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Teams & Riders Bahrain

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The article wasn't clear -- is it only France in which you would need a TUE/TUA, or is it on a UCI or anti-doping agency list?

Zanaflex is the brand name, at least in the US. According to US ADA wallet card it appears to be permitted w/out a TUE, but it could also be subject to country or sport restrictions.

Anyway, I suspect that this -- if it's what was found -- isn't the only special sauce that has made Bahrain ... more victorious this year. But it could have a huge effect on recovery...
In France a Dr would need temporary authorisation to prescribe it to someone. Dr Korsic may well have abided by Slovenian medical law though and legally prescribed it to these 3 riders in Slovenia and the riders then simply need to declare its use on their doping control form when tested in terms of WADA's requirement to take it. In terms of French law, clearly, if Dr Korsic has essentially imported a quantity beyond what he's prescribed and documented, the charges will I assume be what French Police alleged and the boxes seen prove the Dr has acquired, transported, and was in possession for importing of a prohibited substance or method and possible charge him for use by an athlete without justification, although I think that charge is unlikely as the drug seems to have uses beyond simply the typical high street uses.
 
A hair-raising report, no doubt.

But seriously, can anyone even act surprised? Bahrain had a real sudden collective surge this year & that always means one thing only. This will be the tip of a huge iceberg & the only question is whether it's a string which if pulled can unravel a whole lot more in the pro peloton.
So these are muscle relaxants, they are not banned. I think Bahrain V are up to something, but a hullabaloo about muscle relaxants seems a bit misplaced, at least in terms of a doping offense.

Now, if it creates a conversation about health and physical well-being in sport, then that is a good thing.
 
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Now, if it creates a conversation about health and physical well-being in sport, then that is a good thing.
But will it? Or will it quickly be forgotten? History suggests the latter:
Cycling is promoted as being the healthiest sport there is. Yet consider how much medicine - legal medicine - is used in this sport. Consider how races today have become pharmacies on wheels. The French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche revealed in July 2004 that eleven non-French teams starting that year's Tour had requested permission from the Agence Française de Sécurité Sanitaire des Aliments to import medicines - lotions, potions, needles and pills - many of which have no obvious application within cycling. On average, these teams were each importing more than eighty different substances. One team imported one hundred fifty-five substances.

Commenting on the volume and type of legal drugs being imported, Gérard Guillaume, doctor to the fdjeux.com team said:

The cyclist's pathology is hypochondria: falls, skin irritations, digestive, pulmonary or muscular complaints. That necessitates around thirty products, no more. You can add to that a couple of medicines in case of an emergency, like a heart attack, but no more. Nothing justifies such an arsenal of products.
Nothing justifies such an arsenal of products? Well, maybe nothing except a Therapeutic Use Exemption. The AFLD revealed that, at the 2008 Tour de France, seventy-six of the one hundred eighty riders who took the line in Brittany needed TUEs in order to be able to ride.

Walsh and Ballester, in LA Confidentiel, procured the drugs manifest of one team from the 2000 Tour. It listed one hundred twenty-six products. Six hundred and eighty-four individual packages were detailed, which the authors calculated to amount to seven thousand four hundred and twenty-two individual doses. The 2001 manifest for the same team, which the authors also procured, covered one hundred and nineteen different products. Seven hundred and ninety packages were detailed, which the authors calculated to amount to eight thousand, three hundred and thirty-four doses. This is for a team of nine riders in a twenty-one day race. Do the math on the daily doses yourself.

Walsh and Ballester were minded to recall a comment from Daniel Delegove, the presiding judge at the Festina trial in 2000. Looking at the all the evidence he had heard about the use of drugs in cycling, Delegove declared: "These are not racers, they are cycling test tubes."

The authors also turned to Jean-Pierre de Mondenard, the author of the Dictionnaire du Dopage:

The main purpose of medication is to combat disease. Once medication is given to enhance performance, a doping system develops. Originally, sport had its virtues, but sport organised by man has eliminated them.
Mondenard might well be shocked by this latest story but even fans of recent vintage know we've been here before and it got us nowhere, with Wiggins's reputation barely stained, let alone tarnished, by his use of 'legal' meds.

