In Blood Stepped: The History Of Blood Doping In Sport

[sniper]

Nice find, especially t the extent that it relates to GTs, and we're talking 1980.
As you say, it increases the smoke but there's still no fire.
It does show, imo, that speculation about Lemond and others blood doping in the mid-80s during GTs is, at the very least, plausible/warranted.

btw, your Dutch seems good enough. I don't think there's more (or less) to it than what you read into it.

 

[Tienus]

Hinault on auto transfusions as written by fmk in part 3:
" It suffices to take some of one's own blood during the Spring when it is rich, hyper-oxygenated, and to re-inject it when one is fatigued. Is that really doping? Maybe not, except if the blood is placed into a machine to re-oxygenate it to the maximum."

 

[Aragon]

Re:

Having seen that Hinault - quote several times, I've never quite figured out what the reference to "re-oxygenation" means, whether it is a reference to murky ozone therapies or substances elevating concentration of enzyme 2,3DPG or to something else. If anyone has an idea/knowledge I'd be interested to know.

 

[fmk_RoI]

A Powerful False Positive: Nationalism, Science and Public Opinion in the ‘Oxygen Doping’ Allegations Against Japanese Swimmers at the 1932 Olympics

 

[Aragon]

Re:

After reading some portions of the brilliant and original book Spitting in the Soup, there are a few blood doping - related items that caught my attention:

- While not vouching for Eddie B's reading of the Jacques Anquetil's blood reinfusion method, at least Borysewicz seems to have considered the Frenchman's method as the same blood doping as was used by athletes since 1970s and had this opinion also when rethinking Anquetil a short time ago:

Borysewicz recalled telling Anquietil that Polish riders took iron and vitamin supplements to help with recovery. Did Anquetil's doc give him something extra? "Yes," Anquetil replied. Twice a year he got a fresh transfusion of his own blood. "Because after the Giro, I can't recover for the Tour de France, so I need my blood", Borysewicz remembered the Frenchman saying... For Borysewicz, Burke's [blood doping] memo triggered memories of his dinner in France. "It clicked - Anquetil was doing the same thing," Borysewicz told me.

- Cyclist Alexi Grewal also claims in the book that blood doping was very prevalent at lower levels of sports in 1980s as "a college basketball player he grew with" told that "his team doctor extracted and stored blood for the players, and then reinjected it before important games".

- Third item is just notion on how blood doping was seen before it was banned. When modern commentators are critical of athletes who used questionable but not banned methods in 1970s or 1980s, it is customary to accuse these commentators of anachronism, ie. applying modern standards to past decades. Still some authors tend to overstate this case and claim that many ethically questionable methods such as blood doping were considered just "new science" and "modern exercise physiology" when they were introduced. This is not necessarily the case with blood doping, as two of the "inventors" of the method had following to say about blood doping already some 10-15 years before it was banned:

Björn Ekblom, 1972: "The question arises whether this type of blood transfusion described here is doping. Without a doubt, yes". ("Frågan blir då om den typ av blodöverföring som beskrivits här är doping. Enligt mitt förmenande utan tvekan ja").

Per-Olof Åstrand, 1976: "I think it is not unbelievable that there have been sportsmen who have used blood doping in major competitions. At the same time, I am naïve enough to hope that this hasn't taken place. This is totally banned". ("Jag håller inte för otroligt att det finns idrottsmän som använt bloddoping i stora tävlingar. Samtidigt är jag naiv nog att hoppas att man in har gjort det. Der är helt förbjudet.")

 

[sniper]

Good stuff.
There seems to have been some kind of blood boosting going on at the Junior World champs in Poland in 1974 (when borysewicz was working for polish cycling fed). It be baffled if Eddie didn't know the ins and outs of bloodboostong, having been trained at the Polish equivalent of the hochschule for koerperkultur and having worked with the creme Dr la creme of polish amateurcycling in the 70s. And that was no catpiss.
See my post about 1974 bloodboosting in the US cycling scene thread.
The greatest trick borysewicz ever pulled was making people believe he was not brought to the states for his knowöedge of dopings. And that he only looked at blooddoping that one time in 1984.
A funnt guy, Eddie.

