Catwhoorg said:
Comparing 2009 data for the time around the Giro
Lance's ret% 4/30 0.98% 5/7 1.33% 5/18 0.72%
Lances HGB drops from 14.9 14.8 13.6 g/dL over those three dates
Chris ret% 4/30 0.68% 5/7 1.01% 5/18 0.75%
Chris's HGB drops from 15.5 14.6 14.2 g/dL
Same pattern as a convicted blood doper, same dates.
Except that most analysts think LA's Giro data are OK. The HT/Hb drop as they should. It's his TDF data that year that are suspicious, and particularly when compared to the Giro, which is used as a baseline of what would be normal.
OTOH, as someone else pointed out, Horner's Vuelta data are a little suspicious. I looked at 5 tests during periods when I was pretty sure he wasn’t racing (Nov – early Feb., various years). His mean HT in those 5 tests was 44.1 +/- 0.90, with a range of 43.2 – 45.1. His pre-Vuelta value of 45.4 is consistent with that (though certainly on the high side), and the value of 40.0 early in the Vuelta is as expected, but the subsequent rise to 43 is not. That is within his normal range, which of course is not what you would expect deep into a GT.
This is the point Ashenden raised wrt LA. A rider can have a "clean" passport, one that does not trigger the criterion, as long as his parameters stay within the baseline. But in a GT, the baseline changes, the HT/Hb drop, so that values that are within the normal baseline may in fact not be within what would be normal within a GT. But the passport does not take this into account. Horner's 43% HT late in the Vuelta is within his normal range, but it may not be within his normal range after plasma expansion. It's still not a huge rise from 40% (which was a single value, so itself has some uncertainty as being representative), but this just reflects how easy it is to stay within acceptable values while still getting a significant benefit.
Not saying that these data show Horner doped, but he could have doped, and substantially, and gotten numbers like these.