There was literaly an interview where an Arsenal player talked about Wenger introducing 'vitamin injections' that had them running as if they had a 'third lung'. The host (I think it was Lineker) laughed it off and said 'I don't think you were supposed to say that'. This was for the invincibles season where they didn't loose a single game, also during the height of the EPO era.
Fuentes famously said during his trial after Operation Puerto that; «if he talked, Spain would no longer be world champions in football». One of the witnesses at the trial testified that he saw players from Real Madrid and Barcelona in Fuentes waiting room, as well as a certain Spanish all-time tennis ace.
Of course, the judge ordered all evidence unrelated to cycling destroyed - and then the Spanish courts dragged the appeal for years until a couple months after the statute of limitations.
Football is dirty as fuck, and everyone should know it. It’s the biggest sport, with the most money and the most prestige, with players willing to do anything on pitch to gain an advantage - including all kinds of scumbaggery and unethical shit. But there is supposedly no organized doping in the sport, ever? Yeah right - and pigs can fly.
Sure, but you said height of epo.. Armstrong didn't win at the height of epo..
It was much more present before 98's festina scandal because of the increase in testing that happened afterwards..
Besides, early 00's was the beginning of blood doping, much more used in cycling.. Michael Rasmussen (danish cyclist) said he bought a blood doping machine, and it took him a year or 2 to get it right, before he was close to winning tdf in 2007 but was thrown out
I don’t know how you define “much more present before 98’” but almost all riders that apear in the top10 from 99 to 05 have had confirmed histories or at least are big suspects regarding doping.
That tells me that dopping was still very much around back then
Yes the top 10 - even top 30... but before that basically every single rider was doping
I've read interviews with former danish riders, and all from the 90's have pretty much confirmed that not single person on their team was clean. "Doping was everywhere, everyone was using it. You had to use it to even get to the big races" is sooo normal to hear when they talk about that era
Btw when talking about blood doping, you should look into Spanish doctors and why Spain was so dominant in almost any sport they participated in from 05 to 14 ish
Lol you mean some people actually buy the claim that the sport was clean after 98? It's total rubbish, and probably perpetuated by the same kind of people who want 2000s cycling to be a few bad apples like Armstrong, not a mutant peloton. But it clearly still was a mutant peloton.
With all the crazy products they were taking in the 90s, you'd expect the Tour average speed to be dramatically slower after 98. But average speeds of the Tour only started dropping off after Armstrong's final victory in 2005.
The test for EPO was only designed/invented in 1999-2000 so before then it was only on hematocrit levels. The 50% hematocrit rule was only brought in 1997, so before then there were basically no rules or methods to detect EPO. Which is why the person above you is saying it was up to Festina in 1998 where it was most rife.
After the test was discovered in 2000 there was a big move back to blood bags rather than EPO as you could now get caught. It wasn't until 2008 that the biological passport was brought in to cacth dodgy blood values.
I think it is a mistake to split doping history into a 'before or after' Festina and EPO testing.
Riders were taking more drugs than Tony Montana in Scarface, both before and after those milestones. Here is a list of 'supplements' provided in USADA documentation on Operation Puerto:
which generally included anabolic steroids, corticoids, different types of hormones, including EPO, HMG and growth hormone, and for select cyclists, blood transfusions
Sure, riders and their doctors had to adapt their practices because of new detection methods, but nothing fundamental really changed until later.
Methods
There are several common methods used for blood doping:
Blood Transfusions This involves the withdrawal of blood, which is then stored and re-infused into the athlete's body shortly before a competition.
Autologous Transfusion: Uses the athlete's own blood. This method is harder to detect.
Homologous Transfusion: Uses blood from a compatible donor. This method carries a higher risk of immune reaction and is easier to detect.
Lance's domination came after the height of the EPO era. By then there were some rudimentary controls in place so riders had to be a bit more cautious with their doping. Whereas in the mid 90s pretty much the only limit on how much riders could use was that they needed to not die in their sleep, and guys were hitting hematocrit levels well into the 50%s.
One of the sports with more money that can pay millions to any performance Doctor is clean, and nobody want to look because huge billion sized investments could evaporate.
But then you have players falling unconscious on the pitch and is just bad luck.
No other sport is 100% clean either. Athletes and their doctors know what substances they can use, how much to use and when to use it in order to avoid a positive test.
This is my view too. I'm sure there is some clever work here and there with "supplements" during training and such. But the way some corners of the "fandom" go on completely baseless rants on what are basically conspiracy theories about secret undetectable doping that just evades all doping chekcs, like it is some sort of supersoldier serum seems a bit unlikely to me.