 

[gillan1969]

Re:

Good stuff.
There seems to have been some kind of blood boosting going on at the Junior World champs in Poland in 1974 (when borysewicz was working for polish cycling fed). It be baffled if Eddie didn't know the ins and outs of bloodboostong, having been trained at the Polish equivalent of the hochschule for koerperkultur and having worked with the creme Dr la creme of polish amateurcycling in the 70s. And that was no catpiss.
See my post about 1974 bloodboosting in the US cycling scene thread.
The greatest trick borysewicz ever pulled was making people believe he was not brought to the states for his knowöedge of dopings. And that he only looked at blooddoping that one time in 1984.
A funnt guy, Eddie.

i think for any person looking at the 1984 debacle involving EddyB you can only conclude that he had knowledge of it. You wouldn't set it up for your medal hopes on a whim. The question is only how much he knew about it. The fact that it was a big scandal, the fact is was a bit of a debacle (insofar as it was amateur to the extreme) would suggest he had a cursory knowledge of its working rather than being a master of the art....

 

[sniper]

That^ is a fair assessment, at least as far as this particular type (homologous) of blood boosting is concerned.

 

[Aragon]

Re:

That^ is a fair assessment, at least as far as this particular type (homologous) of blood boosting is concerned.

Far from being a specialist on this LA84 thing, my reading of the episode is that people put too much stress on the actual method (autologous vs. homologous). I've heard it claimed for instance that the cyclists of LA84 succumbed to using blood of their relatives because they hadn't enough time to organise the blood removal and storage.

It is claimed that they got the idea from an article by Canadian blood doping specialist Norman H. Gledhill. If you actually read any of Gledhill's papers on blood doping, it is apparent that he is very skeptical about the potency of autotransfusions with refrigerator stored blood. I pretty much agree with him, but he seems to underestimate the material of the data on a few studies and his claims might be tilted towards the efficacy of high-glycerol freezing method as he was one of the coauthors of the first published blood doping study using the method in 1980.

 

[sniper]

Ed Burkes claim that he found out about blooddoping through a 1983 Gledhill paper is not credible.
As you pointed out earlier, he wrote his PhD under the guidance of Costill, who in turn had done an internship in Sweden at Ekblom/Astrands home institute.
Furthermore, by 1982 Burke had one publication and a conference paper co-authored with Ekblom.

Burke lying about this was part of the whitewashing operation put into motion by Ed(die) and co. directly after the whole thing leaked into the press, as described by Les Earnest.

 

[Aragon]

Re:

Ed Burkes claim that he found out about blooddoping through a 1983 Gledhill paper is not credible.
As you pointed out earlier, he wrote his PhD under the guidance of Costill, who in turn had done an internship in Sweden at Ekblom/Astrands home institute.
Furthermore, by 1982 Burke had one publication and a conference paper co-authored with Ekblom.

Burke lying about this was part of the whitewashing operation put into motion by Ed(die) and co. directly after the whole thing leaked into the press, as described by Les Earnest.

Certainly Ed Burke knew about blood doping, I don't think that he has ever claimed that he heard about blood doping first time from the September 1983 issue of The Physician and Sports Medicine (interestingly, Burke had coauthored a research paper with the actual conductor of the 1984 transfusions, cardiologist Herman L. Falsetti in earlier months edition of the same journal).

My reading is that after reading the brilliant literature review by Norman Gledhill, it became apparent for him that the academic debate on the efficacy of blood doping had ended, because Gledhill pinpoints some methodological flaws in the earlier blood doping inquiries and interestingly is quite critical on the 1972 research by none-other-than Ekblom.

For one reason or another, they chose homologous transfusions. Here is quote from a well-known online article about the decision to use homologous blood doping instead of autotransfusions:

The main problem with the blood boosting scheme was that there wasn't enough time to extract blood from each athlete and let them fully replenish it by the time of the Olympics. An alternative scheme was concocted: use transfusions from friends and relatives instead. Aside from the ethical and administrative errors in this decision, it was also medically defective in two ways:

(1) according to prior medical studies, the planned transfusion of one unit of blood per rider was insufficient to improve performance and

(2) transfusions involve considerably greater risks than self-infusions.

Regarding the latter point, medical literature that had been read by the organizers of this project pointed out that the use of transfusions for blood boosting is unethical.

http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/cyclops/dopes.htm

If you actually read what Gledhill tells about autotransfusions, he has a very strong opinion that elevation of hematocrit through refrigerated blood is nearly impossible regardless how much one has time to prepare the operation. And because US team most likely had no access to high-glycerol freezing, they chose the "easier" alternative and looked for donors.

 

[sniper]

Re:

...In 1985 Joost de Maesenaar was also involved with the preparation of Panasonic team, he is now the Astana team doctor after working for CSC / Riis.
While working as a doctor for DAF Trucks Harm Kuipers diagnosed van der Poel with anaemia in 1982 just days before the tour start.

