Parker said:
Cummings was on the British track programme for many years
But he wasn’t when he was at Barloworld, was he?
Look, maybe there’s an explanation for why FB didn’t find a TUE for salbutamol for Froome. Or why Froome, when asked, said those prednisolone TUEs were the only ones he ever had. I’m putting this out because it’s obviously very germane to this case, and I’m frankly mystified why no one in the media cares. Just as no one in the media cared about his USG, when that one value had the potential to get Froome off immediately, case closed. You seem content that there might be an explanation for this, so aren't interested in pursuing it any further. I’m not. I want to know for sure.
It's clearly not a nothing to lose situation. What readings would do pills give. Isn't that the point of the threshold?
It’s not that difficult to take oral doses and remain below the threshold. I’ve discussed this before.
But lots of people have talked about taking testosterone as a performance enhancer. Nobody at all has mentioned taking salbutamol for anything but asthma.
What riders talk about, and are actually heard talking about, is not the ultimate arbiter of whether something is performance enhancing. There are many studies showing salbutamol can help, and of course the existence of a threshold implies WADA takes this possibility seriously.
What did you think he should do? Drop back down the bunch and hide behind people. No-one had seen him puffing away before because they weren't looking for it. It barely looks any different to someone eating something.
So after seven years or so as a pro, and several years at the top, Froome is seen inhaling. Not only has the most-watched rider in the peloton never been seen doing this before, but none of his teammates or other riders in the peloton came forward to confirm that he’s been doing this.
Precisely my point. But a person who knows they are doing something wrong will always be more cautious.
Like Ricco?
The most rational explanation is that he overdid his asthma drugs and/or the test isn't perfect (probably a combination of both). Not that he had some sort of overarching scheme plotted over many years to abuse an ineffective drug that no-one else has ever bothered with before.
I really don’t think one can claim at this point that there is a “most rational” explanation, not with the certainty implied by your claim. There’s too much information we don’t have access to. And I'm not sure what you mean by the test isn't perfect. It certainly measures urinary concentration of salbutamol with high precision, so there's no reason at all to doubt the level reported. Like any pharmacological test, there is some uncertainty in working backward from there to dose taken.
If Froome were a little over the threshold, and he admitted he might have taken too much, I would certainly be inclined to accept that as the most likely explanation, though even then I wouldn’t rule out doping. The threshold has been set at a level that for most athletes, most of the time, is well above what they will test at. Unless Froome is an outlier, he probably wouldn’t exceed it even slightly unless he took considerably more than allowed.
But his level is so high that it’s hard to see how he could have reached it without taking a massive dose. Many researchers believe the most likely cause is that he intentionally did this, probably through a nebulizer. Again, if he admitted to doing that, I would give him the benefit of the doubt.
But Froome has said over and over and over that he didn’t inhale too much. At a certain point, I think you have to take him at his word—not assume he’s telling the truth, but that this is the framework within which a decision has to be made. And that means you have to compare the likelihood of doping to the likelihood of some unusual physiology, like renal impairment. Made a mistake is off the table. That's why doping, despite some reasonable objections, looks to be the more likely answer. We know riders dope. Kidney problems are unusual.
But if you want to stick with the notion that he took too much by mistake or accident, you're basically saying Froome is a liar. That makes you more or less just like anyone who thinks he was doping, you're just focusing on a different kind of lie. But lying and cheating are close cousins, and if someone would lie about taking too much salbutamol, it's difficult to trust anything else he says related to potential doping.
I know you really, really want this to be a proper doping scandal, but I'm pretty sure you'll be disappointed.
I’m always amused when someone accuses me, a scientist, of being more biased than he is. In the past, I've taken flak from fans of riders like Tyler, Floyd, LA and Contador because I pointed out how science undermined their defense.
I’m trying to understand what happened, and though I’ve long thought Froome was a doper, that suspicion doesn’t compromise my ability to think rationally and based on facts. In the very beginning of this thread I shot down the blood contamination hypothesis—a notion that obviously would appeal to anyone who thinks Froome is doping—because it was clearly highly improbable. As I noted above, I’ve also puzzled over the fact that salbutamol is not a drug that one would expect a rider to take during a race. I’ve never maintained that there is an obvious explanation for the positive, particularly when I’m not privy to some of the most important data that could shed more light on Froome’s usage of the drug.
Robert5091 said:
This was discussed upthread. Most researchers don't believe this is possible, though there has been some recent work suggesting that riders can lose as much as 2% of body weight (this would correspond to that 47 seconds up Alpe) through dehydration without compromising power.
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