Did EPO use really kill some riders?

[Tienus]

Marty Hall almost certainly didn't accuse Soviets of using rEPO but referred to transfusions. I've seen a few dozen news items about the incident based on the same UPI/AP - articles and recall seeing only one article where name rEPO is mentioned, so most likely the author mixed up the publicity surrounding rEPO and the accusation.

Even in the Dutch newspapers they are called vague accusations. But journalists where asking questions and writing about blood doping and EPO during the games. In my opinion de Merode was just trying to play it down in the press, just like he did after the 84 transfusion scandal.

If I am not mistaken, the PDM/Wim Sanders - inquiry of late 1990s also placed the first instances of rEPO-purchases around 1989 or 1990, assuming that the information reported is trustworthy. That has been strikingly underreported inquiry in the English literature and I'd be interested to know if you have opinion/additional information on that matter through Dutch sources.

This was a financial investigation. The autobus link you posted is a pretty good english summary. The scam, using other patients names for prescriptions, happened between 89 and 95. This scam was not possible before 89 since this was the first year EPO was paid for by the NHS. I therefore would not take this as an indication that 89 was the first year Sander supplied EPO.

Still Björn Ekblom and Bo Berglund told that they had to go through a lot of red tape in order to get hold of the expensive product for their rEPO-tests with athletes in 1989 and they were heavily under the impression that rEPO was in so short supply an difficult to obtain that athletes most likely had no access to use yet.

Sanders was buying EPO from a pharmacy in The Netherlands in 1989 and Arnold Beckett claimed it was available with a prescription in several countries.

 

[Aragon]

Re:

Even in the Dutch newspapers they are called vague accusations. But journalists where asking questions and writing about blood doping and EPO during the games. In my opinion de Merode was just trying to play it down in the press, just like he did after the 84 transfusion scandal.

As such, I don't deny the incentives by IOC to downplay the prevalence of doping use, but on the other hand why publicly tell that blood doping isn't tested at all just a week before the 1988 Olympics if they wanted to downplay the doping use. My key point was that the gossips and accusations circulated still around transfusions and while there must've been some expected whispering about the super-drug, very few publicly claimed that it actually was used even in the most vague terms.

This was a financial investigation. The autobus link you posted is a pretty good english summary. The scam, using other patients names for prescriptions, happened between 89 and 95. This scam was not possible before 89 since this was the first year EPO was paid for by the NHS. I therefore would not take this as an indication that 89 was the first year Sander supplied EPO...
Sanders was buying EPO from a pharmacy in The Netherlands in 1989 and Arnold Beckett claimed it was available with a prescription in several countries.

Very little debate here, as I wouldn't be surprised if some of the rEPO circulating in 1989 did find its way into the hands of athletes as the availability improved significantly when compared to 1987 or 1988. Difficult to take any position on the Ljunqvist-Beckett debate, perhaps the product was difficult to obtain when Swedes were conducting the injection phase of their 1991 EPO-study during the spring of 1989.

It should also be emphasized that the available material doesn't necessarily support the allegation that EPO-purchases of Sanders started as early as 1989. The sole reference to that particular year seems to exist only in that CN-article I linked, whereas other CN and Dutch sources published before and after the article put the starting year at 1990. In fact, I've seen zero other sources supporting the 1989-claim, but that doesn't mean that such a source couldn't exist.

In addition, even after rEPO became "available" and "approved" in many countries around 1989-1991, one can not jump to the conclusion that every second pharmacy had the product in its inventory. Here is an interesting quote from a Canadian newspaper from 1991:

The only distributor of EPO presently in Canada is Ortho Pharmaceutical (Canada Ltd.), which has sold the drug by the trade name Eprex since March of last year [ie. 1990].

Ortho spokesman Walter Masanic said the drug can only be obtained by prescription through hospitals at the moment, but that the company is hoping to eventually distribute it through pharmacies by prescription...

