Using Power to detect doping

[Escarabajo]

It was Kohl who said that. And we know you don't believe him. So...

Only so much blood can literally be drained off, which is why dilution, plasma expanders, PFCEs and HBOCs, and stuff we don't even know about. are used, as BigB noted. To simply fill/drain/fill/drain day and night to yo-yo between 42 and 52 HCT would be incredibly stressful on the body, and very risky.

I'm not sure, but I think BroDeal lives around 5,800' and has a hematocrit of about 51. Maybe he'll come on and verify.

The only time mine was taken I lived at sea level, and it was about 42 if I recall. So like Kohl, I'd be a much better candidate for doping than poor BroDeal!

I calculated a number between 7 to 8 times for blood doping for a Grand Tour. Knowing that there are other untraceable doping products that could be taken on a regular basis like HGH he can keep up on the lesser stages. But according to Kohl he did "blood doping" only 2 times. He said that the CERA was in his body as a result of preparation for the Tour de France. I think somewhere there is a broken link. My assumption is that he was micro dosing CERA on a frequent basis since it is not traceable (And to avoid high hematocrit peaks) and had some "blood doping" support on the hardest stages.
Somebody can extend maybe or explain better?
Thanks.

 

[Anonymous]

Its crit that matters jack, you'd be lucky to finish a grand tour clean with this happening. Nobody would be top 10 places without the above described. Totally clean you'd never ever be top 50 and probably just a DNF.

the courses and climbs in the tour have been used countless times over the years.

are there any records of time or average speeds to compare old performances to new?

 

[Escarabajo]

the courses and climbs in the tour have been used countless times over the years.

are there any records of time or average speeds to compare old performances to new?

Alpe d'Huez is the the one that people have paid close attention to. In another thread somebody posted all the record times and how it evolved over time. I don't know where it is. Maybe somebody will show it once they read your post.

 

[luckyboy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpe_d'Huez#Ascent_times

 

[Escarabajo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpe_d'Huez#Ascent_times

Thanks.

We need to start correcting wiki. Luis Herrera's time was in 1984. Fignon was second just 49" behind. So I don't know how these times are posted. I remember Herrera collapsing and losing more than 20 minutes the following day.

 

[nobody]

what about when they crash and end up in a hospital. are you saying the doctors are all bought off to not say what they'd see if someone had as many sticks as your talking about?

Don't forget that medical staff have to respect confidentiality about their patient.

do you remember Museuw's case? Museuw complained that he had been bad treated by hospital. The director of hospital responded that they have done the best they can do related to the medicine that he had absorbed prior his accident!

Do you remember Manzano's case ?
Or Heras who crashed of "dehydration" just after 50km of downhill and flat roads before major climbing! Apparently a poisonus transfusion according rumors from medical team.

 

[luckyboy]

What about Pantani's blood values after his crash in Milan-Turin? Or where they released due to various investigations later on?

 

[Anonymous]

Don't forget that medical staff have to respect confidentiality about their patient.

do you remember Museuw's case? Museuw complained that he had been bad treated by hospital. The director of hospital responded that they have done the best they can do related to the medicine that he had absorbed prior his accident!

Do you remember Manzano's case ?
Or Heras who crashed of "dehydration" just after 50km of downhill and flat roads before major climbing! Apparently a poisonus transfusion according rumors from medical team.

Wasn't he the one that they said his blood was gel like?

 

[BigBoat]

The top riders all have marks in places and this is expected/ accepted. LOL

Dextrose, IV saline refills are normal and daily during a Grand Tour along with big time blood doping... Did you know IV equipment is legal in an "emergency situation" by all the teams... Like needing to run back to the motorhome and get an "infusion" to "rehydrate." Anyways they do not want to sleep at 60% crit and so they must train off 2 units, pop it into a blood bag and set it in the fridge at 4 degrees. Teams need the right preservation solution to minimize cell death... they need to know how to freeze, store and thaw it of course if using packed red cells... If using whole blood it has to be kept chilly and it cannot be put out at room temperature for longer than 15 minutes or it could grow bacteria and the rider could get a transfusion reaction and end up dead or very sick...

And yes sometimes they "dump" extra blood if they do not have the medical means or know how to store it for later.


