First EPO users in the peloton?

[MarkvW]

Re: Re:

Lance didn't need to microdose. Protection= do whatever you want, and we'll make sure your competitors don't do the same. Currently, British athletes are being given the green light. Microdosing is for those without the protection.

Blood doping can be masked by micro-dosing with EPO after blood infusions to keep the reticulocyte percentage in range. That's basicly the method I'm referring to.

For a good part of Lance's domination, there was no scientifically accepted test for EPO. That inability to test, plus fears of riders dying, resulted in the hematocrit limit. Hence, no need for Lance to microdose.

 

[staubsauger]

I put it in here because it fits better in this thread:

Rooks was climbing better than ever in 1988! Only in 1988! Only with blood doping? Foreign blood like he claims!? In 1988? With AIDS & still HIV uncontrolled blood donations (when did they actually start with that?) going.

That point always irritates my big time. I have riead an article in the Spiegel magazine last year about the emerge of AIDS and that whole patient zero story from I believe it was 1986. By that time blood conserves still weren't controlled for HIV in the US. They banned gays from blood donations as a result of the AIDS emerge in the late 80s I believe!? Was that as well the case in Europe? Because if it was than imho that whole “foreign blood donations in the 80s“ and “EPO only began in the 90s“ gets a big blow for me. Since in America there were literally people dying from AIDS related illnesses like kaposi's sarcoma or spinal meningitis caused by HIV tainted blood conserves. I would either expect a sudden drop off from blood doping in the pro peloton by around 1985 or riders dying from AIDS related illnesses in the late 80s. Which in fact definitely happened in the porn industry. But not in cycling. That imho makes any claim regarding blood doping in the 80s and the very late arrival of EPO heavily untrustworthy.

Or is this simply an error in reasoning and a logical fail by me!?

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re:

I put it in here because it fits better in this thread:

Rooks was climbing better than ever in 1988! Only in 1988! Only with blood doping? Foreign blood like he claims!? In 1988? With AIDS & still HIV uncontrolled blood donations (when did they actually start with that?) going.

That point always irritates my big time. I have riead an article in the Spiegel magazine last year about the emerge of AIDS and that whole patient zero story from I believe it was 1986. By that time blood conserves still weren't controlled for HIV in the US. They banned gays from blood donations as a result of the AIDS emerge in the late 80s I believe!? Was that as well the case in Europe? Because if it was than imho that whole “foreign blood donations in the 80s“ and “EPO only began in the 90s“ gets a big blow for me. Since in America there were literally people dying from AIDS related illnesses like kaposi's sarcoma or spinal meningitis caused by HIV tainted blood conserves. I would either expect a sudden drop off from blood doping in the pro peloton by around 1985 or riders dying from AIDS related illnesses in the late 80s. Which in fact definitely happened in the porn industry. But not in cycling. That imho makes any claim regarding blood doping in the 80s and the very late arrival of EPO heavily untrustworthy.

Or is this simply an error in reasoning and a logical fail by me!?

It's not like you can roll up to your local blood bank and order a couple of pints "to go"... My understanding is that most of the blood doping by cyclists has been autologous (their own blood that's been stored) or fresh from family members. That would cut down on the risks of any unwanted infections, for sure.

John Swanson

 

[djpbaltimore]

The first HIV blood test was approved in March 1985.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re:

Or is this simply an error in reasoning and a logical fail by me!?

Clearly, yes.

While it is true that AIDS was around and was an issue - John Gleaves argues it was the real reason the IOC banned blood transfusions - that did not stop transfusions happening in the real world and clearly not everyone who got a transfusion got a problem from it. (I received a transfusion in the mid-eighties and it didn't kill me.)

Further, most transfusions in sport by that stage were the athlete's own blood, not blood bought at the local blood bank. Train high, transfuse low was by then the ethos of the day.

 

[Norks74]

Exactly that John.

AIDS, if acquired by blood transfusion (homo- or hetero- logous), rather than say, sex, was likely the consequence of receiving (others) contaminated blood, not ones own reinfused.

 

[staubsauger]

Oh, okay. I always thought that back in the 80s it was mainly blood doping with foreign blood. Thanks for clarifying that!

