Question: Does ASO really mean it?

donrhummy

ASO claims that they want all cheaters out of cycling and especially out of the TDF. So...why don't they test EVERYONE?

They could afford it but they can also require teams that want to race in the TDF to pay a fee to help cover the costs. If they tested every rider instead of random ones each day, not only would they catch more dopers but I'll bet fewer guys would even consider doping because they would no longer be able to hope that they'd be able to avoid the random 3-5 tests each day.

So, do you think ASO REALLY wants to get rid of all dopers? Would they be willing to spend more money (and thus make less of a profit) AND risk having 90-100% of riders test positive?

iainf72

donrhummy wrote:

They could afford it but they can also require teams that want to race in the TDF to pay a fee to help cover the costs. If they tested every rider instead of random ones each day,

Do you know that would cost more than €2m just to test for EPO. And that's without collecting samples.

And could labs cope with that kind of volume etc etc.

donrhummy

iainf72 wrote:

donrhummy wrote:

They could afford it but they can also require teams that want to race in the TDF to pay a fee to help cover the costs. If they tested every rider instead of random ones each day,

Do you know that would cost more than €2m just to test for EPO. And that's without collecting samples.

And could labs cope with that kind of volume etc etc.

Do you realize how much money ASO and France makes from the TDF? We're not talking just tens of millions, it's more than that. And the teams can cover some of the cost too. And yes, there are enough labs to cover all the testing as long as you don't have AFLD do 90% of it like they're doing now. It's completely doable.

Moomaloid

And the time it would take to perform this?

LangerDan

All ASO need to do is create the perception that the races are cleaner. Twelve months ago, positives on the Tour were treated as the final nail in pro-cyclings coffin. This year, positives on the Tour have been presented as life-saving surgery. ASO haven't had to spend millions on testing to achieve this - merely manage peoples expectations.

cougie

I think they're doing a pretty decent job of it really. They test randomly and they test the winners and the podium.

Would you bother paying 000's to dope to finish mid pack ?

Most dopers are gone I think, and they're targeting the unusual performances.

afx237vi

cougie wrote:

I think they're doing a pretty decent job of it really. They test randomly and they test the winners and the podium.

Would you bother paying 000's to dope to finish mid pack ?

Most dopers are gone I think, and they're targeting the unusual performances.

Isn't that exactly what Manuel Beltran and Moises Duenas were doing? Not everyone dopes to win, a lot (the majority?) of riders dope to get a contract for next year.

Kléber

No, Beltran and Duenas seem to have been taking a "secret" EPO, hoping to sail through the tests because they were using what has been an undetectable drug until now.

afx237vi

Yes, but they were still spending thousands of euros to finish mid-pack.

Targetting the phenomenal performances is all very good - and it might even work - but it's not going to be a magic solution to wiping out all doping. What have Beltran and Duenas ever done to catch anyone's attention? There are many more Beltrans than there are Riccos.

cougie

We dont know they were hoping to finish mid pack though ?

To them - they thought it was undetectable - they were probably hoping to score a stage win ?

donrhummy

afx237vi wrote:

Yes, but they were still spending thousands of euros to finish mid-pack.

Targetting the phenomenal performances is all very good - and it might even work - but it's not going to be a magic solution to wiping out all doping. What have Beltran and Duenas ever done to catch anyone's attention? There are many more Beltrans than there are Riccos.

Exactly. And remember a GC guy cannot win the tour without some HUGE help from domestiques, who work VERY hard. If they're all doping, yet never contest a stage or jersey, they could easily escape testing.

Kléber

Note they did test everyone: Beltran posted suspicious values in the pre-race doping control and so he was targetted. And busted.

In the past I've suggested a similar thing, to stop testing 3 a day and to test 30. But in fact it's much better to work intelligently, to catch riders by surprise.

aurelio_-_banned

donrhummy wrote:

Do you realize how much money ASO and France makes from the TDF? We're not talking just tens of millions, it's more than that. And the teams can cover some of the cost too. And yes, there are enough labs to cover all the testing as long as you don't have AFLD do 90% of it like they're doing now. It's completely doable.

Really?

`French journalist Pierre Ballester, in his book 'Storms over the Tour,' named the 2005 Tour turnover at 135 million euros (214 million dollars). He gave the profit at 27.6 million euros.`

Then the UCI uses a large proportion of these profits to subsidise events such as the Paris-Nice. Even McQuaid has said that the ASO only make a profit from the Tour...

donrhummy

Even assuming only 27.6 million euros profit (although I believe that to be a bit low), you don't think if they put in 3 million euros and the teams all put in a collective 3 million euros that they could cover tests for everyone? That would cover it and they'd still have a healthy 24.6 million euro profit.