(Mondenard's shock is even harder to take seriously when you consider that USADA have named this med as legal in one of their athlete guides. He does tend to talk a lot of hyperbollix sometimes, no matter how valuable his original contributions to anti-doping might have been.)
 
But will it? Or will it quickly be forgotten? History suggests the latter: Mondenard might well be shocked by this latest story but even fans of recent vintage know we've been here before and it got us nowhere, with Wiggins's reputation barely stained, let alone tarnished, by his use of 'legal' meds.

(Mondenard's shock is even harder to take seriously when you consider that USADA have named this med as legal in one of their athlete guides. He does tend to talk a lot of hyperbollix sometimes, no matter how valuable his original contributions to anti-doping might have been.)
Indeed. I should have written if in all caps and added that it resulted in actual healthy changes. But that as you point out seems unlikely given previous examples
 
I should have written if in all caps and added that it resulted in actual healthy changes. But that as you point out seems unlikely given previous examples
To park the negativity momentarily, we have seen success with Tramadol (pretty definitively, I think) and with corticosteroids (it's very early days I accept but at least there's now a clearer ban in place) and if it is shown that Tizanidine is both being used in competition (and not as a recovery aid) and is genuinely capable of endangering others by causing real drowsiness, you could see the UCI moving to save face.

But ... taking out one product here and another product there does nothing to change the culture of a pharmacy on wheels, which remains untalked about with no one willing to throw open the doors of their medicine cabinet (even Walsh, who made much of rent-a-gobs like De Mondenard in his pursuit of LA, couldn't be bothered looking at what was in Team Sky's medicine cabinet just a couple of years later).
 
The 90 day limit for the hair test is procedural rather than scientific. Hair drug tests only use the ~1.5" of hair closest to the scalp which goes back about 3 months. You could hypothetically test longer hair and get results further back (perhaps with more false negatives, but I doubt with any more false positives).
 
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Speaking of Bahrain, Padun offers an impassioned defense of himself, but then ruins it by refusing to even hint at why his contract wasn't renewed at Bahrain.

We shall see if he can get results at EF. I'm not optimistic.

If I was prone to conspiracy theories, I would say that he went off the track with whatever they were using/testing, and they just lost confidence in having him in the team. For instance, double dosed, tested with something they were not keen on taking to a race, or simply because he trashed the peloton in those two stages when he was supposed to be just trialling it. Of course, you could say that they were not doing anything wrong and that it was Padun all alone, but between the tour findings and the above-average results the whole team had the whole year, I would still put my money on the first theory.
 
It's a bit grim that the authorities have as yet been unable to lay a glove on Padun despite literally every possible sign pointing to PED abuse.

I hope it is not considered too soon, but with Colbrelli on the mend does anyone have any thoughts on the potential of alleged illegality by Bahrain to have impacted on a riders health like that? Or do we think it is likely unrelated? I appreciate that without knowing precisely what they were doing to their riders (that resulted in the weird hair samples) we are kind of shooting in the dark.
 
HBOC's trials were canceled due to provoking dangerous cardiac problems. Sonny-boy had that episode at Catalunya and the whole team is still on fire. They just don't care.

Teuns is now his old 2017 self again, out of nowhere. I haven't seen this blantant piss taking since Sky promoted Gerain't to a Tour winner a few years ago. Really good stuff.
 
on fire? they are doing very good. Teuns podiumed Fleche before, and he won against old man Valverde. they were many in Liege and they didnt even try to follow Remco. Teuns timed it well and beat Dennis in Romandie. let's wait for the Giro.
what should they care about?

Colbrelli had a cardiac problem. no trial was on.
 
on fire? they are doing very good. Teuns podiumed Fleche before, and he won against old man Valverde. they were many in Liege and they didnt even try to follow Remco. Teuns timed it well and beat Dennis in Romandie. let's wait for the Giro.
what should they care about?

Colbrelli had a cardiac problem. no trial was on.
Doing extremely good is my definition of being on fire. That doesn't mean winning every race tho. They should care about looking so suspicious given the current context. Both things seem quite obvious to me, hope you understand now.

Trials of all HBOCs? Or trials of specific HBOCs?

Don't know if it's absolutely all of them, but at as far as I can find, yes, at least in the US the FDA cancelled them.
 
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