50% threshold

grantus

From what i've read the 50% haemo threshold is a 'cheat's charter' and natural levels are no more than the low forties to high thirties.

Yet in Bradley Wiggins' book he says Rob Hayles was withdrawn from the 2008 world track champs because his level was 50.3%.

Wiggins also expressly states that he knows Hayles to be a clean rider and in other points of the book describes cheats as 'pondlife' and 'maggots'.

So if someone as staunchly anti-druggie as Wiggins can state he is absolutely certain Hayles didn't cheat then where does that place the argument that there is no such thing as a naturally occurring 50+% haemo level?

This means then that a clean rider was deprived of his chance in the Worlds. Does this also mean, therefore, that freakishly high blood values like this can sometimes occur and perhaps are what enable certain riders to rise above the rest without resorting to artificial means to boost their blood?

disgruntledgoat

Some people do have naturally freakish Haemo values, Cunego has an exemption from the UCI due to his. Ricco had one too, although one could speculate that he'd simply been doping since he came onto the testers radars.

The Rob Hayles thing was a real conundrum, he's never rode for GB since I don't think.

iainf72

50% is just a number based on nothing in particular.

Some people can be over. Not many but it does happen.

bikerZA

Surely the whole purpose behind the 50% thing is no longer needed because of the biological passport.. It was only used before there was a test for EPO, just to indicate there might be something wrong with the blood values.

grantus

So by logical extension it follows that someone with a naturally high blood count could give performances that would give rise to suspicions of blood boosting without them having actually done anything illegal?

shockedsoshocked

Funny how BC dropped him like the proverbial afterwards though.

Le Commentateur

Too many New Years honours at stake for the empire builders to take the chance, I reckon.

RichN95.

disgruntledgoat wrote:

The Rob Hayles thing was a real conundrum, he's never rode for GB since I don't think.

He has though. He rode in three rounds of the World Cup in the winter. He's 36 now, so his chances are going to be limited.

Bugly

funny how the HC levels for elite athletes pre EPO were high thirties then magically in the epo era high forties became the norm. (the cross country skiers were the first to exhibit this btw). The other strange thing with endurance athletes is that HC levels dont fall off as during a long tour as they have in the past.

The biological passport is really a crock for HC- riders that are using EPO or blood boosting from their junior days will show a high HC and the continued use of doping or blood boosting can go unchecked as long as it remains constistent.

Were all the riders clean this tour? possible but highly improbable.

SteppenHerring

According to Wikipedia (yeah, I know) the]normal level for men is about 46 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haematocrit.

I recall some fuss about the Columbian riders in the 80s/90s (e.g. Herrera) who claimed that training at altitude gave them crit levels high enough to hit the arbitrary 50% (Bogotoa is 2650m above sea level). It's pretty difficult to tell whether someone comes by a high level naturally or with a bit of chemical help.

grantus

Yes but the interesting point for me was that someone as outspoken against cheats as Wiggins publicly stated his faith in Rob Hayles.

Surely this then means it is really quite plausible for a 'genetic freak' to have such a high level naturally occur?

Take Armstrong for example who never looked like he was struggling when he blitzed the other contenders during the majority of his 7 wins. Is there a record of his levels from pre-99 to, say 2005?

If there is and there is a huge inexplicable jump in them then, fair enough, it's suspicious however if he always had a high level then could it not just be that he was naturally more gifted than the best of the rest?

This, combined with his total focus on the tour, could explain his dominance, no?

disgruntledgoat

Whilst I hate the reduction of every thread to an Armstrong slanging match a naturally high HCT count would not, on it's own explain away any accusation of cheating. With prolonged activity the count decreses as the red blood cells die off, witness Sylvain Chavanel's publicised count of 33 on the morning of the Alpe D'Huez TT in 2004.

If someone is bumping along at 48 for the whole tour, then that says their blood is manipulated just as much as if it was over 50. At this point I would like to note that I'm not party to any of Armstrong's bloodwork from any year and have no idea what his count was at any point.

Matt Rendell's Pantani book is very good on stuff like this.

grantus

Perhaps we could substitiute the rider for, say, Indurain rather than as you say making it another Armstrong thread. (as it happens I think on the balance of probability and anecdotal evidence he was doing the same as the rest and I am definitely not a fan of him, even less so after this year's tour)

The point I was trying to make is that i'd been led to believe anything over mid-forties was cheating but it appears this may not be the case, assuming Wiggins is correct. Maybe not as clear cut as a lot of people will have you believe?

P.S. I read Matt Rendell's book and found myself disliking Pantani but especially his family who seemed reluctant to accept what he was doing to himself. To be honest though, the section on blood boosting read like a medical text book to me and a lot of it went right over my head.

appletrees

Don't think you can make that assumption regarding anything above mid 40's - I had a full blood test earlier this year, I'm a moderately trained triathlete and tt'er, but nothing special -my Haematocrit is 47% naturally, and, god knows, my performances don't indicate use of PED's!

disgruntledgoat

grantus wrote:

The point I was trying to make is that i'd been led to believe anything over mid-forties was cheating but it appears this may not be the case, assuming Wiggins is correct. Maybe not as clear cut as a lot of people will have you believe?

