All About Salbutamol

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What will the verdict in Froome's salbutamol case?

  • He will be cleared

    Votes: 43 34.1%
  • 3 month ban

    Votes: 4 3.2%
  • 6 month ban

    Votes: 15 11.9%
  • 9 month ban

    Votes: 24 19.0%
  • 1 year ban

    Votes: 16 12.7%
  • 2 year ban

    Votes: 21 16.7%
  • 4 year ban

    Votes: 3 2.4%

  • Total voters
    126
Mar 13, 2013
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Given the leak was out by 80%, I would remove 80% from 1500 too. If there's anything Sky teaches us, it's when it's leaked, whistleblown or from an anonymous source or French sports paper, it's invariably unreliable to use in discussion.
 
Mar 13, 2013
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Re: Re:

Alex Simmons/RST said:
samhocking said:
Mamil said:
samhocking said:
Race a Grand Tour, half the peloton are falling apart in last week. See Pinot, Doumilin & Yates. All with chest problems in last week of Tour and after finishing and that's just the good riders!

And what happened to Pinot, Yates and even to some extent Dumoulin when they got sick? Compare that to supposedly sick/increased asthma Froome.

Thanks for proving my point yourself. Talk about an own goal :rolleyes:

Pinot almost completed last week with illness. Doumilin came second and he was coming down ill in last week and day after Giro ended said he was very ill for a week after.
I'm just saying, being high up on GC and winning races with chest issues is part of cycling, it always has been, Froome is no different. Clearly it's bronchial stuff, it's not going to be an issue unless you don't medically keep it under control like we know all team doctors in all teams are they to do. That is their primary role. Racing a bike for 3 weeks is unhealthy, all team doctors say that.

The infection being referred to was Froome's at the Vuelta, not the Giro. It's Sky that are telling us he had a chest infection at the time of the salbutamol AAF. A chest infection on the mountain stage at which he beat all his GC rivals.

The ill riders at the Giro lost time. The "ill" rider at the Vuelta gained time on his opponents.

That's a special kind of illness. The sort that others would like to catch.

Say you have a choice before a decisive mountain stage:
i. be healthy, or
ii. have a chest infection
Apparently choosing the latter is the new marginal gain.

Maybe you're new to cycling. All the examples I gave lost time ill at various parts of the race and still won or up on GC overall. Everyone at top of GT is at various stages of relative illness. Now you can argue being ill loses time, but everyone in a GT is in various degrees of illness and degrading health losing time at some point. Who wins is party about who can manage illness the best when it happens and a lot of that comes down to medical care. The more under control you can keep illness, the more likely you are to recover and win it's as simply as that. Not only that but medical care and robust health is a big part of elite sport.
 
Jan 11, 2018
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samhocking said:
Maybe you're new to cycling. All the examples I gave lost time ill at various parts of the race and still won or up on GC overall. Everyone at top of GT is at various stages of relative illness. Now you can argue being ill loses time, but everyone in a GT is in various degrees of illness and degrading health losing time at some point. Who wins is party about who can manage illness the best when it happens and a lot of that comes down to medical care. The more under control you can keep illness, the more likely you are to recover and win it's as simply as that. Not only that but medical care and robust health is a big part of elite sport.

New to cycling? :lol: Alex is a Cycling Australia coach. How condescending of you. Sam just give it a rest already. Comments like your bolded above are laughable. Your love for your hero blinds you to obvious truths.
 
Mar 10, 2009
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Mamil said:
samhocking said:
Maybe you're new to cycling. All the examples I gave lost time ill at various parts of the race and still won or up on GC overall. Everyone at top of GT is at various stages of relative illness. Now you can argue being ill loses time, but everyone in a GT is in various degrees of illness and degrading health losing time at some point. Who wins is party about who can manage illness the best when it happens and a lot of that comes down to medical care. The more under control you can keep illness, the more likely you are to recover and win it's as simply as that. Not only that but medical care and robust health is a big part of elite sport.

