Me neither, even though Lundby is a world renowned expert, it's still too big a call to say "the only performance enhancing mechanism resulting from EPO use is increased O2 transport" because who knows what science will discover in the future?sideshadow said:Thanks KrebsCycle, you have been most informative. I am still not fully convinced, but time will tell I guess . Thanks.
@Wiggo. I'm not sure.
He says "there is no evidence" though, but nobody has done a study in pro level cyclists on the long term effects (like years of use) of EPO use.
What I think is that by far the dominant performance effect is O2 transport, and without a doubt, that goes back to normal within a month or two no matter how long you were doping (you explained exactly why this happens in your above posts). The structural changes such as capillarisation and mitochondrial density might take several months to go back to normal. Maybe there are some other changes that remain for years, but without the most important physiological changes lost, then anything else is going to be barely noticeable from a performance perspective.