Why Tenerife?

[Benotti69]

"Unusually for a track coach, Salzwedel is a believer in altitude camps and road races for his track riders, meaning he has had them schlepping up Mt Teide in Tenerife, most famously used by Team Sky for their Tour de France preparations, for much of the winter".

All this plus magic bikes and good hotels is all you need ...

....he has had them schlepping up Mt Teide in Tenerife, most famously used by Team Sky, USPostal, Once, T-Mobile, HTC, Movistar and Astana etc for their Tour de France preparations, for much of the winter......... :lol:

Fixed free of charge.

 

[Jacques (7 ch)]

Apr. 17
Joe Dombrowski ‏@JoeDombro
@sean_0406 I don't know how often testers come up here, but I was tested on Thursday.

sniper will prove, Dombrowski is lying and his father in law invented EPO in the peloton.

Dombro forgot to thank the phone call a few hours earlier telling him testers had landed and were on their way.

the other thing about Tenerife is the tests don't count for the blood passport, because it's at altitude.
And doesn't know how often the testers come up there? Lol. Yes, he's lying.
So that's a pretty dumb tweet from Dumbrowski.
And why is he tweeting about it as if it has any kind of bearing on his cleanliness? Never tested positive?
So yeah, pretty cheap from Dombro, but there are always fans who buy it.
Reminds me of Race Radio who tweeted something about Dombro being clean because he's on Strava.

So: go up Teide when it suits. Great climbs, etc. Never fail the BP. Why wouldn't you?

Marginal gain.

 

[Tienus]

From the Froome topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF9vvlnN93I&app=desktop
@ 06:00
According to Brailsford there where initially no test in Tenerife. Chris asked the UCI to do something about tis and now they are being tested there.

 

[PremierAndrew]

"Unusually for a track coach, Salzwedel is a believer in altitude camps and road races for his track riders, meaning he has had them schlepping up Mt Teide in Tenerife, most famously used by Team Sky for their Tour de France preparations, for much of the winter".

All this plus magic bikes and good hotels is all you need ...

....he has had them schlepping up Mt Teide in Tenerife, most famously used by Team Sky, USPostal, Once, T-Mobile, HTC, Movistar and Astana etc for their Tour de France preparations, for much of the winter......... :lol:

Fixed free of charge.

Thing is, if you want to dope, you could do it in any remote location. There's a lot more to the use of Tenerife by all these teams than just doping

 

[sniper]

So no testing on Tenerife until Froome asked for it.
1. Goes to show UCI are in Dave's pocket. If Dave says jump, UCI says how high.
2. I don't buy it (probably still no testing, or with advanced notice)
3. I like how it confirms that there was no testing there when Wiggins and Froome won their first TdF.

 

[sniper]

...

Thing is, if you want to dope, you could do it in any remote location. There's a lot more to the use of Tenerife by all these teams than just doping

sure,
but it seems Tenerife has the ideal altitude doping infrastructure laid out for pro-teams.
what it consists of we can only speculate.
there might be docs (think Bonar) there who offer 'packages' (consisting of dope, island intel, protection, god knows what).
we don't know.
fact is if you're a clean team, you'd go elsewhere, if only to avoid the association with doping.

Dave just confirmed that there was no testing there prior to 2014. That says enough.
How can there be no testing if the Lance case has shown that there was rampant doping going on there?
A rethorical question that is.
It goes to show that the island has been a dope paradise 'condoned' by UCI.

 

[Benotti69]

"Unusually for a track coach, Salzwedel is a believer in altitude camps and road races for his track riders, meaning he has had them schlepping up Mt Teide in Tenerife, most famously used by Team Sky for their Tour de France preparations, for much of the winter".

All this plus magic bikes and good hotels is all you need ...

....he has had them schlepping up Mt Teide in Tenerife, most famously used by Team Sky, USPostal, Once, T-Mobile, HTC, Movistar and Astana etc for their Tour de France preparations, for much of the winter......... :lol:

Fixed free of charge.

Thing is, if you want to dope, you could do it in any remote location. There's a lot more to the use of Tenerife by all these teams than just doping

The thing with Tenerife is that it is tried and tested. They get a pass on ABP anomalies due to altitude and then it is remote, 1 hotel, who are used to assisting cycling teams in whatever manner they wish and it is cheap.