One could imagine that the availability must've been roughly similar in most of the other countries of the world at that time period of 1989-1991. Apparently there were leakages from the system to the sports world, but there weren't necessarily that many suppliers of the product at that point of time which diminished the possible leakages significantly.

 

[sniper]

Downplaying the rumors because "very few publicly claimed that it actually was used even in the most vague terms" is flawed.
How many athletes have publicly claimed AICAR was being used in 2009?
Or Hematide?
We know it was being used only because of Pierre Bordry's honesty (which cost him his job one year later).

Another thing: for first-usage, you're really looking in the wrong direction. The first athletes on EPO were most likely from the country were EPO was first developed and trialed.
Some rumors make an awful lot of sense don't they.

 

[Aragon]

Re:

Downplaying the rumors because "very few publicly claimed that it actually was used even in the most vague terms" is flawed.

I didn't downplay the "Soviet used rEPO"-accusation's significance, but debunked its whole existence. When two members of Finnish team (Esa Klinga, Pekka Vähäsöyrinki) more or less accused Soviets of blood doping almost at the sime time, rEPO wasn't mentioned either. The context was that doping rumors about methods used during that time circulated more likely around transfusions than around rEPO.

That public as well as possible and active dopers became interested in rEPO at that time is another issue.

 

[sniper]

ok that's certainly fair enough, cheers.

 

[Tienus]

why publicly tell that blood doping isn't tested at all just a week before the 1988 Olympics

De Merode made a lot of statements after the 84 transfusion scandal, mayby journalists where asking him if there would be tests.

In this link there is a bit more info on the Sanders case. The case was well reported in 300 pages by the financial investigation. Journalists have read the full report but obviously did not publish everything. Danny Nelissen went to court and got some bits prevented from publishing.
http://www.cyclingforums.com/threads/doping-or-not-read-this.21521/
Starting from: Drug Scandal in the Netherlands
This link mentions that Sanders also suplied doping to the Superconfex team (87-89).

In addition, even after rEPO became "available" and "approved" in many countries around 1989-1991, one can not jump to the conclusion that every second pharmacy had the product in its inventory. Here is an interesting quote from a Canadian newspaper from 1991:

Sanders also bought from the Local pharmacy in Geleen but he himself might have been the soul reason for that,

I think its a strange "coincident" that EPO was being tested in calgary at the time of the olympics. I wonder who the drug was tested on. It does prove that you could manage to get EPO in Canada at the beginning of 1988.

 

[Aragon]

Re:

Thanks for the link, it certainly looks very interesting while the EPO-connection remains as murky as ever at least after a precursory look. I've seen surprisingly few references to the material in published works and David Walsh makes no mention about Wim Sanders's case in his From Lance to Landis as well as doesn't mention PDM at all, if I recall correctly.

The Foothills-research was performed on kidney patients, as the news item that has circulated in CN forums points out clearly.

http://www.delpher.nl/nl/kranten/view?query=calgary+cocktail&coll=ddd&identifier=ddd%3A010611550%3Ampeg21%3Aa0285&resultsidentifier=ddd%3A010611550%3Ampeg21%3Aa0285

If I am not mistaken, the research was part of the following paper on which Mandin and his group co-contributed.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1662387/pdf/bmj00168-0027.pdf

The research seems to have lasted at least six months and involved 118 patients in thirteen hospital dialysis centers, so it shouldn't have been that a surprise that there was a geographical and chronological overlapping with February/1988 and Calgary.

The fact that a group of researchers uses a product in academic research implies very little about the products real availability and how easily an athlete "manages to get EPO" there, as the product seems to have been stored and administered in the dialysis centers and not through pharmacies. Naturally there is some relevance with increased supply, and it indeed would be interesting to know some data on how many kidney patients actually received rEPO regularly in time period of 1986-1989, whether the figure in Canada was only that 118 patients or was that a fraction of a larger group of up to a few thousand patients.

In any case, the culture was a light year away from the easy days of late 1990s when one could just visit Switzerland and return with a bag filled with Eprex and Recormon from the first pharmacy.

