In Blood Stepped: The History Of Blood Doping In Sport

[sniper]

Re:

What do I win?

Nothing, I was looking for this answer.

So, someone else's blood, the correct treatement for anaemia after all.

Good stuff.

 

[Aragon]

Re: Re:

There is an interesting chart of distribution of hematocrit values in UCI's 2001 leaflet 40 years of fighting against doping (p. 17) about hematocrit values of 1997 vs. pre-1988.
http://oldsite.uci.ch/english/health_sante/docs/40_ans.pdf
There is no explanation, no source or no indication, from where the data comes from. While one could question the 1997 data, there are some suspiciously high hematocrits in the pre-1988 data and the mean is also suspiciously high. (I'd upload the image of the chart, but the webpage keeps saying that "Sorry, the board attachment quota has been reached", whatever that means.)

 

[buckle]

Growth hormone was available in '81.

The evidence for that, going against the general understanding of when HGH first began to be used, I - and much of the whole sports science community - would dearly love to see. So, please, do share, don't leave us in the dark.

If I can guess the evidence what do I win..?

Americans were already extracting growth hormones from cadavers decades before the 80's.

 

[King Boonen]

Growth hormone was available in '81.

The evidence for that, going against the general understanding of when HGH first began to be used, I - and much of the whole sports science community - would dearly love to see. So, please, do share, don't leave us in the dark.

If I can guess the evidence what do I win..?

Americans were already extracting growth hormones from cadavers decades before the 80's.

Anecdote was my second guess...

 

[Aragon]

Re: Re:

This falls into the un-substantiated gossip category, but when blood doping made one of its first appearances in the media at the 1976 Winter Olympics of Innsbruck, Le Monde-journalist "M. A.-R." claimed among other things that a "large number of cyclists from all countries" had blood doped:

Le prélèvement et la réinjection de sang ne constituent pas un nouveau soupçon de dopage dans le sport de haute competition. Plusieurs athlètes finlandais et néo-zélandais, un grand nombre de coureurs cyclistes de tous les pays, auraient déjà fait, et régulièrement, ce genre d'expérience.

While totally without any explanation, this claim is interesting as it was made before the Zoetemelk-episode and even before the method became widely known after Lasse Viren came under suspicion some half years later.

 

[sniper]

Great find, Aragon.

I'm kind of excited about the reference to New Zealanders in there.
New Zealand happens to be where Fritz Hagerman started his career as a rowing coach in the late 60s, just after he'd finished his altitude study for the US army.
Hagerman later became an exercise physiologist at the Olympic Training Center (working with people like Ed Burke, and testing athletes like Heiden and Lemond), but also had a gig for NASA, and of course continued as US Olympic rowing coach.
He wrote an article about steroids in 75, and a paper on 'cardio-respiratory conditioning of adolescents' in 76 where he references Ekblom, Astrand, and Woldemar Gerschler, although not explicitly mentioning blood doping.

 

[Aragon]

Re:

The only connection that comes into my from New Zealand is Arthur Lydiard, who was the head coach of Finnish runners in late 1960s and brought his training methods into the country. Almost at the same time transfusions began to take place, but there is most likely no connection there.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re: Re:

This falls into the un-substantiated gossip category, but when blood doping made one of its first appearances in the media at the 1976 Winter Olympics of Innsbruck, Le Monde-journalist "M. A.-R." claimed among other things that a "large number of cyclists from all countries" had blood doped:

Le prélèvement et la réinjection de sang ne constituent pas un nouveau soupçon de dopage dans le sport de haute competition. Plusieurs athlètes finlandais et néo-zélandais, un grand nombre de coureurs cyclistes de tous les pays, auraient déjà fait, et régulièrement, ce genre d'expérience.

While totally without any explanation, this claim is interesting as it was made before the Zoetemelk-episode and even before the method became widely known after Lasse Viren came under suspicion some half years later.

Define blood doping bearing in mind Anquetil's publicly talked about 'blood doping' in the 1960s.

 

[sniper]

"Withdrawal and reinfusio". I guess it could hypothetically also refer to ozon therapy(?), but the gossip here seems more likely to be about autotransfudions.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re:

"Withdrawal and reinfusio". I guess it could hypothetically also refer to ozon therapy(?), but the gossip here seems more likely to be about autotransfudions.