Richrd2205

It's not just the lab cost, it's the staff & time involved in collecting the samples. I'd rather see the money going into longitudinal testing & informed testing.
This tour, both domestiques & team leaders have been caught. Given that you're suggesting increasing the cost by a huge margin, having massive queues outside doping controls, with the consequent messing up of recovery regimes & lots of unhappy riders, what exactly id the improvement?

claudb

Surely what has happened this year is that everybody HAS been tested - the initial Blood Tests. The subsequent tests have been targeted as a result of the Blood Tests. I think this has produced the most effective testing we've ever seen on the Tour. I really don't see the need to (urine) test everybody as they have all been BLOOD tested anyway. No-one can surely say this has not been the most successfull anti-doping exercise in the Tour (possibly in the whole of the sporting world) - and it must also be pretty cost-effective too !!!

Eurostar

Are ASO a touch hypocritical? Would they be bothering with cleaning up the sport if it hadn't been for Operation Puerto? I don't recall them doing an awful lot after the Festina affair. It seems to me that they left this mucky doping business to the French federation, who cleaned up French cycling a fair bit so that all the dirty foreign riders could dominate the Tour year after year.

Perhaps Prudhomme is sincere and we should be pointing the finger at LeBlanc for not lifting a finger during alll those years when the UCI was doing buggr'all.

Actually I think the sport would be as dirty as ever if it weren't for the Guardia Civil. I don't think Prudhomme gave a monkeys about being an anti-doping crusader until the big sponsors quit the sport last year.

So maybe the real anti-doping crusaders in all this are the Spanish legislators who decided to make doping a criminal offence. Who are they? And did they really care about cycling, or was it some other sport they were exercised about?

claudb

The French were the first to go down the legislative route. ASO are just being realistic.
They have a very profitable commercial event in the Tour, but it is much more than just that. It is a significant part of the French life and it has serious affect on tourism. I can not see how anyone can critiscise ASO motives because the Tour is so important to so many people, and they have a right for it to be as credible as humanly possible.

treize vents

aurelio wrote:

`French journalist Pierre Ballester, in his book 'Storms over the Tour,' named the 2005 Tour turnover at 135 million euros (214 million dollars). He gave the profit at 27.6 million euros.`

Then the UCI uses a large proportion of these profits to subsidise events such as the Paris-Nice. Even McQuaid has said that the ASO only make a profit from the Tour...

This is nonsense. ASO also own loads of other sporting events, check out their website. They make money on those too. Furthermore, during Tour time, I have read, but cannot cite the sources, that sales of L'Equipe triple. It is already the most sold daily in France, full stop. ASO is huge, it has 4,000 emplyees!

the reason they don't put more money into controls is partly the slow speed of lab analyses, and partly they don't want to cut into profits. I mean they are a business. If they can get teams to pay the costs, why not?

feersumendjinn

Spin is a wonderful thing.
Last year while the race was run under UCI all the dope positives were "nails in the coffin of the Tour"
This year the ASO & French federation are in charge & suddenly "all the positives show how much the ASO is doing to clean up cycling"

Not convinced.

RichN95.

If they tested everyone or even tested twenty or thirty each day the backlogs at the lab would be horrendous.

In that situation, we wouldn't have know about Landis until Christmas. As it is there's an eight day lag. Target testing is the way to go for the time being.

donrhummy

I found actual numbers for how much the tests cost! And it is COMPLETELY doable.

According to ProCycling (in the Contador article this month), Daamsgard's program for Astana has 800 blood and urine tests this year and costs 300,000 Euros. That's an average cost of 375 Euros a test. (And the tests are not only for EPO, steroids and other drugs but also for homologous blood doping and to create a profile)

So, if ASO tested every rider for 23 straight days, it'd cost a total of 1.6 million Euros. That's it! ( 375 * 189 * 23 = 1,630,125 euros)

Heck, even if you doubled that amount, you'd only be looking at 3 million Euros to test every rider, every day of the tour! Since there are 21 teams, ASO could ask each team to pay an entry fee of 75,000 Euros and that's be 1.6 million Euros right there!

ASO has no excuse that they can't afford to test EVERY rider every day of the tour.

iainf72

donrhummy wrote:

ASO has no excuse that they can't afford to test EVERY rider every day of the tour.

That's the testing cost. Then having people to chaperone the riders to make sure they don't put some Persil on their hands, gathering the samples for all the riders will be time consuming, storage and shipping and then the volume of tests to perform.

How long does an EPO test take?

I think there approach has been very good. I'm down with Damsgaard though - Test the top 20.