 

[Tienus]

The Foothills-research was performed on kidney patients, as the news item that has circulated in CN forums points out clearly.

From the link you posted: EPO works better on trained bodies than transfusions.
The title of another article on the Foothill research is "medicine better than blood doping".
http://leiden.courant.nu/issue/LD/1988-02-18/edition/0/page/18?query=epo&period=1980-1990&sort=relevance
I wonder how they know this if they only tested it on anaemic patients. I would like to read the original article from the Calgary herald but I cant find it. I think its also strange that Mandin is a speaker at a doping seminar in Monte Carlo a year later where he explains the dangers for athletes (high blood pressure and blood clots).

The old Dutch articles I have read so far indicate that EPO was easy to get with a prescription in The Netherlands after January 1989. Around that time it was also bought over the border in Belgium and Germany. A member of the IOC medical staff confirmed in Monte Carlo that it was easy to get with a prescription in several countries.
The only ones i found denying this seem to have an agenda.

This article is in a respons to an article in Sports Zurich which sugests that EPO might be the cause for the sudden death of cyclist in The Netherlands.
http://leiden.courant.nu/issue/LLC/1990-03-30/edition/0/page/9?query=epo&period=1980-1990&sort=relevance
Lon Schattenberg claims in it (March 1990) that EPO is barely available due to scarcity and the high price.
Eprex costed Fl 1.200,- a box in 1989, the avarage month income at the time was Fl 3.165,-.
The receipts show that Sanders was selling it for an even higher price and he did have plenty of customers including alot of local amateur cyclists.

 

[blutto]

Re:

The Foothills-research was performed on kidney patients, as the news item that has circulated in CN forums points out clearly.

From the link you posted: EPO works better on trained bodies than transfusions.
The title of another article on the Foothill research is "medicine better than blood doping".
http://leiden.courant.nu/issue/LD/1988-02-18/edition/0/page/18?query=epo&period=1980-1990&sort=relevance
I wonder how they know this if they only tested it on anaemic patients. I would like to read the original article from the Calgary herald but I cant find it. I think its also strange that Mandin is a speaker at a doping seminar in Monte Carlo a year later where he explains the dangers for athletes (high blood pressure and blood clots).

The old Dutch articles I have read so far indicate that EPO was easy to get with a prescription in The Netherlands after January 1989. Around that time it was also bought over the border in Belgium and Germany. A member of the IOC medical staff confirmed in Monte Carlo that it was easy to get with a prescription in several countries.
The only ones i found denying this seem to have an agenda.

This article is in a respons to an article in Sports Zurich which sugests that EPO might be the cause for the sudden death of cyclist in The Netherlands.
http://leiden.courant.nu/issue/LLC/1990-03-30/edition/0/page/9?query=epo&period=1980-1990&sort=relevance
Lon Schattenberg claims in it (March 1990) that EPO is barely available due to scarcity and the high price.
Eprex costed Fl 1.200,- a box in 1989, the avarage month income at the time was Fl 3.165,-.
The receipts show that Sanders was selling it for an even higher price and he did have plenty of customers including alot of local amateur cyclists.

....having for a long time been involved in this discussion I can say that those deniers were definitely tied to an agenda and in one very particular case seemed for all intents and purposes to be working from a script....yeah that is a really "out-there" statement but the discussion/argument over the EPO timeline was also tied to preserving the legacy of a certain Tour miracle....it made for a very strange , uhhhh, discussion....and yes agenda was definitely part of it....

...that being said very glad to see the stuff I was routinely trashed for now being accepted as the historical fact that it is....but we also have to understand the real mystery now left to explore is the examination of the timeline of the earliest production of the drug and the supply chain that was used in the various studies used to get the drug approved....if my suspicions are correct this drug left the reservation right around the start of the study period , which could well be in 86 ( why 86 ?....well if you run the study timeline backwards that is where it should reasonably start....however if you run that timeline to include the production timeline that could move the date back even further ....)....

