In Blood Stepped: The History Of Blood Doping In Sport

[pmcg76]

Re: Re:

The USSR was doing their own research in the sixties at the same time as Ericson in Sweden according to old Soviet studies on blood transfusions in USSR team.
https://twitter.com/iljukov/status/546814155173662720

According to Danny Van Haute's father, Danny and other US juniors were introduced to blood boosting during the junior worlds in Poland, 1974.
So yes, it definitely looks like it was more than just the Scandinavians looking into blood doping in that early period.

No, that is your very deliberate misrepresenation of that interview. Firstly you were repeatedly claiming Eddie B was sending Juniors to Poland to learn how to blood dope based on the Van Haute Snr interview, except nowhere in the article did it say that. That was your spin on it.

Reading the interview, it seemed more like something they found about in the course of their trip rather than seeking out that information, like a team learning about a new training method from another team or something. I pointed out that Van Haute had not been a Junior since 1974 and it did say it was during a trip but the juniors but I queried the accuracy of this as it mentions Eddie B was managing the boys and he didnt become national coach until 78.

You then jumped on this and spun it as Juniors learning about blood doping in 74 at the World Juniors in Poland, again nowhere in the article does it explicitly say that. It would seem incredibly unlikely that someone would learn about blood doping and not try it for 10 years as when Van Haute tried it for the first time in the lead up to the US trials in 84. Would he have not tried it in the build up to the 76 Olympics or sometime in between? Why wait 10 years.

All these claims you make have no actual basis in fact and you just spin the narrative to suit your own agenda and then post it as if they are true. You seem truly desperate to prove something and are happy to manipulate anything to make your very weak cases.

<edited by mods>

 

[Aragon]

Re:

What is the photo from? I've seen that Tweet before but never been able to get an answer to that question. Is it a book or a thesis?

I did not link correctly
https://twitter.com/iljukov/status/546812063889506304
Bioenergetics of Sports Activities, by Nikolay Volkov. Very limited edition. 2010. That was a secret PhD until 1991. Defended 67.

Thanks for the link, looks very interesting particularly when the study isn't in original Russia but translated to English. But - as Sergey Ilyukov puts in his twitter account - while "Volkov defended his PhD thesis in -67", this isn't necessarily the same work as Ilyukov has "to check when this [sic.] studies done".

Researcher Michail Kalinski based his own article on the Soviet use of blood doping on the blood doping reports by the same N.I. Volkov from early 1990s. While I don't have my copy of the paper on hand, I'm pretty confident that Kalinski mentions that the studies he was referring to took place around 1976 or a year or two earlier.

Interestingly when one Canadian journalist visited Soviet Union in 1974, his hosts weren't that secretive about the research that was going on:

In private conversations over the last three weeks at the Central State Institute for Sports and Physical Education, more than one Russian host has spoken of recent surprising increases in endurance made possible through "blood doping", the technique whereby a quantity of an athlete's blood is first withdrawn, and then reinjected shortly before a competition... But whether such things might be frightening or not, they are entirely indicative of the Russian approach to sport where the Western idea of play for the sake of play is lost in a drive to use sport for the furtherance of the state...

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re: Re:

Interestingly when one Canadian journalist visited Soviet Union in 1974, his hosts weren't that secretive about the research that was going on:

In private conversations over the last three weeks at the Central State Institute for Sports and Physical Education, more than one Russian host has spoken of recent surprising increases in endurance made possible through "blood doping", the technique whereby a quantity of an athlete's blood is first withdrawn, and then reinjected shortly before a competition... But whether such things might be frightening or not, they are entirely indicative of the Russian approach to sport where the Western idea of play for the sake of play is lost in a drive to use sport for the furtherance of the state...

The openness of some before these procedures are actually banned is one of the things that always intrigues me. Some are open, some aren't. You can see how some see it as an ethical/moral issue and some don't. To a degree, I understand where those who complain of whipped up hysteria on the subject post 1985 are coming from, but they ignore the quieter moral/ethical 'debate' (talking versus not talking) that was going on earlier. (The same is also true of doping in general: even as far back as the c19th you can see people taking a moral/ethical stance.)

As for "the Western idea of play for the sake of play" ... oy vey!

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

...

There were articles on the subject dating back to the 1960s. Clearly there was much (a relative term) debate on the subject in the 1970s, just look at the (relative) volume of articles published. But knowledge does not prove action, if it did we would be saying that the Irish team at the Games in the 1970s and 1980s was blood doping and - specifically with regard to the 1980s - I think Paul Kimmage might have thought to mention that in A Rough Ride if it really was happening.