Interesting interview here with De Maeseneer, thanks to good questioning from Hans Vandeweghe:
https://hansvdw1.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/joost-de-maeseneer.pdf
Really old school from De Maeseneer.
I wonder what 1988 team and doctor he's talking about.
And who's the "bomb" that exploded? (he talks about that towards the end).

 

[Aragon]

Re: Re:

A brand new academic paper has taken a look into the history of blood doping at the Olympic games:

J Sports Med Phys Fitness. 2017 Jan 17. doi: 10.23736/S0022-4707.17.06948-1. [Epub ahead of print]
Blood doping at the Olympic Games.
Fitch KD1.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28094487

I'll take a look on the paper and review the material as soons as I get a hold of a copy of the article. The earliest instances are from 1972 and the abstract says that "the author had a medical role at each of the Olympics that is discussed", but I wouldn't expect much new and revolutionary information to be revealed, but it is still interesting to read new insights about the matter.

 

[Aragon]

Re: Re:

It is my impression that the Ekblom-, Åstrand- and Gjermund Eggen - material is on the more trustworthy side of his source material. Eggen is a Norwegian triple-gold medallist cross country skier who - according to the Finnish folklore - was the "first" blood doper in the 1966 Winter Olympics. Vettenniemi claims elsewhere that he has even a contemporary newspaper source from 1966 to back up the claim that an unnamed Norwegian cross-country skier went into a hospital to elevate his blood values in 1966.

That is something I wrote a few months ago with no access to the sources of Mr. Vettenniemi.

Now he has published a brand new and quite an interesting book titled Suomalainen Hiihtodoping: Punssia, Pillereitä ja Punasoluja ("Finnish Ski Doping: Punsch, Pills and Red Blood Cells") released almost exactly a week ago. His blog entry a year ago promised that he had a good source about Eggen:

Reporting from Holmenkollen, a Finnish journalist briefly referred to an unnamed Norwegian whose red blood cell mass had been topped up in a clinic. In today’s parlance, the anonymous athlete had resorted to blood packing, a procedure which, especially in endurance events, gives the recipient an enormous boost.

http://idrottsforum.org/forumbloggen/triple-victory-for-norwegian-sport-medicine/

But now it seems that his source could be just an idiosyncratic reading of one sentence in a 1966 newspaper, because in the recent book he writes the following:

According to an suggestive preliminary article on the 1966 games, one "Norwegian who had acquired/(obtained) red blood cells from Switzerland" was one of the gold candidates at the 30 km race.

The reference is very murky and without going to deeply into how to apply the Finnish-language verb "hankkia" (ie. "acquire/obtain"), the sentence can refer to blood doping or to high altitude training or other methods than physically infusing blood.

 

[fmk_RoI]

A couple of stories in Herbie Sykes's new book, The Giro 100 - 100 Tales from the Giro Corsa Rosa:

- Moser was working with a Polish trainer named Andrzej Żmuda, "he was the precursor to the preparatori like Ferrari and Conconi. He understood how blood values affected performance and in that sense he changed the direction of cycling. It was through him that Moser started to understand the importance of haemoglobin levels in the blood. [...] Żmuda didn't last long but it was the beginning of a big change."

- "Then in Belgium they'd prepare with hormones extracted from a monkey's kidney, and allied to iron injections it gave you an increase in red blood cells. So when I was in Belgium I had to find a way to get hold of that, because you can't just sit back and watch your rider lose."

And this tale:

- "In 1982 I was with Hoonved, and the patron was a guy from Varese named Erminio Dall'Oglio. At the time, Roberto Sassi was their athletics trainer, and they brainwashed me into accepting his brother Aldo to train me. So I followed his training methods, and he arranged for me to meet with Dr Conconi. He's become a sort of scapegoat for blood doping, but for me he was a person worthy of respect. He simply said, 'Look, if you want to transfuse, that's fine, but it's entirely up to you. The only thing is that if you choose not to do it, the others will overtake you.' I chose not to do it because I didn't trust it, and my career suffered as a consequence. Dino Zandegù, my DS, used to say, 'Mario, you can't go to war with rubber bullets!' But it was my choice and I wanted it to be my career.”

 

[pmcg76]

Re:

A couple of stories in Herbie Sykes's new book, The Giro 100 - 100 Tales from the Giro Corsa Rosa:

- Moser was working with a Polish trainer named Andrzej Żmuda, "he was the precursor to the preparatori like Ferrari and Conconi. He understood how blood values affected performance and in that sense he changed the direction of cycling. It was through him that Moser started to understand the importance of haemoglobin levels in the blood. [...] Żmuda didn't last long but it was the beginning of a big change."