Cheers

 

[sniper]

This Dutch pharmaceutical(?) company in Eindhoven bought rights to sell EPO in 1989. I posted that somewhere, but not sure in which thread.
edit: "bought" -> "tried to buy"

 

[Aragon]

Re:

From the link you posted: EPO works better on trained bodies than transfusions.
The title of another article on the Foothill research is "medicine better than blood doping".
http://leiden.courant.nu/issue/LD/1988-02-18/edition/0/page/18?query=epo&period=1980-1990&sort=relevance
I wonder how they know this if they only tested it on anaemic patients. I would like to read the original article from the Calgary herald but I cant find it. I think its also strange that Mandin is a speaker at a doping seminar in Monte Carlo a year later where he explains the dangers for athletes (high blood pressure and blood clots).

As it was well-known in 1988, the mechanism of blood doping was through elevating hematocrit, but is was also known that all kind of transfusions are difficult to organise and there was a practical limit on how much hematocrit could be elevated through them. Even the handful of available rEPO-studies pointed out even in 1988 that one could elevate hematocrit easier and most likely also higher with Erythropoietin. It was the consensus view of almost all sports doctors that blood dopers would switch to rEPO in the future as soon as the product would become available. This intuitive assumption was totally valid even with no in vivo-studies backing it up.

When Monte Carlo seminar was held, there had been no academic research involving athletes, so researchers such as Henry Mandin were the obvious choise to lecture on the hematological effects of the substance. The first rEPO study involving athletes was finished around the fall of 1989 and published two years later in two research papers.

The old Dutch articles I have read so far indicate that EPO was easy to get with a prescription in The Netherlands after January 1989. Around that time it was also bought over the border in Belgium and Germany. A member of the IOC medical staff confirmed in Monte Carlo that it was easy to get with a prescription in several countries.
The only ones i found denying this seem to have an agenda.

This article is in a respons to an article in Sports Zurich which sugests that EPO might be the cause for the sudden death of cyclist in The Netherlands.
http://leiden.courant.nu/issue/LLC/1990-03-30/edition/0/page/9?query=epo&period=1980-1990&sort=relevance
Lon Schattenberg claims in it (March 1990) that EPO is barely available due to scarcity and the high price.
Eprex costed Fl 1.200,- a box in 1989, the avarage month income at the time was Fl 3.165,-.
The receipts show that Sanders was selling it for an even higher price and he did have plenty of customers including alot of local amateur cyclists.

I have no incentives to insist that rEPO wasn't available in Netherlands pharmacies in 1989, but I'd like to see a link to the information about Netherland pharmacies as well as to the information on the price of Eprex in 1989. Even I've been able to locate the Ziekenfonds's "almost certain" decision to pay rEPO treatments of kidney patients (1/25/1989) in the future, but the article makes no mention on where the product is available nor when the decision will be put into practice.

http://www.delpher.nl/nl/kranten/view?query=nier-medicijn+ziekenfonds&coll=ddd&identifier=ddd%3A010645455%3Ampeg21%3Aa0500&resultsidentifier=ddd%3A010645455%3Ampeg21%3Aa0500

I can actually point a wildely-quoted and credible source claiming something to the opposite to this. It shouldn't be much of a dispute that athletes took rEPO in 1990, as a L.A. Times article told in 1990 that Dutch sports doctor Rob J. Pluijmers "admitted" that "he knows three professionals taking EPO". However the same article mentions a few paragrahps later that "the three got the drug from sources in Belgium" and that "EPO is not yet registered in the Netherlands, although it is widely approved throughout Europe". Doesnt' sound like easy availability to me.

http://articles.latimes.com/1990-06-02/sports/sp-143_1_performance-enhancing-drug

(I should point out that I become always even more skeptical when anyone startes overstating his material, because I read it as a sign that he/she is running out valid arguments, material or both. For instance, only a few days ago you described that at the Monte Carlo seminar, Arnold Beckett "stated... that EPO was available with a prescription in some countries". Just in a matter of days, this same material has grown to the importance that Beckett "confirmed... that it was easy to get with a prescription in several countries".)