If it was happening, it's more likely to have happened in controlled environments, OTCs (not just US OTC obviously), etc.. We're looking at athletes with a proper medical entourage. Only the fewest would have gone about experimenting with their own blood without proper supervision. I've said this plenty of times. I thought (correct me if wrong) we're focusing the discussion on blood doping among elite athletes. Not among the athlete population at large.

Of course, with the Americans, it's not just reading articles. Eddie Borysewicz claims to have first learned of blood manipulation not through a medical journal but at a social engagement with Jean Stablinski in the early 1970s, when they were joined by Jacques Anquetil and Maître Jacques, when queried on the topic, talked of having his blood flushed twice a year (the sort of quackery we would today call detoxing and which Anquetil had talked about in newspapers in the 1960s). This only adds to Borysewicz being the perfect stage villain here: he's called Eddie ("What's for dinner? Meatlof!"); he has a surname so unpronounceable it's abbreviated to its initial letter; he comes from a then Communist country; and he was an assistant to that country's 1976 Olympic team and we all know what a doping Colossus Poland was in the 1970s (they were joint first with Bulgaria and the USA for the number of positives at the 1976 Games). But ... well, where's the stories of the blood transfusions used by the Polish cyclists who won bronze in the road race (men's, women didn't race bikes at the Olys in the 1970s) and silver in the TTT? We can join the dots all day and all night, paint pictures of Mickey Mouse in the stars above us. But without actual evidence, without properly sourced stories, what have we got? So.

I should look it up but I think he was with the Polish cycling amateurs between 1973 and 1975, a period in which they did actually have some considerable achievements (obviously at the amateur level).

For Borysewicz to be the father of American blood doping, let's see the stories from the Polish team where he learned all about it.

Why would the polish team tell stories about their doping?
Some of them are still seen as heroes of their time.
The stories are there though and they come from Eddie himself. See Wheelmen or the US cycling scene thread.
Other stories come from 1984 newspapers and interviews with the people involved in that scam.
I didn't make up the lable "Father of American doping". People in the know did.

Besides Eddie B., there are only very few individuals from the 70s and 80s of whom we can say with so much certainty that they were involved in (blood) doping athletes.
Still in 1985, when the practice had already been banned by USOC, Eddie was publicly defending the right of athletes to boost their blood.
Go figure.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re: Re:

If it was happening, it's more likely to have happened in controlled environments, OTCs (not just US OTC obviously), etc..

But your argument is always whatever whatever whatever they had the knowledge whatever whatever whatever therefore they did it. (I'm not quoting, call that a paraphrase.) So if the knowledge was out there (as clearly it was) then they must have done it in Ireland, especially with Pat McQuaid bossing the team, I mean he was a PE teacher, so must have known.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re: Re:

I should look it up but I think he was with the Polish cycling amateurs between 1973 and 1975, a period in which they did actually have some considerable achievements (obviously at the amateur level).

Oh, considerable achievements, well that proves it, you can only get achievements with doping, so to get considerable ones you have to be doing bleeding edge doping.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

...
Interestingly when one Canadian journalist visited Soviet Union in 1974, his hosts weren't that secretive about the research that was going on:

In private conversations over the last three weeks at the Central State Institute for Sports and Physical Education, more than one Russian host has spoken of recent surprising increases in endurance made possible through "blood doping", the technique whereby a quantity of an athlete's blood is first withdrawn, and then reinjected shortly before a competition... But whether such things might be frightening or not, they are entirely indicative of the Russian approach to sport where the Western idea of play for the sake of play is lost in a drive to use sport for the furtherance of the state...

Another nice find.
It's this the approach that Dardik and Ariel wanted to copy 1:1 when they sought funding for the OTC.
I'm still amazed that whereas the Russians and Germans seem to have at least done some research on their respective doping past, for the US such research is not even in its infancy. It's non-existent.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

...Would he have not tried it in the build up to the 76 Olympics or sometime in between? Why wait 10 years.

you tell me. I never said he waited 10 years.

All these claims you make have no actual basis in fact and you just spin the narrative to suit your own agenda and then post it as if they are true. You seem truly desperate to prove something and are happy to manipulate anything to make your very weak cases.

<edited by mods>

adhoms noted.

Here's the post we're talking about:
viewtopic.php?p=1907797#p1907797
People can make up their own minds.
I think I made a plausible and rather straightforward deduction there. You think I didn't. That's fair enough.

