I found the article last week at Velo news interesting. Beloki states he can’t race without his cortisone inhaler for alergies since he was 3. Manzano or whoever stated that these inhalers are the prefered method to hide drug use as it masks much of the steroid family. The way he stated his absoulte need just sounded pretty desperate.
I use to be a big skeptic of drug use, however with those coming clean and all the deaths last year it’s discouraging to see the truth. Those allegations played only a small part until I heard first hand some of the stuff going on locally. Worst part is that it robs the fun and makes you doubt true accomplishments.
One guy I never doubted was Greg Lemond. He knew of the drug use and was even paranoid they’d slip it into his meals.
What I think is awesome is the perfect breeding of the Pro Cyclists who’s parents all knew that a hemocrit level over 50 was a DQ…so they have kids who all sit a 49 day after day after day…odd huh? Now that beez sum guud breedin!
"One guy I never doubted was Greg Lemond. He knew of the drug use and was even paranoid they’d slip it into his meals. "
I remember reading that in the 89 Giro Lemond was on the verge of quitting and was getting dropped everyday, when his doctor detected low Iron? After an “Iron” injection he went out and got 2nd in the final TT and then won the Tour and Worlds. If it really was just an Iron injection then why is that considered “clean” but using artificial means to raise your hemacrit to the legal level is doping? If Lemond naturally has low Iron and that hurts his performance why is he allowed to artificially raise it? Why cant Beloki say " my team doctor noticed my hemacrit was only 45. So he gave me an EPO injection to raise it to 50, now I am on the same level as the competition" Isnt that what Lemond was doing? assuming he really just got an Iron injection.
Cycling news today, another cyclist with a heart attack.
Former Lotto and US Postal Service rider Stive Vermaut (28) suffered a heart attack on Sunday after being out on his bike. He is currently in a coma in a critical condition in Roeselare hospital, Belgium. Vermaut was forced to end his career two years ago because of heart rhythm disturbances. Unfortunately his father, who also had heart problems, died two weeks ago.
Might be a coincidence, only 9 healthy cyclist died last year, statisticly might be fine but it sure is not comforting.
This is something that has always frustrated me. Beloki (or whoever) has allergies and asthma and can’t compete without his inhaler (have you ever noticed how many high level athletes have “asthma” or “allergies”?). So this guy is pre-disposed, genetically, to having asthma/allergies. Maybe he can’t even compete or train without the meds? Yet someone else, maybe who has a genetically low hematocrit, isn’t allowed to address that issue with EPO, as that drug is illegal. What’s the difference? EPO is a performance enhancer, but so are drugs which address asthma/allergies – if you can’t breathe, you can’t compete. Both are performance enhancers. It’s just that one is illegal and other is not.
Virtually any drug is a performance enhancer. Hell, even advil is. Can’t train as well if you’re in pain, right? So who decides what’s legal and what’s illegal? I’m probably the cleanest athlete on the planet, right now. I take nothing. No pain meds, no allergy meds, no anti-histamines, no cough syrup, no caffeine…
epo thickens up your blood, to the point that it’s life-threatening. they don’t just arbitrarily make certain druges illegal - with, arguably, the exception of marijuana.
Thats what I am saying. Say Beloki and I are racing together as juniors. We are neck and neck every race. I have lower hemacrit but he has asthma.We both go as hard as we can given our current physical conditions. He goes out and gets an inhaler and solves his problem and starts winning every race. I go out and take EPO and solve my problem and get back to his level. But now he is clean and I am a doper?
Good point, what if the doc tells him this to get the needle in him, very sad either way. Geez they were men back then, doing all the tours and the classics.
An albuterol inhaler is not going to raise your hematocrit level. It’s going to allow you to breathe closer to what a ‘normal’ person does. For a true asthmatic the meds are not PED’s. They simply allow you to do what you would not otherwise be able to.
Having had Asthma since child hood I have never thought that it is an advantage and would much rather not take any medication. Without the drugs I would not be able to race at all.
As a kid I certainly would not want to be told I could not play sport because if I did I would be cheating.
I guess like anything it is knowing where to you draw the line. Chris Boardman’s Career was brought to end because he suffered from an ilness that effected his recovery and the treatment would include drugs that were Banned. I guess if these drugs were then made legal just for the treatment of this ilness there would suddenly be 30 pro riders with the same ilness
"One guy I never doubted was Greg Lemond. He knew of the drug use and was even paranoid they’d slip it into his meals. "
I remember reading that in the 89 Giro Lemond was on the verge of quitting and was getting dropped everyday, when his doctor detected low Iron? After an “Iron” injection he went out and got 2nd in the final TT and then won the Tour and Worlds.
Hilarious. As you probably know, having low iron affects hematocrit and therefore blood’s oxygen carrying capacity. This would impact performance. But an iron injection wouldn’t help at all. Red blood cells last ~3months, so it would take months of repeated iron use (in a low dose) until the red blood cells were re-built back up to proper levels. A high dose iron injection would do nothing. Pro cycling is full of doping, as are most athletic endeavours these days. Sad, but true.
There, too, he faltered. In the first mountain stage LeMond lost eight minutes to the leaders. His masseur, Otto Jacome, who has been a friend of the LeMond family since Greg was 15, took one look at him afterward and said, “You are white. You need iron.”
Again LeMond had his blood tested. This time he was diagnosed as anemic, and his doctor immediately gave him an injection of iron. “I was riding myself into the ground,” LeMond says. “I was pushing so hard that I was eating into my muscles.”
I called Kathy that night and told her, ‘Get ready to sell everything. I want no obligations. If things don’t turn around, I’m quitting at the end of the year.’ " She didn’t try to talk him out of it. It was the lowest point in his cycling career.
Shortly after that phone call, things began to turn. LeMond had a second injection of iron and started feeling stronger. He actually stayed within shouting distance of the leaders on a late mountain stage of the Tour of Italy, which was such a morale booster that he wanted an all-out test. Being hopelessly out of contention in the overall standings, LeMond decided to go for broke in the final stage of the Tour of Italy, an individual time trial of just under 34 miles. He would hold nothing back, start to finish. If he ran out of gas — “blew up,” in cycling parlance — so be it. But LeMond didn’t blow up. He finished second, a whopping minute and 18 seconds ahead of Fignon, the overall winner. “It changed my entire outlook,” says LeMond. “Obviously, there was nothing wrong with me physically.”
“the story may be BS but I don’t see any good reason why it has to be”
agreed. are there any docs who can set us straight? until someone definitively explains things to this uneducated young pup, then everything will just be speculation in my book.
I am no doctor but I have heard the same things that Look486 said, that Iron injections take weeks or months to have an effect, not a couple days in the middle of a grand tour. On the other hand the Kelme guy seems to say that given the right stuff(EPO) the night before a big stage can lead to dramatic results. I am not saying Lemond doped but who knows what the team doctor really gave him? If you are ready to quit the sport you love and have dedicated your life to, and all else has failed what would you(Lemond) be willing to try?
EPO doesn’t work overnight as yoou mentioned. it takes 21 days for a blood cell to “grow” and mature. So if the speculation is that his “iron” injections were EPO that doesn’t explain it. Some of the injectable artificial blood carries could do that however.