 

[sniper]

If you look at p. 69 of the document linked below, you see that the Dutch Organon company applied for an EPO licensing application in the late 80s (can't find the year), but it was suspended (= rejected?).
https://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1990/9038/903805.PDF

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

...

(I should point out that I become always even more skeptical when anyone startes overstating his material, because I read it as a sign that he/she is running out valid arguments, material or both.

that's weird. You should objectively assess the evidence, not base your skepticism on how somebody reports that evidence in the Clinic. Based on that comment it would seem that the one running out of arguments is you.
From what I've read so far it would be a small miracle if EPO wasn't available in the Netherlands in 1989.
If anybody is overstating anything it's probably because you fail to acknowledge the evidence and provide opinions from people with agendas as 'counterevidence'.

 

[sniper]

According to Wikipedia, https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erytropo%C3%ABtine#cite_note-3, Jean Nelisse already spoke about EPO in his book from 1989.

 

[Tienus]

Gert Jacobs admitted using EPO in the 1989 tour.
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gert_Jakobs
He was riding for superconfex and his soigneur Fons de Heel bought EPO from Sanders.

 

[Tienus]

When Monte Carlo seminar was held, there had been no academic research involving athletes, so researchers such as Henry Mandin were the obvious choise to lecture on the hematological effects of the substance.

The Foothill hospital (1 of 8 hospitals participating) did research on only 15 patients of which probably 5 got a placebo. They could have chosen other researchers to speak in MC but they chose the one that told the press that he stores his EPO in a safe to prevent cheating at the games.

I have no incentives to insist that rEPO wasn't available in Netherlands pharmacies in 1989, but I'd like to see a link to the information about Netherland pharmacies as well as to the information on the price of Eprex in 1989. Even I've been able to locate the Ziekenfonds's "almost certain" decision to pay rEPO treatments of kidney patients (1/25/1989) in the future, but the article makes no mention on where the product is available nor when the decision will be put into practice.

I cant find the article that mentioned the price of 1200 a box at the moment. The article that you linked mentioned 16.000 a year per patient. That seems to be in line with 1200 a box. Ziekenfonds financed EPO was only available for dyalise patients and with prior approval from ziekenfonds to prevent fraudsters using it as doping.

(I should point out that I become always even more skeptical when anyone startes overstating his material, because I read it as a sign that he/she is running out valid arguments, material or both. For instance, only a few days ago you described that at the Monte Carlo seminar, Arnold Beckett "stated... that EPO was available with a prescription in some countries". Just in a matter of days, this same material has grown to the importance that Beckett "confirmed... that it was easy to get with a prescription in several countries".)

It wasnt my intention to overstate. For me just needing a presciption means its easy to get. This journalists had the same impression as its the title of his article.
http://leiden.courant.nu/issue/LD/1989-06-07/edition/0/page/17?query=epo&period=1980-1990&sort=relevance

 

[Tienus]

I can actually point a wildely-quoted and credible source claiming something to the opposite to this. It shouldn't be much of a dispute that athletes took rEPO in 1990, as a L.A. Times article told in 1990 that Dutch sports doctor Rob J. Pluijmers "admitted" that "he knows three professionals taking EPO". However the same article mentions a few paragrahps later that "the three got the drug from sources in Belgium" and that "EPO is not yet registered in the Netherlands, although it is widely approved throughout Europe". Doesnt' sound like easy availability to me.