.... we all know Kohl blood doped in this way and he was never caught blood doping with his own blood because there's no test... We know Postal/ Disco did in their day because of the JV/ Andreau conversation and we know Vinokourov was doped... We know Kloden and Kessler were blood doped along with Kolom and many many more this list is very long from Puerto...In fact year round epo use (which some of the riders still do) has to be IV dosed due to not being able to get a small enough dosage with injections AND the slight risk of PRCA with sub Q injections.

There were 30 riders caught with blood in the fridge in Fuentes' apartment, clinic complex yet they are clean and its all just "science fiction." ha ha ya!

Do you actually believe that Hamilton (who tested for someone else's blood) was clean and he didnt blood dope or have any IV marks? Bro he did its the truth. If he hadnt he might not have been top 25 in that TT or even beaten any of the top riders in pro cycling.... You would never finish the TDF clean if 20 top guys come in at 50% crit or above....the diff that makes is staggering in itself. HGH, or IGF-1 is candy for all the riders along with Insulin. Its the truth...Sorry, have a nice day.

 

[davidg]

Thread is done

Some interesting stuff here, but like most other threads has wandered OT and not relevant to the original post.

Think this topic is done, maybe we can conclude that determining doping by power is possible but just as hard work as any other method and prone to impracticality.

 

[BroDeal]

Few riders can be sure to beat the passport with autologous blood doping. It takes big money and connections and so the "rabid controls" favor wealthy or simply lucky riders on good management.

We do not know anything about the effectiveness of the passport so this statement is complete BS. Kohl, aside from his mistake with CERA, managed quite well using a Mickey Mouse operation run by his manager. So far the passport has been a whole lot of talk about a whole lot of nothing.

It is likely that the UCI will set the threshhold for suspicion so high that a rider has to go full jack in a short period of time to become suspicious. Riders will quickly adjust their programs and we will be in the same situation we were in before the passport.

 

[slcbiker]

Well, we've really only got Kohl's word for that, and no results for anyone for the passport program. So, at present, not really any way to know if he was beating the UCI program or if he was on their watch list.

Certainly though, the amount of time it's taken to roll this out doesn't give me a lot of confidence, nor do the UCI conflicts of interest.

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

Do not condemn V02 max either. Its very important in cycling due to efficient clipless pedaling and in fact it is THE number 1 indicator.

No it's not. Power to weight ratio at threshold is a far better physiological predictor of performance than VO2 Max.

VO2 Max is only one leg of a physiological performance prediction stool, the other two legs being gross efficiency (which can vary quite a bit between riders) and the percentage of VO2 Max a rider can sustain at threshold. It is the combination of all three that matters. Otherwise your performance prediction stool falls over.

Use of power meters would be impractical for a variety of reasons and anyone with substantial experience in using them would understand that. Only have to put on different type of chainring (e.g a solid TT ring) and the slope of an SRM can be out by a factor far greater than taking a doping product might induce. A drift in zero offset is not uncommon, etc etc. Things that require user control to ensure data is correct also allows a user to tamper with data. Just do a ZO with pressure on the pedals and you can screw the data up (same with a Powertap).

And of course not everything is about average power either....

 

[BigBoat]

Some interesting stuff here, but like most other threads has wandered OT and not relevant to the original post.

Think this topic is done, maybe we can conclude that determining doping by power is possible but just as hard work as any other method and prone to impracticality.

Funny... None of the top riders will release power data from the races (Evans, Contador, Lance, Valverde...) It would be nice just to see. Why not?

 

[BigBoat]

No it's not. Power to weight ratio at threshold is a far better physiological predictor of performance than VO2 Max.

....

Now it is true that FTP is the real "big boat" when it comes to Grand Tour fitness (or even crits for that matter) but the ceiling for FTP is V02 max... Whay I should have said is that its the number one indicator for potential.

We all know that Lance is doped. So why cant we see his power files from week to week to watch him dope? He will never ever be santioned for giving out his files... So why not give them out? Its not like we dont already know and it so would be awfully fun to watch him get tuned up power wise. Why did Basso stop posting his data right before the Giro? I totally wanted to see that. Darn it anyways!

 

[BigBoat]

We do not know anything about the effectiveness of the passport so this statement is complete BS. Kohl, aside from his mistake with CERA, managed quite well using a Mickey Mouse operation run by his manager. So far the passport has been a whole lot of talk about a whole lot of nothing.

