First EPO users in the peloton?

[unclem0nty]

Moser admitted Conconi blood-doped him for his 1984 hour record, and if you look at Moser's achievements that same year - the year he turned 33, FFS - it's pretty clear that Dr 57% was already getting some pretty remarkable benefits out of transfusions.

Moser ended 1983 with a single and rather underwhelming victory to his name: Milano-Torino. In 1984, along with the world hour record, he bagged Milan-San Remo, the Giro del Lazio and the national individual pursuit championship. Oh yeah - and the Giro GC.

The '84 Giro was by all accounts a relatively flat route, but Moser's victory still suggests to me that Conconi was administering transfusions that could significantly enhance performance over long durations - days or even weeks.

Conconi certainly knew their value for one-off endurance events by then:

In 1982, Alberto Cova burnt off the field to win the European Championships 10,000m title. He repeated it at the following year's World Championships and, in 1984, won gold in Los Angeles. Cova seemed a genuine phenomenon until his admission that his blood was doped. Conconi performed all Cova's transfusions.

Conconi claimed to have stopped administering transfusions to sportsmen and women in 1985, though Italian Olympic skiers have said he carried on with them until 1988. Why stop then? Given the extraordinary results he'd been getting via transfusions I can't believe he'd have just given up doing them unless he'd found a superior alternative. EPO, obviously, which was launched that year in Europe by both Amgen and Boehringer Mannheim.

On topic, I'd therefore imagine that the first EPO user in the peloton was a Conconi client, in 1988.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

we have no idea how 'full' these investigations were, and probably never will. there could have been no other dirty italian or american riders for the whole decade than those mentioned - or not. we can only guess.

maybe the perpetrators got away with it, won their races, and retired quietly and happily. the few confessions and rumours we have are so patchy that they cannot possibly be assumed to give a complete picture.


I agree, it should not be automatically assumed. I'd be amazed if noone had ever tried it though (Zoetemelk and Hinault have already been mentioned as riders who may well have done so).

I have no problem with guessing - but it should be an 'educated guess'.


The Italian investigation was done by the state and it went root and branch through CONI and over 20 Doctors or coaches were seperatly investigated.
The USA investiagation was much smaller but was specific to cycling.

Yes - someone may have tried it, but 'blood doping' would not be an easy process. It woud probably requires a doctor intead of a soigneur. They would have to identify blood type, find a match or use proper storage, keeping that secret (particularly in cycling) would not have been easy.

 

[Escarabajo]

...

On topic, I'd therefore imagine that the first EPO user in the peloton was a Conconi client, in 1988.

Who in the peloton?

 

[Nick777]

Claim was about hard evidence, not rumors. He cleary peaked for Olympics, but did pretty well also non-Olympics event. His fall in record breaking 10 000 was not a big deal, it happened in the middle of the race when pace was slow- Btw, it happened 1972, but blood doping accusations surfaced 1976, so for 4 years this falling over during the race was not suspicious? I dont know about his teammates admitting blood doping, as far as I know only 1 finnish runner admitted it (Kaarlo Maaninka) and I would not call him teammate of Viren.

Anyway. Rumors are rumors. I dont know did Viren blooddope or not, but I dont know any hard evidence.

Couldn't have been too slow. He broke the world record.

 

[Nick777]

Viren has not written memoirs. And Ive never heard that his written or talked about doping practices in the Finnish national team.

It's not just the runners that have been into it. Plenty of Finnish cross country skiers have been done for illegal blood boosting.
The common thought is that plenty of Finnish athletes/skiers etc have doped. If you don't want to believe it, no problem.

 

[Franklin]

+1. Agree. We need to set this in Stone in this forum.

There is a bit of iffyness with this. Jan Jansen and Kelly did transform from decent hilly classic type racer (top sprinters!) to GT winner. Also, they won GT's quite late in their career.

Otoh, Jan Ulrich was immediately there and though I am a huge fan, he wasn't clean.

In fact, Chiapucci was the first rider in my life that I saw transform himself from nobody to a Tour Contender. I never understood his transformation until I learned about EPO. To me he was a nobody IMO.

