Not sure that analogy holds up in cycling. Athletics is an individual sport where they race fairly infrequently and so there’s huge reliance on national bodies to control doping. Which does lead to an uneven playing field when there are countries like Kenya or Jamaica where national anti doping is poorly funded and/or not very independent, and those places are a long way away from world anti doping agencies so maybe hard to visit and/or the athletes get a heads up when the testers are in town.
The team setup in cycling and the number of days these guys race makes for a much more level playing field. Or at least it does once they’re pro and on the radar of the testers. And most of them live and train in Europe where national anti-doping bodies are well funded and fairly independent, so unannounced out of competition testing is much easier. USPS didn’t dominate because US has lax anti doping controls, everybody was doping at that point, USPS just doped better. UK also has a pretty strong anti-doping body and culture, and it’s still not at all clear that Sky were doing anything that other teams weren’t but just with more money. If there was a cycling equivalent of Kenya, where riders could disappear for long periods of training and be hard for testers to spring up unannounced, I’d say it would be South America.
“decoupling the effects of micro-dosing and altitude is difficult, made even harder by those altitude tents…You need to spend one month above 3,500m to increase red blood cells by five per cent,” Lundby explains…That’s much higher than the likes of Teide and Sierra Nevada. You can see how sleeping low at home but training high is a popular combination for clean riders. You can also see how it would act as a doping mask."
Honestly, Cav doesn’t seem suspect to me, the sprint field is reduced and his tactical knowledge is still impeccable. Plus that leadout, I reckon with that leadout me and my slow 900w peak power could win!
If I recall, he really hadn’t been the same since contracting Epstein-Barr Virus years ago, and he contracted it two times in like 8 months or something. From my understanding (not on of medical science) the effects of this can last for a long time after the primary symptoms have subsided. I always saw this as reason for his rapid decline, rather than him not having the ability anymore. Seems to me that he finally got over that illness and found his fitness again (must have taken ages to build back up after 12ish months of little to no training), and now he’s got the best lead out in the business towing him to the line? Sounds like a close to winning recipe to me. You could put practically any sprinter on Morkov’s wheel and they’d have a 90% chance to win that stage today imo.
Not that I would assume anyone here is an expert but my question is what would they be taking to make these performances?
It seems with the biological passport that a traditional increase of hematocrit/hemoglobin would be difficult to get away with as you would have to maintain it throughout the year.
As physiology goes, what mechanisms are out there that increase FTP and VO2max to the same rate EPO increases it?
FYI the gene-editing stuff is so far away especially with something so complicated like fitness it’s going to be a long time till we see that.
I wonder if it is related to the bottle DQS staff removed from Remco’s jersey when he had the accident…they call it a “Finish bottle”. His actions led one to believe they don’t want other people to know what is in it…NOT NECESSARILY BCS OF DOPING, but trade secret/competitive advantage.
To your point, no one here is likely a medicla expert as it pertains to enahnced substances…but as noted previously, no one developed EPO as a performance enhancement drug. Same with AICAR.
The cheats are always ahead of the enforcement…such is life.
I think they can still microdose with EPO based on the half life. Maybe they get tested after the stage and then they go dose up just enough so that they aren’t caught.
Other than Aderlass, we haven’t seen a police raid in a long long time.
No it’s not. Not at all. See my earlier post about two FDA approved medicines that already do that. Plus, you have at least two nations (Russia and China) that will very much push to develop and deploy the tech further for their athletes. Go watch “Icarus” it’s a downright amazing documentary on Russia’s shenanigans.
Can taking various drugs (steroids /epo/ sarms) still be detected after the people have stopped using them?
So if they did drugs during their training to boost their gains and then stopped, say for example 3 or 4 months before the TdF, would that mean when they were tested it showed no drugs?
Or do they stay in the persons body for a long time after - like when on TV cop shows they take someone’s hair and test it to see if they’ve taken drugs in the last month or so?
Do they automatically test the winners (yellow / green / polka dot jersey plus 2nd and 3rd podium places)?
I was selected to be one of 4 UCI anti-doping chaperone for a stage in the 2018 Tour of California. The UCI protocol back then had automatic testing for:
While gene therapy is a new way of addressing issues it is usually only for single allele-phenotype disease, meaning one gene one outcome. Something like riding you bike uphill fast will never be that simple. Gene therapy on a gene to say increase ATP regeneration or increase hemoglobin biosynthesis would have such broad effects it would be extremely dangerous.
Now if in a decade there are some Chinese runners breaking 2 hrs in the marathon or a Russian no one knows about winning TDF then I would be more skeptical but a two Slovenians aren’t doing these things.
Not if they know what they are doing. But the deeper issue is that the use of PED’s has long lasting beneficial effects. That’s why I don’t like when ppl give a pass to guys like Valverde or Caruso.
I agree, if someone had cracked gene editing of this scale now, I think they’d be using it for something bigger than a pretty unknown slovenian bike rider going to TdF in 2020.
But which peds have long lasting effects? And what effects? All I can think of is anabolic steroids. Once you build the muscle you just have to maintain it. I’d guess that EPO has no long lasting effects. HGH - not sure though one of the effects was every track star in the 1980s needing braces as an adult.
The funny notion to me is that guys like Valverde would be riding at the front today on just their peds from 15 years ago.
but my question is what would they be taking to make these performances?