Jonathan Tiernan-Locke written to by UCI, asked to explain blood values

[del1962]

Thanks and yes passport would only draw one sample of blood.

Seeing as JTL had urine tests at ToB which weren't tested for EPO, perhaps he could have at least asked for his B samples to he tested for EPO?

That would have been a better defense.... if innocent. Would have broken the 10-14 day theorem.

You are assuming the EPO prior to the TOB would be picked up in the urine sample.

From past experience this seems a flawed assumption

 

[thehog]

You are assuming the EPO prior to the TOB would be picked up in the urine sample.

Well that would be the UKAD making the assumption not myself.

They state the 10-14 day window from the Worlds.

 

[TheSpud]

Two further minor additions and clarifications.
Passport samples, and blood samples destined for other analysis are actually handled differently, there is no cross over.

Passport samples are unique in anti-doping a single sample. There is no A and B sample.

If someone was being tested for a Blood EPO test and a passport type test, that would require the drawing of 3 vials. Two for serum analysis (A and B) and a third for the passport.

Couldnt they use the A sample for ABP also? I dont know how much blood they take for each sample but i'm sure you could glean the Hb and retic from tye A sample before then using it for spectrum analysis? Or is this another case of left hand meets right hand again?

 

[del1962]

Well that would be the UKAD making the assumption not myself.

They state the 10-14 day window from the Worlds.

There statement is that it is the probable cause of his blood values, the epo will not necessarily be picked up in the urine samples so a negative test on them for EPO will not rule out the taking of EPO 10-14 days before the passport test.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Seeing as JTL had urine tests at ToB which weren't tested for EPO, perhaps he could have at least asked for his B samples to he tested for EPO?

You really think a race that won't pay for EPO testing is paying to store samples? Highly unlikely.

 

[thehog]

You really think a race that won't pay for EPO testing is paying to store samples? Highly unlikely.

The race stores the samples?

Ummm, ok. That's a new one, I've not heard before. Not sure how WADA feels about that!

 

[thehog]

There statement is that it is the probable cause of his blood values, the epo will not necessarily be picked up in the urine samples so a negative test on them for EPO will not rule out the taking of EPO 10-14 days before the passport test.

So he takes EPO 14 days prior, the ToB was 9 days prior, so why test for EPO at all? That's they didn't. With an off score like his, if an EPO couldn't pick up EPO then he wasn't taking EPO.

All subjective of course because he did't get his B samples tested or maybe he didn't want them tested!

 

[RownhamHill]

Let it drop. It's over.

Just been catching up on the moderators thread, and seen your post there thehog - so with regards to this discussion about Sky defending him or not it all makes a lot more sense now, and my confusion lifts

Thanks for clarifying!

To the JTL claim . . . to my knowledge there is no direct link which states Sky paid for his defence.

 

[thehog]

Just been catching up on the moderators thread, and seen your post there thehog - so with regards to this discussion about Sky defending him or not it all makes a lot more sense now, and my confusion lifts

Thanks for clarifying!

Good lad.

If a link becomes available, you'll be the first to know.

 

[thehog]

Couldnt they use the A sample for ABP also? I dont know how much blood they take for each sample but i'm sure you could glean the Hb and retic from tye A sample before then using it for spectrum analysis? Or is this another case of left hand meets right hand again?

For ABP they run it through an automated machine for CBC or smear it across a plate and look at it under a microscope for more detail. That in itself could cause compromise to the sample. Not sure you could use the same blood for an actual dope testing that has been spun through or smeared across a plate whilst adding a chemical. Although sometimes a drop will do but again you're separating the sample by attempting to perform ABP and drug testing in one. You need two samples.

 

[Catwhoorg]

IIRC correctly the tubes are different. One has Anti-coagulant and one doesn't.

The ABP tube has different packaging/transport requirements.


Its one of the things that I am pretty certain WADA are doing right in having different samples for the different tests. There is easily sufficient justification for doing so.

 

[del1962]

So he takes EPO 14 days prior, the ToB was 9 days prior, so why test for EPO at all? That's they didn't. With an off score like his, if an EPO couldn't pick up EPO then he wasn't taking EPO.

