No Positives at the 2013 Tour

Joelsim wrote:

So on average every rider was tested 3 times...and for EPO there were 113 tests, or nearly 1/2 a time each in 3 weeks. And the glow time of a micro-dose is a couple/few hours. You'd have to be pretty damn unlucky to get caught.

But is it worth it?

There is a fair bit of risk - micro dosing isn't a one shot deal - you have to do it many times. Which means keeping the stuff to hand during the Tour, so risking discovery (including by your team), injecting regularly leaving lots of needle marks and increasing the likelihood of screwing it all up.

And for what? Is there really any advantage? You have to stay within the parameters of the biological passport (and even then it is advisable not to rouse suspicion), so the micro dosing is in the large just doing what the body was going to do any way. And then there's the downside of the stress of doping.

And this is all going to cost a fair amount of money.

It's probably not worth the hassle.

RichN95 wrote:

Joelsim wrote:

So on average every rider was tested 3 times...and for EPO there were 113 tests, or nearly 1/2 a time each in 3 weeks. And the glow time of a micro-dose is a couple/few hours. You'd have to be pretty damn unlucky to get caught.

But is it worth it?

There is a fair bit of risk - micro dosing isn't a one shot deal - you have to do it many times. Which means keeping the stuff to hand during the Tour, so risking discovery (including by your team), injecting regularly leaving lots of needle marks and increasing the likelihood of screwing it all up.

And for what? Is there really any advantage? You have to stay within the parameters of the biological passport (and even then it is advisable not to rouse suspicion), so the micro dosing is in the large just doing what the body was going to do any way. And then there's the downside of the stress of doping.

It's probably not worth the hassle.

Why do you have do it many times? One micro dose before a stage must be better than no micro dose before a stage even if the gain is minimal. Isn't that what we are are told divides the good riders from the really good riders?

RichN95 wrote:

ThomThom wrote:

Why do you have do it many times? One micro dose before a stage must be better than no micro dose before a stage even if the gain is minimal. Isn't that what we are are told divides the good riders from the really good riders?

At some point the gains are going too minimal to be worthwhile. If a single dose you maybe ten seconds in one time trial and that's it, would you bother?

Even St Michael Ashenden used to bang on back in 2010 that 'Based on anecdotal evidence he thought that cyclists were microdosing EPO only during the spring and fall, when races generally last one or two days, and through the off-season. Police activity, he said, makes it too risky for athletes and teams to travel with vials of EPO during three-week events like the Tour de France.'

The bio passport isnt about screaming 'oh look, here's actual traces of EPO, markers etc'. Its a tool for monitoring various parameters over time that can indicate the effect of doping.

As for the recent positives in athletics, they're down to a whole range of different things - including in the case of some of the Russian positives, busting the Moscow lab for corruption and having samples analysed in labs outside Russia, especially Cologne

Joelsim wrote:

I was just saying. Take a dose at 11pm. It's stopped glowing before 7am unless you've misjudged your dose. You get some benefit, even if it's small a 20 second benefit 21 times is the difference between 1st and 10th.

Do this 21 times during a tour and you're laughing.

You have a 50% chance of being tested for it, once.

To get caught, you must be a muppet. It doesn't even really show up on your biological passport by all accounts.

But the selection isn't random, it's done largely on suspicion and success. Any rider who takes 20 seconds every day will be tested a lot more than 50% of the time, and a large number of domestiques won't be tested at all. They also have a lot to gain in terms by setting a high pace and proving their worth to the team for their next contract.

ThomThom wrote:

Surely it's not that black and white that we can make it down to exact seconds on a given stage. We don't even know how much of an effect micro dosing does to you and where line goes from it to be micro dosing and it to be something on a different level.

We know it's present in sports so there's an advantage and a reason of doing it.

It's certainly not black and white. I'm portraying it as anything but. Saying that anything that gains an advantage will be done is black and white. (Wearing a skinsuit provides and advantage but no-one wears it every stage).

No doper will dope regardless. It comes down to an equation:

G/(R*C) > M

G is the expected gains
R is the risk of being caught
C is the cost (both in terms of both money and effort)

If G/(R*C) is greater than M - a morality coefficient, for want of a better phrase, which is particular to the individual - then doping is likely to occur

The question is how do the variables compare for microdosing EPO as opposed to previous doping methods? Do the numbers add up?

Saying that if they can dope they will dope is simplistic.

RichN95 wrote:

Joelsim wrote:

I was just saying. Take a dose at 11pm. It's stopped glowing before 7am unless you've misjudged your dose. You get some benefit, even if it's small a 20 second benefit 21 times is the difference between 1st and 10th.

First of all you are not going to get a 20 second benefit 21 times.

Secondly, the body produces EPO on it's own, but only as much as is needed. If you microdose, the body compensates by producing less itself.

Just because something can be done, it's doesn't mean it is worth doing . People don't automatically cheat because they can - the pros have to greatly outweigh the cons.

Exactly. I hate bloody Armstrong. Because he got away with it for so long, and was tested so many times, everyone in the peloton is now open to the "Just cos he has not tested positive does not mean he is not a lying cheat" charge by those who feel inclined.

dave milne wrote:

Micro dosing is also used to mask blood transfusions right? Something to do with getting the off score within normal params as after a transfusion the percentage of the young cells drops as the body stops producing them and the micro-dose of epo can counter that

True, but they did also test for blood transfusions (the doping method of choice in the post-Epo test era) a total of er.. twice!

To be fair, only an idiot would risk taking a transfusion from a third party. That said, there is still no authorised test for autologous blood doping, so 'micro transfusions' of your own processed and deep-frozen blood are probably the way to go if you want a boost without risk of detection.