But there is a conspiracy (not cycling specifically though) look at recent large scale doping scandals that got completely swept under the rug. It helps when its in certain parts of the world and certain important organisations are involved that dont want it to come out and have the power (money) to do so
Additionally u would assume that every team is pushing the rules pretty much the same. Like no way UAE is and visma isnt for example- which i for one prefer over the alternative of a few teams super soldiering
Nah, I definitely think certain teams have better access to "the good stuff" more than others. As with everything, the teams with more money can afford better stuff, the ones with less can't.
Any fan or journalist who takes the time to read and understand the tests, the list of prohibited substances, and more importantly the ABP and the ADAMS system, would immediately drop the nonsensical accusations and speculations.
The current ABP and ADAMS leave nothing to chance. Every top cyclist has his performance’s ‘genealogical’ markers traced, their thresholds are well defined, their whereabouts are submitted quarterly and updated daily, their non-competition tests are never announced in advance… it would be harder to cheat the system than to train and eat healthier to get better.
And that is why almost all recent cases were related to ADAMS failures/infringements (i.e. trying to avoid a test to hide potential abnormal values in the ABP). So when a cyclist suddenly disappears with no explanation, it usually means that the team was notified of ADAMS infringements by their rider.
Also, with ABP there is no need to actually find x or y substance in the blood/urine sample, abnormal markers are enough to sanction. And the cyclists’ whole careers are printed in their ABP, so the use of prohibited PEDs and/or blood manipulation is de-facto impossible to hide. Even TUEs have to be requested and approved via ADAMS and their potential effect is embedded within the ABP figures anomaly.
I recall reading about quite silly time constraints as to when out of competition tests are allowed to be taken. At least in Spain, coincidently where all teams like to do their training/altitude camps. Something to the effect of tests are actually forbidden by law to be taken between the hours of 17-7 (don’t know the exact hours). Do you happen to know anything about that? Sounds like quite the opening towards microdosing through the nights.
All cyclists must have in their ADAMS filing a designated (but not limited to) 60 minutes slot everyday between 5am and 11pm at a location of their choosing where tests can be conducted, and that includes when they’re on vacation too. Regarding Spain, the only difference is that the tests can only be conducted between 6am and 11pm (so one hour later), as per this BOE, the rest has been adapted to align with the WADA regulation in this other BOE.
Barring an unknown substance that can fully mask doping effects on the biological variables (so getting the enhancement without altering body chemicals), the alteration caused by micro-doses would still show up in the ABP as beyond threshold measurements vis-à-vis the athlete’s historical data, and would then automatically trigger a review for further analysis and testing, and for a subsequent interview with the cyclist to explain the anomaly.
Also, please note that the pro teams also submit in the ADAMS system their team schedules, their riders’ planned training camps, etc.
It's like a loaded coin. To find out if a coin is fair or if it is loaded you need a sufficiently high number of samples.
Getting two consecutive heads or tails doesn't mean anything. If you take a sample of 100 and get 80 heads and 20 tails, you can bet the coin is not fair.
To find a significant deviation in the ABP, you need a sufficiently high number of samples. The smaller the deviation, the higher the number of samples.
I know, I was being kind of flippant because the person above was saying everyone should drop the conspiracy thinking and most of this stuff gets caught. Yet a power house of a rider from a team with some dodgy stuff as of late some how sets off the testing but it's not good enough to have him banged to rights for over two years.
It's quite liberating to accept the fact that if professional athletes are able to use banned substances without being caught, they absolutely will. Cycling is no exception.
You cant really blame them for that attitude. The desire to win, and the rewards that come with it, its easy to cast aside health concerns with that. And when you think about it, a bit of minor doping cant be worse for you than smoking or drinking alcohol (or even taking drugs) which countless people do. Unless of course youre injecting EPO into your eyeballs, that might be a bit bad
I don't really blame them, or other professional athletes. I accept that it's a shit choice that they have to make, and if at a certain level they probably have access to the same substances so it's still a level playing field.
I'm sure they all appreciate doping control exactly in that it sets boundaries that protect their health. Before the 50 % hematocrit limit it was absolutely wild what kind of risks they would take.
With Laskano and Carboni this season, that's clear. I just hope it's above 90% and it's none of the top guys. Especially not Pogacar. If he is, please make the races more tight lol.
I have thought about it since well, it's winter. If you were doping wouldn't you make it that much of a difference each race and do that outrageous.
Honestly if pogacar and mvdp guys are doping the sport has huge issues again. These guys are getting tested every race they win. If they are somehow slipping blatant doping through the controls then all hope for this sport ever being clean will be gone for me
At the end of the day, testing will always be a loosing battle. You can't test someone 100% of the time, you can't test for drugs you don't know exist, and some drugs are near undetectable without 24/7 monitoring.
