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Captain's analysis of Garmin blood data

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Parker said:
Look at that blog. It's poorly presented and even more poorly argued by an anonymous person. Yet you beleive it because it fits your prejudices. Look at blogs by proper (named) scientists, such as the Science in Sport guys to see how proper scientists present their work. It's just nonsense.

It's just crap written by someone who seems to have no idea what he's talking about.

Ah, so it needs to be a wall of text to be accurate, OK.
 
del1962 said:
But what verifiable expertise in the field do this Captain have?

Probably more than us? Maybe you can ask him!

It conforms to the general idea most people have, from years of reading expert analysis. If you have a problem with his analysis, perhaps you could focus on the actual points he presents instead of the fact he wasn't wearing a suit?

Edit: I don't really read what he says either, look at the graphs.
 
Ferminal said:
Probably more than us? Maybe you can ask him!

It conforms to the general idea most people have, from years of reading expert analysis. If you have a problem with his analysis, perhaps you could focus on the actual points he presents instead of the fact he wasn't wearing a suit?

Edit: I don't really read what he says either, look at the graphs.

I look on his site for his qualifications, what did I find nadda. If he were credible he would have a verifiable name and qualifications in the field.

Sorry, I can't treat him seriously.
 
Oct 16, 2012
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Parker said:
But it needs to be written in a sensible manner to be taken seriously.

Nonsense. Spelling and grammar doesn’t matter. What counts is the analysis.

Do yourself a favour and check some of the basics – the net is full of medic libraries, that can help you, for example, understand the reticulocyte matter. Try it! It’s quite interesting.

I did it and read Captain’s stuff again afterwards. And I started to look at Ol’ Sideburns differently.
 
Mar 4, 2010
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Ashenden said:
As I explained earlier, I regard haemoglobin and reticulocytes as separate entities and when I examined Contador's haemoglobin values during the 2010 Tour I found his results to be more or less what I would have expected. However since I already had his data from previous major victories in hand, I went ahead and compared his 2010 haemoglobin results with those other races and I was concerned that I was not able to see consistency between races. In very general terms, you'd expect the same rider to show the same response each race. There is a dilution of the haemoglobin as the cumulative impact of multiple days of stage racing leads to an influx of water into the circulation. Whereas I would have been reassured to find the same characteristic signature in Contador during every one of his victories, I did not.

Now have a look at Brad's data. No consistency between GT's in Hb or retics.
 
Any such blood analysis, whether made by experts or internet heroes, is completely worthless until we get a sample of blood values throughout an entire season from a large collection of clean riders. Until then, it's more or less impossible to know what can be considered random variations.
 
Mar 4, 2010
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Ferminal said:
Also read everything Ashenden et al have said on the matter in recent years.

Then look at the data.

Jakob Moerkeberg:

AS: Part of what you find suspicious about Armstrong’s values is that the hematocrit stays very steady, with a couple of spikes in the middle?

JM: Yes. Usually I'm referring to the hemoglobin concentration, because that is what's used nowadays. People are more and more interpreting hemoglobin concentrations instead of hematocrit because of analytical reasons. So what I see is that his first value is the same as his last value, and when you look at those individual values during the race, it's going down in the beginning, then after the rest day the values increase, then they go down again, and then on the second rest day it increases again. I am well aware of the analytical and biological variations in the hemoglobin concentration, that is why I have emphasized that the important point when interpreting these values is that the last value is not lower than the first.

AS: The other thing you find strange is the reticulocyte count, that it's too low, and that's indicating that he's not producing his own red blood cells?

JM: If you look at his values during the year up to the Tour, the reticulocyte values are pretty much what you would expect, around 1%. There are analytical variations and biological variations to that parameter as for any other parameter. Then at the beginning of the Tour, it's half, .5%, which is producing half the red blood cells that you would expect. The reason why you get a decrease in your reticulocyte values is when you have an increased amount of hemoglobin. Your body does not have to produce as much as usual.

Ashenden:

In a pre-Tour blood screen from June 29, two days before the 2006 race began, Landis had a hematocrit level of 44.8 percent and hemoglobin level of 15.5. On July 11, 10 stages into the Tour, his hematocrit had increased to 48.2 and his hemoglobin to 16.1.

This caught the attention of Michael Ashenden, project coordinator for an Australian research consortium called Science and Industry Against Blood Doping, because the body's concentration of red blood cells naturally decreases during an exhausting competition such as the Tour de France.