The other thing is, Eddie was there in 1974. Fraysse was there.
Suddenly, Eddie is there in 1978, brought in by Fraysse. Eddie allegedly just happened to walk straight into Fraysse's bike store.
Such funny 'coincidences'.
I think doping and blood doping is there in the background all the way from 74 onwards. But if nobody cares to look, nobody's gonna find nothing. That we can agree on.

Talking about trilogies, here's Wheelmen's on Eddie B:
part I: viewtopic.php?p=1907097#p1907097
part II: viewtopic.php?p=1907102#p1907102
part III: viewtopic.php?p=1907165#p1907165

Eddie in 1985:

"It's legal; it's not illegal," Bory­sewicz said in Honolulu. "So when it's legal, then whose business is it who's getting the injections?

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

 

[pmcg76]

Re: Re:

...Would he have not tried it in the build up to the 76 Olympics or sometime in between? Why wait 10 years.

you tell me. I never said he waited 10 years.

All these claims you make have no actual basis in fact and you just spin the narrative to suit your own agenda and then post it as if they are true. You seem truly desperate to prove something and are happy to manipulate anything to make your very weak cases.

<edited by mods>

adhoms noted.

Here's the post we're talking about:
viewtopic.php?p=1907797#p1907797
People can make up their own minds.
I think I made a plausible deduction there. You think I didn't. That's fair enough.

The other thing is, Eddie was there in 1974. Fraysse was there.
Suddenly, Eddie is there in 1978, brought in by Fraysse. Eddie allegedly just happened to walk straight into Fraysse's bike store.
Such funny 'coincidences'.
I think doping and blood doping is there in the background all the way from 74 onwards. But if nobody cares to look, nobody's gonna find nothing. That we can agree on.

Talking about trilogies, here's Wheelmen's on Eddie B:
part I: viewtopic.php?p=1907097#p1907097
part II: viewtopic.php?p=1907102#p1907102
part III: viewtopic.php?p=1907165#p1907165

Eddie in 1985:

"It's legal; it's not illegal," Bory­sewicz said in Honolulu. "So when it's legal, then whose business is it who's getting the injections?

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

As you are the one claiming Van haute discovered blood doping in 74, I would think you would have a logical reason for waiting 10 years to try it or could it be more likely that some of the article is inaccurate.

Why does Van Haute snr mention Eddie B 'managing the boys' when he didn't become coach until 78. That timeline is out of whack.

 

[fmk_RoI]

San Jose Mercury News
Feb 27, 1985
Sports Digest

U.S. cycling coach defends blood doping
Mercury News Wire Services

Blood doping is legal and should be a personal matter left to the individual athlete, the coach of the U.S. Olympic cycling team says.

"Blood doping is a legal thing. When it's legal, why does the media make it a big problem?" asked Olympic team coach Edward Borysewicz, who also is national coaching director of the U.S. Cycling Federation.

Blood doping, also known as blood packing or blood boosting, is a procedure in which an individual receives transfusions of his own or a relative's blood. The technique is aimed at increasing an athlete's red-blood-cell count and oxygen level, thereby increasing stamina.

Some doctors and members of the U.S. Olympic Committee have claimed that some cyclists received such transfusions before their Olympic events.

"It's legal; it's not illegal," Bory­sewicz said in Honolulu. "So when it's legal, then whose business is it
who's getting the injections?

"To even ask the question I think is not polite," he said. "That is an invasion of privacy, and that is not polite, and it's illegal."

I personally find it hard to be shocked - or even perturbed - by this. What Borysewicz said is fully correct: the process was legal. The IOC didn't ban it until later in 1985, in light of the LA 84 furore and presumably in light of what was going on in Italy with Sandro Donati getting the Italian government to step in, risking further state encroachment onto the IOC and the IFs' sacred turf. That Borysewicz knew about the 1983/84 programme, no one seems to deny that. That the coach of the team accused of doing something legal should defend the legality of what they did...

 

[sniper]

I agree. And so there is less and less reason to assume they weren't blood doping otc-based athletes well before 1983.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re:

I agree. And so there is less and less reason to assume they weren't blood doping otc-based athletes well before 1983.

Which explains Pat McQuaid, Paul Kimmage and the Irish blood doping programme. It's no wonder we were able to outride all those Commie cheats.

 

[acoggan]

What is striking about those articles is the lack of any mention whatsoever of any American or Canadian academics.

What is striking about that?

Because to listen to some here, said academics were up to their elbows in such things.