In my head, the benefit of testing is to protect rider's health by disincentivizing 1. young doping, and 2. reckless doping. I'm not sure it can really go much further than that.
I agree. Ineos wouldn't surprise me either - especially with how the team management behaved last season in regard to their head soigneur/carer David Rozman & his communications with the convicted doping doctor Mark Schmidt "asking for the same “stuff” that the now-defunct Milram team once used."
Apparently Ineos (the team that Brailsford previously declared the 'cleanest team in the history of Grand Tour cycling' & demanded that anyone with even a hint of a connection with doping resign) has decided to keep employing Rozman 🙄 https://escapecollective.com/david-rozman-isnt-going-anywhere/
Well might as well accuse EF if they hired piccolo.
If you keep going like that everyone is doping because there is always a connection somewhere to a former doper. Which is obviously ridiculous. Honestly I dont think we can say until there is concrete proof, which hopefully never turns out to be real!
No no, piccolo was a doper at EF. I meant shady riders that they contracted after they had rumours of doping like Quintana for example after the tremadol tour.
I love Pog, but ask yourself - assuming he isn't doping now - how much better would he get if he started doping? Lance said EPO can easily get 10% performance gains. If we say Pog's FTP is 7.53 w/kg (the numbers he did during the tour ITT this year), that would put his 'doped' FTP at 8.3 w/kg. That number is just utterly absurd.
I'm not making accusations here, becuase I find the whole 'are they aren't they' discussion mind numbing, but it's something to think about.
I think that a lot of the major gain doping stuff is probably in some way shape or form detectable. But marginal gain doping (wink to sky) will probably exist in unknown forms (unknown to public/wada).
The MTT last year was 23 mins, so not exactly an FTP length effort.
He did Ventoux in 54 minutes which is an equalized for 60kg rider at W/Kg of 6.5 ish. Actual numbers would be lower for him as he is over 60kg.
Lance says he did the Madone in about 30 mins at 6.7-7w/kg which would be equalized higher due to him being well over 60kg.
So in reality I'd say Pog is at a similar level now to the best guys from 20-30 years ago doping. Considering the money etc put into development and training advances etc I don't think it's that outrageous to think it could be possible.
Personally I'm pretty skeptical but at the same time it's not out of the realms of possibility.
On the plateau de beille, pog did estimated 6.9 for 40 before accounting for Altitude at the end of a stage in the middle of the tour. I'd be surprised if pog cant do 7.something for 60 fresh
No, we should not be worried, because we can't do anything about it so it's best to just enjoy the bike racing and worry about the far more pressing issues in the world.
Legal doping has probably moved on. It was a long time ago TUEs to use clenbuterol under the classic "difficulty walking up stairs" were still being handed out.
Way back in the day, so many inhalers at USA Cycling warm ups it wasn't funny. Someone should ask George Hincapie about that. All entirely legal.
Funny how there is no way to know how many TUEs being granted in any olympic sport. It's almost as if there is no transparency or accountability for a reason.
But that is the thing though. Doing this sport at that level will give you EA asthma for most people. For instance, have you ever had the taste of blood in mouth after an all out effort? That is likely asthma.
You'd be surprised how many people have minor asthma, especially those living in bigger cities or with allergies.
The thing is, in such cases you take Ventolin. If you have asthma, it works and brings you to the level of someone without asthma. If you don't have asthma, it does nothing.
So yeah, many people use it, including me. It stops the peeping at max heart rates. It's like the fairest medicine there is, to level the playing field.
"Doubtful" about every podium? Definitely. There is even less transparency now into anti-doping and the federation has done nothing to suggest its days of wholesale corruption including race fixing are over.
To answer the question- yes worry about it but just don’t do anything about it and then move on to worrying about other things and keep checking cycling weekly for other clickbait crap journalism. The whole of its content could now be written by a GCSE student with ChatGPT
That and training camps away from anti doping authorities. Its long since I've seen the source but depending on where you have a training camp anti doping authorities need to fly in for random tests (tenerife, colombia etc etc.) and those doping are able to utilize that fact to alter how much substances they use or avoid the control taking 1 of 3 strikes for whereabouts. That and using altitude to justify changes in blood values.
It's true Tenerife is ideal for making it more difficult for testing, however it is also ideal for winter and early season altitude training for EU teams. There probably isn't a better place for it.
