Froome Vuelta salbutamol problem

Richmond Racer 2

Tony Martin aint happy

I cant post his FB post here - Sophie Smith tweeted it. But he is not 'appy at all

tangled_metal

Just looked it up briefly but didn't find anything of significance about it as a masking agent. Did find a reference in a document by the Australian body for asthma specialists about masking agents. It said you needed another Tuesday if taking Salbutamol with diuretics or masking agents that you have a TUE for.

Does anyone have a link to a credible source about salbutamol being a masking agent? I think you will agree that anything by a journo isn't rarely completely credible.

I'm not defending Froome because the test shows he's above a threshold that's part of WADA rules. He's got a charge to face. I'm open to him facing it in the appropriate place (not social media, conventional media and ppl with axes to grind). In fact I'd hope that's what happens. Those with knowledge and evidence are listened to then a just decision made after due process. We're all speculating for our entertainment. Not a fair thing to do for any sportsperson IMHO even a cheat (if that's what he proves to be).

BTW I take salbutamol when needed. I've done tests myself (under doctor's instructions) using a prescribed peak flow meter. Readings taken before and after doseage over several weeks. On top of that I took baseline readings. All to find my peak airflow rate when healthy and in an attack. To prove it was asthma. I got told the drug doesn't work unless you've got an asthma type treatment.

As it was not part of a double blind taking regime my anecdote doesn't really have much benefit. However I found my typical healthy airflow level I found asthma put my level a lot lower to a little bit lower. I also found salbutamol never brought my level up to the healthy one. It generally increased my airflow by the same amount after an attack no matter how bad the attack level was.

Interestingly I took it when heavily with a chesty cold while measuring airflow before and after. It didn't raise the airflow on one occasion. I guessed it was the cold lowering airflow not asthma.

Basically this means I fully accept salbutamol only brings you up to a level somewhere below you'd be if you weren't having an attack. As in it doesn't raise you above 100%.

As for masking agent, what does it mask? Where is c the evidence. I am happy to be educated on this. I personally don't want any cheats in sport. I'm an idealist in that I want all sport and top sportspeople to be an ideal we can aspire to. PED cheats and other cheats IMHO spoil sport for all.

shirley_basso

Looks like a google translate

smithy21

Edit- removed as Shirley Basso beat me to it.

rick_chasey

Let's all remember the katusha context:
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/katusha ... ing-cases/

salsiccia1

Sounds like some of that sandpaper has got in his fanny.

mamba80

redvision wrote:

Trivial poursuivant wrote:

This is a legal drug which is only a failure if you reach a certain threshold.

A threshold he exceeded.

As someone who suffers badly with asthma i really do sympathise with him. But if his asthma was that bad that he needed to take his inhaler so many times he should not have continued racing.

Does he use his inhaler whilst racing then? or is it as a syrup or injection? pre race.

gsk82

Maybe Tony Marin should read the rules before spouting off. If you can't find the original post anymore it's probably because he's been told of his ignorance and removed it.

rick_chasey

Salsiccia1 wrote:

Sounds like some of that sandpaper has got in his fanny.

Think you need to up the quality of your chat.

salsiccia1

Rick Chasey wrote:

Salsiccia1 wrote:

Sounds like some of that sandpaper has got in his fanny.

Think you need to up the quality of your chat.

:?:

I was referring to Shotgun Tony's tirade

rick_chasey

Using other people's sh!t chat is still sh!t chat.

iainf72

Tony Martin clearly doesn’t understand the rules

But don’t let that stand in the way of a rant

Jez mon

It does seem a very very mild infraction. I think if you were around in the Peurto days, it's difficult to get massively excited by someone being popped for an Asthma medication, that by many accounts doesn't even put you on a level to someone without Asthma, let alone give you a performance benefit beyond your "natural baseline".

Ultimately this kind of crap just drags cycling through the gutter again. At least when it was Ricco and Piepoli getting popped, we had some genuinely other world performances ;-)

mididoctors

i think tony is not off the mark. he should just take the hit.

daniel_b

gsk82 wrote:

Maybe Tony Marin should read the rules before spouting off. If you can't find the original post anymore it's probably because he's been told of his ignorance and removed it.