 

[spiritualride]

I'm not sure where to ask this but what is the consensus on performance, fitness, and blood values over the course of riding as a GC rider in a grand tour? I've heard it repeated that hematocrit and other aspects that affect performance naturally drop over the course of a 3 week grand tour. Or is this a myth? Do clean riders sometimes actually gain fitness by racing +5 hours a day for basically 3 weeks straight?

Lance didn't need to microdose. Protection= do whatever you want, and we'll make sure your competitors don't do the same. Currently, British athletes are being given the green light. Microdosing is for those without the protection.

Blood doping can be masked by micro-dosing with EPO after blood infusions to keep the reticulocyte percentage in range. That's basicly the method I'm referring to.

For a good part of Lance's domination, there was no scientifically accepted test for EPO. That inability to test, plus fears of riders dying, resulted in the hematocrit limit. Hence, no need for Lance to microdose.

Armstrong tested positive or suspicious range for EPO at the 2001 Tour de Suisse. Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that the hushed positive and warning call the UCI gave to Armstrong for that test result was a factor in him choosing to switch from EPO to blood doping.

 

[sniper]

Anybody in the lucky possession of any of Joe Parkin's two cycling books?
Dog in a hat (2012)
Come and Gone (201?)

According to his wiki in those books he speaks about the early days of EPO.

He witnessed and speaks about the early days of EPO use in professional cycling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Parkin

But Podiumcafe's review of Dog in a Hat suggests that that is a bit of an exaggeration.

PdC: You mention doping on a couple occasions, but don't devote all that much of the book to it. Is this because doping wasn't the story in your races, or because you'd rather write about something else? I recall LeMond saying that around 1991 the peloton suddenly got mysteriously faster, and he seems convinced that the big EPO era began around this time. Did you get the same impression overall?

JP: Yeah, I could have written another 200-something pages on doping but I really don't feel it would have benefitted anybody. Doping exists. It will most likely always exist, but that really does not take away from the sheer harsh beauty that is professional cycling. I don't recall quite the same change in the speed of the peloton at that time, but I have heard others talk about it in years after that. I know there were guys who got mysteriously faster, out of the clear blue, but I did not view it as an epidemic at that point.
http://www.podiumcafe.com/2008/11/3/652503/cafe-bookshelf-some-questi

Does he open up more in Come and Gone?
(afaict feargal didn't review that last one, correct?)

 

[red_flanders]

Re:

I'm not sure where to ask this but what is the consensus on performance, fitness, and blood values over the course of riding as a GC rider in a grand tour? I've heard it repeated that hematocrit and other aspects that affect performance naturally drop over the course of a 3 week grand tour. Or is this a myth? Do clean riders sometimes actually gain fitness by racing +5 hours a day for basically 3 weeks straight?

Lance didn't need to microdose. Protection= do whatever you want, and we'll make sure your competitors don't do the same. Currently, British athletes are being given the green light. Microdosing is for those without the protection.

Blood doping can be masked by micro-dosing with EPO after blood infusions to keep the reticulocyte percentage in range. That's basicly the method I'm referring to.

For a good part of Lance's domination, there was no scientifically accepted test for EPO. That inability to test, plus fears of riders dying, resulted in the hematocrit limit. Hence, no need for Lance to microdose.

Armstrong tested positive or suspicious range for EPO at the 2001 Tour de Suisse. Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that the hushed positive and warning call the UCI gave to Armstrong for that test result was a factor in him choosing to switch from EPO to blood doping.

Per Tyler Hamilton in The Secret Race, some of the Postal riders including Lance started transfusing before the 2000 Tour in fear of a new test for EPO.

Lance, Kevin, and I would fly to Valencia. We would donate a bag of blood, which would be stored, and we’d fly home the next day. Then, at a key point during the Tour, we’d put the bag back in, and we’d get a boost. It would be like taking EPO, except better: there were rumors of an EPO test being developed for the 2000 Olympics, and word was, they might be using the test during the Tour.

And even this note...

It would be so simple, they said. So easy. Extremely safe, nothing at all to worry about. I noticed Johan talked more to Kevin and me than to Lance, and that Lance didn’t seem to pay attention; I got the feeling this wasn’t Lance’s first transfusion.