New to cycling? :lol: Alex is a Cycling Australia coach. How condescending of you. Sam just give it a rest already. Comments like your bolded above are laughable. Your love for your hero blinds you to obvious truths.
Just so it's clear, CA are the accreditation body for cycle coaches in Australia and I am a CA accredited coach. I don't coach with CA (nor desire to). I have coached professionally for a long time and worked with riders at all levels as have my coaching business colleagues. Elite World Champions, pro riders, masters, amateurs, paracycling champions, world record holders, club riders. I've seen the horrible effects doping has had on clean rider's attempting to manage fatigue and stay in the sport. It usually ends badly, or well if you think getting out of the sport is a positive outcome, which honestly it is for many.

None of the above however should matter as my 'qualifications" are not really pertinent to the discussion.

Ad hominem attacks are a sign of a weak argument.
 
Jan 11, 2018
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From one Aussie to another, sorry Alex, I should have been clearer. Don't mean to overstep in jumping to your defence either, but I really didn't like that comment.

Keep up the good work!
 
Jul 6, 2014
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I don't mean any disrespect to Sam in case the answer is no, but I think it is justified to ask if he is actually paid by Sky. The arguments should still be taken on their merits, but some disclosure would help us engage with this discourse more openly/honestly. Sam?
 
Mar 13, 2013
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I know who Alex is lol, I can read and click on his avatar lol! it was dry English humour sorry, too dry.!

Look, from what I can tell humans are not designed to ride bikes. Add in riding everyday for 3 weeks and it's simply not healthy. If it was healthy, you wouldn't have half a peloton complaining they are on their knees. Froome with Chest Infections, Pinot in hospital with Bronchitus & Pnuemonia, Doumilin unable to hold the contents of his bowels and bed-ridden for a week the day after Giro ends, Riders complaining of fever overnight, vomiting during the stage, then feeling good and winning the stage, unable to eat due to the body shitting down etc etc. I'll leave it at that, I simply see GT racing as something that is making you iller and as Desgrainge originally designed it to be so, elements of howe tough it really is manifests itself in illness, yet they carry on, many even winning races with medical support.
 
Jul 27, 2010
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samhocking said:
elements of howe tough it really is manifests itself in illness, yet they carry on, many even winning races with medical support.

I haven't been in favor of banning salbutamol, but I have to say, you have provided as good a rationale for doing away with that and other “health aids” as I’ve seen. If illness results from how tough it is, then anything used to alleviate the illness is a way of ameliorating the toughness. That’s basically how many doctors have justified EPO.

Most riders, it seems, get asthma, or at least significantly worse symptoms from asthma, from breathing outside for hours a day. Breathing outdoors for hours every day is part of what one has to do to be a successful racer. If some develop health problems from doing something that is essential to the sport, shouldn’t they have to live with these problems?

Some riders have better genes than others; we don’t try to level that playing field. Some riders respond to a certain training program better than others; we don’t try to level that playing field. Some riders develop no asthma or more moderate asthma than other riders; we’re supposed to level that playing field?

Froome made the comparison with eating, but everyone has to eat. Not everyone has to take a drug to open up his lungs. Salbutamol in effect allows some riders to train as well as race longer and more intensely than they could without it. Some of these same riders may have compensating strengths like a higher VO2 max or lactate threshold or more efficient energy production. If their competitors aren’t allowed to used drugs to narrow that difference, why should asthmatics get to catch up in the area where they're weak?

The argument is that asthma just makes one's lungs normal (as if any pro racer had normal lungs). But EPO makes someone with a below natural hematocrit normal. In the later stages of a GT, riders's hematocrits generally drop below their normal level. Shouldn't they be allowed to transfuse or use EPO to restore their natural HT, just as asthmatics are allowed to restore their pulmonary passages to normal? What's the difference? Both are sick, and in both cases the sickness comes from prolonged, intense effort.
 
Sep 14, 2009
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Re:

samhocking said:
Given the leak was out by 80%, I would remove 80% from 1500 too. If there's anything Sky teaches us, it's when it's leaked, whistleblown or from an anonymous source or French sports paper, it's invariably unreliable to use in discussion.
LOL! More LOLs!

Thanks for that Sammie, or Sam, or Samantha.

Sky's information is invariably unreliable! :p
 
Mar 10, 2009
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Mamil said:
From one Aussie to another, sorry Alex, I should have been clearer. Don't mean to overstep in jumping to your defence either, but I really didn't like that comment.

Keep up the good work!
No problem, I just didn't want people to get the wrong idea or think I was claiming something I wasn't.
 