All subjective of course because he did't get his B samples tested or maybe he didn't want them tested!

I presume that his first TOB test would be when he firsrt finished in top 3 in a stage which is when he took the leaders jersey, this was on the 14th of september.

His ABP test was on the 23rd September

Which means their could be up to 5 days from taking EPO and a urine sample being taken, can you be certain it would show up in a urine sample after 5 days?

 

[thehog]

I presume that his first TOB test would be when he firsrt finished in top 3 in a stage which is when he took the leaders jersey, this was on the 14th of september.

His ABP test was on the 23rd September

Which means their could be up to 5 days from taking EPO and a urine sample being taken, can you be certain it would show up in a urine sample after 5 days?

I'm not trying to be certain. And putting aside whether JTL doped or not...

JTLs defense was that if he was properly tested then he'd at least have some form of acceptable evidence to provide at the hearing. Which was to my earlier point; because the ABP Panel only allows "official" samples the athlete is at a disadvantage to prove innocence.

If the UCI/anti-doping body doesn't test in a sequential manner or for EPO then the athlete has nothing to present other than their own expert "theory".

Ronan is in the same position, if the UCI didn't test him for EPO in the days surrounding the Giro stage "anomaly" then what hope does he have? He is guilty in the eyes of the panel. I'm not seeing how an expert on his side could disprove otherwise without direct & official evidence from the actual stage. And only anti-doping can provide that and not the athlete.

That's why the 10-14 day claim by UKAD is way out there as a conclusion.

 

[laurel1969]

Regardless, looks like this sportive is completely independent of BC, which would have been a better thing to say in the first place, rather than then adding, BC offer a package to sportives of X, Y & Z, given its potential irrelevancy.

Thank you for your words of advice.

Perhaps you could read your own posts, in particular the one where you quoted me saying:

"Its nothing to do with BC"

You even put it in bold.

As for the rest, people were saying that JTL's sportive was 'sanctioned' and 'accredited' by BC, because the sportive was listed in BC's list of sportive. BC's list of sportives is not the same as a list of BC's sportives. I demonstrated that the length of BC involvement was merely marketing facilities and advice. Therefore it is relevant to dispel the mistaken assumptions made by some posters.

You will see that other posters have thanked me for this. Whereas nobody has thanked you for your post.

You're welcome.

 

[DirtyWorks]

Which means their could be up to 5 days from taking EPO and a urine sample being taken, can you be certain it would show up in a urine sample after 5 days?

Yes. The window is understood by me to be about three days at the longest. Meanwhile, the benefits of EPO are kicking in lasting many days later.

I don't have the links but there was some simple research on the precision of the WADA test. The subjects experienced gains many days later and a WADA lab had miserable detection rates even in the first 24 hours over multiple injection days. There was a TdF sanction where the rider admitted to using EPO during the race and wondered why it took so long to get caught.

These days, you'd have to be an idiot to do race-day doping of banned substances. That's true for many IOC sports. With EPO, you just need to not do too much at once. If my understanding is correct, that was JTL's problem.

 

[Merckx index]

Here is an Ashenden paper published a few years ago that was discussed here quite a bit at the time. He showed that the passport won't pick up a lot of EPO-induced changes, but he also discussed the odds that the rider would test positive for EPO, and concluded there was a good chance he wouldn't.

The link I have provided is through Google scholar. Though it's only the Abstract, some of the full paper comes up, and if you're lucky--I have been in the past, but not now, possibly a browser issue--you might get the full paper. The Discussion section, which I can't access now, goes over the issue of whether the rider would test positive for EPO. As I said, we discussed this extensively before, but I'm not going to try to dig that out now.

However, the gist of it is that if the doses are IV and low enough, the glow time is only 12-18 hours. This was Ferrari's discovery, of course, and in 2006 Ashenden published a paper showing that. In the article I have linked here, EPO was given IV to the volunteers twice weekly, so they might have tested positive, but obviously it would be a chance thing. If you assume they were glowing for 18 hours after each injection, they would still be negative about 80% of the time. Of course it depends on the dose, but no question you can take a significant amount of EPO and have a good chance of not testing positive. The question is whether a rider wants to take that risk.