Pluijmers was the team doctor of PDM in 1990. Gert Jakobs worked with him in 1990 and Jacobs confessed using EPO in the tour of 89.
This article shows epo was being used officially in May 1989 in The Netherlands. The nurse thinks epo is a miracle but expensive (Fl15.000.- a year per patient).
http://www.delpher.nl/nl/kranten/view?query=erytropo%C3%ABtine&page=1&cql%5B%5D=%28date+_gte_+%2201-01-1988%22%29&cql%5B%5D=%28date+_lte_+%2231-12-1990%22%29&coll=ddd&identifier=ddd%3A010566956%3Ampeg21%3Aa0598&resultsidentifier=ddd%3A010566956%3Ampeg21%3Aa0598

This full page article by ex-rider turned into journalist Bennie Ceulen is from 1990. He has one ex rider a soigneur and two team doctors admitting they know cyclists are using epo. In the top right colum Bennie writes: "It seems to have been first used by American athletes"
http://www.delpher.nl/nl/kranten/view?coll=ddd&query=%28dialyse+epo%29&cql%5B%5D=%28date+_gte_+%2201-01-1988%22%29&cql%5B%5D=%28date+_lte_+%2231-12-1990%22%29&identifier=ddd%3A010623773%3Ampeg21%3Aa0485&resultsidentifier=ddd%3A010623773%3Ampeg21%3Aa0485

 

[sniper]

great finds.

first used by americans? who'd have thunk.

 

[Aragon]

Re:

Gert Jacobs admitted using EPO in the 1989 tour.

I wouldn't put too much weight on Gert Jakobs admitting using rEPO in 1989 based solely on a Wikipedia-article. There apparently was a book about participants of the 1989 Tour, in which a few riders admitted taking rEPO (Jakobs being one of them), but their admission wasn't necessarily about that year's Tour.

By reading portions of his biography Meesterknecht in Google Books with my bad Dutch (and with the help of google translate), my impression is that he started rEPO during his time at Festina (~1993). Take all the liberty to correct me, if I am wrong.

The Foothill hospital (1 of 8 hospitals participating) did research on only 15 patients of which probably 5 got a placebo. They could have chosen other researchers to speak in MC but they chose the one that told the press that he stores his EPO in a safe to prevent cheating at the games.

Dr. Henry Mandin was chosen to speak for rEPO most likely because of the geographical location of his research in the first wave of publicity in 1988, and most likely he was being invited to the seminar a year later because had became the "spokeperson" of the substance. As every follower of sports should've been interested on whether athletes used the product at that time, I fail to see any mystery in the reference of rEPO stored behind closed doors.

If he indeed had done research with athletes, I can not understand why in 1989 his subject was blood clots and blood pressure as listeners would've certainly have been more interested on the effect of rEPO on performance and on parameters such as Vo2MAX, submaximal heart rate etc.

In summary, I don't see anything that is contrary to the official narrative and the case for the revisionist version seems to be based on a handful of very loosely connected dots.

I cant find the article that mentioned the price of 1200 a box at the moment. The article that you linked mentioned 16.000 a year per patient. That seems to be in line with 1200 a box. Ziekenfonds financed EPO was only available for dyalise patients and with prior approval from ziekenfonds to prevent fraudsters using it as doping...
It wasnt my intention to overstate. For me just needing a presciption means its easy to get. This journalists had the same impression as its the title of his article.

The actual body text mentions rEPO being "available in some countries with a prescription" without having opinion to one way or another on how easily it was available. It is a common practice not to consider headlines as independent reliable sources, because they are almost never the work of the author of the article but chosen by the editor to catch the attention of the reader. This could be ever more so in articles based on news telegrams items.

Based on the annual cost, the product doesn't appear to have been enormously expensive for athletes to buy even without knowing how many IUs are in the annual treatment. On the other hand, the price as such tells very little its availability for athletes. The La Stampa -article I referred puts the price at 812 Swiss Francs in 1989, but again there is no data on the dosage.

This article shows epo was being used officially in May 1989 in The Netherlands. The nurse thinks epo is a miracle but expensive (Fl15.000.- a year per patient).... This full page article by ex-rider turned into journalist Bennie Ceulen is from 1990. He has one ex rider a soigneur and two team doctors admitting they know cyclists are using epo. In the top right colum Bennie writes: "It seems to have been first used by American athletes"

There is again not so small leap from "used in Netherlands" to "available in Dutch pharmacies". As I have never denied that rEPO was used in 1990, I just fail to see much significance in the article to this discussion, not to claim that there aren't some interesting details here ant there. While the reference to the "Americans" is interesting, without additional details, it is difficult to evaluate how reliable the claim is. If the author referred to athletes in 1989 or 1990, there should be nothing too surprising, as AMGEN had annual sales of some 100 million already in 1989.