 

[fmk_RoI]

What is striking about those articles is the lack of any mention whatsoever of any American or Canadian academics.

What is striking about that?

Because to listen to some here, said academics were up to their elbows in such things.

But the article is not a full review of the available literature.

 

[acoggan]

What is striking about those articles is the lack of any mention whatsoever of any American or Canadian academics.

What is striking about that?

Because to listen to some here, said academics were up to their elbows in such things.

But the article is not a full review of the available literature.

So can you offer more than just innuendo and wild speculation that people like Costill, etc., were involved with blood doping of athletes?

 

[fmk_RoI]

What is striking about those articles is the lack of any mention whatsoever of any American or Canadian academics.

What is striking about that?

Because to listen to some here, said academics were up to their elbows in such things.

But the article is not a full review of the available literature.

So can you offer more than just innuendo and wild speculation that people like Costill, etc., were involved with blood doping of athletes?

Back up the bus buddy. You're the one thinks the absence of Americans in an article that is not a review of available literature is somehow striking. It isn't.

 

[acoggan]

Back up the bus buddy. You're the one thinks the absence of Americans in an article that is not a review of available literature is somehow striking. It isn't.

I was being sarcastic when I said that. Given that there is no evidence to support such claims, the fact that they aren't mentioned isn't surprising in the least.

 

[buckle]

Re: Re:

I agree. And so there is less and less reason to assume they weren't blood doping otc-based athletes well before 1983.

Which explains Pat McQuaid, Paul Kimmage and the Irish blood doping programme. It's no wonder we were able to outride all those Commie cheats.

The 1972 Benson & Hedges cup at York won by Vincent O'Brien's Roberto smashing the unbeaten record of Brigadier Gerrard is suspicious. Even Piggott turned down the ride and a hall of famer from the US flown in for one race. Perhaps Vincent suspected BG and retaliated.

 

[sniper]

In 1976, Dr. Irving Dardik, founder of the OTC in 1977, is on the record expressing the need to

"test the effects of blood doping on American athletes"

(source: http://www.johngleaves.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Manufactured-Article.pdf, p. 7).

Furthermore,

"We want to develop methods and modalities for working with athletes that .would enhance their performances and be safe," Dardik told-the Times. "We'll be reviewing as much information as we can in the European sector, directly and indirectly, and explore what's being done elsewhere." Some American athletes have contended that, sports medicine programs developed by Eastern European nations have contributed markedly to upgrading the performance of those nations' athletes. The outstanding performance by the East Germans at the Olympics - reinforced these claims. Dardik said the panel was prepared to investigate controversial areas of sports medicine, including the effects of anabolic steroids and blood doping on performance, and make judgements, on their po- tentiar benefits to American athletes. Source: The Robesonian (1976) --> https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/43349025/

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re:

In 1976, Dr. Irving Dardik, founder of the OTC in 1977, is on the record expressing the need to "test the effects of blood doping on American athletes" (source: http://www.johngleaves.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Manufactured-Article.pdf, p. 7).

This reminds me of how the Irish blood doping programme must have come about. In the 1960s Shay Elliott - who rode as a domestique for Jacques Anquetil alongside Jean Stablinski - was an occasional visitor to the McQuaid household, as recounted by Pat McQuaid in the Shay Elliott biography, Shay Elliott. In the same way that Eddie Borysewicz learned about blood manipulation through Stablinski and Anquetil, Elliott is clearly the key - the father even - of the Irish blood doping programme (while Elliott did write about doping in one of the British Sundays he never mentioned the use of blood transfusions - a significant omission on his part which makes much sense now we know what we now know). Pat McQuaid himself went on to study Phys Ed where - obviously - he would have familiarised himself with all of the available literature. There is even a possibility that he himself may have contributed some of his own, pseudonymously, his adventures in South Africa demonstrating a fondness for doing things under assumed names. This knowledge was, obviously, used at the various international races the Irish competed at, in particular the Tour of Britain, the Worlds and the Olympics. It, obviously, also, was carried back into the professional peloton by the likes of Sean Kelly, Stephen Roche, Paul Kimmage, Martin Earley and Alan McCormack (coincidentally the five members of the Irish team on the day Stephen Roche won his World Championships - read into that what you will knowing what we know about what is happening in hotel rooms on their eve). Roche himself, he was able to refine his knowledge of the process by direct contact with Anquetil. David Walsh, ghosting Roche's autobiography, The Agony and the Ecstasy: Stephen Roche's World of Cycling (note to coy reference to amphetamines in the title - he really was shameless about these things), writes of the two meeting and of Anquetil advising Roche. Roche also had a particular fondness for Raphaël Géminiani, Anquetil's former mentor, who was his directeur sportif for a time, helping him to pull of that exploit on the Aubisque in 85, for which Roche acknowledges Gém had 'prepared' him fully in advance (we all know that that means all the available doping methods, including transfusions). And, of course, there's Sean Kelly, who unlike Roche was not a super responder to transfusions and invariably had a jour sans in the Tour after receiving one, which was particularly hard on him in 1983 when it cut short his stint in the yellow jersey, a story referred to by Willy Voet in Massacre à la chaîne where he, tellingly, fails to attribute it to a botched blood transfusions (which would have been a criminal offence in France at the time) and painted it more softly, blaming the wrong kind of cortisone. All of this Irish knowledge about blood, of course, culminated in 2007 with the introduction by none other than Pat McQuaid himself - the man who learned it all from Jacques Anquetil via Shay Elliott - of the blood passport, the surest way the UCI could find of legalising available blood manipulation practices without admitting to the world that it was legalising available blood manipulation practices.