It is likely that the UCI will set the threshhold for suspicion so high that a rider has to go full jack in a short period of time to become suspicious. Riders will quickly adjust their programs and we will be in the same situation we were in before the passport.

Bro, I believe that there might be 100 top riders blood doping.. But bro, there are 600 riders on the passport. The UCI is corrupt to the core and they wouldnt make any money from what they do if they allowed everybody to dope full out and be on equal.... There's a reason Lance paid and wanted so bad for an epo test to be implemented in 2001.... And it had nothing to do with wanting to "do the right thing." LOL

Lance will probably win this year, whomever does will be due to autologous blood doping. But not all the teams will do this and some will ride the stages with crits far below 50%. Garmin Chipotle, Cervelo, Astana along with the other top systematic blood doping teams will destroy anybody that tries to come to the key stages with a natural crit of 40-44%... And no the hypnoxic tent or the cabin in Aspen will not last a 3 week Grand Tour.

 

[Anonymous]

Don't forget that medical staff have to respect confidentiality about their patient.

not if they have evidence that laws have been broken.

 

[Anonymous]

I calculated a number between 7 to 8 times for blood doping for a Grand Tour. Knowing that there are other untraceable doping products that could be taken on a regular basis like HGH he can keep up on the lesser stages. But according to Kohl he did "blood doping" only 2 times. He said that the CERA was in his body as a result of preparation for the Tour de France. I think somewhere there is a broken link. My assumption is that he was micro dosing CERA on a frequent basis since it is not traceable (And to avoid high hematocrit peaks) and had some "blood doping" support on the hardest stages.
Somebody can extend maybe or explain better?
Thanks.

i keep reading different things about kohl.

he was busted for using cera right? as were a bunch of people because uci didn't tell anybody when they started using the cera test.

i think the 2 times blood doping and using epo microdoes in the blood bags is a seperate issue isn't it?

they were getting the main kick from cera.

 

[Anonymous]

The top riders all have marks in places and this is expected/ accepted. LOL

Dextrose, IV saline refills are normal and daily during a Grand Tour along with big time blood doping... Did you know IV equipment is legal in an "emergency situation" by all the teams... Like needing to run back to the motorhome and get an "infusion" to "rehydrate." Anyways they do not want to sleep at 60% crit and so they must train off 2 units, pop it into a blood bag and set it in the fridge at 4 degrees. Teams need the right preservation solution to minimize cell death... they need to know how to freeze, store and thaw it of course if using packed red cells... If using whole blood it has to be kept chilly and it cannot be put out at room temperature for longer than 15 minutes or it could grow bacteria and the rider could get a transfusion reaction and end up dead or very sick...

And yes sometimes they "dump" extra blood if they do not have the medical means or know how to store it for later.


.... we all know Kohl blood doped in this way and he was never caught blood doping with his own blood because there's no test... We know Postal/ Disco did in their day because of the JV/ Andreau conversation and we know Vinokourov was doped... We know Kloden and Kessler were blood doped along with Kolom and many many more this list is very long from Puerto...In fact year round epo use (which some of the riders still do) has to be IV dosed due to not being able to get a small enough dosage with injections AND the slight risk of PRCA with sub Q injections.

There were 30 riders caught with blood in the fridge in Fuentes' apartment, clinic complex yet they are clean and its all just "science fiction." ha ha ya!

Do you actually believe that Hamilton (who tested for someone else's blood) was clean and he didnt blood dope or have any IV marks? Bro he did its the truth. If he hadnt he might not have been top 25 in that TT or even beaten any of the top riders in pro cycling.... You would never finish the TDF clean if 20 top guys come in at 50% crit or above....the diff that makes is staggering in itself. HGH, or IGF-1 is candy for all the riders along with Insulin. Its the truth...Sorry, have a nice day.

it's clear that there was a long era where blood doping was common. I don't believe hamilton didn't

back in those days it sounds like doping was simpler. now that they are testing for values it sounds like it's become much more complex.

to say "we all know Kohl blood doped in this way" assumes that you have details of what he did that aren't in evidence anywhere. you are conveniently extrapolating what he may or may not have actually said about microdosing epo into a validation of all you have written about how someone would do it.

you've done a good job of showing how it would be possible theoretically to get around the tests.