“Going from 15.5 to 16.1 (in hemoglobin) is not that unusual when not competing,” Ashenden said by phone from Australia. “But it is very unusual to see an increase after a hard week of cycling. You'd expect it to be the reverse. You'd expect that to fall in a clean athlete. An increase like this in the midst of the Tour de France would be highly, highly unlikely.

Examining Armstrong’s blood results during the 2009 Tour de France, Ashenden said that there were two aspects which appear irregular. The first was the fact that Armstrong’s system showed a lower-than-expected level of reticulocytes, young red blood cells which are generated as part of the body’s normal turnaround of the more mature haemoglobin molecules.

Thre level of reticulocytes was lower than usual, something which Ashenden feels is consistent with a blood transfusion. “Suppressed red blood cell production is a classic signature associated with blood doping,” Ashenden told California Watch. “The body reacts to the presence of excess red cells in circulation by suppressing the bone marrow’s production of new cells.”

Ashenden also pointed out that during a three week race, the level of red blood cells should fall as a result of the strain of the event.

“The absence of a natural decline in blood concentration during a three-week race is also consistent with blood doping,” said Ashenden.

Damsgaard (JV's favourite anti-doping expert):

Rasmussen did have a blood transfusion during the Tour or followed an EPO cure just before the Tour. Damsgaard says the increase of 3.6% in his hematocrit value and 1,1 gram per deciliter for his hemoglobin value is 'suspect', 'physiologically impossible' and scientifically impossible to explain in another way than that Rasmussen used doping.

“The seven CSC riders [who completed the Tour] had hemoglobin numbers decline by between 12 and 22 percent, and that’s completely normal. When the opposite happens — that the [hemoglobin] number rises during a hard race like the Tour de France — it indicates that one has received a blood transfusion,” Rasmus Damsgaard explains.

“We conclude that a rise in hemoglobin by itself ought to constitute the basis for the possibility of a penalty.”
 
Where's the hematocrit data when you need it ? As the USADA recently reminded us in their report, without blood manipulation the level HAS to go down during a three week GT. Armstrong's did during the 2009 Giro, it didn't during the 2009 TDF.
 
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webvan said:
Where's the hematocrit data when you need it ? As the USADA recently reminded us in their report, without blood manipulation the level HAS to go down during a three week GT. Armstrong's did during the 2009 Giro, it didn't during the 2009 TDF.

Hb is more reliable.
 
I still have not found anyone who can verify the Captains qualifications in the field if he has any, until someone can I think it is safe to assume that the site cannot be trusted.

Perhaps some one can put forward a peer reviewed paper by the captain.
 
Sep 29, 2012
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del1962 said:
I still have not found anyone who can verify the Captains qualifications in the field if he has any, until someone can I think it is safe to assume that the site cannot be trusted.

Perhaps some one can put forward a peer reviewed paper by the captain.

in the dark ages, noone was allowed to say the earth was not flat, for fear of incrimination from the church.

chapeau to the scientists who have finally usurped religion for the position of "knowing how stuff works and villify anyone not in our clique".

a school teacher came up with the theory of relativity.

just sayin'.
 
Dear Wiggo said:
in the dark ages, noone was allowed to say the earth was not flat, for fear of incrimination from the church.

chapeau to the scientists who have finally usurped religion for the position of "knowing how stuff works and villify anyone not in our clique".

a school teacher came up with the theory of relativity.

just sayin'.

Is that supposed to vouch for me believing the credebility of an anonymous blogger on the internet, and you think those who think Sky don't dope are gullible, oh the irony.
 
Dear Wiggo said:
in the dark ages, noone was allowed to say the earth was not flat, for fear of incrimination from the church.

chapeau to the scientists who have finally usurped religion for the position of "knowing how stuff works and villify anyone not in our clique".

a school teacher came up with the theory of relativity.

just sayin'.

The Ancient Greeks knew that the earth was a sphere. No-one has has really thought it's flat since.

And the Theory of Relativity was thought up by a patent examiner, not a teacher.

Do you ever bother to check your 'facts'?
 
Mar 4, 2010
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del1962 said:
I still have not found anyone who can verify the Captains qualifications in the field if he has any, until someone can I think it is safe to assume that the site cannot be trusted.

Perhaps some one can put forward a peer reviewed paper by the captain.

You can trust the data. It's a fact that DM's Hb rose at the Giro. It's a fact that DM recorded his highest Hb and lowest retics (0.4!:eek:) of the season in the middle of the TdF. Read what MA, RD and JM have to say and you should be able to judge whether that's normal or not normal.
 

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