Do point to the bit above that points to this clearly being autotransfusions and not other forms of blood manipulation, please do. "Le prélèvement et la réinjection" can describe what Anquetil did more than it can describe what Zoetemelk did, can describe what Anquetil did more than it can describe what anyone who was transfusing other people's blood did. Back then, most believed that what Anquetil did - and spoke about publicly, to journalists, who wrote about it in newspapers - was what today we call blood doping.

You do like to read into these things that which you want to read into these things.

 

[Aragon]

Re: Re:

"Withdrawal and reinfusio". I guess it could hypothetically also refer to ozon therapy(?), but the gossip here seems more likely to be about autotransfudions.

Do point to the bit above that points to this clearly being autotransfusions and not other forms of blood manipulation, please do. "Le prélèvement et la réinjection" can describe what Anquetil did more than it can describe what Zoetemelk did, can describe what Anquetil did more than it can describe what anyone who was transfusing other people's blood did. Back then, most believed that what Anquetil did - and spoke about publicly, to journalists, who wrote about it in newspapers - was what today we call blood doping.

You do like to read into these things that which you want to read into these things.

The strict definition of "blood doping" means "artificially elevating hemoglobin" and the context of the Innsbruck-debate where the Le Monde -article was written refers clearly to that. The debate actually started when the Norwegian Olympic Committee wrote a letter informing IOC that "[r]ecent research at the field of sports medicine has shown that sampling a certain amount of blood from an athlete, storing the blood for three weeks, and reinfusion of the same blood will rise the capacity of aerobic work".

While the title of the article also is "La Norvège alerte le C.I.O à propos d'un dopage par transfusions sanguine" and the body of the text also talks about excessive red blood cells, it could still be that the origin of the cyclist-related rumours is something totally different and have nothing to do with "real" blood doping.

Mea culpa for not bringing up to the context, because - as you pointed out - the quote could've been a cherry-picked lines from somewhere not related to the issue at all.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re: Re:

There is an interesting chart of distribution of hematocrit values in UCI's 2001 leaflet 40 years of fighting against doping (p. 17) about hematocrit values of 1997 vs. pre-1988.
http://oldsite.uci.ch/english/health_sante/docs/40_ans.pdf
There is no explanation, no source or no indication, from where the data comes from. While one could question the 1997 data, there are some suspiciously high hematocrits in the pre-1988 data and the mean is also suspiciously high. (I'd upload the image of the chart, but the webpage keeps saying that "Sorry, the board attachment quota has been reached", whatever that means.)

Two points to consider: impact on pre-1988 figures of a cohort of Colombian cyclists; impact on 1997 figures of artificial manipulation (downward) techniques such as saline drips. I'll Tweet it later and ask Ross Tucker for a quick comment on it.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

.. "Le prélèvement et la réinjection" can describe what Anquetil did more than it can describe what Zoetemelk did, can describe what Anquetil did more than it can describe what anyone who was transfusing other people's blood did. Back then, most believed that what Anquetil did - and spoke about publicly, to journalists, who wrote about it in newspapers - was what today we call blood doping.

cheers and fair enough of course. (thanks also @aragon for expanding)

You do like to read into these things that which you want to read into these things

perhaps try not to read into my posts so much.
that's just for your own comfort. you seem to tense about it.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re: Re:

Mea culpa for not bringing up to the context, because - as you pointed out - the quote could've been a cherry-picked lines from somewhere not related to the issue at all.

I would need to check to confirm my recollection of this, but my memory is that a substantial number of the more recent papers on transfusions in sport talk of Anquetil in terms of blood doping. I think you can also find Beckenbauer cited as an example. Some even talk of Nencini. Not all talk is equal. Particularly in the scientific community, once a comment has appeared once, it will tend to get picked up and repeated, small errors can be grown into great myths. Not all 'smoke' is indicative of fire.

I don't dismiss the possibility that the statement is true. I do discount it, based on experience.

 

[Aragon]

Re: Re:

Mea culpa for not bringing up to the context, because - as you pointed out - the quote could've been a cherry-picked lines from somewhere not related to the issue at all.

I would need to check to confirm my recollection of this, but my memory is that a substantial number of the more recent papers on transfusions in sport talk of Anquetil in terms of blood doping. I think you can also find Beckenbauer cited as an example. Some even talk of Nencini. Not all talk is equal. Particularly in the scientific community, once a comment has appeared once, it will tend to get picked up and repeated, small errors can be grown into great myths. Not all 'smoke' is indicative of fire.

