because they monitor their profiles, and work with it. And if your blood passport profile is already artificially high, you can just keep it that way.
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elapid said:I asked this a few months ago but only received an obscure BB answer - why can't they use 2-3 DPG levels to detect autologous blood doping? Is it diluted out to near or normal levels when only 10% of blood volume is transfused?
At present there is no accepted method for detecting autologous transfusions (that is, using the athlete’s own RBCs), but research is in progress and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has promised that a test will eventually be introduced. The test method and its introduction date are to be kept secret in order to avoid tipping off doping athletes. The assay under development may be a measure of 2,3-bisphosphoglycerate (2,3-BPG) levels in an athlete's red blood cells. Because 2,3-BPG is degraded over time, the stored blood used in autologous transfusions will have less 2,3-BPG than fresh blood. A 2,3-BPG concentration lower than normal may therefore be an indication of autologous transfusion.
Cobber said:From Wikipedia (yes, I know, not the most reliable source...)
It would have to be a pretty sensitive test. If a 150 lb cyclist has, say 5 litres of blood in his body, and was transfused with cells equivalent to 1 litre of blood, if the 2,3-BPG level had dropped 50% in the stored blood, the total amount of 2,3-BPG in a blood test would be 90% of the level before the transfusion (correct?).
So the questions are. What is the normal range of this metabolite in people? Does the level change in elite athletes? How quickly does it recover once the blood is transfused?
Its better to be at 59% for 8 hours then to be permanently at 52%. The issue is not wanting to sleep with it at 55% & up, and the morning controls. So the top guys are likely training blood off before sleeping and re-infuse in the morning after controls. They only have to jack all the way for the TTT, the TTs, and the key mountain top finishes. Think of it this way, some Extra red cells WILL start working right away but the MAX effect wont be felt for 48 hours. Trauma patients get some improvement right away.Advancedone said:I raised the issue of the 24-48 hours with Bigboat and he never answered,.
BigBoat said:Its better to be at 59% for 8 hours then to be permanently at 52%. The issue is not wanting to sleep with it at 55% & up, and the morning controls. So the top guys are likely training blood off before sleeping and re-infuse in the morning after controls. They only have to jack all the way for the TTT, the TTs, and the key mountain top finishes. Think of it this way, some Extra red cells WILL start working right away but the MAX effect wont be felt for 48 hours. Trauma patients get some improvement right away.
They come in at 50 & up with blood doping NO DOUBT. They physically come to the race with a jacked crit. Their undoped crits are all in the low 40s or even upper 30s due to hard training, apart from a few exeptions. After that they can blood dope to 55% or higher during the race.
IF I WAS RIDING THE TOUR this year...I'd do this because it might give me another 5-10% more FTP power. You could be right though. Many of them might only take 1 transfusion right before the Tour, or two refills along the way.
Well, the trouble is it then becomes about who responds well to the treatment, much like EPO. Just look at the effect of EPO down the years. Guys who respond well to the therapy, like Pantani, get the glory. Others who decide not to jack, or who don't respond well, or who get side effects, end up nowhere. It's the same with autologous boosting. Some guys will win simply because they respond well to it, not because of their efforts in training/out on the road.SirLes said:Should autologous transfusions be legalised? It would perhaps reduce the risks if things were out in the open and certain standards applied.
I think it is very much in the grey area of what consitutes doping. It is afterall ones own blood. Arguably it is more natural than many of the legal supplements or chemicals. I believe it didn`t use to be illegal. Why did that change?
There are many people on here that know much more about this than I do so I am prepared to be shot down. Please keep it informative though as I would like to know.
Cobblestones said:To be fair, if you re-infuse blood which was taken out the evening before, 2-3 DPG levels shouldn't have dropped far and you would get more immediate benefit than from a 3-month old bag. That part does make sense. (I still don't believe that that is what's going on, though)
Data collection for a study examining the efficacy of the CO rebreathing method finished more than 18 months ago. It only took 3 or 4 months to decide upon the EPO test prior to the 2000 Sydney olympics.Cobblestones said:This is the same issue which would plague a test based on reticulocyte counting. Both 2,3-DPG and number of reticulocytes are fractionally different in stored blood than fresh. Upon transfusion this fractional change is further diluted since 1 pint of transfused blood will mix with maybe 10 pints of blood in the body. This diluted fractional change has then to be gauged against normal variations of the numbers which might come about when riding a GT or for whatever reason. It's a tall order. I think the better way would be to measure the total volume with the CO method.
mitochondrion said:The necessary dosing of androgens, growth factors and T3 during the tour is miniscule and again practically impossible to detect. It is likely the Di luca non-negatives are due to CERA present in the transfused blood, not from CERA used during the Giro. i.e. the CERA used earlier in the year at the time of donation, the same CERA which would elevate 2-3 DPG levels within the harvested blood.
blackcat said:its cheating, its doping, and it can be dangerous. You should do some homework before a silly post like that.