I'm surprised they haven't set up a testing lab there.
cyclists have to tell doping authorities where they are, where they are going to be. that's the rules.
so, if the doping authorities decide they don't want to go to Tenerife, etc, where training camps are widely known, is that really the fault of the cyclists? also , altitude does in fact alter blood values.
if the doping authorities decide they don't want to go to Tenerife
This is not quite how it works.
Take Tenerife, here you have 2 cases, either the test is done by an agent of the spanish anti doping agency (which nobody has considered credible since the 1992 olympics) or the rider's own national Agency. To go to Teide you have 2 airports and not a lot of routes coming up to the hotels. You can spot someone coming in a Mile away. Just like the runners did in either Kenya or Ethiopia (I think it was Kenya) the top camp is hours away from everything, you are quite isolated, just need someone to spot the route and give you a call.
Also, just in general there are areas so isolated nobody bothers to go test, or the local anti doping agency is useless. Prime example is Michael Rasmussen. Pretended he was in a camp in Mexico because he knew damn well that nobody would try to test him out there.
Also for a bit in the late 2010's South Africa camps were popular with cyclist, in fairly isolated regions with a local anti doping agency that wans't doing shit. Those camps seems to have only stopped due to the dangerosity of the roads.
not trying to argue, but WADA documents 3 agencies that can test anywhere at anytime. Surely, if the UCI or WADA suspects doping in training camps, no matter where they are, they have the authority to test. You can't just ride away from doping control and think you successfully evaded the test. Tenerife is an island but the training routes/roads are very well known. If doping control decides to set up there for a month or 2, the riders will know of course, but the possibility of a test at any time would be known as well. Its impossible to imagine that doping control just winks at the teams with the understanding that if you train in Tenerife, you can microdose etc and no one will test during the entire time.
If you are competing at the national or international level, you are subject to doping control and can be tested anytime or anywhere. You can be tested by relevant National Anti-Doping Organizations (NADOs), International Federations (IFs) and Major Event Organizations (MEOs).
Recall when Froome complained to the UCI that no testing occurred in 2014 when training in Tenerife:
Froome has previously spoken of his frustration that leading cyclists - including his Tour rivals Vincenzo Nibali and Alberto Contador - have trained at altitude on the Mount Teide volcano in Tenerife without a visit from testers. That has changed.
"For me it was important to point that out to the authorities that it seemed to be a bit of an oversight," Froome added. "As far as I can see that has been rectified. This year up on Tenerife alone we were tested at least four times."
Its impossible to imagine that doping control just winks at the teams with the understanding that if you train in Tenerife, you can microdose etc and no one will test during the entire time.
The point is tests are less likely and if they happen you know they will happen.
"Doing a Landis” wasn’t meant to suggest he was literally doing the same thing, but rather as an shorthand for an unbelievable, long solo effort. The kind that makes you question what you’re seeing.
Of course it's not clean. The times are significantly faster than the times during the Lance Armstrong era. And they try to sell the gullible noobs that it's due to better training and nutrition and bike technology 😂 If you believe that, you are retarded. No joke. For God sake looks at tadejs coach and his history. Just enjoy the sport for the entertainment it is but don't think it is clean... What is the half life of epo....
He’s right, but also at what point is the regime too stringent? There does have to be a balance or resources and the UCI and doping authorities can’t track these athletes 24/7. Testing at the grand tours and routine draws on winners and jersey leaders is good as well.
I say enjoy it now, assume positive intent and clean sport unless proven otherwise, and let the racers race.
Feels like a nothing-burger. He basically says no sport is 100% clean but at least they are being checked more than any other sport.
What staggering is no cases found for the Premier League.
Well, aside from Pogba, Mykhailo Mudryk, and some nine other players who were not named, but 'luckily' all had medical exemptions.
There was literaly an interview where an Arsenal player talked about Wenger introducing 'vitamin injections' that had them running as if they had a 'third lung'. The host (I think it was Lineker) laughed it off and said 'I don't think you were supposed to say that'. This was for the invincibles season where they didn't loose a single game, also during the height of the EPO era.
Invincibles was in the 00'es, right ? Height of epo was 92-98 atleast in cycling
Armstrong wins where from 1999 through 2005, which precisely overlap with Arsenal from 2003/2004
Fuentes famously said during his trial after Operation Puerto that; «if he talked, Spain would no longer be world champions in football». One of the witnesses at the trial testified that he saw players from Real Madrid and Barcelona in Fuentes waiting room, as well as a certain Spanish all-time tennis ace.
Of course, the judge ordered all evidence unrelated to cycling destroyed - and then the Spanish courts dragged the appeal for years until a couple months after the statute of limitations.
