Is This The Definition Of The Post-EPO Era?

[TMJ]

I have seen several references on this forum to the new: 'Post-EPO Era' but I don't think the authors mean cycling cheats have simply found something else.

Below is a link to a story confirming two Androni Giocattoli (Italy) riders have been caught doping in the space of three days (June 14 & 16, 2015).

One of them (Fabio Taborre) has somehow got his hands on a blood cell booster known as FG-4592, which is still in development. It is not even something you can buy in a pharmacy or get a prescription for yet.

Wow.

For me that is the most significant fact.

This sport is so dishonourable, so dodgy, so bent that people closely involved in it are going out and securing the latest performance-enhancing drugs that are still undergoing trials.

How are they doing that? The answer must be that cheating is so embedded, so deep, so part of the culture that drug researchers and company employees have the phone numbers of riders, trainers, management etc. on their personal speed-dial.

Shocking.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/taborre-positive-for-novel-epo-stimulating-drug-fg-4592/

 

[Warhawk]

On the other hand, apparently we're also already testing for drugs that are still in development and undergoing trials, so that's nice.

 

[ngent41]

Like most everything else, you can buy FG-4592, for fairly cheap, off many dozens of websites.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Rather that seeking comfort in depression, people should be applauding this. Three reasons:

1) This looks like targetted testing based on CIRC report. Here's what CIRC said:

It also appears that team organised doping is more likely still to take place at lower levels of competition, where anti-doping efforts are less concentrated. The Commission was told of a team below the UCI WorldTour recently involved in doping. It was claimed that the team manager and sports director brought a nutritionist into the team who advised a selected group of riders within the team on a doping programme. The instructions were to administer 1000 ml of EPO Zeta every second day after 11pm at night, and alternate in the winter with HGH and Lutrelef, a hormone. Their haematocrit levels were to be tested every third day, and amounts of EPO Zeta reduced to 500 ml as the season approached. The nutritionist owned a gym, through which substances were procured from Eastern Europe. Other riders were said to have procured substances via a hospital and a pharmacy more locally. It was further explained that the team manager was also a senior person in a prominent anti-doping movement, and had later on introduced strong antidoping clauses in the team contracts, including the imposition of significant fines for anyone caught doping.

The two riders were tested June 14 and June 16. Each now faces a fine of €100,000 from the team. And maybe the MPCC will now finally have to give Gianni Savio the boot.

2) Over the years the UCI has introduced many rules but done little to make use of them (eg retro testing, which so far has only caught Dekker and - IIRC - one other). This year they brought in a rule enabling them to put a whole team on the naughty step. And now it looks like they're actually doing it. Too late for Astana, yes. But it's there now. And being used.

3) Given what was said in CIRC report - about the riders being insrructed to dope post eleven o'clock - this looks like it might be attributable to nighttime testing. Yes, the UCI messed up by suggesting there would be nighttime testing at the Tour when the law didn't allow that. But we knew from peloton scuttlebutt that they had done testing in Girona before the Tour. If these two are also down to nighttime testing, don't discount the possibility of a few more falling over the coming weeks, riders caught off guard by a new move in the anti-doping game.

The counter argument someone is going to present to this is that these are small fry, a Pro-Conti team and a couple of over-the-hill riders. The usual non-entities the UCI makes an example of. But remember this: the Savio anecodte was not the only juicy tidbit CIRC offered about doping in the pro peloton...maybe, just maybe, out there right now is a bigger team, waiting, wondering, fearing...

 

[Ventoux Boar]

In the Brian Cookson interview on the Cycling Podcast dopers special, he spoke at surprising length about the night-time testers, and interesting testimony in CIRC (some redacted) that the UCI were actively pursuing.

Link ($)

 

[TMJ]

This drug was written about a couple of years ago. Link below.

http://cyclingtips.com.au/2013/04/oxygen-in-a-pill-the-next-big-thing-in-sports-doping/

Maybe I was wrong about employees of drug companies being corrupt, seeing as these uncertified medicines are available on the 'grey market' with a month's treatment cycle estimated at $3,000.