- "Then in Belgium they'd prepare with hormones extracted from a monkey's kidney, and allied to iron injections it gave you an increase in red blood cells. So when I was in Belgium I had to find a way to get hold of that, because you can't just sit back and watch your rider lose."

And this tale:

- "In 1982 I was with Hoonved, and the patron was a guy from Varese named Erminio Dall'Oglio. At the time, Roberto Sassi was their athletics trainer, and they brainwashed me into accepting his brother Aldo to train me. So I followed his training methods, and he arranged for me to meet with Dr Conconi. He's become a sort of scapegoat for blood doping, but for me he was a person worthy of respect. He simply said, 'Look, if you want to transfuse, that's fine, but it's entirely up to you. The only thing is that if you choose not to do it, the others will overtake you.' I chose not to do it because I didn't trust it, and my career suffered as a consequence. Dino Zandegù, my DS, used to say, 'Mario, you can't go to war with rubber bullets!' But it was my choice and I wanted it to be my career.”

Interesting piece. I am guessing the Mario was Mario Beccia who was one of the better Italian riders in the 80s, winner of Fleche Wallone and regular Giro Top 10 finisher. I think there is little doubt there was experimentation with blood doping in Italian cycling, but it didn't seem very effective as Italian cycling was relatively weak on the international stage apart from maybe Moser/Saronni.

I have an interesting quote from Roberto Visentini on blood doping if I can dig it up.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re: Re:

Interesting piece. I am guessing the Mario was Mario Beccia who was one of the better Italian riders in the 80s, winner of Fleche Wallone and regular Giro Top 10 finisher. I think there is little doubt there was experimentation with blood doping in Italian cycling, but it didn't seem very effective as Italian cycling was relatively weak on the international stage apart from maybe Moser/Saronni.

I have an interesting quote from Roberto Visentini on blood doping if I can dig it up.

Beccia, yes. The date is what is of interest to me. (Maybe also the involvement of the Blessèd Aldo.) The Italians at this stage were past experimentation - this is after Donati first crossed paths with Conconi, don't forget - and the evidence, slight as it still is, increasingly suggests blood doping among road cyclists at this time was much more common than accepted wisdom allows. It not being effective for the Italians: could it be that others were as advanced?

The Visentini quote would be interesting to see: does it suggest the use of transfusions Inoxpran/Carrera?

 

[yaco]

Blood doping is known to have been used by Lasse Viren in the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games - Doubt cycling would be 10 or 15 years behind.

 

[Aragon]

Re:

It has always been my impression that the total picture of blood doping use in the 1970s remains still unwritten. Still, it should be emphasized that the serious and public accusations against Viren began only after the 1976 Summer Olympics and even then the scientific community was very ambivalent on whether it even enhanced performance, so one shouldn't directly jump into the conclusion that everyone started blood doping even in 1976.

After going through the newspaper search engines, historian John Gleaves came to this conclusion in his Manufactured Dope (2015) claiming that "nsubstantiated allegations linked the Finnish runner, Lasse Viren, to blood transfusions at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, though they did not begin circulating until after his success at the Montreal Olympic Games [of 1976]".

The spirit of the sentence is sound even when there was some gossip about Finns even before that. Track & Field News journalist Cordner Nelson for instance wrote in 1972 right after the Viren's success that there already existed some whispering about Finns having a secret method.

"First Juha, Now Lasse and Friends", Track and Field News, 9/1972
The urgent question was: How are they doing it? At first, "blood doping" was suspected. This badly-named procedure had nothing to do with drugs. It consists of removing blood from a runner to stimulate production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells in his bone marrow. Then his own blood cells are returned to the runner and, theoretically, he is able to run better because of this greater oxygen supply. Vaatainen was thought to use this procedure because people at the 1971 European Championships heard stories of blood transfusions. But Vaatainen's success could also be explained by natural speed which made him a 10.9 100 meter sprinter plus long training runs totaling as much as 200 miles a week. And Scandinavians at Munich denied any "blood doping".

While these type of speculations are hard to find from the pre-1976 publications, I find it very interesting that the "stories of blood transfusions" described in this particular article were circulated some two months before it was revealed in newspaper articles in September 1971 that there was blood reinfusion research originating from Sweden.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re:

Blood doping is known to have been used by Lasse Viren in the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games - Doubt cycling would be 10 or 15 years behind.

Before throwing in your tuppence worth (and I may be over-valuing your contribution - I'm in a generous mood) do you think you could at least skim some of the early pages of this discussion? I really don't feel like repeats... TIA.

 

[yaco]

Re: Re:

Blood doping is known to have been used by Lasse Viren in the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games - Doubt cycling would be 10 or 15 years behind.

