Doesn’t look good for the testing crowd.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/sports/cycling/26micro.html
Old doping was kind of crude. We are now well on our way towards the concept of “blue printing” applied to athletes bodies. Blue Printing is a common practice in sports like car racing, sailboats etc which involve production based classes. For example, in some motor sports classes, cars must meet the production specifications for the important parts in the engine and car but due to variances in production, most cars don’t run up against the limits of every specification. So, the top teams with big budgets take their car apart and put it back together again with parts that are right on spec. For example, if a piston must weigh no less then X grams, they weigh 100 production pistons until they find 6 or 8 that are right at the limit and rebuild the engine with those. There are little variations in the stock engine computers so they will dino test the car with 12 different production ECU chips until they find the one that produces the most power. In the end, the car meets all the production specs but performs measurably better than any car that actually came off the production line. That is perfectly legal (and legit) in most motor sports classes but its a new concept when applied to the human body.
The same thing is now happening in athletics. If the max level of hemocrit is 50, everyone will take just enough EPO in undetectable doses to get to 50.
apples and oranges, one is a legal method the other isn’t
this is probably widely done in T&F/marathon/tennis etc where they only have to pass a test, no HcT limit but in cycling not so much
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Great read, thanks for the link! Now go re-read it and replace every mention of EPO with ALCOHOL! Imagine being able to get away with drinking on the job and never getting busted for being smashed! How awesome would that be?
Despite improvements to the urine test, Ashenden said that microdoses still evaded it, assuming that the samples were not taken from athletes in the middle of the night. Although it is theoretically possible under WADA’s rules for testers to wake up athletes, they have been reluctant to take that step because athletes already complain about the intrusiveness of testing.
Really? So I know the whole innocent until proven guilty idea. But are we really going to allow a group of people who as a whole have proven themselves to be dopers then dictate when they can be tested due to convenience?
Perhaps they should secretly focus on the best athletes for specific durations of time during critical training periods. Literally have the investigator test them 3 times per day for 4 weeks straight.
Conversely are people going to let agencies like WADA ban people who may be innocent b/c their testing is flawed and results in false positives.
It’s a 2 edged sword.
Interesting about race car parts. That’s how speed bins on semiconductors work too. The fast & slow chips come off the same line, just labeled & priced differently after they are tested.
Sounds like golf with the high C.O.R. drivers. Some of the “legal” drivers would fall out of the allowed specification, due to manufacturing differences. Then the hot drivers were used by some of the pros.
Interesting about race car parts. That’s how speed bins on semiconductors work too. The fast & slow chips come off the same line, just labeled & priced differently after they are tested.
Except in semiconductors, most of the binned parts are higher specced, then downgraded to satisfy market needs 
On topic: so let’s assume this is all true and all…and the doping public stays ahead of the testing game. What do you do now? Do you regulate them to a certain Hct level, keep track of their blood volume (is there even a way? Safely, that is), watch general hormonal levels?
It’s an interesting quandary, but not one unknown to other fields. Just change a piece of illegal equipment for an overspec blood count and it’s about the same. Replace the part, disqualify for the event and move on, IMHO.
For those who might not have seen it, there’s an older but good interview with Ashenden at Velocity Nation:
http://velocitynation.com/content/interviews/2009/michael-ashenden
In light of the recent public discussion re. Lance’s donation to the UCI and whether it might have been in exchange for something, I’ll draw your attention to this quote near the end of the interview:
- Do financial payments influence outcomes? Interesting point. Its public record that Armstrong donated $1.5 million to the Indiana University Hospital a few days after his oncologist delivered an affidavit stipulating Armstrong’s medical treatment. Its also public record that Armstrong paid an undisclosed sum to the UCI who were responsible for conducting and reporting his doping controls (I say ‘undisclosed’ because under oath Armstrong could not remember how much, to whom, or when he made the payment, only that he did send them money whilst he was competing). Moreover, Armstrong benefited to the tune of $5 million from the SCA case, yet his testimony/evidence was relied upon. Perhaps financial remuneration, and how that influences your conduct, is a tricky issue to tackle? So, back to my original point: if one asserts that financial payments may influence expert witnesses carrying out their duties, then one must also acknowledge that it is conceivable that financial payments might influence other entities as well.
So, according to Frankie and Betsy Andreu and Stephanie McIlvain, Lance told his doctors that he had taken a bunch of PEDs. Later he donates 1.5 million after they provide a useful affidavit. He later donated a large amount of money (apparently $100,000, but somewhere else I saw $500,000) to the UCI.
Were either of these donations in reality a quid pro quo for silence re. their knowledge? It can be tough to prove, but certainly one needs to entertain the possibility.
and then they take drugs to change the partial pressure of oxygen in the blood and we are back to step 1
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partial pressure of oxygen on relates to the O2 carried in the plasma, which accounts for about 1% of the total O2 in the blood.
plus, to change the pO2 in the blood, you need to change the pO2 in the lungs (by changing the pO2 in the atmosphere). so, they can carry supplemental O2, race in a hyperbarric chamber, or change the structure of the pulmonary system.
so really, athletes are much more likely to stick with altering the hemoglobin/RBCs.