May 26, 2009
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Re: Re:

samhocking said:
Maybe you're new to cycling. All the examples I gave lost time ill at various parts of the race and still won or up on GC overall. Everyone at top of GT is at various stages of relative illness. Now you can argue being ill loses time, but everyone in a GT is in various degrees of illness and degrading health losing time at some point. Who wins is party about who can manage illness the best when it happens and a lot of that comes down to medical care. The more under control you can keep illness, the more likely you are to recover and win it's as simply as that. Not only that but medical care and robust health is a big part of elite sport.

Embarrasing... it was not a joke, and you keep on dancing around the thing that is the difference.

You still haven't given us an example of a sick rider gaining time on his opponents in a Mountainstage.

Be a man and just say "crap Alex, I didn't know who you are, sorry" and "geez guys, I still believe Froome is innocent as Salbutamol is just for asthma, but I admit that I have zero examples of the claim I erroneously made"

Arguing with someone who just denies facts, refuses to admit he's wrong and moves goalposts to avoid admitting issues is disgusting.

Reflect on the facts and your reactions.
 
Jun 21, 2012
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samhocking said:
I know who Alex is lol, I can read and click on his avatar lol! it was dry English humour sorry, too dry.!

Look, from what I can tell humans are not designed to ride bikes. Add in riding everyday for 3 weeks and it's simply not healthy. If it was healthy, you wouldn't have half a peloton complaining they are on their knees. Froome with Chest Infections, Pinot in hospital with Bronchitus & Pnuemonia, Doumilin unable to hold the contents of his bowels and bed-ridden for a week the day after Giro ends, Riders complaining of fever overnight, vomiting during the stage, then feeling good and winning the stage, unable to eat due to the body shitting down etc etc. I'll leave it at that, I simply see GT racing as something that is making you iller and as Desgrainge originally designed it to be so, elements of howe tough it really is manifests itself in illness, yet they carry on, many even winning races with medical support.

Oh dear - the "Lol my mate stole my phone and typed that lol!" defense.
It's not "Dry English Humour" in the slightest. You clearly need to take a break from all these shifts - A veritable one man electronic army cannot march on an empty stomach.
 
Mar 13, 2013
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I've been commenting here since 2013 and Alex is a prominent poster too. I've read and discussed in countless threads with him. He knows his stuff and his opinions are respected here and i've never personally attacked him once and still haven't, so I obviously know he is not new to the clinic amnd i'm sure he knows i'm not either.
Maybe attack me with debate, rather than pretending to know who I am and what my humour is. I work in the concrete industry, own my own business, founded adalta.cc cycling club in UK and am 48 years old. I don't hide behind a pseudonym, Sam Hocking is my real name, you can find me is 3 seconds using google and I have no connections to Sky whatsoever.
 
Mar 13, 2013
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Re:

The Hegelian said:
I don't mean any disrespect to Sam in case the answer is no, but I think it is justified to ask if he is actually paid by Sky. The arguments should still be taken on their merits, but some disclosure would help us engage with this discourse more openly/honestly. Sam?

You just did disrespect me. Your'e accusing me of not being a genuine person and asking for proof i'm real essentially. Feeling great, thanks! Who else has had to prove who they are here - huh?
 
Jul 30, 2009
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Mamil said:
samhocking said:
Maybe you're new to cycling. All the examples I gave lost time ill at various parts of the race and still won or up on GC overall. Everyone at top of GT is at various stages of relative illness. Now you can argue being ill loses time, but everyone in a GT is in various degrees of illness and degrading health losing time at some point. Who wins is party about who can manage illness the best when it happens and a lot of that comes down to medical care. The more under control you can keep illness, the more likely you are to recover and win it's as simply as that. Not only that but medical care and robust health is a big part of elite sport.

New to cycling? :lol: Alex is a Cycling Australia coach. How condescending of you. Sam just give it a rest already. Comments like your bolded above are laughable. Your love for your hero blinds you to obvious truths.

Earlier I asked what his qualifications were such that he knows more than an elite coach like Alex.

tumbleweed...

Edited by King Boonen.
 
Jul 25, 2012
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Mod hat on:

Can I just remind people that the rule is "Post, not poster", several of you are over-stepping the mark here.