This is a bit of a myth really and unfair toward Claudio. When he got the big gap with Maassen, Bauer and Pensec the commentators pointed out Pensec as the big threat, but my brother and I were stunned that the KOM of the last Giro... Chiapucci... was neglected.

His first top performance wasn't the TdF. He had already shown he was a big talent. The "he is a nobody" was over the top considering what he had done in the Giro. Had they shouted that earlier at the Giro they would have a point

Also at the end of 1989 he did win two difficult Italian semi-classics. That's not too shabby for a young guy (he was 26 which with a bit of a stretch can be called young).

Some other "excuses": He had a terrible accident early in his career and he was firmly a domestique under Roche, Visentini, Zimmermann. Note that Chiapucci almost immediately surfaced when those were gone from the roster/faded away.

So yes, he is a prime "transformed by Epo" guy, but he was not invisible till the TdF 1990. His first part of 1990 was actually very good and he did grow beyond domestique in 1989.

I just feel that though he can be put squarely in the "doper" corner, he is being underrated a bit. He wasn't a mule and it is really uncertain if he wouldn't become a Race-horse in a clean era (unlikely, sure, but a bit more respect is in place).

 

[Franklin]

Actually - you can say with some certainty that 'Blood doping' was not in Pro cycling during the 80's.

The 2 examples you gave for 'Blood doping' in cycling were both for track events - but more importantly both incidents were investiagted by their respective Olympic Committees and no other incidents like that took place within cycling.

Also there have been many books and confessions published about the activities of riders and teams during that era and there has been no mention of it.

This actually amazes me (I believe it, not arguing) considering that in those days Cycling was compared a lot with Langlaufing. And in Langlaufing blood-doping was rife.

Considering the luddite nature of cycling in those days I do believe you and the sopurces are right... but it amazes me

 

[Von Mises]

Couldn't have been too slow. He broke the world record.

It was slow, there was sharp slowdown. Coincidentally the lap when Viren fell, was the slowest laps of all 25.

It's not just the runners that have been into it. Plenty of Finnish cross country skiers have been done for illegal blood boosting.
The common thought is that plenty of Finnish athletes/skiers etc have doped. If you don't want to believe it, no problem.

Finnish cross country skiers were busted and they confessed, so its absolutely not the question of belief, do I believe it or not; they doped, were busted, they confessed.
(Though, it should be mentioned that Finnish skiers were busted skiers 25 years after Viren. To use this against Viren is the as to use Justin Gatlin bust against Jim Hines results at 1968 Olympics).

I would remind, that my initial post was a response to this sentence:

But there are simply no hard facts showing it happened other than what we listed by the DDR, Lasse Viren, and 1984 US cycling track team, and Joop's transfusion, the impetus of which was health related.

And lumping all this together is not right. There is indeed hard facts against DDR or 1984 US cycling track team, but there is no hard facts against Viren. If we want to speculate about Viren, we can do this, it is fine.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

I probably shouldn't have clumped Viren with the others, regardless of the preponderance of those around him and history, as Nick points out. Sorry for starting that confusion. Here's an interview where he denies it.

The common thought is that plenty of Finnish athletes/skiers etc have doped. If you don't want to believe it, no problem.

I wouldn't limit it to the Finns. And what years are you talking? In the 1988 Olympics the USSR cleaned up, winning all but two events, even trumping the Swedes who were kings before then. Their slip was attributed to training, waxing, and generations at the moment, but I'd bet everything the USSR had a program similar to the DDR at the time.

I'd still like to know what the 1994 Italian XC team was on, as it sure wasn't bread and ice. Topping the Norwegian "dream team" on their home snow (and it's not likely that team was completely clean) raised as many eyebrows than the way Riis dropped everyone on the Hautecam in 1996.

Sorry for the digression.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

Moser admitted Conconi blood-doped him for his 1984 hour record, and if you look at Moser's achievements that same year - the year he turned 33, FFS - it's pretty clear that Dr 57% was already getting some pretty remarkable benefits out of transfusions.