Someone at AG got something very wrong for there to be positive tests on June 14 and 16, 2015.

At the end of the day the whole point of my post was to shoot down the notion we are living in a: 'Post-EPO Era'.

 

[argyllflyer]

Remember Savio and Gavazzi too.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/http:/www.cyclingnews.com/news/mattia-gavazzi-receives-two-and-a-half-year-ban-for-cocaine-positive/

 

[ToreBear]

I think EPO is the safest doping to use if you don't want to get caught. The problem is that safe levels are so low that the effect of using it becomes dubious. And the higher up you are in the sport, the more testing and the more opportunities for getting caught.

As for this newer stuff, you really can't know how much the original developer worked with WADA to make it detectable. Neither how early in the research process. So you might get some new wonder drug with a marker with a half life of a month. So in essence making their job easier to catch you.

Developing new drugs costs a lot of money. Those who have that money are large companies. Those companies are likely cooperating with WADA.

 

[FroomehasneverdopedX]

googled it and u can buy it off many websites

lol

 

[Eyeballs Out]

As with almost everyone who seems to get busted these days - the drugs don't work. It's not possible to compete with the clean riders

 

[roundabout]

Poor guy having to resort to these desperate measures when he was getting much better results clean at A e S.

 

[del1962]

I have seen several references on this forum to the new: 'Post-EPO Era' but I don't think the authors mean cycling cheats have simply found something else.

Below is a link to a story confirming two Androni Giocattoli (Italy) riders have been caught doping in the space of three days (June 14 & 16, 2015).

One of them (Fabio Taborre) has somehow got his hands on a blood cell booster known as FG-4592, which is still in development. It is not even something you can buy in a pharmacy or get a prescription for yet.

Wow.

For me that is the most significant fact.

This sport is so dishonourable, so dodgy, so bent that people closely involved in it are going out and securing the latest performance-enhancing drugs that are still undergoing trials.

How are they doing that? The answer must be that cheating is so embedded, so deep, so part of the culture that drug researchers and company employees have the phone numbers of riders, trainers, management etc. on their personal speed-dial.

Shocking.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/taborre-positive-for-novel-epo-stimulating-drug-fg-4592/

Surely that is just another form of EPO

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

From Sports Intelligence:
Cycling in the EPO era: 65 per cent ‘juiced’ … and probably more
December 31, 2014

...Also considered in this study are other key riders away from those top 10s in the sport’s most prestigious race, as well doctors and team personnel who have been involved in the sport, and the findings are in the poster below and in the long and detailed appendix at the foot of this piece.

In the 16 TdF races from 1998-2013 inclusive, the 160 top-10 places were filled by 81 different riders, and 31 of them (or 38 per cent) are confirmed dopers who have already been officially sanctioned by some body or other for their doping. These include Armstrong and some other major names and they are marked in red on our ‘Cycle of Suspicion’ graphic.

A further eight riders are known dopers who have never been sanctioned – and they are purple – and a further 14 riders on top are blue, denoting riders who are linked to doping or strongly suspected of doping but have not been proved to be so, definitely, yet.

Together, these three groups make up 65 per cent of the riders who finished in the top ten of the Tour de France in the 16 years under consideration. It would be a surprise in the fullness of time if it transpired that cycling was ‘only’ 65 per cent murky in the EPO era....

I find it more than a bit Pollyannish to believe cycling has become even marginally 'cleaner' in the intervening two years. Clearly, as the number of riders doping in any event increases, the statistical likelihood that a clean rider could win decreases. if 65% of the top 10 riders were doped just two years ago, what conclusions does that point to regarding 2015's top finishers? Or the myth of the "post-EOP era"?

 

[HappyCycling]

How do riders even anticipate dosage with developmental drugs like these? Surely they are playing even riskier dice than usual with these obscure products, one wrong dosage could do something awful.

 

[thrawn]

Re:

How do riders even anticipate dosage with developmental drugs like these? Surely they are playing even riskier dice than usual with these obscure products, one wrong dosage could do something awful.

