Merckx index said:
So he was taking EPO at least four years before cancer. I'm not surprised, but this deepens the mystery of how he became such a good climber, and a better TTer, after cancer. RR and some others think he was a high responder, and it does appear he has a naturally low HT that would have allowed him to get a larger benefit from EPO than many other riders. But why did the benefit not really become apparent until after cancer? If being a high responder is what enabled him to win all those Tours, why could he do nothing in GC in four tries before cancer? Other alleged high responders, like Ulle and Pantani, seemed to reach their GC potential much sooner. Even Riis was a better climber than Armstrong at that time.
Was it Ferrari? Maybe, but I find it hard to believe that Ferrari + EPO made a bigger difference in his GC performance over EPO alone than EPO alone did over no EPO. All EPO seemingly did for him is make him a much better one day racer. For four years. Then boom, suddenly he can climb, not just better, but he goes from a total non-climber to the best in the world. Was Ferrari's program really that good?
Was it being protected by the UCI? Maybe, but all that would have done is allowed him to take as much EPO as he wanted, and he could have done that in the 90s before cancer, when there was no 50% rule. Protection would have allowed him to take more than his competitors, but it wouldn't explain how he was so much better than he was in the mid 90s.
Was he using some other substance, such as HemAssist or PFCs? Maybe, but plenty of testimony (including his own, for what that's worth) indicates he was blood doping throughout his TDF dominance, so it doesn't sound as though anything else he was using was very important. If he could have achieved the same effects with a non-detectable substance, there wouldn't have been much point in using EPO or even transfusions.
NB. may be apocyphal.
but in 98 Vuelta he bragged that he had a horse steroid that no one else did. And obiously, it would not show up on the assay of the mass spec gas chromatograph (and folks already have told me that i am mistaking my biological testing technology)
but still holds true. more the metaphor. It did not show up.
I think in the 98 Vuelta, it allowed Ferrari to see how Armstrong responded over three weeks, and to tweek crit, haemoglobin, and the other O2 parameters.
Folks are looking at the Rasmussen Mexico training camp nee Dolomiti.
The preparation doping. And increasing the threshold.
That is only half of the function.
Folks, look at recovery doping. RECOVERY doping.
Motoman and recovery doping is where its at.
I would like to enter into evidence, Raimondas Rumsas, and Edita Rumsas.
If you neutralise the 2003 Tour for the Team timetrial. Rumsas beats Beloki.
Have a think for a second, the advantages that Armstrong had up his sleeve on Rumsas. But Rumsas did have some decent recovery support thanks to Edita, and he could have managed to negate Beloki's Manalo Saiz recovery doping advantage.
And have an advantage over the field, wrt recovery doping.
After Festina, recovery doping became a game of subterfuge, and Armstrong could get an enormous advantage by capturing the administration of the sport, to give him a wide berth, while sending Edita and Remi di Gregorio and Christiano Moreno and everyone else off to jail.
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