You could dope anywhere, but there must be altitude to explain blood anomalies, so that narrows it down, then you have to have advance warning of testers, well Tenerife is a small island and testers must fly in, so they obv have that covered. There are less cars meaning empty roads. Most people go to Tenerife to sit on the beach.

Nope, Tenerife works for cycling teams, mostly for doping.

 

[Tienus]

What is the performance benefit of an altitude training camp in the winter months for a cyclist? I'm curious as I expect the advantage to have dissapaered by the time the season starts. In other words is there another reason apart from stacking up a blood supply or get a pass on the ABP.

 

[42x16ss]

"Unusually for a track coach, Salzwedel is a believer in altitude camps and road races for his track riders, meaning he has had them schlepping up Mt Teide in Tenerife, most famously used by Team Sky for their Tour de France preparations, for much of the winter".

All this plus magic bikes and good hotels is all you need ...

....he has had them schlepping up Mt Teide in Tenerife, most famously used by Team Sky, USPostal, Once, T-Mobile, HTC, Movistar and Astana etc for their Tour de France preparations, for much of the winter......... :lol:

Fixed free of charge.

Thing is, if you want to dope, you could do it in any remote location. There's a lot more to the use of Tenerife by all these teams than just doping

It's the combination of a great place to train, and a good place to dope in peace. Best of both worlds.

 

[PremierAndrew]

"Unusually for a track coach, Salzwedel is a believer in altitude camps and road races for his track riders, meaning he has had them schlepping up Mt Teide in Tenerife, most famously used by Team Sky for their Tour de France preparations, for much of the winter".

All this plus magic bikes and good hotels is all you need ...

....he has had them schlepping up Mt Teide in Tenerife, most famously used by Team Sky, USPostal, Once, T-Mobile, HTC, Movistar and Astana etc for their Tour de France preparations, for much of the winter......... :lol:

Fixed free of charge.

Thing is, if you want to dope, you could do it in any remote location. There's a lot more to the use of Tenerife by all these teams than just doping

The thing with Tenerife is that it is tried and tested. They get a pass on ABP anomalies due to altitude and then it is remote, 1 hotel, who are used to assisting cycling teams in whatever manner they wish and it is cheap.

You could dope anywhere, but there must be altitude to explain blood anomalies, so that narrows it down, then you have to have advance warning of testers, well Tenerife is a small island and testers must fly in, so they obv have that covered. There are less cars meaning empty roads. Most people go to Tenerife to sit on the beach.

Nope, Tenerife works for cycling teams, mostly for doping.

Well that's been confirmed today in Walsh's article. Last year, Astana knew testers were coming to Tenerife in two days, so Brailsford informed UKAD about that :lol:

 

[Freddythefrog]

Yes, I read that as well and what a cracking stunt to pull. What motive would DB have for not following the course of action described ?

You have to have a conclusion to the conversation with the mechanic or soigny who informed you. This guy is way down the food chain and obviously "believes" which is why he has come to you. You can't tell him anything other than something that casts you and the organisation you have had a huge hand in creating, in a good light so you tell him you are going to inform UKAD. IF you have anything to hide, you have as much advance notice as Astana so can do all you need to. The risk to you is zero.

Now, with no losses, to get that current account into credit.
You ring up your previous "embedded" journalist and tell him that you have informed UKAD and hope that some other team can cope the flack. You gain street cred with the journalist even if nothing comes of the story and if nothing happens, so what, nothing lost. At best it was, exactly like it played out, an insurance policy, could be used by both Walsh and Sir David come a rainy day.

What's not to like ?

As it is, the Hotel staff informed Astana having seen the hotel booking, the testers that turned up last year have pre-booked again this year. FFS how inept are the anti-doping agencies ? These guys are being paid vast amounts of money to catch the crooks and it is like something out of a later day Keystone Cops story. How can anyone have faith in an agency that goes about their business in this manner ?