Football is dirty as fuck, and everyone should know it. It’s the biggest sport, with the most money and the most prestige, with players willing to do anything on pitch to gain an advantage - including all kinds of scumbaggery and unethical shit. But there is supposedly no organized doping in the sport, ever? Yeah right - and pigs can fly.
Sure, but you said height of epo.. Armstrong didn't win at the height of epo..
It was much more present before 98's festina scandal because of the increase in testing that happened afterwards..
Besides, early 00's was the beginning of blood doping, much more used in cycling.. Michael Rasmussen (danish cyclist) said he bought a blood doping machine, and it took him a year or 2 to get it right, before he was close to winning tdf in 2007 but was thrown out
I don’t know how you define “much more present before 98’” but almost all riders that apear in the top10 from 99 to 05 have had confirmed histories or at least are big suspects regarding doping.
That tells me that dopping was still very much around back then
Yes the top 10 - even top 30... but before that basically every single rider was doping
I've read interviews with former danish riders, and all from the 90's have pretty much confirmed that not single person on their team was clean. "Doping was everywhere, everyone was using it. You had to use it to even get to the big races" is sooo normal to hear when they talk about that era
Btw when talking about blood doping, you should look into Spanish doctors and why Spain was so dominant in almost any sport they participated in from 05 to 14 ish
Lol you mean some people actually buy the claim that the sport was clean after 98? It's total rubbish, and probably perpetuated by the same kind of people who want 2000s cycling to be a few bad apples like Armstrong, not a mutant peloton. But it clearly still was a mutant peloton.
With all the crazy products they were taking in the 90s, you'd expect the Tour average speed to be dramatically slower after 98. But average speeds of the Tour only started dropping off after Armstrong's final victory in 2005.
The test for EPO was only designed/invented in 1999-2000 so before then it was only on hematocrit levels. The 50% hematocrit rule was only brought in 1997, so before then there were basically no rules or methods to detect EPO. Which is why the person above you is saying it was up to Festina in 1998 where it was most rife.
After the test was discovered in 2000 there was a big move back to blood bags rather than EPO as you could now get caught. It wasn't until 2008 that the biological passport was brought in to cacth dodgy blood values.
I think it is a mistake to split doping history into a 'before or after' Festina and EPO testing.
Riders were taking more drugs than Tony Montana in Scarface, both before and after those milestones. Here is a list of 'supplements' provided in USADA documentation on Operation Puerto:
Sure, riders and their doctors had to adapt their practices because of new detection methods, but nothing fundamental really changed until later.
The US National team famously blood-doped to mens & womens road gold medals at the LA Olympics in 1984.
Wasn't doping
Methods There are several common methods used for blood doping:
I said it was not doping, not that it is not doping.
When did Armstrong dominate the TdF?
Lance's domination came after the height of the EPO era. By then there were some rudimentary controls in place so riders had to be a bit more cautious with their doping. Whereas in the mid 90s pretty much the only limit on how much riders could use was that they needed to not die in their sleep, and guys were hitting hematocrit levels well into the 50%s.
Bjarne Riis was know as "Mr 60%". There are rumours that, before the famous Hautacam stage, he got up to 64%.
When did the festina scandal happen ?
That was 97 or 98 but Armstrong domination ran into the 00's. The "Invincibles" season was 2003-04.
98 Tour de France.
One of the sports with more money that can pay millions to any performance Doctor is clean, and nobody want to look because huge billion sized investments could evaporate.
But then you have players falling unconscious on the pitch and is just bad luck.
Do they even blood test at all? Or still just not very random piss tests?
Who is "they"? Other sports?
Premier league and football in general.
Down Under can't come fast enough.
they’re running out of things to write about 😭
Any good "the younger riders don't show respect in the peloton" articles lately?
Can't wait. Always a buzz when it's in town.
43 today. 40 tomorrow. 37 following day. Next week looks cooler so I hope the riders get some reprieve.
Not more sport in australia! I've had enough of it after yet another dire ashes
No other sport is 100% clean either. Athletes and their doctors know what substances they can use, how much to use and when to use it in order to avoid a positive test.
EPO days are long behind us though.
Edit: spelling
This is my view too. I'm sure there is some clever work here and there with "supplements" during training and such. But the way some corners of the "fandom" go on completely baseless rants on what are basically conspiracy theories about secret undetectable doping that just evades all doping chekcs, like it is some sort of supersoldier serum seems a bit unlikely to me.