 

[Huapango]

Charlie Craig

This may be an inappropriate post, and I'm not sure of all the facts at this time, but this reminds me of many similar deaths when EPO was introduced to cycling: http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/british-cycling-mourns-loss-of-promising-racer-charlie-craig-news-shorts/

So sad.

 

[Aragon]

Re: Re:

Per Tyler Hamilton in The Secret Race, some of the Postal riders including Lance started transfusing before the 2000 Tour in fear of a new test for EPO.

Lance, Kevin, and I would fly to Valencia. We would donate a bag of blood, which would be stored, and we’d fly home the next day. Then, at a key point during the Tour, we’d put the bag back in, and we’d get a boost. It would be like taking EPO, except better: there were rumors of an EPO test being developed for the 2000 Olympics, and word was, they might be using the test during the Tour.

And even this note...

It would be so simple, they said. So easy. Extremely safe, nothing at all to worry about. I noticed Johan talked more to Kevin and me than to Lance, and that Lance didn’t seem to pay attention; I got the feeling this wasn’t Lance’s first transfusion.

Very off-topic, but most likely Lance wasn't too interested to hear the details because he was familiar with them having planned the whole operation with Bruyneel and Ferrari and latter having explained the process in detail.

And while The Secret Race is a well-written and good book, one should be careful always and not to take everything Hamilton's tell at face value. I don't know what to make up about the following, but I find it strange that his published account of his first experience with blood doping in 2000 isn't coherent and while the discrepancies aren't that alarming, something just doesn't add upp.

He tells the following in his affidavit in 2012, around the same time his book is published:

73. After landing we went to a hotel in Valencia.
74. Dr. Michele Ferrari and Dr. Luis Garcia del Moral and Pepe Marti were waiting for us at the hotel.
75. Ferrari and del Moral supervised the extraction process.
...
79. We received our blood transfusion during the 2000 Tour de France... Kevin, Lance and I joked about whose body was absorbing the blood fastest."

In his book The Secret Race, Hamilton tells some details differently. He omits Ferrari being present during the blood extraction process at all and even puts the joking episode to the blood extraction process telling that "[w]e tried to cut the tension by comparing the speed with which our respective bags were fillling" (revised UK edition, p. 159). Ferrari rarely left Italy and most likely didn't fly to Valencia for a process so simple. According to Tyler's account, this was his only blood doping operation at US Postal, so does he simply throw more dirt on the Italian or has a recollection about another US Postal operation involving blood removal with Ferrari being present?

 

[red_flanders]

Re: Re:

Per Tyler Hamilton in The Secret Race, some of the Postal riders including Lance started transfusing before the 2000 Tour in fear of a new test for EPO.

Lance, Kevin, and I would fly to Valencia. We would donate a bag of blood, which would be stored, and we’d fly home the next day. Then, at a key point during the Tour, we’d put the bag back in, and we’d get a boost. It would be like taking EPO, except better: there were rumors of an EPO test being developed for the 2000 Olympics, and word was, they might be using the test during the Tour.

And even this note...

It would be so simple, they said. So easy. Extremely safe, nothing at all to worry about. I noticed Johan talked more to Kevin and me than to Lance, and that Lance didn’t seem to pay attention; I got the feeling this wasn’t Lance’s first transfusion.

Very off-topic, but most likely Lance wasn't too interested to hear the details because he was familiar with them having planned the whole operation with Bruyneel and Ferrari and latter having explained the process in detail.

And while The Secret Race is a well-written and good book, one should be careful always and not to take everything Hamilton's tell at face value. I don't know what to make up about the following, but I find it strange that his published account of his first experience with blood doping in 2000 isn't coherent and while the discrepancies aren't that alarming, something just doesn't add upp.

He tells the following in his affidavit in 2012, around the same time his book is published:

73. After landing we went to a hotel in Valencia.
74. Dr. Michele Ferrari and Dr. Luis Garcia del Moral and Pepe Marti were waiting for us at the hotel.
75. Ferrari and del Moral supervised the extraction process.
...
79. We received our blood transfusion during the 2000 Tour de France... Kevin, Lance and I joked about whose body was absorbing the blood fastest."

