence and conviction, and Rudisha was good enough to do it.  He led the field through the bell in 49.28s, and then began to open the gap with 300m to go.  That's not surprising, because everyone in the race was running above themselves just to reach the 500m mark at that pace.

At 600m, which was passed in 1:14:30 (25.02s for the 200m split). Rudisha was clear, and on course for the record.

He slowed in the final 200m, covering it in 26.61s, but it was enough to break 1:41, and claim Kenya's second gold.  The manner of the win, plus the bronze for Timothy Kitum, will be some consolation for the nation that expected more than they have won to date.

2) The race was spectacularly deep and fast

Rudisha was chased home by a host of sensational performances.  In fact, every single position in the race set a world-place position.  Second went to young Nijel Amos of Botswana (a surprise) in 1:41.73, fittingly equalling Seb Coe's old world record), and then a further three men went under 1:43.  They included the two Americans, Duane Solomon and Nick Symmonds, who would surely not have believed that they'd break 1:43 and not even win a medal.  Even in last place, Andrew Osagie ran 1:43.77.  Only Abubaker Kaki of Sudan, who eventually finished 7th, did not run a personal best.  Three national records were also set.

It was just a spectacularly fast and deep race, and while everyone who was in it might feel stunned at their times without medals, they were part of something truly remarkable.  I suspect many would be wondering if a step up to 1500m might not make more sense, however - Rudisha is only 24!

3) The pacing - a pattern in the 800m

One final point about the race, and it relates to a peculiar pacing pattern that you see when you look at the best ever performances in the 800m event.   Part of my PhD looked at the pacing strategies used in all the world records from 800m to 10,000m, and there's a pretty constant pattern in long-distance races.  The 800m race is different, however, and is paced differently from other middle- or long-distance races.

However, I'm going to hold back on this discussion, for now, because David Epstein of Sports Illustrated will probably introduce it in his piece on the race.  I'll provide you that link, as soon as it comes out, and then I'll add the detail once his article is up.

So that's for tomorrow, a discussion on pacing in the 800m event.

There is much more to be said about 800m running, but on the women's side.  The semi-finals took place tonight, and they introduced us to a controversy that is just waiting to erupt when the finals happen on Saturday.  Semenya is back, having battled all year for half a second here and there in the range of 1:59-2:00, she tonight won her semi, looking incredibly easy and in a time of 1:57.  That's a 2 to 3% improvement, after a long season of many reasons 'stuck' at 1:59.

Cue yet another debate on "unrealistic" performance improvements, like those we saw with Ye Shiwen and Makhloufi.  Except this time, it's not doping that will be discussed.

But that may be for another day, keep your eyes open for the debate.

Until tomorrow, which brings some relay finals, and the women's 5000m, the second part of a Tirunesh Dibaba double, perhaps?

Ross

London Day 10: 400m success, gene pools and training, and a DQ debate

London Day 10: 400m success for the islands, and disqualification (doping?) debate

Quick thoughts on last night's action:

1) The 400m events were a Caribbean parade. As were the 100m sprints.  Is it the genes? Or the training?

Last night saw both 400m events - the flat and the hurdles, and both were dominated by Caribben islands.  Add this to the 100m sprints for both men and women (where Jamaica won four of the six medals - gold and silver for men, gold and bronze for women), and it's clear where the epicenter of world sprinting now lies.

Here's the finish results for the men's 400m, for example:

The same was true of the 400m hurdles final later, won, amazingly, by Felix Sanchez eight years after his Athens triumph.  That race had a strong American presence (three men), whereas the 400m race was the first time in the history of the Games that the USA did not have at least one runner in the final.


Then here's a graph (source: Sporting Intelligence) showing gold medals won per million people (on the y-axis) and per billion GDP dollars (x-axis) back in 2008, in Beijing.  Zimbabwe did well GDP-wise (thanks to Coventry, who won all four of their medals, but Jamaica and the Bahamas feature well in both categories.  Grenada now have their first gold, the Dominican Republic won two last night, with Sanchez's gold complemented by Santos' silver.  These Caribbean islands made up nine out of the 16 finalists in the two events, winning five of the six medals.  The same debate can of course be had for distance events, with a focus on Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda as your main protagonists.

Of course, this invites the common debate about training vs talent.  Are these tiny nations, like the Bahamas and Jamaica, so successful because of a deep gene pool, which is somehow related to an accelerated "survival of the fittest" concept, as was discussed in a recent documentary featuring Michael Johnson?  Or is their success a function of their excellent school sports systems, their "culture" for sprinting, their investment into the sport and excellent training programmes?  David Epstein of Sports Illustrated described some of these factors in his report on Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce after her 100m gold.