But there is a conspiracy (not cycling specifically though) look at recent large scale doping scandals that got completely swept under the rug. It helps when its in certain parts of the world and certain important organisations are involved that dont want it to come out and have the power (money) to do so
Additionally u would assume that every team is pushing the rules pretty much the same. Like no way UAE is and visma isnt for example- which i for one prefer over the alternative of a few teams super soldiering
Nah, I definitely think certain teams have better access to "the good stuff" more than others. As with everything, the teams with more money can afford better stuff, the ones with less can't.
Any fan or journalist who takes the time to read and understand the tests, the list of prohibited substances, and more importantly the ABP and the ADAMS system, would immediately drop the nonsensical accusations and speculations.
The current ABP and ADAMS leave nothing to chance. Every top cyclist has his performance’s ‘genealogical’ markers traced, their thresholds are well defined, their whereabouts are submitted quarterly and updated daily, their non-competition tests are never announced in advance… it would be harder to cheat the system than to train and eat healthier to get better.
And that is why almost all recent cases were related to ADAMS failures/infringements (i.e. trying to avoid a test to hide potential abnormal values in the ABP). So when a cyclist suddenly disappears with no explanation, it usually means that the team was notified of ADAMS infringements by their rider.
Also, with ABP there is no need to actually find x or y substance in the blood/urine sample, abnormal markers are enough to sanction. And the cyclists’ whole careers are printed in their ABP, so the use of prohibited PEDs and/or blood manipulation is de-facto impossible to hide. Even TUEs have to be requested and approved via ADAMS and their potential effect is embedded within the ABP figures anomaly.
I recall reading about quite silly time constraints as to when out of competition tests are allowed to be taken. At least in Spain, coincidently where all teams like to do their training/altitude camps. Something to the effect of tests are actually forbidden by law to be taken between the hours of 17-7 (don’t know the exact hours). Do you happen to know anything about that? Sounds like quite the opening towards microdosing through the nights.
All cyclists must have in their ADAMS filing a designated (but not limited to) 60 minutes slot everyday between 5am and 11pm at a location of their choosing where tests can be conducted, and that includes when they’re on vacation too. Regarding Spain, the only difference is that the tests can only be conducted between 6am and 11pm (so one hour later), as per this BOE, the rest has been adapted to align with the WADA regulation in this other BOE.
Barring an unknown substance that can fully mask doping effects on the biological variables (so getting the enhancement without altering body chemicals), the alteration caused by micro-doses would still show up in the ABP as beyond threshold measurements vis-à-vis the athlete’s historical data, and would then automatically trigger a review for further analysis and testing, and for a subsequent interview with the cyclist to explain the anomaly.
Also, please note that the pro teams also submit in the ADAMS system their team schedules, their riders’ planned training camps, etc.
So what was going on with Oier Lazkano that somehow lasted two whole seasons?
It's like a loaded coin. To find out if a coin is fair or if it is loaded you need a sufficiently high number of samples.
Getting two consecutive heads or tails doesn't mean anything. If you take a sample of 100 and get 80 heads and 20 tails, you can bet the coin is not fair.
To find a significant deviation in the ABP, you need a sufficiently high number of samples. The smaller the deviation, the higher the number of samples.
I know, I was being kind of flippant because the person above was saying everyone should drop the conspiracy thinking and most of this stuff gets caught. Yet a power house of a rider from a team with some dodgy stuff as of late some how sets off the testing but it's not good enough to have him banged to rights for over two years.
Hence why it took 4 years to catch Lazkano on his blood passeport values.
It's quite liberating to accept the fact that if professional athletes are able to use banned substances without being caught, they absolutely will. Cycling is no exception.
You cant really blame them for that attitude. The desire to win, and the rewards that come with it, its easy to cast aside health concerns with that. And when you think about it, a bit of minor doping cant be worse for you than smoking or drinking alcohol (or even taking drugs) which countless people do. Unless of course youre injecting EPO into your eyeballs, that might be a bit bad
I don't really blame them, or other professional athletes. I accept that it's a shit choice that they have to make, and if at a certain level they probably have access to the same substances so it's still a level playing field.
I'm sure they all appreciate doping control exactly in that it sets boundaries that protect their health. Before the 50 % hematocrit limit it was absolutely wild what kind of risks they would take.
With Laskano and Carboni this season, that's clear. I just hope it's above 90% and it's none of the top guys. Especially not Pogacar. If he is, please make the races more tight lol.
I have thought about it since well, it's winter. If you were doping wouldn't you make it that much of a difference each race and do that outrageous.
Honestly if pogacar and mvdp guys are doping the sport has huge issues again. These guys are getting tested every race they win. If they are somehow slipping blatant doping through the controls then all hope for this sport ever being clean will be gone for me
Yeah very true. But in all honesty, how can you trust Gianetti. If it turns out UAE dopes, it would be the only one I'm not surprised by.
