Blood doping and blood passports.

aurelio_-_banned

Does anyone on here have a definitive answer as to whether the rider passports scheme really can prevent doping?

We know that if a rider takes Epo (especially in the limited amounts used with volunteers in studies) the labs may well not be willing to declare that a test is conclusively positive, hence all those rumours about riders moving over to `micro dosing`.

Even more importantly to my mind, is there any validated, sensitive and reliable test for autologous blood doping as yet? OK, so a rider`s profile might show something was amiss if a rider used the old US-Postal technique of injecting riders with `800 ml of packed cells` on the rest days or before an important stage. Such doping would also tend to produce an anomalous red cell population (in terms of the age distribution of cells) due to the body`s red cell generation systems temporarily closing down in response to such an overload of red cells.

However... suppose a team instead injected it`s riders with just 100 ml of their own blood every day in order to combat the fall in the red cell population due to the rigours of riding a race like the Tour? Might not such doping even allow the body`s own red cell regeneration systems to work more or less as normal, so giving a normal looking cell age population whilst at the same time allowing a rider to benefit from blood doping, especially after a couple of weeks of such treatment?

How about micro-dosing with both blood and Epo, thereby ensuring that new cells are being generated so that the riders cell-age population looks normal? Can the `passports` scheme really detect such doping methods?

dulldave

Surely if they don't see a drop in red blood cells during a 3 week tour that will look suspicious?

aurelio_-_banned

dulldave wrote:

Surely if they don't see a drop in red blood cells during a 3 week tour that will look suspicious?

But suspicion is not proof. Thank`s to the likes of Landis even multiple positive dope tests using sophisticated testing techniques is not held to be proof of doping!

Anyhow, I would think that it is not beyond the abilities of the latest generation of doping doctors to engineer a slight fall in haemocrit levels over the course of a stage race. After all, it wasn`t long after the introduction of the UCI`s 50% haemocrit limit (or rather the introduction of the UCI`s licence to use Epo `as long as you don`t go mad lads`...) that teams were lining up at races with every member having a haemocrit level within a percentage point or so of the limit. For example, Indurain`s Banesto squad.

dulldave

What I'm saying is that if they see suspicious levels they will target you.

leguape

aurelio wrote:

Does anyone on here have a definitive answer as to whether the rider passports scheme really can prevent doping?

We know that if a rider takes Epo (especially in the limited amounts used with volunteers in studies) the labs may well not be willing to declare that a test is conclusively positive, hence all those rumours about riders moving over to `micro dosing`.

Even more importantly to my mind, is there any validated, sensitive and reliable test for autologous blood doping as yet? OK, so a rider`s profile might show something was amiss if a rider used the old US-Postal technique of injecting riders with `800 ml of packed cells` on the rest days or before an important stage. Such doping would also tend to produce an anomalous red cell population (in terms of the age distribution of cells) due to the body`s red cell generation systems temporarily closing down in response to such an overload of red cells.

However... suppose a team instead injected it`s riders with just 100 ml of their own blood every day in order to combat the fall in the red cell population due to the rigours of riding a race like the Tour? Might not such doping even allow the body`s own red cell regeneration systems to work more or less as normal, so giving a normal looking cell age population whilst at the same time allowing a rider to benefit from blood doping, especially after a couple of weeks of such treatment?

How about micro-dosing with both blood and Epo, thereby ensuring that new cells are being generated so that the riders cell-age population looks normal? Can the `passports` scheme really detect such doping methods?

Is anyone actually on the record as confirming this 800ml of packed cells story? Or are we still on an IM conversation that was disavowed pretty swiftly by one of the participants as being purely banter/gossip?

I can't buy that in 7 plus years not one journalist out of the several hundred following the tour could provide any concrete proof of it happening when something far more easily concealed such as extraordinary rendition and the existence of Echelon have both been proved rather more rapidly by journalists working largely alone.

cougie

Hmmm - I'm thinking its harder to cover up a great big plane landing all over the world than a small plastic bag and a hotel room ?

Kléber

Few investigative journalists cover cycling. Those that do such as Ressiot and Walsh have turned up plenty of stories and if Walsh has been sued for some statements, he hasn't for others and Ressiot is still waiting for a day in court but he's gone unchallenged.

Remember the cycling media are there to whip up interest in their copy, not to pose critical questions. Read Jeremy Whittle's autobiographical account "Bad Blood", he recounts how he spent most of his career penning hagiographies on the big names in cycling whilst knowing the real truth about the riders and it took a long time before he could admit it.

LangerDan

Aurelio - if you head across to the "cuttingedgemuscle" forum and do a search on "blood passport" you'll find a number of threads on how you can manipulate your levels to avoid suspicion. As long as your blood values don't fluctuate unexpectedly, you reduce your risk of increased attention and detection.