LangerDan

donrhummy wrote:

I found actual numbers for how much the tests cost! And it is COMPLETELY doable.

According to ProCycling (in the Contador article this month), Daamsgard's program for Astana has 800 blood and urine tests this year and costs 300,000 Euros. That's an average cost of 375 Euros a test. (And the tests are not only for EPO, steroids and other drugs but also for homologous blood doping and to create a profile)

So, if ASO tested every rider for 23 straight days, it'd cost a total of 1.6 million Euros. That's it! ( 375 * 189 * 23 = 1,630,125 euros)

Heck, even if you doubled that amount, you'd only be looking at 3 million Euros to test every rider, every day of the tour! Since there are 21 teams, ASO could ask each team to pay an entry fee of 75,000 Euros and that's be 1.6 million Euros right there!

ASO has no excuse that they can't afford to test EVERY rider every day of the tour.

DR, I'm afraid your quotes are a bit out. The majority of the CSC / Astana / Garmin - type tests are relatively cheap because they are not "punative" tests to determine the presence and concentration of certain banned substances. Instead they look at the variations of certain blood characteristics over long periods of time - an unexpected variation may be an indicator of misbehaviour but won't tell you what the rider actually took. Many of the parameters they look at can be measured quite simply - I think the trick lies in being able to interpret the trends.

The analytical tests used for HGH, EPO, CERA etc. are much more stringent as they are used as the basis for sanctions - fines, bans etc and therefore have to be much more rigorous. The attached link shows that the costs of the WADA EPO test is between €400 and €600 for that test alone. Factor in the other tests and the management of the testing programme and the costs rise rapidly. I would be surprised if the full suite of tests would cost much less than €2000 per rider per day for the labs alone - close on €8 million on lab fees for a 3 week Tour.

http://www.maiiadiagnostics.com/researc ... g_test.htm

donrhummy

LangerDan wrote:

donrhummy wrote:

I found actual numbers for how much the tests cost! And it is COMPLETELY doable.

According to ProCycling (in the Contador article this month), Daamsgard's program for Astana has 800 blood and urine tests this year and costs 300,000 Euros. That's an average cost of 375 Euros a test. (And the tests are not only for EPO, steroids and other drugs but also for homologous blood doping and to create a profile)

So, if ASO tested every rider for 23 straight days, it'd cost a total of 1.6 million Euros. That's it! ( 375 * 189 * 23 = 1,630,125 euros)

Heck, even if you doubled that amount, you'd only be looking at 3 million Euros to test every rider, every day of the tour! Since there are 21 teams, ASO could ask each team to pay an entry fee of 75,000 Euros and that's be 1.6 million Euros right there!

ASO has no excuse that they can't afford to test EVERY rider every day of the tour.

DR, I'm afraid your quotes are a bit out. The majority of the CSC / Astana / Garmin - type tests are relatively cheap because they are not "punative" tests to determine the presence and concentration of certain banned substances. Instead they look at the variations of certain blood characteristics over long periods of time - an unexpected variation may be an indicator of misbehaviour but won't tell you what the rider actually took. Many of the parameters they look at can be measured quite simply - I think the trick lies in being able to interpret the trends.

The analytical tests used for HGH, EPO, CERA etc. are much more stringent as they are used as the basis for sanctions - fines, bans etc and therefore have to be much more rigorous. The attached link shows that the costs of the WADA EPO test is between €400 and €600 for that test alone. Factor in the other tests and the management of the testing programme and the costs rise rapidly. I would be surprised if the full suite of tests would cost much less than €2000 per rider per day for the labs alone - close on €8 million on lab fees for a 3 week Tour.

http://www.maiiadiagnostics.com/researc ... g_test.htm

I'm sure that prices are diff at every lab and that definitely they could be more expensive but ProCycling's report states that he tests for HGH and EPO in addition to other drugs, blood doping AND making a profile out of it. My guess is, the numbers you're seeing are the equivalent of MSRP (suggested retail price) and when you "buy in bulk" you get a cheaper price. Like I said, even if you double the price it's still not very expensive and unless ProCycling has their info wrong, the tests by Daamsgard are testing what you're suggesting.

Jez mon

Surely, blood test every rider each rest day.

Then mark the suspicious values and target test.

Testing 180 riders at the end of every stage is 180 cups of pee, thats a huge logistical operation labling them correctly, making sure there's no contamination and getting them to the correct desination quickly. Riders also have to be monitored when they give the sample, so how many monitors are you going to have to hire, or are you going to have one massive queue?

A better way would be to ensure greater out of competition testing, or to ensure only teams such as Garmin are allowed to race.