How they dope today

[72gmc]

Originally Posted by ripvanrando

The way UCI monitors (trending off baseline) is easily beaten by cheats.....interesting article, I thought the regime would have been much tighter.

It's almost as if they want to appear anti-doping, but they are not!

[ripvanrando]

Originally Posted by 72gmc

It's almost as if they want to appear anti-doping, but they are not!

My thoughts, too.

Get your baseline at 50% or whatever the limit is but do it when at lower plasma levels. As fitness and plasma levels increase and therefore crit levels drop, titrate up the RBC with whatever method works but do it to stay within the trend lines.


I thought they were checking for plasticiser residuals in the blood and EPO.

I suspect all riders are in the 48-50% range. I wonder what riders would have been back before epo came on the scene in 1990 ish.

[benb]

Originally Posted by 72gmc

It's almost as if they want to appear anti-doping, but they are not!

Doping brings all the Euros (and I'm not talking citizens) to the UCI HQ.

Doping sells ads & clicks & impressions for the press.

Doping brings out all kinds of jingoistic defense if the athlete/team is from your country and WWE level hatred if the athlete/team is from a different nation.

It's good business. More drama is good business.

[benb]

Originally Posted by ripvanrando

I suspect all riders are in the 48-50% range. I wonder what riders would have been back before epo came on the scene in 1990 ish.

Interestingly even the Red Cross, Mayo Clinic, etc.. put the upper end of the normal range at 48-50% for Men.

Maybe that's factoring in some patients being dehydrated or something when blood is drawn but if that's really the normal high end of the range it actually would make a lot of sense for the top level of any endurance sport to have self selected athletes right at the top of the range.

I can't believe I've been reading about EPO all these years and never looked at the medical ranges.

But it's also well known whatever you start a hard multi-week race with your HCT will drop through the race, and a blood transfusion will keep it high through the end of the race.

I haven't had a blood panel in 7 years. I was a 42% last time, based on the date I was probably not in good shape.

[jimoots]

Originally Posted by benb

This is a great point but who is we?

I have a great time watching slower cleaner races. I'm pretty sure a lot of the amateur races I have watched actually were clean.

I am not sure the final average speed is more important than just "good racing".

Some racing is exciting and some isn't, and super human doped average speed doesn't automatically make it exciting.

But I think given what this sport is a European perspective is really really important, cause "we" (US fans) could all be OK with a cleaner race but there's something going on there that creates more pressure. Not saying US fans are not demanding doping, just that the international peloton probably doesn't care as much about US fans.

Yeah, I think what makes good racing is not the speed but simply a group of individuals of similar fitness levels.

At categorised / graded levels, this is easy to create - individuals are limited by the inputs of fitness (time, inclination, etc) and end up being filtered to the appropriate group.

But when you get to the top end, those fitness inputs no longer exist and you're dealing with both "money on the line" and a bunch of hyper competitive types who will try and eek out any advantage.

I don't know if doping exists at the pro ranks. Probably. Around where I live, amateur racers with no hope of ever being elite have been 'pinged' for doping infractions and persistent rumours about others. Like someone else in the thread said, if the amateurs are doing it... then surely it's going on at the upper echelons.

That said, do I really care? Not really.

I don't even know if I care if the people I am racing against personally, on some level I do care... but I mean, fundamentally I'm just doing it for fun and personal growth while they are putting their health on the line.

[flying]

Originally Posted by benb

I have a friend who was infected with Hepatitis C through a blood transfusion as a kid in the 1980s, they didn't figure it out for a long long time. He got real lucky it got caught when it did.

They started screening the blood supply for it in the early 1990s, I seem to recall we had to get tested for it when we went to college.

I just had to get tested again for one of the variants at my physical.. there's some kind of new screening effort.

As far as I know the pros that testified said it was always their own blood drawn at earlier rested times