I don't dismiss the possibility that the statement is true. I do discount it, based on experience.

The debate is here partly semantic in nature, as all types of blood manipulation are now-and-then referred as "blood doping", but the antidoping definition is "artificial elevation of hemoglobin". I think that the Anquetil-connection is usually made because people such as Francesco Moser have referred to him as a blood doper, it could be that Moser honestly thought that the Frenchman indeed used transfusions.

You are totally right that the claim about Anquetil has been taken by some academic authors also, and we can find following quotes even in respected high-quality academic publications such as British Journal of Sports Medicine:

The first alleged use of blood boosting in sport was in the 1960s, when a French four times winner of the Tour de France (1961–1964) was named as one of the first cyclists to use the technique. Widespread use among endurance athletes (especially running, cycling, and cross country skiing) started after the 1968 Olympic Games, in Mexico City which is situated at an altitude of 2300m.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1724728/pdf/v038p00099.pdf

It should be added that author's claim about "widespread use" starting right after the 1968 Olympics is totally unsubstantiated claim as even his source for the allegation(Randy Eichner) insists only that the research was sparked by the high-altitude olympics, a claim I have my own reasons to think is not true.

 

[fmk_RoI]

The semantic issue arises whenever you talk about doping. You talk to riders, current or retired, and they will all have different definitions of what is and isn't doping. Some are ultra Puritan and will say doping is all forms of medical aide. Some are less pure and will only call it doping if it's been proved by a test at the time of the event. We all think we're talking about the same thing, but we're not. Which is why sometimes we do have to ask the pedantic question, can't take at face value sweeping claims about "doping", should always avoid reading our interpretation of doping into the words of others.

With blood doping, I'd guess that both things Anquetil did - the ozone therapy and the annual blood flush - would be banned under current WADA rules. Me, I have a hard time thinking of either of them as blood doping, as oxygen vector doping, treat them as some less crime, blood manipulation.

If we're talking transfusions - and while the topic of this thread was left wide, all blood doping, across all sport, my primary interest is the less well told history of transfusions - I would tend to leave Anquetil out. Mention him, but only to say he's excluded. But yes, I think he is the one Moser referred to with that comment of his. But of course that's not possible - others see it as blood doping and include it when they make statements such as blood doping was widely used in cycling in the 1960s and 1970s.

I have, though, a bigger problem with such statements: time and again we see that cyclists (professional) are paranoid, they always believe their rival has something stronger than they have in the medicine cabinet. Bartali and Coppi in particular spring to mind. It's a comforting thing to believe: you're not beaten by a better rider, but by a better chemist. But this leads to people overestimating the extent of doping. As does the common assumption that if I'm doping then my rivals are doping too. (Or the fan version of it, if rider X doped then so did riders A to Z.) So these sweeping statements, they offer some evidence - they tell you to look, and look hard - but they don't tell you what's really going on. They're useful. But only of limited use.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re: Re:

It should be added that author's claim about "widespread use" starting right after the 1968 Olympics is totally unsubstantiated claim as even his source for the allegation(Randy Eichner) insists only that the research was sparked by the high-altitude olympics, a claim I have my own reasons to think is not true.

Remind me again where you date the origin of interest. I agree with you that Ekblom's 1972 paper is the big breakthrough and I agree that the Pace paper from the 40s I referred to in the articles (and I appear to be in error referring to two Pace papers, the two are part of the one) and the Gullbring paper from the 60s don't really count (the knowledge they give sports scientists is a by-product).

 

[sniper]

interesting guy who's not been mentioned yet (afaict):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Drew

 

[Aragon]

Re: Re:

It should be added that author's claim about "widespread use" starting right after the 1968 Olympics is totally unsubstantiated claim as even his source for the allegation(Randy Eichner) insists only that the research was sparked by the high-altitude olympics, a claim I have my own reasons to think is not true.

Remind me again where you date the origin of interest. I agree with you that Ekblom's 1972 paper is the big breakthrough and I agree that the Pace paper from the 40s I referred to in the articles (and I appear to be in error referring to two Pace papers, the two are part of the one) and the Gullbring paper from the 60s don't really count (the knowledge they give sports scientists is a by-product).