Well and movistar maybe. If you're willing to take back dopers in contracts it's not a great look.
Tbh ineos wouldn't surprise me either. But yeh its not that I trust gianetti its more I try to trust the testers tbh
At the end of the day, testing will always be a loosing battle. You can't test someone 100% of the time, you can't test for drugs you don't know exist, and some drugs are near undetectable without 24/7 monitoring.
In my head, the benefit of testing is to protect rider's health by disincentivizing 1. young doping, and 2. reckless doping. I'm not sure it can really go much further than that.
Good points. And obviously testing is always trailing behind medical research and innovation.
I agree. Ineos wouldn't surprise me either - especially with how the team management behaved last season in regard to their head soigneur/carer David Rozman & his communications with the convicted doping doctor Mark Schmidt "asking for the same “stuff” that the now-defunct Milram team once used."
Apparently Ineos (the team that Brailsford previously declared the 'cleanest team in the history of Grand Tour cycling' & demanded that anyone with even a hint of a connection with doping resign) has decided to keep employing Rozman 🙄 https://escapecollective.com/david-rozman-isnt-going-anywhere/
Thats crazy I didnt know that they kept employing him- slipped under my radar thats for sure
Well might as well accuse EF if they hired piccolo.
If you keep going like that everyone is doping because there is always a connection somewhere to a former doper. Which is obviously ridiculous. Honestly I dont think we can say until there is concrete proof, which hopefully never turns out to be real!
No no, piccolo was a doper at EF. I meant shady riders that they contracted after they had rumours of doping like Quintana for example after the tremadol tour.
I love Pog, but ask yourself - assuming he isn't doping now - how much better would he get if he started doping? Lance said EPO can easily get 10% performance gains. If we say Pog's FTP is 7.53 w/kg (the numbers he did during the tour ITT this year), that would put his 'doped' FTP at 8.3 w/kg. That number is just utterly absurd.
I'm not making accusations here, becuase I find the whole 'are they aren't they' discussion mind numbing, but it's something to think about.
When Pogi retires, he should spend a couple of years doping and smashing records just for shits and giggles to prove he wasn’t doping all along. lol.
I pray to cycling lords he isn't this good when he retires lol. That would mean this boring racing until at least until 2030...
I think that a lot of the major gain doping stuff is probably in some way shape or form detectable. But marginal gain doping (wink to sky) will probably exist in unknown forms (unknown to public/wada).
The MTT last year was 23 mins, so not exactly an FTP length effort.
He did Ventoux in 54 minutes which is an equalized for 60kg rider at W/Kg of 6.5 ish. Actual numbers would be lower for him as he is over 60kg.
Lance says he did the Madone in about 30 mins at 6.7-7w/kg which would be equalized higher due to him being well over 60kg.
So in reality I'd say Pog is at a similar level now to the best guys from 20-30 years ago doping. Considering the money etc put into development and training advances etc I don't think it's that outrageous to think it could be possible.
Personally I'm pretty skeptical but at the same time it's not out of the realms of possibility.
On the plateau de beille, pog did estimated 6.9 for 40 before accounting for Altitude at the end of a stage in the middle of the tour. I'd be surprised if pog cant do 7.something for 60 fresh
Lol.
Haha yeah he is making racing so boring. I love Pogacar, but if he's doping I'm mad, because he should've made it more exciting racing lol.
No, we should not be worried, because we can't do anything about it so it's best to just enjoy the bike racing and worry about the far more pressing issues in the world.
So many asthmatics
Legal doping has probably moved on. It was a long time ago TUEs to use clenbuterol under the classic "difficulty walking up stairs" were still being handed out.
Way back in the day, so many inhalers at USA Cycling warm ups it wasn't funny. Someone should ask George Hincapie about that. All entirely legal.
Funny how there is no way to know how many TUEs being granted in any olympic sport. It's almost as if there is no transparency or accountability for a reason.
Oooooh, that's why Contador danced up the climbs instead!
But that is the thing though. Doing this sport at that level will give you EA asthma for most people. For instance, have you ever had the taste of blood in mouth after an all out effort? That is likely asthma.
No, but I did notice tiny blood specks in my spittle immediately after an all out effort once
Ding ding ding
You'd be surprised how many people have minor asthma, especially those living in bigger cities or with allergies.
The thing is, in such cases you take Ventolin. If you have asthma, it works and brings you to the level of someone without asthma. If you don't have asthma, it does nothing.
So yeah, many people use it, including me. It stops the peeping at max heart rates. It's like the fairest medicine there is, to level the playing field.