Moser ended 1983 with a single and rather underwhelming victory to his name: Milano-Torino. In 1984, along with the world hour record, he bagged Milan-San Remo, the Giro del Lazio and the national individual pursuit championship. Oh yeah - and the Giro GC.

The '84 Giro was by all accounts a relatively flat route, but Moser's victory still suggests to me that Conconi was administering transfusions that could significantly enhance performance over long durations - days or even weeks.

Conconi certainly knew their value for one-off endurance events by then:

In 1982, Alberto Cova burnt off the field to win the European Championships 10,000m title. He repeated it at the following year's World Championships and, in 1984, won gold in Los Angeles. Cova seemed a genuine phenomenon until his admission that his blood was doped. Conconi performed all Cova's transfusions.

Conconi claimed to have stopped administering transfusions to sportsmen and women in 1985, though Italian Olympic skiers have said he carried on with them until 1988. Why stop then? Given the extraordinary results he'd been getting via transfusions I can't believe he'd have just given up doing them unless he'd found a superior alternative. EPO, obviously, which was launched that year in Europe by both Amgen and Boehringer Mannheim.
On topic, I'd therefore imagine that the first EPO user in the peloton was a Conconi client, in 1988.

Moser had 18 victories in 1983 - not one.
But 84 was a much better year, as you say with the Giro and MSR wins.

To the blue above- why stop in 88? Because that was the year of the Winter Olympics.

Also I checked the Amgen release of EPO - which was held up until June 1989. Is there somewhere else that it shown it was made available in Europe earlier?

BTW - I am pretty much agreeing with your timeline.
My 'guess' is that Conconi was using it in 1989 -but I also think some Dutch/Belgians had managed to get their hands on EPO when it first arrived in Europe, which is why I'm inquiring about its availability in 88.

 

[galaxy1]

I wouldn't limit it to the Finns. And what years are you talking? In the 1988 Olympics the USSR cleaned up, winning all but two events, even trumping the Swedes who were kings before then. Their slip was attributed to training, waxing, and generations at the moment, but I'd bet everything the USSR had a program similar to the DDR at the time.

i think we can probably agree that the olympics in that era were incredibly dirty, on all sides, possibly even dirtier than TdFs of the late '90s.

 

[unclem0nty]

Who in the peloton?

No idea. Has anyone got a definitive list of Conconi's pro cycling clients in 1988?

Also I checked the Amgen release of EPO - which was held up until June 1989. Is there somewhere else that it shown it was made available in Europe earlier?

In markets outside US (especially Europe and Japan), the competition issues were slightly different: two products developed by two different firms were competing, and we did not observe a market segmentation. In 1988 Amgen launched its epoetin alfa product, sold under license by J&J and its subsidiaries under a variety of commercial names (Eprex, Erypo, Epopen, Epoxitin, Globuren, Espo…) whose therapeutic indication was the treatment of anemia.

In 1988 the non-US markets also saw the launch of another EPO product, called Recormon (epoetin beta), whose indication was the treatment of anemia in patients with chronic renal failure]

http://www.hero.uio.no/publicat/2006/HERO2006_3.pdf

Conconi would have been all over this stuff pronto. He knew more than almost anyone about the benefits of blood doping (all those hours fiddling about with the shiny new hemox analyser CONI bought for him) and was forever scouting about for new PEDs on the block.

 

[ultimobici]

There is a bit of iffyness with this. Jan Jansen and Kelly did transform from decent hilly classic type racer (top sprinters!) to GT winner. Also, they won GT's quite late in their career.

Jan Janssen's TdF record is perfectly in keeping with being a contender from day one. He crashed out of his forst in 63 having won a stage. Then in 64 having won Paris-Nice, he took two stages & the Green Jersey and finished 24th. The next two editions saw him move up to 9th and then 2nd with the Green Jersey to boot. FInally he won in 67 & 68.