I won't go into the whole discussion of training vs talent, and the 10,000 hour concept of deliberate practice.  Rather, I'll refer you to these two articles I wrote a while back, for those interested in more and who feel like a longer read:

1. A review of the 10,000 hour concept: Is it valid, even for non-sport activities?
2. Some of the evidence for genes, and why they matter

Unnecessary polarization

But for now, I will say that the polarization of this debate is unnecessary and wrong.  Why does it need to be one or the other, rather than both?  Why do we insist on discounting the role of genes?  I am sure that most of you reading this already agree, and probably wonder what the fuss is about.  Well, in popular media, in particular, the likes of Malcolm Gladwell and Matthew Syed have propagated the idea that genes don't matter, that it's all in the training, as I described in those previous posts linked to above.

So no, it's not just the genes.  And no, it's also not just the training.  We know that genetic factors influence performance, both in terms of the starting physiology, the adaptations that occur in response to training, and in all likelihood the ultimate ceiling that can be reached.  There's evidence from Bouchard et al, for example, that 21 distinct single nucleotide polymorphisms (or SNPS) affect how our VO2max changes in response to endurance training - if you have 19 or or more of the "right" SNPs, you respond well, whereas if you have 9 or fewer, you are a non-responder.  If you want to be an elite athlete, it's a pretty sure bet that you need to be on the high responder side of that spectrum.  That's just in terms of VO2max, and we know that endurance performance is made up of far more than just VO2max.

The point is that genetic factors clearly affect performance.  More in some sports than others - the "physiologically limited" sports like rowing, running, cycling etc may be more affected than say table tennis, archery, or even sports where a greater range of physiology can succeed (think football, and Messi vs Drogba).  But genes matter, and for speed and endurance, dismissing them is to dismiss scientific evidence

What has NOT been found is a single gene that explains it.  There was a prospect, when a specific variant of the ACTN3 gene was found to be associated with sprint/power ability in a group of European athletes.  That same gene is not associated with sprinting ability in other populations, but that's because of interaction effects and genetic differences between populations that I won't claim to be able to explain to you in sufficient detail.  But this failure to find the gene is often cited as evidence that there is no gene.  I'd argue that the scientific approach to the question is wrong, for two reasons.  First, it's far more complex than just being one gene - if 21 SNPs explain training response of VO2max, then you won't explain something so complex using a single gene approach.

And secondly, the question should not be whether there is a specific gene that some groups have that others do not - this is why geneticists and anthropologists get worked up and annoyed, because this kind of question leads to generalizations that are almost certainly wrong.  If you try to argue that Grenada, or Jamaica, or people of West African descent have a gene that makes them faster, then have a problem when someone NOT of that descent wins.

(As an aside, this discussion also opens a can of political correctness that I've never truly understood - I'd have thought it would be complement to be identified as "superior" in some task.  Obviously, if you're accused of being inferior, it's different, but that's not what's happening when we celebrate the world's fastest sprinters and distance runners.  I guess for every winner there is a loser, but it's funny that the "winners" are the ones who usually pull out the PC-stick! And it certainly doesn't diminish the achievement - it's not to say it's 'easier', because the training is still absolutely vital.  Anyway...)

For example, when Galen Rupp wins a medal in the men's 10000m race, you have to explain why he did, when clearly he isn't of east African descent.  If your position of "it's all in the genes" was based on heritage, it now looks weak.  But it was, in my opinion, the wrong position to adopt to begin with.  It shouldn't be about this population or that population, this descent or that descent.  I would say there is still a chance that some genes that affect performance ARE linked to descent, but for now, that's not even needed to explain why genes matter.

It should be whether the prevalence or frequency of the "favorable genes" is higher in some groups than others.  When you try to find a gene or SNP that you think Jamaicans may have that no other people do, you doom yourself to a negative finding, because that gene might be present everywhere.  You're asking the wrong question.  You should rather be looking to find whether that gene might exist in more people in certain groups, and thus whether the probability of producing a champion athlete there is greater.  This scientific question has yet to be answered, but may hold the key.

If this were the case, then the end result would an enormous difference in final performance because of the additive effect of having more to choose from, plus the system applied to choose it.  Does South Africa possess athletes who could challenge the Kenyans or Jamaicans?  Yes, of course.  But I'd hypothesize that we have a lower probability to begin with, and we don't maximize what we do have.

Based on this, I'd conclude that it is the application of the training system and culture to the right population, where the prevalence of whatever genetic factors determine success, that enables such dominance by a small population group.

That's my conclusion, for today.  The rest is the explanation, but here is a paper I co-authored with a geneticist, Prof Malcolm Collins, recently, where we explain how BOTH genetic and training factors are crucial for success.  Bottom line is that while Gladwell and Syed's fairy-tale that you can achieve anything if you practice sounds good, the reality is far more complex.

2) Track gets its own version of Ye Shiwen in Taoufik Makhloufi

Last week, the action in the pool produced a side debate on the Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen.  The 16-year old won the 400 and 200m Individual Medley, and because of her age, her world records and the fact that she is Chinese, was deemed suspicious as a possible doper.