In his book The Secret Race, Hamilton tells some details differently. He omits Ferrari being present during the blood extraction process at all and even puts the joking episode to the blood extraction process telling that "[w]e tried to cut the tension by comparing the speed with which our respective bags were fillling" (revised UK edition, p. 159). Ferrari rarely left Italy and most likely didn't fly to Valencia for a process so simple. According to Tyler's account, this was his only blood doping operation at US Postal, so does he simply throw more dirt on the Italian or has a recollection about another US Postal operation involving blood removal with Ferrari being present?

Interesting, thanks for the info.

I find the book extremely credible and one of the best (if not the best) accounts we have of what went on. The detail about when they did it, how, what the effects were, and how he felt physically lines up with everything else we know about those stages and races. He does not claim this is his only transfusion, it's simply the only one he describes–-it's not clear from the text if there were others. He also mentions Ferrari coming to the training camps in Tenerife, which puts Ferrari outside of Italy at least for a more involved operation. Anyway, the omission of Ferrari in one account does not put the timeline of blood doping in question, at least to my view.

My point was to establish that at least one team (and I'm sure more) were doing autologous transfusions well before the 2001 Tour du Suisse. While certainly one can have criticisms of the book, I don't find any which warrant a question of whether Postal blood doped in 2000.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re: Re:

I find the book extremely credible and one of the best (if not the best) accounts we have of what went on.

And which other books are you basing that comparison on, may I ask? Titles will suffice, I'll know the authors.

 

[Aragon]

Re: Re:

Just to clarify, I am not implying any wrongdoing from your part, you accurately informed readers what Tyler Hamilton told about the 2000 blood doping operation and about his intuition about Lance having possibly used transfusion even earlier.

Whether the 2000 TDF transfusion took place is actually not a matter of debate at all, as Lance himself admitted to Alex Gibney the incidence in the movie The Armstrong Lie mentioning also that the idea originated from by Michele Ferrari.

https://youtu.be/g40HoNEPdj8?t=34m28s
(I'll try to remove this link when/if YouTube removes this video)

As I mentioned, it is difficult to come to any conclusion about how the narrative is affected by the discrepancies other than that evolving recollections are always very suspicious in nature. Was Ferrari present or not and why is the key figure omitted in the book if he was? The trip had no exercise value whatsoever, so was he present to consult about the blood doping process? According to Hamilton, this was his only blood doping experiment at USPS, so why the discrepancies at all? He claims to have dropped from the USPS inner circles around 2000, but was he taken into the blood doping operations even for the 2001 season and Ferrari was then present?

Hamilton actually describes the 2000 incident as his only transfusion during his USPS period (-2001), because he tells about his meeting with Riis in 2001 that "Bjarne's recommendation led me to reconsider my opinion of transfusions. In my single experience, back in the 2000 Tour I hadn't ridden as well as I'd expected..."

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re: Re:

Was Ferrari present or not and why is the key figure omitted in the book if he was?

Two reasons to exclude Ferrari in the book: 1) legal pulled it as it couldn't be stood up; 2) Coyle pulled it as it couldn't be stood up. The affidavits don't have a ghost or a legal department looking over his shoulder, challenging his recollection of events.

 

[red_flanders]

Re: Re:

Just to clarify, I am not implying any wrongdoing from your part, you accurately informed readers what Tyler Hamilton told about the 2000 blood doping operation and about his intuition about Lance having possibly used transfusion even earlier.

Whether the 2000 TDF transfusion took place is actually not a matter of debate at all, as Lance himself admitted to Alex Gibney the incidence in the movie The Armstrong Lie mentioning also that the idea originated from by Michele Ferrari.

https://youtu.be/g40HoNEPdj8?t=34m28s
(I'll try to remove this link when/if YouTube removes this video)

As I mentioned, it is difficult to come to any conclusion about how the narrative is affected by the discrepancies other than that evolving recollections are always very suspicious in nature. Was Ferrari present or not and why is the key figure omitted in the book if he was? The trip had no exercise value whatsoever, so was he present to consult about the blood doping process? According to Hamilton, this was his only blood doping experiment at USPS, so why the discrepancies at all? He claims to have dropped from the USPS inner circles around 2000, but was he taken into the blood doping operations even for the 2001 season and Ferrari was then present?