That's p1ss poor isn't it.

It's YOUR sport, so educate yourself as to how the rules are applied, OR check first before publishing to the world.

tailwindhome

Tony Martin doesn't know the rules.
What a chump.

daniel_b

Two chumps do not make a right though ;-)

rick_chasey

Katusha rider angry about other teams doping shocker.

kleinstroker

Seems to me that everyone is forgetting that he uses Salbutamol to bring him back up to the level of the other riders, he isn't getting a boost, just trying to breathe as easily as the rest of the peloton.
After riding for so many years he must have known how many puffs he could take & stay within the limits, but something obviously happened that day to change this, maybe one puff too many or who knows what.

It's really sad to see so many people quickly jump to use this to taint his achievements

salsiccia1

kleinstroker wrote:

Seems to me that everyone is forgetting that he uses Salbutamol to bring him back up to the level of the other riders, he isn't getting a boost, just trying to breathe as easily as the rest of the peloton.
After riding for so many years he must have known how many puffs he could take & stay within the limits, but something obviously happened that day to change this, maybe one puff too many or who knows what.

It's really sad to see so many people quickly jump to use this to taint his achievements

It does taint them a bit though. Especially the Vuelta, if he gets to keep it.

Ben6899

No tA Doctor wrote:

Ben6899 wrote:

powerbookboy wrote:

[If a team could find an asthmatic with colitis and diabetes they'd be set for the next 10 years ( salbutamol, insulin and oral low dose steroids )

I know it was a slightly tongue-in-cheek comment (right?), but I'm guessing you've never taken the 'favourite' steroid to combat IBD - prednisolone. It's no performance enhancer!

*Dumoulin*

Was he taking prednisolone during the Giro? I did not know that.

Hey, it's a bloody effective treatment, but I wouldn't recommend taking it without genuine cause.

Vino'sGhost

kleinstroker wrote:

Seems to me that everyone is forgetting that he uses Salbutamol to bring him back up to the level of the other riders, he isn't getting a boost, just trying to breathe as easily as the rest of the peloton.
After riding for so many years he must have known how many puffs he could take & stay within the limits, but something obviously happened that day to change this, maybe one puff too many or who knows what.

It's really sad to see so many people quickly jump to use this to taint his achievements

Yes i could take HGH and EPO to bring me up to the standards of other riders. is that ok too?

Jez mon

Yea, right.

w00dster

I think Tony has a point, would this have been swept under the carpet if it wasn't for the leak?
Whilst it appears to be only a minor transgression of the rules, nonetheless, those rules have been broken.

It would be good to see the timeline on another recent case to ensure that Sky have not been awarded any leniency. Ulissi had almost twice the allowed amount of salbutamol as did Froome, so there is a precedent that has already been set. Was Ulissi handled any differently than Sky / Froome?

We can presume that in the days leading up to Stage 18 that Froome wasn't feeling great, I was on holiday at the time so was using the Pro Race forum and only the highlights to keep up to date so I'm not really sure about the race detail. A quick Wiki shows it was a rest day, Froome winning the ITT on Stage 16, Mountain Stage for 17 and then another mountain stage for 18.

Stage 17 is interesting, this excerpt from Cycling News shows that Froome struggled:-
"Froome struggled to stay with teammate Mikel Nieve in the final two kilometres and finished 14th on the stage at 1:46. He lost 42 seconds to Nibali and Zakarin and a little less to Kelderman and others. His lead on the Sicilian is down to 1:16, with Kelderman at 2:13 and Zakarin at 2:25. Contador remains fifth but closed the gap to 3:34. Other riders also gained time on Froome."