I am not referring to any published work that showed interest in "blood doping" before México, but I have several trustworthy sources confirming that the research culminating in the 1972 breakthrough study began in Sweden as early as 1966, if not a year or two earlier. The most important people in the project were Björn Ekblom, Per-Olof Åstrand and Bengt Gullbring, of whom first two were famous exercise physiologist and Gullbring a big shot in the Blood Service and also a coauthor of the now-and-then referred 1960 blood reinfusion study.

Still the México-claim isn't totally untrue, as there was a high altitude blood transfusion - study right after the 1968 Olympics, pretty much confirming with actual athletes what Nello Pace and his team had already researched with privates, but even after going through a wast amount of literature, I recall seeing only two references to the paper. As I referred in another thread, it was published in a sports medicine publication where many Central Europeans and Belgians published, so there is a slight possibility that the 1972 Merkcx-transfusion actually has its roots in this research and not in Ekblom.

My intention wasn't to take any ethical stance on the issue, but only to discuss the way the term "blood doping" is used. I think that Dr. Norman H. Gledhill summarizes the consensus view of the term in his opening lines of his famous 1982 blood doping literature review:

During the past decade there has been persistent interest in the topic of induced erythrocythemia, commonly termed blood doping or blood boosting. An experimental subject or athlete who has a normal level of red blood cells (RBCs) is given additional blood with the intention of increasing maximal aerobic power (Vo2MAX).

http://d3epuodzu3wuis.cloudfront.net/R072.pdf

The association of the term "blood doping" to the Swedish research goes back ten years earlier to autumn 1971, when Track & Field News referred the new Swedish invention with that name. Björn Ekblom himself also used the term in an article only a year later.

As you mentioned, there was a wide range of blood therapies that more confuse than clarify the issue. These could've been referred as "blood doping" by the competitors as well as other people. To confuse further the evidence, there could've been unintentional false memories particularly if cyclists remembered even decades after the fact having seen empty IV-bags and bloody needles, they could've imagined seeing something else than what actually was happening.

 

[Aragon]

Re: Re:

There is an interesting chart of distribution of hematocrit values in UCI's 2001 leaflet 40 years of fighting against doping (p. 17) about hematocrit values of 1997 vs. pre-1988.
http://oldsite.uci.ch/english/health_sante/docs/40_ans.pdf
There is no explanation, no source or no indication, from where the data comes from. While one could question the 1997 data, there are some suspiciously high hematocrits in the pre-1988 data and the mean is also suspiciously high. (I'd upload the image of the chart, but the webpage keeps saying that "Sorry, the board attachment quota has been reached", whatever that means.)

Two points to consider: impact on pre-1988 figures of a cohort of Colombian cyclists; impact on 1997 figures of artificial manipulation (downward) techniques such as saline drips. I'll Tweet it later and ask Ross Tucker for a quick comment on it.

While totally not ruled out possibility, the effect and prevalence of blood dilution shouldn't be overestimated, as it is mainly logistically reasonable only in the danger zone (Hct >50 %), so it shouldn't move the bell curve to left but lead only to suspicious cluster of athletes slightly below the upper limit. Even when there was a high amount of blood dilution through HES, saline, albumin and frozen plasma, the mean hemoglobin values of cross country skiers still increased suspiciously from around 14.8 g/dl (1989) to around 16.5 g/dl (1997-1998) in the EPO-decade as illustrated in a study published by a group of Scandinavian researchers in 2000 (Scand J Med Sci Sports 2000: 10: 98–102).

There is a clue how the data was collected in a letter that a team of Dutch researchers wrote to the medical journal Lancet (Vol. 352, Nov 28, 1998):

Between 1980 and 1986, 34 professional cyclists from leading racing teams had routine blood tests to monitor health and training stress. During this 6-year period, venous blood samples were taken after a minimum rest of 3–4 h; Hb and PCV were determined by routine laboratory methods. From 353 samples the mean Hb was 9·05 (SD 0·48) mmol/L (range 8·3–10·2) and PCV 0·43 (0·02) (range 0·39–0·48). Both Hb and PCV values were normally distributed.

http://digitalarchive.maastrichtuniversity.nl/fedora/get/guid:9a1b20e3-5e78-410a-9513-823d9b27a7a9/ASSET1

As usual, things are not that clear and there is a problem. The highest PCV (ie. hematocrit) referred here is 48 %, whereas it is clearly significantly higher (57 %) in the UCI-chart, so it isn't that clear that there are all UCIs samples in the 353 samples referred by the Dutch researchers, if the data even originated from the same source.