Thanks for the clarifications Aragon––much appreciated.

In the book he says he was not in the doping inner circle in 2001 season and suffered mightily. The focus at that point was on Lance and the Spaniards.

EDIT: I see later in the book in his discussion with Bjarne he mentions the transfusion as a single experience, so I was incorrect there. Thanks.

 

[Aragon]

Re: Re:

Was Ferrari present or not and why is the key figure omitted in the book if he was?

Two reasons to exclude Ferrari in the book: 1) legal pulled it as it couldn't be stood up; 2) Coyle pulled it as it couldn't be stood up. The affidavits don't have a ghost or a legal department looking over his shoulder, challenging his recollection of events.

This is a very plausible explanation especially when I can't produce any better alternative scenario. Two things aren't still that apparent:

1) It isn't that clear what was so damning in linking Ferrari specifically to the year 2000 blood doping operation, when he is accused of several other doping offences almost on every second page of the first half of the book and when there does exist other testimonies linking Ferrari having participated personally to blood removal/reinfusion operations (Hincapie, Landis).

2) Hamilton seems to have also little to back up on his allegation about Luis García del Moral, whom he didn't hesitate at all in naming as the conductor of the blood removal. USADA had accused both Dr. del Moral ("...from 2000 he was intimately involved in the prohibited method of blood transfusions...") and Ferrari ("...was present and assisted during instances of prohibited blood doping and EPO use by USPS team members...) of blood doping already before the book was published, a charge that neither of the doctors contested.

There might've been other factors regarding Ferrari and in any case I know next to nothing about libel laws. In the end, the book was written in time period of roughly two years (2010-2012), so even after revisions and updating material there must've been some "old" material in the book, especially when there were new turns in the Armstrong-case almost on a weekly basis in 2012 and the book just had to be published to be the first exposé on the USPS team.

 

[sniper]

"when I saw riders with fat asses climbing like airplanes, that's when I knew."

As in a not very skinny Lemond and a not so tiny Indurain dropping Chiapucci and all other mountain specialists in stage 16 of the 1990 tdf?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAjj5137yKM

 

[lartiste]

Re:

"when I saw riders with fat asses climbing like airplanes, that's when I knew."

As in a not very skinny Lemond and a not so tiny Indurain dropping Chiapucci and all other mountain specialists in stage 16 of the 1990 tdf?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAjj5137yKM

if I remember correctly, this sentence was connected with Riis ...

 

[sniper]

"the early 90s", when Riis was still a donkey.
Watch the footage I linked and tell me if you see any fat asses climb like airplanes. I see one at least.

 

[lartiste]

Re:

"the early 90s", when Riis was still a donkey.
Watch the footage I linked and tell me if you see any fat asses climb like airplanes. I see one at least.

True, I saw it and of course Indurain was like airplane with about 80 kg ... . But still there are information, that his heart (especially left part) was half bigger than the heart of normal person.

 

[sniper]

Lol.

 

[lartiste]

Re:

Lol.

interesting - the interview with a doctor who was in the team which made research regarding hearts of top conteders of Tour de France 1996 edition. unfortunatelly I cannot find the result of research online, may be the problem is that I have only name of Czech doctor. Anyone knows whether some outcomes are available online?

http://www.ivelo.cz/casopis/2002-9/ukazka1/


To be honest Indurain was the reason I started to follow cycling but now I have no doubt that he was on EPO, but still even on EPO he was incredible and unbelievable.

 

[GJB123]

Re:

"when I saw riders with fat asses climbing like airplanes, that's when I knew."

As in a not very skinny Lemond and a not so tiny Indurain dropping Chiapucci and all other mountain specialists in stage 16 of the 1990 tdf?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAjj5137yKM

Again you show that you have no idea of how 80's GT-riders looked. They were never as anorexic as they are now. Hinault and Fignon for example, were not really skinny by modern standards, same for LeMond (get the spelling right for once). Also you don't seem to understand that Hamilton was not referring to LeMond-type GT-riders but to big Italian rouleurs and domestiques for flat stages suddenly climbing like there was no tomorrow. But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of a good troll.