"Worried" not the right word.
"Doubtful" about every podium? Definitely. There is even less transparency now into anti-doping and the federation has done nothing to suggest its days of wholesale corruption including race fixing are over.
To answer the question- yes worry about it but just don’t do anything about it and then move on to worrying about other things and keep checking cycling weekly for other clickbait crap journalism. The whole of its content could now be written by a GCSE student with ChatGPT
Not worried as I’m not riding in the Tour this year.
microdosing?
That and training camps away from anti doping authorities. Its long since I've seen the source but depending on where you have a training camp anti doping authorities need to fly in for random tests (tenerife, colombia etc etc.) and those doping are able to utilize that fact to alter how much substances they use or avoid the control taking 1 of 3 strikes for whereabouts. That and using altitude to justify changes in blood values.
It's true Tenerife is ideal for making it more difficult for testing, however it is also ideal for winter and early season altitude training for EU teams. There probably isn't a better place for it.
I'm surprised they haven't set up a testing lab there.
cyclists have to tell doping authorities where they are, where they are going to be. that's the rules.
so, if the doping authorities decide they don't want to go to Tenerife, etc, where training camps are widely known, is that really the fault of the cyclists? also , altitude does in fact alter blood values.
This is not quite how it works.
Take Tenerife, here you have 2 cases, either the test is done by an agent of the spanish anti doping agency (which nobody has considered credible since the 1992 olympics) or the rider's own national Agency. To go to Teide you have 2 airports and not a lot of routes coming up to the hotels. You can spot someone coming in a Mile away. Just like the runners did in either Kenya or Ethiopia (I think it was Kenya) the top camp is hours away from everything, you are quite isolated, just need someone to spot the route and give you a call.
Also, just in general there are areas so isolated nobody bothers to go test, or the local anti doping agency is useless. Prime example is Michael Rasmussen. Pretended he was in a camp in Mexico because he knew damn well that nobody would try to test him out there.
Also for a bit in the late 2010's South Africa camps were popular with cyclist, in fairly isolated regions with a local anti doping agency that wans't doing shit. Those camps seems to have only stopped due to the dangerosity of the roads.
not trying to argue, but WADA documents 3 agencies that can test anywhere at anytime. Surely, if the UCI or WADA suspects doping in training camps, no matter where they are, they have the authority to test. You can't just ride away from doping control and think you successfully evaded the test. Tenerife is an island but the training routes/roads are very well known. If doping control decides to set up there for a month or 2, the riders will know of course, but the possibility of a test at any time would be known as well. Its impossible to imagine that doping control just winks at the teams with the understanding that if you train in Tenerife, you can microdose etc and no one will test during the entire time.
Recall when Froome complained to the UCI that no testing occurred in 2014 when training in Tenerife:
The point is tests are less likely and if they happen you know they will happen.
It’s no cleaner now than in the 90s imo. Most the same people are leading the sport and doping advances has far outpaced the testing.
It's simply amazing there are people who look at the Pogacar freakshow and think it's clean/normal
What, you don't believe in someone doing a Landis, every weekend, all year, no matter the parcourse?
/s
When did he do that?
I'd love to see Pogačar going solo with 127 km to go, 1 HC and 1 1C climbs to go. You should have plenty of examples if he is doing it every weekend.
"Doing a Landis” wasn’t meant to suggest he was literally doing the same thing, but rather as an shorthand for an unbelievable, long solo effort. The kind that makes you question what you’re seeing.
And he seems to be doing it all the time…
Don't watch.
I don't anymore when he is racing. Shame really.
Same. I turned off a lot of races this year just because of him.
Why would we need to be worried
It has been, is, and always will be dirty as long as there’s money in it.
Compared with athletics and swimming - from what I know of them - cycling is clean as a whistle.
Duh. Obvi.
Man they really had to stretch to write a whole article around that quote
Of course it's not clean. The times are significantly faster than the times during the Lance Armstrong era. And they try to sell the gullible noobs that it's due to better training and nutrition and bike technology 😂 If you believe that, you are retarded. No joke. For God sake looks at tadejs coach and his history. Just enjoy the sport for the entertainment it is but don't think it is clean... What is the half life of epo....
He’s right, but also at what point is the regime too stringent? There does have to be a balance or resources and the UCI and doping authorities can’t track these athletes 24/7. Testing at the grand tours and routine draws on winners and jersey leaders is good as well.
I say enjoy it now, assume positive intent and clean sport unless proven otherwise, and let the racers race.
Since caffeine = PED, nobody is clean. It doesn't matter if it is legal or not.
Same for me, I'm on drugs too since I drink coffee everyday.