They consult doctors.

 

[ggusta]

when does le tour start?

 

[BrentonOfTheNorth]

Re:

I think EPO is the safest doping to use if you don't want to get caught. The problem is that safe levels are so low that the effect of using it becomes dubious.

Can they just use full doses for a few days to get a weeks long effect though? I'd imagine that it's probably incredibly easy to get away with sporadic full EPO dosing. The odds of being tested during those few days is low enough that you can just use up one of your yearly "missed test" mulligans when it happens, no?

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Re:

How do riders even anticipate dosage with developmental drugs like these? Surely they are playing even riskier dice than usual with these obscure products, one wrong dosage could do something awful.

Institutions have access to studies publishing their findings.

I cannot find the article I read, but new drugs were tested on low-level riders and then once proven, the big boys took advantage.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Re: Re:

I think EPO is the safest doping to use if you don't want to get caught. The problem is that safe levels are so low that the effect of using it becomes dubious.

Can they just use full doses for a few days to get a weeks long effect though? I'd imagine that it's probably incredibly easy to get away with sporadic full EPO dosing. The odds of being tested during those few days is low enough that you can just use up one of your yearly "missed test" mulligans when it happens, no?

Riders can be tested anywhere /any time between 6am and 11pm. Hence the riders wearing anonymous kit when out training - to avoid detection.

 

[ToreBear]

Re: Re:

I think EPO is the safest doping to use if you don't want to get caught. The problem is that safe levels are so low that the effect of using it becomes dubious.

Can they just use full doses for a few days to get a weeks long effect though? I'd imagine that it's probably incredibly easy to get away with sporadic full EPO dosing. The odds of being tested during those few days is low enough that you can just use up one of your yearly "missed test" mulligans when it happens, no?

There are some problems with that strategy. If you take full doses the glow time is extended. So one day away will not be enough. Then there is the secondary effects that are easily detectable with a blood test. At first the amount of reticulocytes will be abnormally large, and a few days later your HGB count will be high and the reticulocyte count very low. All this is a dead giveaway to blood manipulation.

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

Re: Re:

I think EPO is the safest doping to use if you don't want to get caught. The problem is that safe levels are so low that the effect of using it becomes dubious.

Can they just use full doses for a few days to get a weeks long effect though? I'd imagine that it's probably incredibly easy to get away with sporadic full EPO dosing. The odds of being tested during those few days is low enough that you can just use up one of your yearly "missed test" mulligans when it happens, no?

There are some problems with that strategy. If you take full doses the glow time is extended. So one day away will not be enough. Then there is the secondary effects that are easily detectable with a blood test. At first the amount of reticulocytes will be abnormally large, and a few days later your HGB count will be high and the reticulocyte count very low. All this is a dead giveaway to blood manipulation.

According to the doping authorities who spoke at the 2012 Swissnex conference (video here, mentioned in the OP of this thread), the "glow time" for full dosing is 7-12 days, but the performance boost persists for 21 days, which leaves a 9-14 day window when the EPO is undetectable but the rider is still doped. Which is just about perfect for the scheduling of rest days in events such as the TdF. They also state that a 400ml bag of blood drawn while still glowing and later reintroduced to a rider's 6-litre blood system becomes so dilute as to be undetectable.

The matter of HGB and reticulocyte values goes to discussions we were having (in another thread) at the inception of the biological passport program. If a rider entered into the program already doped to "maintenance" levels, his baseline blood work would reflect the abbienormal HGB and reticulocyte values and so would be his 'norm.'

Pro cyclists are expected to be abbienormal medical specimens because normal humans could never do what they do on a daily basis. They all of them have natural biological "adaptations" that few of the rest of us do. In their line of work, being abbienormal ...is normal. High HGB and low reticulocyte values of themselves prove nothing because they are only indirect indicators, like the T/E ratio. So long as a rider's ABP values remain reasonably consistent with his baseline (meaning they have continued to dope), they're golden. They only get caught if they mis-time a microdose, or if they cease doping and reveal their natural blood values.