Cheers,

KB.
 
Jul 25, 2012
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Re: Re:

Winterfold said:
Mamil said:
samhocking said:
Maybe you're new to cycling. All the examples I gave lost time ill at various parts of the race and still won or up on GC overall. Everyone at top of GT is at various stages of relative illness. Now you can argue being ill loses time, but everyone in a GT is in various degrees of illness and degrading health losing time at some point. Who wins is party about who can manage illness the best when it happens and a lot of that comes down to medical care. The more under control you can keep illness, the more likely you are to recover and win it's as simply as that. Not only that but medical care and robust health is a big part of elite sport.

New to cycling? :lol: Alex is a Cycling Australia coach. How condescending of you. Sam just give it a rest already. Comments like your bolded above are laughable. Your love for your hero blinds you to obvious truths.

Earlier I asked what his qualifications were such that he knows more than an elite coach like Alex.

tumbleweed...

Edited by King Boonen.

Appeals to authority are never a good idea. If you disagree with someone's arguments then disagree with them.
 
Jul 30, 2009
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King Boonen said:
Winterfold said:
Mamil said:
samhocking said:
Maybe you're new to cycling. All the examples I gave lost time ill at various parts of the race and still won or up on GC overall. Everyone at top of GT is at various stages of relative illness. Now you can argue being ill loses time, but everyone in a GT is in various degrees of illness and degrading health losing time at some point. Who wins is party about who can manage illness the best when it happens and a lot of that comes down to medical care. The more under control you can keep illness, the more likely you are to recover and win it's as simply as that. Not only that but medical care and robust health is a big part of elite sport.

New to cycling? :lol: Alex is a Cycling Australia coach. How condescending of you. Sam just give it a rest already. Comments like your bolded above are laughable. Your love for your hero blinds you to obvious truths.

Earlier I asked what his qualifications were such that he knows more than an elite coach like Alex.

tumbleweed...

Edited by King Boonen.

Appeals to authority are never a good idea. If you disagree with someone's arguments then disagree with them.

It's not an appeal to authority, it's a request for a poster to provide evidence of their knowledge in the field of sports physiology and the demands it places on elite riders so that we may form a view on the validity of their arguments.
 
Jul 25, 2012
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Re: Re:

Winterfold said:
King Boonen said:
Winterfold said:
Mamil said:
samhocking said:
Maybe you're new to cycling. All the examples I gave lost time ill at various parts of the race and still won or up on GC overall. Everyone at top of GT is at various stages of relative illness. Now you can argue being ill loses time, but everyone in a GT is in various degrees of illness and degrading health losing time at some point. Who wins is party about who can manage illness the best when it happens and a lot of that comes down to medical care. The more under control you can keep illness, the more likely you are to recover and win it's as simply as that. Not only that but medical care and robust health is a big part of elite sport.

New to cycling? :lol: Alex is a Cycling Australia coach. How condescending of you. Sam just give it a rest already. Comments like your bolded above are laughable. Your love for your hero blinds you to obvious truths.

Earlier I asked what his qualifications were such that he knows more than an elite coach like Alex.

tumbleweed...

Edited by King Boonen.

Appeals to authority are never a good idea. If you disagree with someone's arguments then disagree with them.

It's not an appeal to authority, it's a request for a poster to provide evidence of their knowledge in the field of sports physiology and the demands it places on elite riders so that we may form a view on the validity of their arguments.

No, it's an appeal to authority. If the only way you can decide who to believe in the discussion is based on their qualifications then there is obviously not enough information provided. Their qualifications are irrelevant if there is enough information to assess their arguments.
 
Mar 13, 2013
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Merckx index said:
samhocking said:
elements of howe tough it really is manifests itself in illness, yet they carry on, many even winning races with medical support.

I haven't been in favor of banning salbutamol, but I have to say, you have provided as good a rationale for doing away with that and other “health aids” as I’ve seen. If illness results from how tough it is, then anything used to alleviate the illness is a way of ameliorating the toughness. That’s basically how many doctors have justified EPO.

Most riders, it seems, get asthma, or at least significantly worse symptoms from asthma, from breathing outside for hours a day. Breathing outdoors for hours every day is part of what one has to do to be a successful racer. If some develop health problems from doing something that is essential to the sport, shouldn’t they have to live with these problems?