 

[vedrafjord]

Well that's been confirmed today in Walsh's article. Last year, Astana knew testers were coming to Tenerife in two days, so Brailsford informed UKAD about that :lol:

Can you post the relevant section? I've never understood people implying Tenerife is some deserted desert island and teams can just watch for testers at the airport:

In 2014, 11,473,600 tourists (excluding those from other parts of Spain) came to the Canary Islands. Tenerife had 4,171,384 arrivals that year, excluding the numbers for Spanish tourists which make up an additional 30 percent of total arrivals.

but if the hotel staff (of a hotel that is far away from the millions of tourists) are in on it then that's a different matter.

 

[Benotti69]

Well that's been confirmed today in Walsh's article. Last year, Astana knew testers were coming to Tenerife in two days, so Brailsford informed UKAD about that :lol:

If Astana get advance notice, they all do.

Confirms Teide is indeed used for doping.

 

[pastronef]

as in 2016, Froome will not go to Tenerife so often. he´ll traval again to South Africa

fly to Australia 10.01
29.01 Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race
01.02 Herald Sun Tour
3 weeks SOUTH AFRICA
20.03 Volta Ciclista a Catalunya
25.04 Tour de Romandie
04.06 Critérium du Dauphiné
01.07 Tour de France

 

[ThePopeOfDope]

The idea behind Tenerife came from Dr.F back in the 90s who was looking for a place closer to Europe for his altitude camps (He used to go in the US). The island is perfect for it because you can 1: Sleep high, Train low or 2: Sleep low, Train High at altitudes that aren't to limiting (by that I imply you can still put out big Watts without exhausting yourself).
It has been rumored for years that hotel staff are drilled to make sure testers don't get access to athletes, but the reality is very few control actually happen.
On top of that you can add the ease of buying dope at the local pharmacy without a script (something very common across Spain).
Some athletes have tried to away from the island like Froome, Ulrich and Rasmussen, preferring to go to South Africa. As it happens very few control happen in South Africa, the official WADA lab has been suspended and Oxyglobin is legal. Pharmacist are apparently on a similar wavelength as the Spanish and if you can't find one just go to a vet.
Now given Froome has friends is SA but you know...

 

[thehog]

Re:

So no testing on Tenerife until Froome asked for it.
1. Goes to show UCI are in Dave's pocket. If Dave says jump, UCI says how high.
2. I don't buy it (probably still no testing, or with advanced notice)
3. I like how it confirms that there was no testing there when Wiggins and Froome won their first TdF.

It's utterly pointless testing on Tenerife. No test could ever be validated at altitude. Can't do passport and you can't do an EPO test. That's why teams train there, Froome knows this as does Sir Dave.

 

[sniper]

Yeah ^that's^ the thing people keep forgetting.
Although hypothetically the testers c/should probaably still go there to test for drugs that don't correlate with altitude.

Eithher way, Brailsford sending his riders to the place where USPS UPS and Ferrari used to camp and gear up is another insult to the brain of the average cycling fan and makes a mockery of his "we're going to do things differently" slogan. (Not that anybody other than the British press took that slogan seriously, but still)

 

[Benotti69]

as in 2016, Froome will not go to Tenerife so often. he´ll traval again to South Africa

fly to Australia 10.01
29.01 Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race
01.02 Herald Sun Tour
3 weeks SOUTH AFRICA
20.03 Volta Ciclista a Catalunya
25.04 Tour de Romandie
04.06 Critérium du Dauphiné
01.07 Tour de France

To be closer to Jeroen who works for SA anti doping??????

 

[vedrafjord]

Re: Re:

So no testing on Tenerife until Froome asked for it.
1. Goes to show UCI are in Dave's pocket. If Dave says jump, UCI says how high.
2. I don't buy it (probably still no testing, or with advanced notice)
3. I like how it confirms that there was no testing there when Wiggins and Froome won their first TdF.

It's utterly pointless testing on Tenerife. No test could ever be validated at altitude. Can't do passport and you can't do an EPO test. That's why teams train there, Froome knows this as does Sir Dave.

Why can't you do an EPO test?

 

[thehog]

Re: Re:

So no testing on Tenerife until Froome asked for it.
1. Goes to show UCI are in Dave's pocket. If Dave says jump, UCI says how high.
2. I don't buy it (probably still no testing, or with advanced notice)
3. I like how it confirms that there was no testing there when Wiggins and Froome won their first TdF.