 

[Tienus]

I wouldn't put too much weight on Gert Jakobs admitting using rEPO in 1989 based solely on a Wikipedia-article. There apparently was a book about participants of the 1989 Tour, in which a few riders admitted taking rEPO (Jakobs being one of them), but their admission wasn't necessarily about that year's Tour.

By reading portions of his biography Meesterknecht in Google Books with my bad Dutch (and with the help of google translate), my impression is that he started rEPO during his time at Festina (~1993). Take all the liberty to correct me, if I am wrong.

He admits it on his own booking site.
https://www.gertjakobs.nl/over-gert/
But he did not dope as it was not banned yet.

 

[sniper]

Re:

Good news. We've found our first user and it wasn't Lemond. It was Gert Jakobs.

...
He admits it on his own booking site.
https://www.gertjakobs.nl/over-gert/
But he did not dope as it was not banned yet.

This story just gets better and better.
Gert Jakobs in the Tour of 1989, on EPO, 134th.

 

[sniper]

btw, according to Mathieu Hermans' wiki, Hermans implicitly admitted to EPO use in 1989, just like Jakobs in Smeets' book:

In 2009 gaf hij in het boek Het laatste geel van Mart Smeets impliciet toe dat hij in de Ronde van Frankrijk van 1989 epo heeft gebruikt .

In 2009 in Smeets' "Het Laatste Geel" he implicitly admitted to using EPO in the TdF of 1989

For the record, in 1989 Hermans finished last in the TdF GC. I'm not shitting you.

1989: Rode Lantaarndrager in de Ronde van Frankrijk

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathieu_Hermans

 

[Irondan]

Re:

btw, according to Mathieu Hermans' wiki, Hermans implicitly admitted to EPO use in 1989, just like Jakobs in Smeets' book:

In 2009 gaf hij in het boek Het laatste geel van Mart Smeets impliciet toe dat hij in de Ronde van Frankrijk van 1989 epo heeft gebruikt .

In 2009 in Smeets' "Het Laatste Geel" he implicitly admitted to using EPO in the TdF of 1989

For the record, in 1989 Hermans finished last in the TdF GC. I'm not shitting you.

1989: Rode Lantaarndrager in de Ronde van Frankrijk

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathieu_Hermans

It's interesting that Hermans used EPO in the 89 Tour de France but came in dead last...

The Lantern Rouge, reserved for the rider that can barely hang on and make all the time cuts.

Does this mean Hermans was a non-responder to EPO?

Maybe it just means that he was not a donkey but a pony that was made into a racehorse, capable of hanging in there with the best in the world but only just barely. I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud because I'm kind of shocked that Hermans placing at the 89 Tour was so low when he was doped to the gills with the wonder drug that would go onto fuel the next two decades worth of Tour champions.

Why did he not respond to EPO??

I guess this just goes to show how dangerous EPO is with some riders dying in their sleep after using it and some riders not responding at all. Back then, in 89 they really had no idea what they were dealing with.

 

[sniper]

Yeah. Assuming they both really took EPO, it's still darn difficult to draw any conclusions from it in terms of performance benefits.

In any case, it is tempting (though not compelling) to conclude from this that EPO was more widespread in 1989 than we have hitherto assumed.
It is hard to imagine that Jakobs and Mathiue were EPO pioneers.
If, as suggested by at least two independent newspaper articles, Americans pioneered It, we might actually be looking at 1986 for first usage.

 

[Tienus]

Hermans was a sprinter who did not care about the gc. In 1989 he did manage to win a stage in the tour and four stages in the vuelta.
I would not be surprised if he was on epo in 1988 as it was his best year with 24 victories of which 6 vuelta stages.