Be warned though, "cuttingedgemuscle" is a deeply unpleasant place. It would make you wonder why they bother testing at all.

cougie

Scary talk indeed. Although I'm sure the testers frequent there too - but is there anything that they can do with their interpretation of the results to make things trickier for the dopers ?

flattythehurdler

Cutting edge muscle serves as a constant reminder never to take sanity for granted, or at least presume that one's own version of sanity is similar to anyone else's. It is a quite remarkable forum given that for most people on there, sport is a pasttime rather than a profession.
It is a great read sometimes.

Jez mon

Vodafone broadband doesn't let me get onto cutting edge muscle

I sometimes think the only way to get the dopers is to enforce random police raids during races. BUT that's hardly good for the sports image, and what happens when they leave races and when genetic modification is introduced? Do we just electronically tag every rider or keep them under lock and key?

The days of being innocent until proven guilty seem to be gone, Lance was never proven guilty in court, yet it would be very surprising if he was clean.

leguape

Kléber wrote:

Few investigative journalists cover cycling. Those that do such as Ressiot and Walsh have turned up plenty of stories and if Walsh has been sued for some statements, he hasn't for others and Ressiot is still waiting for a day in court but he's gone unchallenged.

Remember the cycling media are there to whip up interest in their copy, not to pose critical questions. Read Jeremy Whittle's autobiographical account "Bad Blood", he recounts how he spent most of his career penning hagiographies on the big names in cycling whilst knowing the real truth about the riders and it took a long time before he could admit it.

I refuse to believe that we should accept the total abnegation of duty as journalists by the cycling media to investigate and report properly. Whittle, and Walsh for that matter, were quite happy making a living turning a blind eye until they decided they could get better money by turning gamekeeper, as many others have and do still do. Ressiot's work I'm not familiar with but I'm willing to accept that there are, as ever, honourable exceptions.

I'm tired of hearing "oh we knew all along" after the fact. The job of a journalist is NOT to "whip up interest in their copy", it is to report on what they see in front of them in a way which engages the interest of the reader and informs them to some degree of the events witnessed. Much as I'm no fan of Kimmage, he at least seems to have managed that to some degree. There's a clear difference between the two acts. Whipping up interest is what PRs do.

Kléber

Noble thoughts leguape but those penning copy for cycling magazines and websites are often writers, not journalists. The same goes for many British newspapers as they take articles from the same writers. They are PRs, the magazines are part hagiography, part advertising.

You might be tired of hearing Jeremy Whittle and others saying "I knew things but couldn't print them" but that's they way it goes. It's common. I too would like them to do their journalistic job but they don't.

You might add Stephane Mandard to the list of investigative journalists. But we can count them on one hand right now.

I've got an email from a Cycle Sport writer which says precisely that he's had to bite his tongue and pen soft articles because he'll be blacklisted and without access, he's no use to anyone. Similarly, I've got an email from a Cycling Weekly writer who openly admits that sales go up when a certain Texan resident appears on the cover and that there are clear commercial pressures, ie sales, to ensure that the myth is preserved. (Both emails are sent in confidence so I can't name them, please don't ask. Also, both emails are over a year old, so here's hoping the line has changed)

So that makes Pro Cycling (Whittle is editor), Cycle Sport and Cycling Weekly all saying similar things because it's not what the audience wants to hear. Like a priest telling his flock that there is no god, or Gerald Ratner saying his company sold "total crap", you can't undermine the product.

aurelio_-_banned

Kléber wrote:

I've got an email from a Cycle Sport writer which says precisely that he's had to bite his tongue and pen soft articles because he'll be blacklisted and without access, he's no use to anyone. Similarly, I've got an email from a Cycling Weekly writer who openly admits that sales go up when a certain Texan resident appears on the cover and that there are clear commercial pressures, ie sales, to ensure that the myth is preserved.

This is just the sort of hypocrisy that makes me want to throw up whenever I see that Cycling Weekly `I support drug free sport` guff...

wildmoustache

[quote="

I can't buy that in 7 plus years not one journalist out of the several hundred following the tour could provide any concrete proof of it happening when something far more easily concealed such as extraordinary rendition and the existence of Echelon have both been proved rather more rapidly by journalists working largely alone.[/quote]

I can't buy that you think extraordinary rendition is more easily concealed

wildmoustache

[quote="

I can't buy that in 7 plus years not one journalist out of the several hundred following the tour could provide any concrete proof of it happening when something far more easily concealed such as extraordinary rendition and the existence of Echelon have both been proved rather more rapidly by journalists working largely alone.[/quote]

I can't buy that you think extraordinary rendition is more easily concealed