Kelly's GT win in the 88 Vuelta was not a surprise at all. If you look at his GT record it is plain to see that he had the talent there from the start. His first team was Flandria with Maertens as his leader. As such Kelly's job was to look after Maertens first and look out for his own interests second. Once Kelly was free of these responsibilities he grew into the all rounder he always was. His run of 7 consecutive Paris-Nices started as soon as he joined Sem-France Loire in 82. He finished 15th in 82 but then didn't finish out of the top 10 of any GT he finished for the next 4 years. If anything rather than labelling him a Classics rider turned GT winner a better term would be "Last of the True Allrounders"?

This is a bit of a myth really and unfair toward Claudio. When he got the big gap with Maassen, Bauer and Pensec the commentators pointed out Pensec as the big threat, but my brother and I were stunned that the KOM of the last Giro... Chiapucci... was neglected.

His first top performance wasn't the TdF. He had already shown he was a big talent. The "he is a nobody" was over the top considering what he had done in the Giro. Had they shouted that earlier at the Giro they would have a point

Also at the end of 1989 he did win two difficult Italian semi-classics. That's not too shabby for a young guy (he was 26 which with a bit of a stretch can be called young).

Some other "excuses": He had a terrible accident early in his career and he was firmly a domestique under Roche, Visentini, Zimmermann. Note that Chiapucci almost immediately surfaced when those were gone from the roster/faded away.

So yes, he is a prime "transformed by Epo" guy, but he was not invisible till the TdF 1990. His first part of 1990 was actually very good and he did grow beyond domestique in 1989.

I just feel that though he can be put squarely in the "doper" corner, he is being underrated a bit. He wasn't a mule and it is really uncertain if he wouldn't become a Race-horse in a clean era (unlikely, sure, but a bit more respect is in place).

Fair comment.

 

[Von Mises]

I wouldn't limit it to the Finns. And what years are you talking? In the 1988 Olympics the USSR cleaned up, winning all but two events, even trumping the Swedes who were kings before then. Their slip was attributed to training, waxing, and generations at the moment, but I'd bet everything the USSR had a program similar to the DDR at the time.

Finnish cross country skiers were busted big time in 2001: team wide doping program.

 

[Adamastor]

Jan Janssen's TdF record is perfectly in keeping with being a contender from day one. He crashed out of his forst in 63 having won a stage. Then in 64 having won Paris-Nice, he took two stages & the Green Jersey and finished 24th. The next two editions saw him move up to 9th and then 2nd with the Green Jersey to boot. FInally he won in 67 & 68.

Not that important, but for good order, Janssen won TDF only once, in 1968. In 67 it was Pingeon.

 

[Krebs cycle]

Haven't read the whole thread but surely the knowledgable folks around here remember the 1984 Olympics? The US cycling team used blood doping didn't they?

Also, I'm pretty certain that Conconi actually admitted to using blood doping to prepare Moser for the hr record in 1984 since it wasn't a banned practice until 1986.


Anyway, testosterone stimulates endogenous EPO production aswell, so the 1980s were likely a period of EPO use 'by proxy'.

 

[workingclasshero]

i think we can probably agree that the olympics in that era were incredibly dirty, on all sides, possibly even dirtier than TdFs of the late '90s.

not possible, at best (worst) cycling of that era can be equalled. i also think that the third or fourth tier xc skiers wouldn't bother with expensive and dangerous doping as there was no captain to work for - you were only in it for yourself, no need to risk that much for finishing 9th as opposed to 14th

 

[Tyler'sTwin]

I'd still like to know what the 1994 Italian XC team was on, as it sure wasn't bread and ice. Topping the Norwegian "dream team" on their home snow (and it's not likely that team was completely clean) raised as many eyebrows than the way Riis dropped everyone on the Hautecam in 1996.

Sorry for the digression.

That danish documentary posted in the Livingston thread shows that the entire italian relay team were treated with EPO by Conconi, as was Manuela Di Centa. They even showed some crits. I believe Fauner's was 58% and Di Centa's was 55%.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

No idea. Has anyone got a definitive list of Conconi's pro cycling clients in 1988?



In markets outside US (especially Europe and Japan), the competition issues were slightly different: two products developed by two different firms were competing, and we did not observe a market segmentation. In 1988 Amgen launched its epoetin alfa product, sold under license by J&J and its subsidiaries under a variety of commercial names (Eprex, Erypo, Epopen, Epoxitin, Globuren, Espo…) whose therapeutic indication was the treatment of anemia.