If you want to take a deeper look into the matter, perhaps someone from the UCI medical commission (Schattenberg) knows more details about the pre-1997 blood sample collection and there is also a corresponding author in the letter, Wim H. Saris, who has done extensive research on cycling even quite recently (just a wild guess that the Saris Power Meter has something to do with him).

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re: Re:

There is a clue how the data was collected in a letter that a team of Dutch researchers wrote to the medical journal Lancet (Vol. 352, Nov 28, 1998):

Between 1980 and 1986, 34 professional cyclists from leading racing teams had routine blood tests to monitor health and training stress. During this 6-year period, venous blood samples were taken after a minimum rest of 3–4 h; Hb and PCV were determined by routine laboratory methods. From 353 samples the mean Hb was 9·05 (SD 0·48) mmol/L (range 8·3–10·2) and PCV 0·43 (0·02) (range 0·39–0·48). Both Hb and PCV values were normally distributed.

http://digitalarchive.maastrichtuniversity.nl/fedora/get/guid:9a1b20e3-5e78-410a-9513-823d9b27a7a9/ASSET1

Well that helps with something I only thought of later yesterday: the UCI was down on blood tests until 1997, when the haematocrit test was enacted. Verbruggen opposed blood tests on a matter of principle: "It must be made clear that our anti-drug commission has always been against blood test controls because of ethical problems."

 

[Tienus]

34 professional cyclists from leading racing teams

Perhaps riders from DAF trucks and Panasonic. Saris was part of the team with Kuipers and van den Hoogenband in Maastricht.
http://www.delpher.nl/nl/kranten/view?http://www.delpher.nl/nl/kranten/view?query=hoogenband+kuipers+saris&coll=ddd&identifier=KBNRC01%3A000029789%3Ampeg21%3Aa0089&resultsidentifier=KBNRC01%3A000029789%3Ampeg21%3Aa0089

 

[Tienus]

Day 0 7 14 15 21
Hb (mmol/L) 9·2 (0·3) 9·1 (0·3) 9·0 (0·3) 9·1 (0·4) 8·9 (0·4)
Range 8·6–10·3 8·7–10·1 8·5–10·2 8·4–10·1 8·0–9·9
PCV 0·45 (0·04) 0·44 (0·04) 0·43 (0·05) 0·44 (0·05) 0·42 (0·05)
Range 0·39–0·49 0·38–0·48 0·37–0·47 0·37–0·47 0·36–0·47
Hb and PCV from nine professional cyclists (n=9) during the
Tour de France in 1984

Looks like the data from the Panasonic squad. Do those numbers tell us anything?

 

[sniper]

Re:

Day 0 7 14 15 21
Hb (mmol/L) 9·2 (0·3) 9·1 (0·3) 9·0 (0·3) 9·1 (0·4) 8·9 (0·4)
Range 8·6–10·3 8·7–10·1 8·5–10·2 8·4–10·1 8·0–9·9
PCV 0·45 (0·04) 0·44 (0·04) 0·43 (0·05) 0·44 (0·05) 0·42 (0·05)
Range 0·39–0·49 0·38–0·48 0·37–0·47 0·37–0·47 0·36–0·47
Hb and PCV from nine professional cyclists (n=9) during the
Tour de France in 1984

Looks like the data from the Panasonic squad. Do those numbers tell us anything?

which day(s) was the rest day?
numbers seem to go up a bit going from day 14 to day 15

 

[Tienus]

Looks like there was only one rest day after stage 15.
http://www.bikeraceinfo.com/tdf/tdf1984.html

I'm not sure if the numbers really go up. There might be all sorts of explanations for it like normal fluctuations. Panasonic finished the tour with 8 riders this might also have influenced the mean.

I think the mean and the highest at the start of the tour are quite high. Panasonic spent much time at altitude in Font Remeu so this could be explained. I do think however that the drop after 3 weeks of tour (with 23 stages and only 1 rest day) is smaller than I would have expected. Maybe I'm wrong as I'm no expert on this.

I failed to make the table fit correctly in my post but the original can be seen here in the link from Aragon on the last page.
http://digitalarchive.maastrichtuniversity.nl/fedora/get/guid:9a1b20e3-5e78-410a-9513-823d9b27a7a9/ASSET1
the mean at the start of the tour is .45 and at the end .42 the highest sore at the start .49 vs .47 at the finish.