Henao withdrawn from racing

andyp

Sky have just posted this;

http://www.teamsky.com/article/0,27290, ... 91,00.html

Expect a Twitter meltdown in milliseconds.

Richmond Racer

Twitter can meltdown all it likes

However, this isnt the result of AD or UCI tests. This has come out of a pretty substantial internal monitoring process Brailsford's instigated in the wake of the JTL affair.

Team taking pro-active stance towards internal monitoring rather than leaving it all up to the NADs or the UCI.

Surely that should be a template for all pro teams?

iainf72

Better effort at handling it.

But for some crazies it will be some kind of smoking gun

blazing_saddles

A pretty decisive step. His season won't start until June, if he gets the all clear.
Presumably he is out on his ear if he doesn't.
Couldn't see any other team taking such a pro active approach.
However, I'm sure that the spin doctors on twitter will weave this as some sort of doping parameter
experiment.

Richmond Racer

iainf72 wrote:

Better effort at handling it.

But for some crazies it will be some kind of smoking gun

For some crazies their very existence is a smoking gun, let's face it

Yellow Peril

Contemplating the reaction to this is like trying to imagine the vastness of the universe, it makes your head spin.

chapeau for that approach by the Team but we know the villagers will be assembling with the pitchforks and burning torches.

Macaloon

Are the team sharing the results of their internal testing with the authorities? Or are they reviewing "Sergio’s out-of-competition control tests at altitude - tests introduced this winter by the anti-doping authorities" ?

Not wishing to start a conspiracy hunt, but I think this has a bearing on overall team monitoring. How exactly were they monitoring WADA compliance before these tests this Winter?

calvjones

I just love the fact CN are reporting this with a picture featuring Liberty Seguros epaulettes

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/sergio- ... -anomalies

ddraver

Don't dream it's over...

(yeah i'm not even a little bit sorry)

Richmond Racer

Macaloon wrote:

Are the team sharing the results of their internal testing with the authorities? Or are they reviewing "Sergio’s out-of-competition control tests at altitude - tests introduced this winter by the anti-doping authorities" ?

Not wishing to start a conspiracy hunt, but I think this has a bearing on overall team monitoring. How exactly were they monitoring WADA compliance before these tests this Winter?

Re your first question, as per the press release from Sky, the answer is yes.

How were they monitoring before these tests? How was any team, Maca? The simple truth is that pro teams dont monitor their riders on a pro-active basis like this. You (by which I mean, people in general) assume that they do - but they dont.

Teams - as well as the riders - are sent copies of the results of all tests on their riders. Sky reviewed results from OOC tests on Henao, and picked up on something that it looks like the AD authorities themselves didnt.

blazing_saddles

Richmond Racer wrote:

iainf72 wrote:

Better effort at handling it.

But for some crazies it will be some kind of smoking gun

For some crazies their very existence is a smoking gun, let's face it

First post out of the hat in the Asylum.
Why is it that the wrong team always seems to be doing the right thing?

iainf72

I like how in some People's minds it's already a passport case..

Macaloon

[quote="Richmond Racer"Re your first question, as per the press release from Sky, the answer is yes.[/quote]

"The decision was made by the team following its latest monthly governance review, a comprehensive internal process which looks at each rider’s physiological profile.

Team Principal, Sir Dave Brailsford, said: "We have strong monitoring and compliance processes in this team, with the full cooperation of riders and coaches.

“In our latest monthly review, our experts had questions about Sergio’s out-of-competition control tests at altitude - tests introduced this winter by the anti-doping authorities. We need to understand these readings better."

There's no mention of internal tests in the press release. Hence my confusion.

And given the reputations at stake, I'd be pretty surprised if the team previously relied mainly on AD test results to monitor rider physiology.

tailwindhome

the Inner Ring ‏@inrng · 42m
Sergio Henao parked by Team Sky http://www.teamsky.com/article/0,27290, ... 91,00.html … I imagine cyclingnews staff rushing to install more server capacity

Richmond Racer

---

ddraver

Richmond Racer

Macaloon wrote:

"The decision was made by the team following its latest monthly governance review, a comprehensive internal process which looks at each rider’s physiological profile.

Team Principal, Sir Dave Brailsford, said: "We have strong monitoring and compliance processes in this team, with the full cooperation of riders and coaches.

“In our latest monthly review, our experts had questions about Sergio’s out-of-competition control tests at altitude - tests introduced this winter by the anti-doping authorities. We need to understand these readings better."

There's no mention of internal tests in the press release. Hence my confusion.

And given the reputations at stake, I'd be pretty surprised if the team previously relied mainly on AD test results to monitor rider physiology.

Maca, remember - embarrassingly, before signing JTL they hadnt even had blood tests done on him, instead relying on the fact that he'd been tested OK by Garmin. And that the likes of Herety vouched for him.

In the wake of the JTL affair (sorry to repeat myself), Brailsford and Kerrison instigated a big programme of monitoring, review and analysis - and hired an independent body to assist. Walsh wrote up some information about it in his Scourge-of-the-Clinic-book-on-Sky, and I've heard about it from other sources close to the team.

Its easy to assume that pro teams in general are all over their riders blood etc profiles on an ongoing basis - but they are amazingly laissez-faire.