That's a blanket assertion, I had some bloodwork done when I took my job a few years ago and came out at 46, and god knows I can't afford to cheat. I would argue though that if you took 4 red cell counts at the start of a GT, the end of teh first 2 weeks and the finish and found the score was consistenly in the high 40s, that would be as much evidence of manipulation as one spike above 50%.

gregssmirkingrevenge

Say if your blood was say 48% HC naturally, and during the course of a grand tour you kept yourself topped up at that 48% level using transfusions of your own blood from the training season, would that constitute cheating? It's your own un-doctored blood after all, and surely it could be argued that this was a practice to maintain peak health throughout what is an arduous and physically depleting experience. Things like dehydration and mineral depletion could be put forward as arguments supporting this practice of "maintaining peak health". And suppose a rider had a nasty crash and lost some blood, would it be normal medical practice to perform a transfusion to ensure a speedy return to health for the rider or so he could continue the race?

You hear the top riders regularly telling us they have never, and do not take "drugs", but most are still reluctant to talk about the whole issue. Maybe they don't take "drugs" nowadays but they do maintain their blood using transfusions. It seems really hard to regulate this kind of thing, does the biological passport expect, nigh demand the riders HC levels to deplete over the course of a three week tour? And would they take issue if a riders HC remained at a legitimate but high level throughout the race? Or is it accepted that an athlete at peak fitness would be able to maintain these levels naturally? For example we hear talk of Lance Armstrong's excellent recovery capacity of the course of a long tour.

Is there a list of things a normal bio passport of a clean rider should display over the course of a year, how would his values be expected to change over the training season, or in races etc?

grantus

No, blood transfusions constitute dopage.

Not sure of the exact wording/definition but it's on it.

Interesting question though. It's a fine line between 'topping up' and 'boosting' - that's the trouble!

It's very murky - Paul Kimmage talks about vitamin injections in his book to aid recovery - which he saw himself as cheating however where is the line drawn? You could argue that energy drinks are used because they boost your performance so why is this not classed as cheating?

disgruntledgoat

gregssmirkingrevenge wrote:

Say if your blood was say 48% HC naturally, and during the course of a grand tour you kept yourself topped up at that 48% level using transfusions of your own blood from the training season, would that constitute cheating? It's your own un-doctored blood after all, and surely it could be argued that this was a practice to maintain peak health throughout what is an arduous and physically depleting experience. Things like dehydration and mineral depletion could be put forward as arguments supporting this practice of "maintaining peak health". And suppose a rider had a nasty crash and lost some blood, would it be normal medical practice to perform a transfusion to ensure a speedy return to health for the rider or so he could continue the race?

I can only really address teh first para quoted above but yes, that kind of reintroduction of blood is cheating. The traditional practice was to have blood drawn off a few weeks before a big event when you were in form and not fatigued (witness Landis, leading the Dauphine and then coming 114th in the TT!) and then reintroduced whilst you were fading over the course of 3 weeks. Many doctors did argue that they were just protecting their riders health, and that cycling was damaging to them, indeed. The idea of endurance sport however, is that it is a tst of your ability to combat fatigue etc, not of who can afford the best scientific programme of ferrying blood about the place.

Secondly, if you lose enough blood in a crash to warrant a transfusion, you should probably quit.

Pokerface

Isn't one of the reasons that auto blood doping is not allowed is because if the blood is not stored correctly, it can lead to serious health issues when re-transfused?

gregssmirkingrevenge

disgruntledgoat wrote:

gregssmirkingrevenge wrote:

Say if your blood was say 48% HC naturally, and during the course of a grand tour you kept yourself topped up at that 48% level using transfusions of your own blood from the training season, would that constitute cheating? It's your own un-doctored blood after all, and surely it could be argued that this was a practice to maintain peak health throughout what is an arduous and physically depleting experience. Things like dehydration and mineral depletion could be put forward as arguments supporting this practice of "maintaining peak health". And suppose a rider had a nasty crash and lost some blood, would it be normal medical practice to perform a transfusion to ensure a speedy return to health for the rider or so he could continue the race?

I can only really address teh first para quoted above but yes, that kind of reintroduction of blood is cheating. The traditional practice was to have blood drawn off a few weeks before a big event when you were in form and not fatigued (witness Landis, leading the Dauphine and then coming 114th in the TT!) and then reintroduced whilst you were fading over the course of 3 weeks. Many doctors did argue that they were just protecting their riders health, and that cycling was damaging to them, indeed. The idea of endurance sport however, is that it is a tst of your ability to combat fatigue etc, not of who can afford the best scientific programme of ferrying blood about the place.

Secondly, if you lose enough blood in a crash to warrant a transfusion, you should probably quit.

Haha fair point about the crash scenario.

I think the issue i was trying to raise was to do with the idea of ethics and morality relating to cheating i.e. many people wouldn't cheat or break the rules because they feel it is fundamentally wrong. But in cycling the line between acceptable and wrong is so hazy and it seems the issue of autologous transfusions is hardly regulated. So if the rule book can't make it stance clear and perhaps more importantly, police this stance, then it is left to the personal stance of the rider- and some poeple are clearly bastards and are willing to do the immoral thing in order for personal gain.

Wiggins clearly has a staunch anti-doping anti-cheating stance but i suppose that only extends to what he personally deems as breaking the rules.. whether that extends to uses of blood boosting substances like epo, the practice of autologous blood tranfusions, vitamin injects or even isotonic drinks as suggested above.

I'd like to make it clear i'm not having a go at Wiggins or suggesting he is cheating in any way, i'm merely using him as an example of a clearly ethically inclided rider within the sport.