 

[thehog]

Here is an Ashenden paper published a few years ago that was discussed here quite a bit at the time. He showed that the passport won't pick up a lot of EPO-induced changes, but he also discussed the odds that the rider would test positive for EPO, and concluded there was a good chance he wouldn't.

The link I have provided is through Google scholar. Though it's only the Abstract, some of the full paper comes up, and if you're lucky--I have been in the past, but not now, possibly a browser issue--you might get the full paper. The Discussion section, which I can't access now, goes over the issue of whether the rider would test positive for EPO. As I said, we discussed this extensively before, but I'm not going to try to dig that out now.

However, the gist of it is that if the doses are IV and low enough, the glow time is only 12-18 hours. This was Ferrari's discovery, of course, and in 2006 Ashenden published a paper showing that. In the article I have linked here, EPO was given IV to the volunteers twice weekly, so they might have tested positive, but obviously it would be a chance thing. If you assume they were glowing for 18 hours after each injection, they would still be negative about 80% of the time. Of course it depends on the dose, but no question you can take a significant amount of EPO and have a good chance of not testing positive. The question is whether a rider wants to take that risk.

Per Ferrari:

Inject a micro-dose of 10 iu per 1 kg of body weight intravenously at 10:01 pm. Repeat every second day.

 

[Catwhoorg]

One of those 3000 iu vials we discussed a couple of weeks ago lasts about or a little more than a week then.

I'm about 80 Kg, so would use 800 iu per injections, not quite 4 per bottle.

Thanks for the quote Hog, very useful in putting things into context.

 

[thehog]

One of those 3000 iu vials we discussed a couple of weeks ago lasts about or a little more than a week then.

I'm about 80 Kg, so would use 800 iu per injections, not quite 4 per bottle.

Thanks for the quote Hog, very useful in putting things into context.

A pleasure.

There's a nine hour window there as well whereby therocially could be tested by by 7am the next morning. Good time to take a shower or go for a massage for an hour or so. Or just do a 4 hour training ride at 6:59am to extend it out further

 

[DirtyWorks]

A pleasure.

There's a nine hour window there as well whereby therocially could be tested by by 7am the next morning. Good time to take a shower or go for a massage for an hour or so. Or just do a 4 hour training ride at 6:59am to extend it out further

Every athlete deserves an uninterrupted block of personal time, but we know it's turned into the perfect opportunity to dope.

I'm a little reluctant to advocate closing this huge hole. Maybe there are lots of other ones to close before that one. (ex. T/E ratio)

 

[thehog]

Every athlete deserves an uninterrupted block of personal time, but we know it's turned into the perfect opportunity to dope.

I'm a little reluctant to advocate closing this huge hole. Maybe there are lots of other ones to close before that one. (ex. T/E ratio)

Additionally the window and method assists with the passport. Keeps you at a slightly higher but most importantly a consistent level.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Thank you for your words of advice.

Perhaps you could read your own posts, in particular the one where you quoted me saying:

"Its nothing to do with BC"

You even put it in bold.
<snip>

If you were a native English speaker you'd know there are multiple interpretations of "It's nothing to do with XYZ". To then go on and talk about what BC do provide sportives, in the context of discussing a sportive's link to BC, is misleading, whether intentionally or not.

Nice snipping of your error, by the way...

You're welcome.

Keep digging, champ.

What BC offer is a zero-fee entry system.

Sure thing.

The Online Entry system is FREE for organisers. All riders pay a £1 admin fee per race or ride entered, irrespective of the total cost of entry.

You're welcome too!

 

[laurel1969]

Thank you for your advice on English. As an English native speaker of English I am particularly grateful, and I apologise for posting with a phrasing that caused you comprehension difficulties. The only relief for me is that you seem to be the only person who struggled with it.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Thank you for your advice on English. As an English native speaker of English I am particularly grateful, and I apologise for posting with a phrasing that caused you comprehension difficulties. The only relief for me is that you seem to be the only person who struggled with it.

Noone questioned your claim that the BC system was zero-fee, either. Except me.

Huh.

 

[laurel1969]

I hate to be pedantic, especially towards somebody with your command of the English language, but there is no such word as "noone".

I think you mean 'no one'.