in the process of doing so, you include more and more and more sticks, on top of what you admit is a lot of sticks that even a clean rider goes through and you're saying they'd need to be able to run their own value tests on the fly, hide the equipment, hide the refrigerators, and account for their whereabouts as they add blood, take blood out, test blood, put more back again this time with a little of this to hide a little of that, test again, no no that was too much, take some out, test again.

maybe they have a retratable port somewhere.

in order to hide all the endless sticks you talk about the teams would all have to be complicit in what's going on. all of them that have a single doped contender that does what you decribe. the teams staff surely would know when they see marks they can't account for. There's not a single plausible excuse a rider might have for unexplained marks that couldn't easily be checked out.

just how many people do you think would have to be in on this conspiracy in the tour alone, and it would have to hold and have been in place for a long time.

you offer proof that it can be done, nothing but your "trust me" that it is still being done.

a lot of things that are possible are very highly improbable.

 

[Escarabajo]

in order to hide all the endless sticks you talk about the teams would all have to be complicit in what's going on. all of them that have a single doped contender that does what you decribe. the teams staff surely would know when they see marks they can't account for. There's not a single plausible excuse a rider might have for unexplained marks that couldn't easily be checked out.

This was covered in other threads. Tatoos is one typical way of doing. Make Up another. Using different points to inject, lower legs, toes. Etc, etc. Just check the other threads. And yes in many cases the Staff knows what is going on. It is the reason why they call it the "Omerta"
Thanks.

This is from another Forum:
If you need to hide tracks on your arm, get some liquid concealer (make up) and rub that over your skin after you wipe the injection spot clean.

 

[nobody]

not if they have evidence that laws have been broken.

No. Only if that is a gun fire wounds or something like that. In France even drug addict are protected by health system, so why to denounce a doped athlete?

 

[BigBoat]

i keep reading different things about kohl.

he was busted for using cera right? as were a bunch of people because uci didn't tell anybody when they started using the cera test.

i think the 2 times blood doping and using epo microdoes in the blood bags is a seperate issue isn't it?

they were getting the main kick from cera.

Cera is epo. They microdose (IV drip) tiny amounts of epo to "hide" the autologous blood transfusions their doing. Blood doping with their own blood is what raises their crits.

 

[BigBoat]

the courses and climbs in the tour have been used countless times over the years.

are there any records of time or average speeds to compare old performances to new?

42 minutes... Maybe 41 min is what is humanly possible completely without dope on Alpe D'Huez... I believe Fingon was relatively clean apart from a few corticoids and stimulants... Fingon believes he doped but the reality is he really didnt get "much" from it and he never used epo or blood doped which is what doping really is in cycling. In 1989 Fingon dropped lemond slightly on Alpe D'Huez and rode a 41:30 or so... Lemond came in at 42:08. Even with the lightest setup going they wouldnt have gotten to 41 flat IMO.

In 1995 a jacked Pantani rode 36:40 on the old course dist. and 37:35 on the new dist. It really depends on where people believe it "starts." IMO

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

Now it is true that FTP is the real "big boat" when it comes to Grand Tour fitness (or even crits for that matter) but the ceiling for FTP is V02 max... Whay I should have said is that its the number one indicator for potential.

Actually the number one indicator of potential is performance itself.

We all know that Lance is doped. So why cant we see his power files from week to week to watch him dope? He will never ever be santioned for giving out his files... So why not give them out? Its not like we dont already know and it so would be awfully fun to watch him get tuned up power wise. Why did Basso stop posting his data right before the Giro? I totally wanted to see that. Darn it anyways!

If you think that a rider dopes (and hence has an interest in hiding data or at least providing misinformation) then what makes you think their power meter data would reflect reality even if they did release it?

 

[davidg]

If you think that a rider dopes (and hence has an interest in hiding data or at least providing misinformation) then what makes you think their power meter data would reflect reality even if they did release it?

Agreed. Given that power files are all ASCII files, they are fairly easy to manipulate if you want to. Run them through a script to knock 20 or 30 watts off, or a percentage, and you have a brank new file that tells you something else.

Then everybody can argue that 'Rider X must have been pulling more than 350 watts on that climb, more like 450' which begs the question why you would want the data in the first place.

I think the reason certain riders publish data is as much to do with their commercial deal with the power meter company as anything else. Manufacturers have a vested interest in making their product more appealing to lift sales. Typically the riders are domestiques, and when a top rider like Basso publishes, it is a question of 'I will tell you everything you want to know, as long as it is something I want to tell you'