DeVlaeminck

Richmond Racer wrote:

Macaloon wrote:

Are the team sharing the results of their internal testing with the authorities? Or are they reviewing "Sergio’s out-of-competition control tests at altitude - tests introduced this winter by the anti-doping authorities" ?

Not wishing to start a conspiracy hunt, but I think this has a bearing on overall team monitoring. How exactly were they monitoring WADA compliance before these tests this Winter?

Re your first question, as per the press release from Sky, the answer is yes.

How were they monitoring before these tests? How was any team, Maca? The simple truth is that pro teams dont monitor their riders on a pro-active basis like this. You (by which I mean, people in general) assume that they do - but they dont.

Teams - as well as the riders - are sent copies of the results of all tests on their riders. Sky reviewed results from OOC tests on Henao, and picked up on something that it looks like the AD authorities themselves didnt.

Very good spot, on first reading I'd assumed these were Sky's own tests but you are right it seems to be that this comes from independent out of competition testing. It raises a number of questions - I guess there must be a grey area in these results where suspicions are raised but the evidence isn't there for sanctions to be applied. Perhaps Henao falls into that area. It seems unlikely that the independent testers would just fail to spot something in the data - but then this is cycling so wo knows.

ddraver

I should ve done Biochem or Physiology instead of geology, that sounds like a fun study to do...

ddraver

We should number Journal Velo's guide to twitter so that instead of writing out the whole phrase we can just write "Point 2" or "Point 6" a la the Velominati Rules...

frenchfighter

So just checking here: Henao's tests are not considered worth flagging by the anti-doping authorities but Sky's analysis is better than the anti-doping authorities so they think there could potentially be something more suspicious and would therefore like to conduct further extensive tests?

If so seems quite a bit ott. If they get rid of him due to a non anti-doping authority decision it will be very interesting. I assume he will find another team straight away.

Also, that this information only came to light after an article from Gazzetta which led to a Sky press release?

I see no reason to doubt Henao at this point. Would have been good to see him in TA - would have probably been the highest placed Sky rider.

I wonder what will happen to his cousin.

iainf72

Who's talking about getting rid of him? Part of the passport is being able to understand different values, so they'd work to understand that and involving the UCI / CADF.

Macaloon

Richmond Racer wrote:

Maca, remember - embarrassingly, before signing JTL they hadnt even had blood tests done on him, instead relying on the fact that he'd been tested OK by Garmin. And that the likes of Herety vouched for him.

In the wake of the JTL affair (sorry to repeat myself), Brailsford and Kerrison instigated a big programme of monitoring, review and analysis - and hired an independent body to assist. Walsh wrote up some information about it in his Scourge-of-the-Clinic-book-on-Sky, and I've heard about it from other sources close to the team.

Its easy to assume that pro teams in general are all over their riders blood etc profiles on an ongoing basis - but they are amazingly laissez-faire.

Thanks for that. Seems like a chasm between rhetoric and reality. And a colossal amount of reputation exposure for management svengali DB.

ddraver

the simple reason is that it's phenominally expensive to run such monitoring programs Maca, most teams simply couldnt.

frenchfighter

iainf72 wrote:

Who's talking about getting rid of him? Part of the passport is being able to understand different values, so they'd work to understand that and involving the UCI / CADF.

If. I have not read that they would.

Can you confirm that what I wrote is indeed the situation?

curium

ddraver wrote:

I should ve done Biochem or Physiology instead of geology, that sounds like a fun study to do...

I did Biochemistry but this is a very specialised area. While I understand many of the pathways the data is just not there to be able to apply strict cutoffs in most cases. The full extent of biological variation is not understood for many analytes. There can also be issues with assay standardisation.

It would also be interesting to know how applicable current research is for non-Caucasian individuals. This could be more of an issue as the sport globalises. For instance it is known that black males have a higher circulating concentration of the enzyme creatine kinase than Caucasian males but the exact difference you can expect is not known because most research is carried out using Caucasian males.
This could be the case for a number of other analytes and the authorities will need to bear this is mind before handing out bans.

Some people will have a genetic advantage due to ethnicity and evolution but the pool of data the rules are built on come from a very narrow base.

Macaloon

ddraver wrote:

the simple reason is that it's phenominally expensive to run such monitoring programs Maca, most teams simply couldnt.

Is this true for internal monitoring, with no need for chain of custody, A and B sample storage, infrastructure to cover and possibly sanction 500 riders etc. Granted you wouldn't want to be sending someone to Colombia every week, but you might not have to if the team training and competing blocks were covered.

ddraver

Well i agree with you really but apparently it is. I think labs with the neccessary equipment are rare and therefore costly...

iainf72

frenchfighter wrote:

iainf72 wrote:

Who's talking about getting rid of him? Part of the passport is being able to understand different values, so they'd work to understand that and involving the UCI / CADF.

If. I have not read that they would.

Can you confirm that what I wrote is indeed the situation?

Pretty much. They want to get more tests done when they know what's going on, so they can understand the impact of altitude.

Walsh guessing they've learnt from the JTL thing and want to clear things up rather than have UCI open a case

curium

ddraver wrote:

Well i agree with you really but apparently it is. I think labs with the neccessary equipment are rare and therefore costly...

Not so. The equipment is fairly standard for a comprehensive lab. I think it's the expertise that is likely to be the limiting factor.

ddraver

same thing really...depends if you view a lab rat* as Equipment

*sorry, technician