That story has no resolution, but now athletics has its own case, in the form of Taoufik Makhloufi of Algeria.  He won his 1500m semi-final, beating defending champion Asbel Kiprop and a host of other athletes, in pretty amazing fashion.  His last lap was 52.5s, with a final 800m of around 1:49.  He also improved substantially in the last year, about five seconds for 3:30.8 this year.  And he comes from a nation that is regarded by most within the sport as being 'suspect'.  In the same way that China is deemed suspect in swimming (and track, for that matter), North African nations have the same stigma.

Apparently, commentator Steve Cram said "That's unusual to see the Algerian run this well. ... I'm not sure what I'm watching with Makhloufi there ...", and the forums on athletics sites kicked off with debate and accusation over the possibility that he was doping.

So once again, you have a debate where some will say it's an unfair generalization (which it probably is), but others will point to history and how we've been fooled before.  Learning lessons from history is often the basis for generalizations, but applying them correctly is a difficult concept!  And once again, as was the case for Ye, looking SOLELY at performance leads to all kinds of conclusions that ARE certainly not fair.  For example, it soon emerged that there have been a few performances where the final 800m have been quite a bit faster than Makhloufi's, and they've often been in faster races.  Big improvements are also not unusual

So judging someone as a doper based on performance is just not feasible.  It was the same for Ye.  Some would say "she's young", but others could easily point to other young swimmers who were not suspicious.  They'd say "she improved by 7 seconds in a year", and others can point to even bigger improvements in non-accused swimmers.  Ultimately, performance doesn't cut it.

The performance does however ask the question, and given the history, it's right.  It's unfortunate for the individual, but history means it's his turn in the spotlight.  The only way to answer those questions is through testing, comprehensive and long-term.  Then, if the athlete doesn't get caught and doesn't slow down, then we must accept it.  If they don't get caught and slow down, we have a hint of an answer.  And sometimes they get caught.  If the testing is done properly, then time will provide the answer.  Of course, the problem is that the testing is not trusted either, because we've learned that it's too easy to get away with doping and not get caught.  But the more the better, it's the best one can hope for.

3) Makhloufi finds himself in a second, unrelated controversy

Then amazingly, the same athlete whose performance was hotly debated, found himself in a second, totally unrelated controversy when he was first kicked out of the Games and then later re-instated, after he was found to have deliberately under-performed in the men's 800m heats.

You'll recall the badminton players who got expelled for deliberately trying to lose to set up more favorable draws in the quarter-finals.  You'll also recall that Japan's women were instructed not to beat South Africa to get a better draw, and you may remember that a British cyclist confessed to crashing on purpose to force a race restart in the men's pursuit (he later retracted the 'confession').

So this has been the Olympics of "slower, lower, weaker", in some respects.  In the case of Makhloufi, he lined up in the heats, the morning after his 1500m semifinal, and presumably wanted to save himself for the final.  So he jogged slowly for 200m, stepped off and was done.  In response, the IAAF expelled him from the Games.

It was a bizarre sequence of events. Three quick thoughts:

1. There's no consistency in the sanctioning of athletes for "not trying hard enough".  Some are expelled, others are not.  At least get the same method for all.  I realize they're subtly different, in the same way that an athlete who jogs in to qualify in fifth place in a 5,000m heat is different from one deliberately losing a heat like Makhloufi allegedly did.  Playing a weaker team to rest key players, or playing at 90% because you don't care to win a match, is different from deliberately manipulating the result to lose or draw, I'd argue. When you pre-determine the outcome, you're fixing the result, but the format of competitions and the rules sometimes facilitates this.
   
   
2. I can't believe his federation would make him run the 800m heats knowing that he is a realistic medal chance in the 1500m.  The final is a day later, he's already limped off after his 1500m heat (unless he was laying the groundwork for his excuse a day early, that is), and so why push him to run a race that compromises his chances?  I presume the athlete didn't want to run the race, and that the Algerian Federation refused his request to withdraw.  We had a similar case in the swimming, where Chad le Clos had actually qualified for the final of the 200m IM, but withdrew because he wanted to focus on the 100m butterfly event as a better medal chance.  That was not sanctioned (rightly), and seems the common sense approach.
   
   
3. Why does the Olympic programme not enable the 800m-1500m double by at least separating them?  Remember Coe and Ovett?  Their double attempts were a highlight of the Games.  Kelly Holmes won the same double in Athens.  Did those heats overlap with the finals of the other event?  They have done, in which case, I'll take this one back (no time to check, sorry!).  But it seems that it would be reasonable to enable the double with a schedule change.

In any event, he has now been re-instated for the 1500m final.  If he can produce the same 250m as he did in the semi-final, maybe that will provide more 'fodder' for debate on the forums, and another "Is he doped?" debate.

Should be interesting. That final is later this evening!

Ross