Did PDM get dodgy blood way back? Not sure. But in 2004 Vuelta, Vino and the T-Mobile riders all pulled out of the Vuelta with "sickness", a food poisoning. Yeah, sure. The story is it was bad blood transfusions. Evans, Konecny and Zabel whom did not suffer the "food poisoning" stayed in the race. No dodgy transfusions, as they did not get blood.
Could be apocryphal. Me: leaning to 50/50. As there is a lotta BS, but lots of truth and substance in the doping tales. Put about twice as much stock in this tho, than the function you assess Bigboat with.
mitochondrion said:Perhaps two or three times during a three week tour, the transfusion of autologous blood in volumes of approximately 500ml would suffice. Daily transfusion and donation would expose the rider to an unacceptable risk of infection. Cannulation / venepuncture of a reasonable calibre vessel 40+ times in 3 weeks is impractical, technically demanding and hard to conceal.
Krebs cycle said:Applied to sports what it means is that tension is created during the contest. There is a level of suspense which creates an emotional state (of tension). When the final whistle is blown, there is an outcome and the tension is resolved. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief because the emotional state has been removed, even if that means your team or guy/girl lost. You might be annoyed, but at least you know what the result was.
If you allow a free for all drugs situation, the tension remains because you just don't know whether or not the outcome is based on genetics and environment or whether if was influenced by something that is out of control of the competitor themselves.
Ozzie2 said:Can I perhaps restate the question I asked- “amongst_the cyclists_,is ABT regarded as cheating (not is it dangerous, does it have consequences or is it breaking “rules”)
If you ask me hanging onto the team car while getting a drink and taking that last shove they all take from the manager is cheating, and it is also against rules as I understand, but people bear it?
sherer said:sorry for asking yet another stupid question. What are sticky bottles ? Not heard that used before so must have missed it.
I do wonder with a lot of the cyclists being intelligent people and with the start of EPO with them having to wake up in the night to walk around and all the other risks and with a few dying in their sleep why didn't the whole peleton just turn round and say no and speak out about it
In the early days EPO use was a serious game of russian roulette. Once the correct anticoagulant/antiplatelet treatment was figured out (probably aspirin) the risks were reduced, although not eliminated. If the risks of dying are 1/100, more guys are gonna be tempted than if they're 1/10, especially if you're desperate for success.sherer said:sorry for asking yet another stupid question. What are sticky bottles ? Not heard that used before so must have missed it.
I do wonder with a lot of the cyclists being intelligent people and with the start of EPO with them having to wake up in the night to walk around and all the other risks and with a few dying in their sleep why didn't the whole peleton just turn round and say no and speak out about it
Krebs cycle said:Ozzie2, I have been involved with elite sport for many yrs now and the debate about whether or not to let sport be a free for all versus maintaining bans on drugs and doping methods has always existed.
It is a philosophical and ethical debate. The way that I view it is that human performance is a combination of two main factors, genetics and environment. The interaction between those two factors underlies important charateristics such as the psychology of elite performance, ie: determination, motivation etc. It also underlies the physiology of elite performance, the right genetics are required to produce a world champion, but genetics on their own will not suffice. This is where training and nutrition become important. Now lets add a very important co-variable into this equation.... MONEY. Countries with more money are more successful at sport in general. On this topic I don't think you can use the argument that simply having more money is unethical (you can) but it opens a whole new can of worms. Regardless of how much money you have though (to spend on cutting edge sports science and technology for example) this on its own does not produce a world class athlete. You must have the first 2 factors which are far more important than money.
BUT, PEDs and doping methods bring a different kind of variable into the equation. Now you are able to bypass the first 2 factors and create something that is unphysiological. IMO it brings a fundamental change to the world of sports performance. Our ethical and moral code dictates that we humans want to compete against each other using human evolution as our benchmark. Once we start playing around and artifically manipulating our evolutionary history we are changing that benchmark. we create performances that may not be possible to achieve with genetics and environment alone.
Humans in general are honest creatures IMO. We want to see the gladiators fight it out based on their skills and strength. If a doctor behind the scenes becomes just as resposnsible as the athlete we are always left wondering who the real winner was, the athlete, the doctor or some combination of both? Think about that weird empty feeling you get when you see a movie that finishes without an ending, or how people feel whose loved ones go missing never to be found. I think humans need closure. If drugs were legal, I believe we loose that closure.
sherer said:sorry for asking yet another stupid question. What are sticky bottles ? Not heard that used before so must have missed it.
sherer said:sorry for asking yet another stupid question. What are sticky bottles ? Not heard that used before so must have missed it.
I do wonder with a lot of the cyclists being intelligent people and with the start of EPO with them having to wake up in the night to walk around and all the other risks and with a few dying in their sleep why didn't the whole peleton just turn round and say no and speak out about it