GJB123 said:
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@ Sniper, I read and understood the entire article and let me put it this way; I never stated that blood doping cold not work in the 80's nor did I state that it was;t used at all. Hoever my conclusions tie in pretty well with the article in that it was not widespread, that the effectiveness was doubtful and that there is no reason to assume that it was used in GT's a lot and that use for one day races, hour records, etc. seems more likely. In know the PDM-story and I also understand that that their blood doping is a far cry from the blood doping we have seen post 2000 with centrifuges being used yo a great extent.
I appreciate you paying homage to David Walsh' "it's more difficult to dope in the GTs" argument. In fairness, you seem to have a bit of a stronger case for the 80s than Walsh has for the 2010s.
Still, I'm not sure it works like that for the guys at the high end with all the money and means in the world at their disposal. But fair enough, I have to grant you that there seems to be little clear-cut evidence of blood doping
during GTs in the 80s.
You'll obviously disagree, but arguably the Giro 89 is the best piece of 'evidence' we have wrt blood manipulation in GTs in the 80s. Did you address my point about the correlation between iron shortage and aut. blood transfusions? Or between kidney disorders and anemia? It's not much, I admit. But no reason to discard it either.
I should clarify my use of the term 'widespread'.
Of course you need a good organization and money to set up a GT-winning program. So no, some of the stuff GT winners do will not be widespread in the sense that everybody does it. AICAR, for instance, probably isn't widespread
in the peloton at large. It's too expensive for the racers at the low end. But you'll agree it's not farfetched to assume it's widespread at the higher end.
My point would be similar for aut. blood transfusions: done mostly (if not exclusively) by teams and racers with the proper means.