In 1988 the non-US markets also saw the launch of another EPO product, called Recormon (epoetin beta), whose indication was the treatment of anemia in patients with chronic renal failure; it was developed by Genetics Institutes and marketed in EU by Boehringer Mannheim, sold in Japan by Chugai (under the name Epogin).

http://www.hero.uio.no/publicat/2006/HERO2006_3.pdf

Conconi would have been all over this stuff pronto. He knew more than almost anyone about the benefits of blood doping (all those hours fiddling about with the shiny new hemox analyser CONI bought for him) and was forever scouting about for new PEDs on the block.

Appreciate the link!

To the highlighted - I agree, they would have been awaiting it like the latest version of the I-phone.

In fact it was predicted in the article 131313 linked from '88 earlier.

Perhaps the discovery and isolation of erythropoetin will make blood doping irrelevant. Erythropoietin is a direct stimulus to further red cell production and is a potentially cleaner method of achieving the same effects. Erythropoietin is not currently a banned substance and the potential for it being used to confer an unfair disadvantage is considerable.

 

[mikkemus23]

I'd still like to know what the 1994 Italian XC team was on, as it sure wasn't bread and ice. Topping the Norwegian "dream team" on their home snow (and it's not likely that team was completely clean) raised as many eyebrows than the way Riis dropped everyone on the Hautecam in 1996.

Sorry for the digression.

Sorry, but exactly who in the Norwegian team are you pointing to? Bjørn Dæhlie? Vegard Ulvang? Terje Langlie? No no no. They were always very consistent throughout the season, while the Finns and Italians popped up just for the championships.
Norwegian cross country has not had a single doping case IIRC (you always have the never tested positive but come on).

Do you have anything at all?

Okay, I`m in a glass house here, of course I`m Norwegian
But come on!

 

[Tyler'sTwin]

Sorry, but exactly who in the Norwegian team are you pointing to? Bjørn Dæhlie? Vegard Ulvang? Terje Langlie? No no no. They were always very consistent throughout the season, while the Finns and Italians popped up just for the championships.
Norwegian cross country has not had a single doping case IIRC (you always have the never tested positive but come on).

Do you have anything at all?

Okay, I`m in a glass house here, of course I`m Norwegian
But come on!

What about Thomas "acromegaly" Alsgaard in 2002? Or Tora Berger this year?

 

[sheenyp]

What's teh Tora berger story, must have completely passed me by.

 

[Le breton]

Interesting quote by Hinault....

Interview - Philippe Brunel, special envoy of l'Équipe at Futuroscope

What is your position in the face of statements by Moser, who made use this spring of blood transfusions?

Moser made use of autotransfusion. So he was playing with his own blood. He did no more no less that the Finnish athletes, Lasse Viren and the others. It suffices to take some of ones own blood during the spring when it is rich, hyperoxygenated, and to reinject it when one is fatigued. Is that really doping? Maybe not, except if the blood is placed into a machine to reoxygenate it to the maximum.

As can easily be seen Hinault didn't really understand how the process worked.
It is also worth noting that in 84-5-6 Hinault and LeMond were in La Vie Claire, which was definitely not the team to join if you wanted to be at the forefront of doping knowledge considering Koechli's stance against doping. (I know Tapie, the manager, had no scrupples but I don't believe he had much influence beyond finances).

It's quite likely Hinault took amphetamines in the Post-TdF criteriums like most pros at the time and at least once he implicitly blamed Cyrille Guimard for pushing corticoids on him, but there is not much evidence of him being a continuous/regular doper.

Since the early 90's he has been extremely consistent at putting his head in the sand, refusing to acknowledge the sad situation of his sport.

 

[Escarabajo]

There is a bit of iffyness with this. Jan Jansen and Kelly did transform from decent hilly classic type racer (top sprinters!) to GT winner. Also, they won GT's quite late in their career.

Otoh, Jan Ulrich was immediately there and though I am a huge fan, he wasn't clean.