Before throwing in your tuppence worth (and I may be over-valuing your contribution - I'm in a generous mood) do you think you could at least skim some of the early pages of this discussion? I really don't feel like repeats... TIA.

My post is discussing whether blood doping in cycling would be years and years behind other endurance sports, like athletics - When you discover that countries both in the eastern bloc and western bloc had systemic doping programs, that covered a variety of sports - Then you consider that countries used leading doctors/researchers for these programs - It's conceivable that cycling would not be too far behind, the cutting edge in blood doping - I thoroughly read every thread before making a contribution.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re: Re:

Blood doping is known to have been used by Lasse Viren in the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games - Doubt cycling would be 10 or 15 years behind.

Before throwing in your tuppence worth (and I may be over-valuing your contribution - I'm in a generous mood) do you think you could at least skim some of the early pages of this discussion? I really don't feel like repeats... TIA.

My post is discussing whether blood doping in cycling would be years and years behind other endurance sports, like athletics - When you discover that countries both in the eastern bloc and western bloc had systemic doping programs, that covered a variety of sports - Then you consider that countries used leading doctors/researchers for these programs - It's conceivable that cycling would not be too far behind, the cutting edge in blood doping - I thoroughly read every thread before making a contribution.

We're 14 pages into this. I really do suggest you at least skim, cause so far you've not said nothing new. And what you have said suggests you don't know what's previously been posted. TIA.

 

[pmcg76]

Re: Re:

Interesting piece. I am guessing the Mario was Mario Beccia who was one of the better Italian riders in the 80s, winner of Fleche Wallone and regular Giro Top 10 finisher. I think there is little doubt there was experimentation with blood doping in Italian cycling, but it didn't seem very effective as Italian cycling was relatively weak on the international stage apart from maybe Moser/Saronni.

I have an interesting quote from Roberto Visentini on blood doping if I can dig it up.

Beccia, yes. The date is what is of interest to me. (Maybe also the involvement of the Blessèd Aldo.) The Italians at this stage were past experimentation - this is after Donati first crossed paths with Conconi, don't forget - and the evidence, slight as it still is, increasingly suggests blood doping among road cyclists at this time was much more common than accepted wisdom allows. It not being effective for the Italians: could it be that others were as advanced?

The Visentini quote would be interesting to see: does it suggest the use of transfusions Inoxpran/Carrera?

Ok, dug it up with another interesting anecodte, the first is from a book that was published annually in the UK about the Giro and Tour, it was simply titled Tour 86 published by Kennedy Bros. This refers to the success of Guido Bontempi winning 5 stages at the Giro in 86.This was to be Bontempi's best season winning Ghent-Wevelgem and 3 stages at the Tour. Bontempi did test positive at the Tour in 87.

".....but it was again Bontempi who surged over the line for his third victory of the race, paying tribute afterward to the team doctor, transferred from Mosers entourage and the same doctor who advised Moser on the preparation for his hour record preparation"

The Visentini bit is from Winning magazine review of the 86 Giro.
i][/i]

Visentini rebuffed the cynics who said he owed his Giro victory to the training regime imposed on his squad by a doctor from the team formed by Professor Conconi to help Moser break the World Hour record in 1984.Visentini said at a press conference after receiving his final pink jersey, "I am one of the few riders who doesnt follow all this advice. For one thing, I would never volunteer to undergo a blood transfusion".


Carrera did have a fantastic season in 86, Bontempi, Visentini and Urs Zimmermann all had super years in 86. In neither example does it mention who the doctor was, clearly not Conconi himself, was it Ferrari?? I know Ferrari worked with Mosers team in 87 so did he possibly jumps ship for a season or was it someone else? Roche did have his super season in 87, but then Zimmerman was rubbish that same season whilst Bontempi was nowhere near as good.

[

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re: Re:

The Visentini bit is from Winning magazine review of the 86 Giro.


Visentini rebuffed the cynics who said he owed his Giro victory to the training regime imposed on his squad by a doctor from the team formed by Professor Conconi to help Moser break the World Hour record in 1984.Visentini said at a press conference after receiving his final pink jersey, "I am one of the few riders who doesnt follow all this advice. For one thing, I would never volunteer to undergo a blood transfusion".

That quote is exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for, thanks for digging it out.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re: Re:

In neither example does it mention who the doctor was, clearly not Conconi himself, was it Ferrari?? I know Ferrari worked with Mosers team in 87 so did he possibly jumps ship for a season or was it someone else? Roche did have his super season in 87, but then Zimmerman was rubbish that same season whilst Bontempi was nowhere near as good.

Grazzi. Giovanni Grazzi.