Then on Stage 18 Froome shows improvement, again from Cycling News:-
If Froome had shown little concern about Aru's solo effort, he was considerably more active in following Contador's brace of attacks on the category 2 Collada de la Hoz. The second of Contador's stinging attacks near the summit briefly reduced the red jersey group to just 10 riders, but Froome was among the first to respond, with Nibali, Kelderman, and Zakarin following in his wake.
They were unable to follow, however, in the final 800 metres, and Froome could scarcely hide his satisfaction at putting so much time into Nibali. "Yeah, I mean that feels great. That feels great especially after a difficult day yesterday," he said. "It's good to bounce back again, and as I said yesterday, the morale is still good and the team is still strong. We're just looking forward to getting through these next couple of days now."

Where I get suspicious, and cycling (and other sports) have a history of riders improving overnight, sometimes legally, but not always.
Putting two and two together and getting 5, but it does make me think. He has been popped on Stage 18 for failing doping controls, but its a minor infraction... Stage 17 he appears to be faltering fairly significantly, Stage 18 he is back to putting time in against his rivals. Yes I appreciate it can happen, Nibs could have put everything in on Stage 17 and his tank was empty on Stage 18, but with the fact that Froome was double the permitted level of Salbutamol it makes me wonder why.

Alex99

Vino'sGhost wrote:

kleinstroker wrote:

Seems to me that everyone is forgetting that he uses Salbutamol to bring him back up to the level of the other riders, he isn't getting a boost, just trying to breathe as easily as the rest of the peloton.
After riding for so many years he must have known how many puffs he could take & stay within the limits, but something obviously happened that day to change this, maybe one puff too many or who knows what.

It's really sad to see so many people quickly jump to use this to taint his achievements

Yes i could take HGH and EPO to bring me up to the standards of other riders. is that ok too?

No you can't because they're banned.

RichN95.

iainf72 wrote:

Tony Martin clearly doesn’t understand the rules

But don’t let that stand in the way of a rant

A bit for a worrying for an ex-policeman to be making up his own rules. Dirty Tony - have you had five puffs or six? Do you feel lucky punk?

smithy21

kleinstroker wrote:

Seems to me that everyone is forgetting that he uses Salbutamol to bring him back up to the level of the other riders, he isn't getting a boost, just trying to breathe as easily as the rest of the peloton.
After riding for so many years he must have known how many puffs he could take & stay within the limits, but something obviously happened that day to change this, maybe one puff too many or who knows what.

It's really sad to see so many people quickly jump to use this to taint his achievements

He is allowed to take it, up to a limit, which he exceeded. The only the reason the why and how matters will be to determine the length of the ban.

RichN95.

Matthewfalle wrote:

gsk82 wrote:

I'm surprised it took so long for the inevitable claims it's a masking agent to surface.

Its not a claim that Sally is a masking agent - it's a well known and proven fact.

It's not. It's proven nonsense.

For example, from Daniel Freibe: Have seen speculation over last 24hrs about salbutamol possibly being a masking agent. France National Anti-Doping Agency (AFLD) testing director Michel Audran told me today this is definitely NOT the case.

haydenm

Alex99 wrote:

Vino'sGhost wrote:

kleinstroker wrote:

Seems to me that everyone is forgetting that he uses Salbutamol to bring him back up to the level of the other riders, he isn't getting a boost, just trying to breathe as easily as the rest of the peloton.
After riding for so many years he must have known how many puffs he could take & stay within the limits, but something obviously happened that day to change this, maybe one puff too many or who knows what.

It's really sad to see so many people quickly jump to use this to taint his achievements

Yes i could take HGH and EPO to bring me up to the standards of other riders. is that ok too?

No you can't because they're banned.

Basically this. It's also not OK because HGH and EPO are performance enhancing and Salbutamol isn't. Those are the widely accepted facts and those are the rules. Not hard to understand.

germcevoy

Froome saying he hopes this incident does not prevent athletes using their inhalers in emergency situations.

If you are having an asthma related emergency then perhaps it’s best not to go race a few hundred kilometres in the mountains? The dosage he had in him was equivalent to 32 puffs of his inhaler. As an athletic that seems an obscene volume. He should have been on a nebuliser under medical Caren if he needed that much.