Some riders have better genes than others; we don’t try to level that playing field. Some riders respond to a certain training program better than others; we don’t try to level that playing field. Some riders develop no asthma or more moderate asthma than other riders; we’re supposed to level that playing field?

Froome made the comparison with eating, but everyone has to eat. Not everyone has to take a drug to open up his lungs. Salbutamol in effect allows some riders to train as well as race longer and more intensely than they could without it. Some of these same riders may have compensating strengths like a higher VO2 max or lactate threshold or more efficient energy production. If their competitors aren’t allowed to used drugs to narrow that difference, why should asthmatics get to catch up in the area where they're weak?

The argument is that asthma just makes one's lungs normal (as if any pro racer had normal lungs). But EPO makes someone with a below natural hematocrit normal. In the later stages of a GT, riders's hematocrits generally drop below their normal level. Shouldn't they be allowed to transfuse or use EPO to restore their natural HT, just as asthmatics are allowed to restore their pulmonary passages to normal? What's the difference? Both are sick, and in both cases the sickness comes from prolonged, intense effort.

Thanks for not personally attacking me on this. If people think every GT rider that won a race or finished high up on a race is always 100% healthy I think they are naive to how Grand Tour racing especially works with medical support. While no doubt team doctors can and do dope riders, the majority of their day-to-day is supporting each rider medically, either to not get sick, treat the existing sickness medically to get well again while racing or to at least not deteriorate any more and obviously at the extreme end, lean on WADA's TUE system if things get to the point a rider would otherwise pull out of the race. I think there's a huge misconception due to the focus on Sky and what is being revealed that medical support is either doping or invented to cover doping and that is not my experience of team doctors whatsoever.

All teams heavily lean on legal medication because many riders are getting sick at some point in a race. Some won't, but generally after that 2nd week the body begins to fail because racing a bike for 3 weeks at the intensity required is not only not natural, originally the race was designed to destroy riders physically to find a hero to write stories about in a popular newspaper and sell advertising on that heroic performance. Desgrange even describes Le Tour is designed to first destroy a rider physically and then mentally. The rider that can destroy themselves the most and not crack mentally is the winner.

I think the whole Salbutomol thing is so blown out of proportion. Sure it's use is big in cycling because guess what, the riders are maxed out bronchially for 5 hours a day, racing through pollution, alternating temperatures and all sorts of dry conditions in the mountains which is exactly what triggers asthma. They can't control it using steroids like a normal person would, so dependence on what is legal - Salbutomol is inevitable.

I don't agree with the comparison to EPO, not of your general reasoning, but simply because it is a banned substance. EPO in the medical environment is not used to address a common everyday medical problem like Salbutomol and Aspirin and even Food and Water using your analogy.
It's an impossible answer. Denying medical support to a human who could otherwise compete in a bike race is a big step towards something. I'm not sure what, but obviously doing so would only help non-asthma sufferers. Would it even be right to medically cleanse the peloton based on who has Asthma? Sounds a bit like a place I wouldn't want to go to be honest.
 
Re:

Benotti69 said:
The idea that a sick rider can win a GT is laughable. Doping riders are what wins GTs.

Froomster now has a free pass to dose as much Salbutamol as he wants/needs. Tip of the iceberg, of course. The more critically ill Froome gets, the more assuredly he wins GTs. Bilharzia, asthma, kidney failure. Gotta get anemia in there, too, so EPO will be a TUE. :lol:
 
May 26, 2010
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JosephK said:
Benotti69 said:
The idea that a sick rider can win a GT is laughable. Doping riders are what wins GTs.

Froomster now has a free pass to dose as much Salbutamol as he wants/needs. Tip of the iceberg, of course. The more critically ill Froome gets, the more assuredly he wins GTs. Bilharzia, asthma, kidney failure. Gotta get anemia in there, too, so EPO will be a TUE. :lol:

Yep.

Doctors in the UK were shocked when they heard Wiggins was taking Kenacort for asthma. They said he would need hospitalisation for that to be considered.

So the idea the sick riders win GTs is for the birds!

Doping riders win GTS. Seriously doped riders win 3 GTs in a row while telling everyone the dope they took is because they were sick. Only a fool would believe that nonsense.
 

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