 

[Tienus]

I did a bit of research on the Gimondi story. Looks like Peter Ouwerkerk was one of the journalist who witnessed the transfusion. It happened during the tour of 1975 in a hotel in Merlin Plage.
http://www.delpher.nl/nl/kranten/view?query=gimondi+merlin-plage&page=2&coll=ddd&identifier=ddd%3A010958820%3Ampeg21%3Aa0184&resultsidentifier=ddd%3A010958820%3Ampeg21%3Aa0184
Ouwerkerk wrote this article about the career of Gimondi. The article starts with Dutch journalists knocking at the room door and Gimondi gets angry with them. Gimondi later comes down and talks to the journalists. According to the article Gimondi is angry because he thinks the journalists are fans hunting for souvenirs. Allmost ten years later Ouwerkerk writes what really happened that day.
http://www.delpher.nl/nl/kranten/view?query=zoetemelk+bloed&page=8&coll=ddd&identifier=ddd%3A010961920%3Ampeg21%3Aa0344&resultsidentifier=ddd%3A010961920%3Ampeg21%3Aa0344"
Who walked into the room of a rider risked upsetting the rider because he was having a transfusion. We remember Felice Gimondi, tour 1975, Merlin-Plage

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re:

It happened during the tour of 1975 in a hotel in Merlin Plage.

So now we've gone from the eve of the 73 Worlds to the middle of the 75 Tour?

 

[acoggan]

Re:

In 1976, Dr. Irving Dardik, founder of the OTC in 1977, is on the record expressing the need to

"test the effects of blood doping on American athletes"

(source: http://www.johngleaves.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Manufactured-Article.pdf, p. 7).

Furthermore,

"We want to develop methods and modalities for working with athletes that .would enhance their performances and be safe," Dardik told-the Times. "We'll be reviewing as much information as we can in the European sector, directly and indirectly, and explore what's being done elsewhere." Some American athletes have contended that, sports medicine programs developed by Eastern European nations have contributed markedly to upgrading the performance of those nations' athletes. The outstanding performance by the East Germans at the Olympics - reinforced these claims. Dardik said the panel was prepared to investigate controversial areas of sports medicine, including the effects of anabolic steroids and blood doping on performance, and make judgements, on their po- tentiar benefits to American athletes. Source: The Robesonian (1976) --> https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/43349025/

Non-sequitur.

 

[Tienus]

Peter Ouwerkerk was also the journalist who wrote the first article about the Zoetemelk transfusions
http://www.delpher.nl/nl/kranten/view?query=zoetemelk+bloed&page=2&coll=ddd&identifier=ddd%3A010959274%3Ampeg21%3Aa0175&resultsidentifier=ddd%3A010959274%3Ampeg21%3Aa0175
According to this article Dr Fucs is a similar doctor like Dr Rolink, a known Dutch doping doctor. In 1979 Zoetemelk is caught for nortestosteron, it was prescribed by Fucs. Not for performance enhancement but because Zoetemelk was underweight. Fucs was a normal Parise gp who got his sport experience from working for team Sonolor.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89quipe_cycliste_Sonolor

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

It happened during the tour of 1975 in a hotel in Merlin Plage.

So now we've gone from the eve of the 73 Worlds to the middle of the 75 Tour?

remind's of Floyd's emails. He got the dates all wrong.
Ergo he must have been making all that stuff up.