It's utterly pointless testing on Tenerife. No test could ever be validated at altitude. Can't do passport and you can't do an EPO test. That's why teams train there, Froome knows this as does Sir Dave.

Why can't you do an EPO test?

Because EPO at altitude or just prior to altitude, rather than using it as a pure performance enhancer, stimulates & speeds the natural effects and altitude acclimatisation for an increase in RBCs. The EPO test does not look for levels of EPO rather than recumbent EPO - smaller cell size etc. due to synthetic use rather than natural occurring. The test simply can't yield a result. Addtionally the legal aspect, its way too open for legal challenge making the already flakey test redundant.

People oft forget that the medical use of EPO is to stimulate the natural production of EPO rather than supplement a patient with EPO. A patient generally would receive a blood transfusion followed by a course of EPO.

As an aside; Wiggins most likely took a EPO shot in the back of the bus; he was just drugged tested and about to be in transit for 6 hours and overnight (testing stops), so no chance he'd be tested again in the short window for the microdose to leave the body. Perfect opportunity to use EPO prior of going to altitude and minimising any chance of being tested.

 

[vedrafjord]

Re: Re:

Because EPO at altitude or just prior to altitude, rather than using it as a pure performance enhancer, stimulates & speeds the natural effects and altitude acclimatisation for an increase in RBCs. The EPO test does not look for levels of EPO rather than recumbent EPO - smaller cell size etc. due to synthetic use rather than natural occurring. The test simply can't yield a result. Addtionally the legal aspect, its way too open for legal challenge making the already flakey test redundant.

People oft forget that the medical use of EPO is to stimulate the natural production of EPO rather than supplement a patient with EPO. A patient generally would receive a blood transfusion followed by a course of EPO.

No, that's a muddled and inaccurate explanation. Like many biological processes there's a long and complex pathway, but for now let's just worry about two bits: EPO and the EPO receptor. This is your standard lock and key model: EPO fits into the EPO receptor, which in response kicks off a cascade of signalling that results in more red blood cells.

That's the natural EPO that your body produces, so what's the artificial EPO that athletes take? It's recombinant human EPO, so it's the same sequence of amino acids as human EPO (other animals will have their own EPOs with very slightly different sequences), but made in a lab instead of the ribosomes of your cells. A protein is made as a 2D string, same as it's stored in DNA, but after the string is made, it's folded into the shape it needs to be to do its job, often with the help of special chaperone proteins. It may also have parts of the ends of the string chopped off, and can have sugars attached at certain places (this is called glycosylation and can help folding or tag a protein for immune system reasons etc.).

So even if recombinant EPO was made from the same DNA/amino acid sequence, it will end up looking different, because it was made with different biological machinery, inside bacteria or another non-human cell in a lab instead of your own cells. Also some manufacturers change the sequence slightly (e.g. Amgen's darbopoeitin alpha) to make the resulting EPO more stable etc. But these changes are still small enough that the key still fits in the lock.

So how does the EPO test work? Because of the different glycosylation, electrical charge is distributed differently around the artificial EPO. If we put a mix of natural and recombinant EPO in a gel and apply an electric current (electrophoresis) they will separate out. https://gbiomed.kuleuven.be/english/research/50000618/50753339/files/revepo.pdf

But back to the original point: there is nothing that would cause the test to not work on athletes who were at altitude. They may have produced more natural EPO due to hypoxia, but if they've taken artificial EPO it'll still separate out. It'll be more difficult to indirectly detect EPO usage via HgB/reticulocytes etc., but that's not the EPO test, that's the biological passport.

There's also the wider class of continuous erythropoietin receptor activators (CERAs) like Mircera of Ricky Ricco fame that are often based on the basic EPO protein, but modified enough that they need their own test to detect. You can also design drugs that target other earlier or later steps of the hypoxia pathway, like HIF-1 (hypoxia-inducible factor) that the Russians found was boosted by xenon. It's inaccurate to call any of those other substances EPO though.

As an aside; Wiggins most likely took a EPO shot in the back of the bus; he was just drugged tested and about to be in transit for 6 hours and overnight (testing stops), so no chance he'd be tested again in the short window for the microdose to leave the body. Perfect opportunity to use EPO prior of going to altitude and minimising any chance of being tested.

