Does not being on the list equate to clean?

[Catwhoorg]

There are some cyclists who use NSAIDS is what I would consider an abusive manner. They can help push 'the limit' a little, veru useful on a day in the breakaway.

One of the younger US riders commented on this in an interview this year (Talansky maybe - help me out here folks).

So yes its legal, to me its not ethical, and it is going on.

 

[King Boonen]

It did get me thinking though King Boonen. Reminded me of this:


Now if you remove the bolded final line which theoretically turns all the ingredients into a pharmacological gruel, and only ingest all the natural ingredients mentioned individually, would that trigger clause S0?

Could Dawg - adament he will never ever be caught doping and his win will stand the testament of time - be eating some natural ingredients like this recipe? Sure in the knowledge it is not covered under WADA? Is Horner now eating Turks Nose and Jews Liver instead of a hamburger and fries for his longevity?

Ok, this seems a more reasonable example than water, so I'll try and give a decent answer. I'm an analytical chemist (Mass Spectrometrist to be exact) and my biology isn't great but I'm confident I understand the basics I'll mention here.

As far as I'm aware, no. You can eat whatever natural products you want (non-refined things), but if it contains a banned substance you need to prove it came from there whether endogenously, salicylic acid from Willow although I don't think that's banned, or exogenously, see the Mexican footballers Berto was desperate to emulate.

Natural drug products is a massive research area for many reasons that I won't go into, but the likelihood of Sky or Radioshack finding a food source that has the effect of change people are attributing to Froome and Horner is tiny. Really, really tiny.

Even if they did you then have other problems. If you eat something it has to get past both the stomach and through the liver where the CYP3A's break down pretty much anything (this is a massive issue in the pharmaceutical industry). This is why things like anabolic steroids and EPO have to be injected, they won't survive to get to where they need to be if you just stick them in a power-shake and drink it. Hence why the no needle policy in cycling is so good and why Mr. McQuaid wants to claim it as his own. I personally think the no needle policy should be part of the WADA code.


And remember, anything they have found must not clash with the banned list which has some very overreaching rules. If it were proved that they knew it did and were using it, that's doping.

You then have other rules than just the S0 one quoted so far (Just a few highlights):

S1. ANABOLIC AGENTS
Anabolic agents are prohibited.

S5. DIURETICS AND OTHER MASKING AGENTS
Masking agents are prohibited.

M1. MANIPULATION OF BLOOD AND BLOOD COMPONENTS
The following are prohibited:
1. The administration or reintroduction of any quantity of autologous, homologous or heterologous blood or red blood cell products of any origin into the circulatory system.
2. Artificially enhancing the uptake, transport or delivery of oxygen, including, but not limited to, perfluorochemicals, efaproxiral (RSR13) and modified haemoglobin products (e.g. haemoglobin-based blood substitutes, microencapsulated haemoglobin products), excluding supplemental oxygen.
3. Any form of intravascular manipulation of the blood or blood components by physical or chemical means.

M3. GENE DOPING
The following, with the potential to enhance sport performance, are prohibited:
1. The transfer of polymers of nucleic acids or nucleic acid analogues;
2. The use of normal or genetically modified cells.

S6. STIMULANTS
All stimulants, including all optical isomers (e.g. d- and l-) where relevant, are prohibited, except imidazole derivatives for topical use and those stimulants included in the 2013 Monitoring Program*.

You'll also see sentences like these:

Exogenous* AAS, including:

and other substances with similar chemical structure or similar biological effect(s).

Aromatase inhibitors including, but not limited to

These are used a catch-alls and are very difficult to get round, I've thought about it and can't think of a way except pleading ignorance.

to the questions about what is a pharmacological substance, look up drug on wikipedia.



As with all threads that end up like this, I urge you to read the WADA code and do at least some reading around to make sure you know what the terms mean (not directed at you Sitting_Bison, mainly at Doperhopper).

Reductio ad absurdum is just going to get peoples back up.

 

[King Boonen]

This is what I was thinking.

There was some discussion in some thread a while ago about Froome's Biharzia drug therapy giving some corollary benefit to his training afterwards in terms of blood production. Which, if true*, even if you take the illness and subsequent treatments completely at face value, open up an interesting ethical discussion.

By this S0 rule, presumably using any approved medicinal drug which isn't on the banned list (ie paracetamol) can be used by riders. So if some particular medicine was found to be helpful to training, a rider could start taking it even if they didn't have the illness (or carry on taking it longer than strictly necessary) and derive a benefit. Would that be legal? Would it be ethical?

(* I have no idea if Froome was or wasn't ill, or is or isn't doping, and bring him up here purely as a hypothetical example. . .)

To the bold part, I think you are talking about the gas6 thread. There is absolutely no evidence to support that theory and no evidence gas6 provides any benefit over EPO use (in terms of doping).

I think there is also a knowledge gap about Schistosomiasis here as well. The schistasomes do not affect red blood cell levels as they do not eat whole cells (from what I can tell) they go after haem (and no doubt some other parts, but not the whole cell). There was a paper quoted somewhere showing that RBC numbers didn't change with infection very much, haemoglobin levels did. So red blood cell production is unaffected both before and after treatment as far as I can tell.


About NSAIDs, yes, they are open to abuse. There's not really much you can do about that. Paracetamol is a wonder-drug considering what it can be used to treat and it's much better that people can use these than everyone turning up with loads of TUEs for steroids. Is it ethical? I personally don't find those questions helpful in these kind of discussions because everyone's ethics vary. It is within the rules, they are cheap and all athletes have access to them pretty much wherever they are. I'd argue they are more ethical than some athletes being able to afford better equipment, having better training facilities and associated care or even sponsorship deals that provide exclusive access to certain equipment (didn't Cav have the only Venge when it was released?).

 

[neineinei]

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravined salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digged i' th' dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat and slips of yew
Slivered in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-delivered by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab.
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron

To harness those who ingest that WADA must forge a chain made of these six things:

The sound of a cat's footfall
The beard of a woman
The roots of a mountain
The sinews of a bear
The breath of a fish
The spittle of a bird

 

[DirtyWorks]

Again the only thing that can hold in court is the all famous drug list.

Another reminder that an adverse analytical finding is not a process involving either law enforcement or judicial branches of government. Read Contador's complete CAS decision. Contador's team basically denies supplement contamination and then CAS claims, "It was supplement contamination" with the best timed sanction ever. Hardly a sound, fair, process compared to a FuYu Li.

I don't have the link handy, but Ashenden once gave an interview where he said there are cases where the scientific proof an athlete was doping was overwhelming. The cases wouldn't last CAS/local procedural challenges where down can really be up.

Also remember that the sports federation is the one that directs WADA to open a case. The UCI/National federation have all the authority. So, even if they had a positive as has happened, they don't open cases as they see fit.

Finally, as posted in many other threads on the topic, PED testing is an IQ test that only idiots, or people the federation really dislikes are the ones that fail. Testing keeps PED use to won't-kill-the-athlete levels. For example, lots of room to use Testosterone. Just don't cross the T/E threshold. So, plenty of PED performance to be had with a decent program and never tested positive in the cleanest peloton ever.