This is a bit of a myth really and unfair toward Claudio. When he got the big gap with Maassen, Bauer and Pensec the commentators pointed out Pensec as the big threat, but my brother and I were stunned that the KOM of the last Giro... Chiapucci... was neglected.

His first top performance wasn't the TdF. He had already shown he was a big talent. The "he is a nobody" was over the top considering what he had done in the Giro. Had they shouted that earlier at the Giro they would have a point

Also at the end of 1989 he did win two difficult Italian semi-classics. That's not too shabby for a young guy (he was 26 which with a bit of a stretch can be called young).

Some other "excuses": He had a terrible accident early in his career and he was firmly a domestique under Roche, Visentini, Zimmermann. Note that Chiapucci almost immediately surfaced when those were gone from the roster/faded away.

So yes, he is a prime "transformed by Epo" guy, but he was not invisible till the TdF 1990. His first part of 1990 was actually very good and he did grow beyond domestique in 1989.

I just feel that though he can be put squarely in the "doper" corner, he is being underrated a bit. He wasn't a mule and it is really uncertain if he wouldn't become a Race-horse in a clean era (unlikely, sure, but a bit more respect is in place).

I'll take your explanation with a grain of salt.

It is a nice summary but to me still was not good enough. The only thing you have are those 1 day semi classics. In the Giro he could have been juicing himself already. You are talking about the same year Giro in which he performed outstanding in the Tour. You are just proving my point anyway.

In my mind I was getting exited that somebody like him could evolve into a great GT. That gave hope for so many riders. I thought the same way about Indurain, but in this forum I have been proven wrong. Besides Indurain was a huge talent in the ITT from the beginning, so there was hope for him to evolve to better things.

 

[Franklin]

I'll take your explanation with a grain of salt.

The timeline and palmares does not have to be taken with a grain of salt as it's actually what happened.

It is a nice summary but to me still was not good enough. The only thing you have are those 1 day semi classics. In the Giro he could have been juicing himself already. You are talking about the same year Giro in which he performed outstanding in the Tour. You are just proving my point anyway.

Hah! I would be stunned if he wasn't loaded one way or the other To think he was clean in 1990 is indeed stretching it. But here we enter speculative country... was he a mule doped to racehorse? Or did he have a certain talent of the bat?

Considering he did get a chance after the old patrons left it seems his teammanagement felt he had it in him. Also considering many who dope don't get that far as he did it's really tough to dismiss him immediately.

In my mind I was getting exited that somebody like him could evolve into a great GT. That gave hope for so many riders.

This I fail to understand... for me he is a carbonprint of attacking climbing GT specialists like Winnen, a rider from the pre-epo era. Considering this is just a few years later it was not exactly unheard of for a small, "burly" doing so well.

I wasn't really shocked by Chiapucci, I had seen a few like him in the eighties. His palmares is good, but hardly exceptional compared to climbers just a few years earlier. All in all, his performance keeps stride with what we saw pre-epo.

Now if we take in account most top-riders used and how Italian cycling took over classic racing it's all rather differently, but even then it were the classic racers that were the first to ring alarm bells for me.

And if you then with those alarmed eyes look at the GT's you understand something is going on. But at that moment exploits were not unheard of. The eighties were full of them. The proof is in the results (a generation evaporating, a new, Italian, generation taking), not so much in the exploits themselves.

I thought the same way about Indurain, but in this forum I have been proven wrong. Besides Indurain was a huge talent in the ITT from the beginning, so there was hope for him to evolve to better things.

Proven is a bit of a big word, though I do say there is a huge established deduction and evidence to suggest most pro's are on dope. We have to realize that our sleuthing isn't proving it for the real world and that being frustrated about it doesn't help.

Even though a lot of bad stuff happened there is the incredibly hard thing to proof that the real stars under the dopers wouldn't have been on top anyway. An Indurain is a good example as he was groomed for greatness pre-epo.

Epo denied genuine riders to break through and more than probably influenced results in a significant way. Riis seems a prime example of being "just dope", but it's the realm of "what if" and "virtual wins".