Yep EPO or similar is the most obvious answer to "what drug would a professional cyclist get couriered several hundred miles and not want to talk about it?".

 

[thehog]

It wasn't a muddied explanation, it was a good reason why testing for EPO at altitude would not yield a positive test. The user will always (as they are not stupid enough to use at altitude) to microdose with EPO just prior to going to altitude and just as they return. The passport is designed to reduce its sensitivity before, during and after altitude and the EPO test would not detect synthetic EPO at any stage in the process as long as there around 6-10 hours clear after injection.

I also agree that all EPO is not equal and there are several variants.

 

[yaco]

We need to realise blood passports have their limitations - You have issues with athletes living in high altitude whose blood values can be out of the normal range - You had the Kreuzeger case which was thrown out - I have serious reservations with the science around blood passports.

 

[vedrafjord]

It wasn't a muddied explanation, it was a good reason why testing for EPO at altitude would not yield a positive test. The user will always (as they are not stupid enough to use at altitude) to microdose with EPO just prior to going to altitude and just as they return. The passport is designed to reduce its sensitivity before, during and after altitude and the EPO test would not detect synthetic EPO at any stage in the process as long as there around 6-10 hours clear after injection.

Well I was being charitable - it was a wrong explanation. You haven't explained why being at altitude would interfere with the EPO test (which is completely separate to the biological passport) to the point that it no longer works. Have you a source or sources for this theory? There doesn't seem to be much online but the 2002 paper "The effects of factors such as exercise and disease on the distribution of urinary erythropoietin isoforms" from the Australian Sports Drug Testing Laboratory cautiously says "some data has been obtained showing that the distribution of urinary EPO isoforms is not significantly affected by external factors such as altitude". Here's a 2011 review on natural EPO levels: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3082088/ - "On ascent to altitude, Epo levels reach peak values after 1–2 days and then fall to a new plateau at about twice that present at sea-level".

Note also that when we're talking about cyclists training at altitude we're talking about pretty modest heights - the Mt Teide hotel is only at 2200 metres, while when doctors in general are talking about altitude they're talking about places like the Bolivian capital La Paz (over 3500m), Tibet, the Altiplano etc., where someone coming from sea level is likely to need an acclimatisation period.

Any problems with detecting EPO microdosing shouldn't be significantly different to at sea level. The real problem is access. If the Spanish ADA put a tester full time in the hotel on Mt Teide for the whole time teams were there, I think they'd get results.

 

[vedrafjord]

Back to the general issue though, yes, the bio passport in its current form isn't fit for purpose. The allowable range is way too wide, and it doesn't take into account the expected drop of values during a Grand Tour. So IMO the best way to catch people is direct testing for substances.

The EPO test is more sensitive than it used to be by the way. Remember Di Luca in 2013: http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/di-luca-reveals-details-of-his-doping-in-hard-hitting-autobiography/

Di Luca admits he simply got it wrong when he was tested for EPO in an out-of-competition test a few days before leaving for the 2013 Giro d'Italia. He reveals he injected himself with a micro-dose of the latest generation of EPO before going to bed but then was awoken by anti-doping inspectors at 7:30 the next morning. He made sure he urinated before giving the test to pass any traces of the EPO but was caught by a new, refined test that can detect EPO for 24 hours, rather the 6-8 hours most riders believed.

Santambrogio was caught at the same time, and then the Iglinskys, but we haven't had any high profile EPO cases since then. So I think riders are a lot more cautious about EPO use right now. Here's my conjecture about what the likes of, say, Astana are currently up to: go to altitude camp, take EPO if there are no testers around, or some legal erythropoeisis-stimulating substances, as well as take advantage of increase in natural EPO production to withdraw blood, freeze blood if necessary, or do the old two units out one unit in etc as detailed by Tyler. Then during a GT, transfer a couple of small bags. But how do they deal with the drop in reticulocytes post transfusion? I think even microdosing EPO during a GT is now pretty dangerous, but maybe there's a technically legal drug (fluimucil?) that boosts retics enough to not fall foul of the passport. It doesn't have to be powerful enough to actually give a performance gain, just to mask a small transfusion. Certainly looking at Astana in the last two Giros you get the impression that transfusions are the main engine.