It’s official, http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2004/nov04/nov01news. Phonak has confirmed Perez’ positive for blood doping…still spouting the same line about proving the proof…guess we’ll see. Starting to sound like Phonak is more interested in covering their own asses and not just their riders.
All pro cyclist most certainly do not dope. C’mon Greg, that is a stretch.
-SD
it’s it funny how all these world champions and hi profile cyclist are being caught for doping? it’s interesting that even these doping athletes are getting a sound thrashing by lance. how can he be that much stronger then the world’s best athlete (who are on drugs)?
lets not forget that at the age of 16 he already had a VO2 of 86 or something. that goes along way to making him that much stronger, and don’t discount the fact that he dropped almost 20lbs during cancer, and regained all/more of his power, plus the fact the he was on EPO during his chemo out of necessity…not trying to defend him, just think some of these factors get forgotten. personally, i don’t think it is humanly natural to go throught the kind of stress they do on a daily basis without some help…
How can you use positive drug tests by a small minority of riders as proof that allriders are positive. If you believe that the testing is never wrong then they prove that most riders aren’t doping. Also, regarding LA he isn’t much better than most other superelite riders. He is a little better at the one race a year he specifically targets and no one else does.
Everyone always says you have to dope to win, so if no one doped then no one would win? Look at the results for the tour right before EPO and steroids. Sure its faster now according to average speed, but when you factor in the time trial bicycles and the fact that riders attack from the gun rather than wait until midway through a stage it doesn’t seem so out of line.
I’m not saying doping isn’t a problem, its hugh but I just don’t think everyone does it.
Styrrell
How can you use positive drug tests by a small minority of riders as proof that allriders are positive.
the world’s best are doping. how is the average guy going to try and compete with that?
If you believe that the testing is never wrong then they prove that most riders aren’t doping.
you’re kidding right? david millar never tested positive. testing negative doesn’t mean innocent, it sometimes just means you didn’t get caught that time.
Also, regarding LA he isn’t much better than most other superelite riders. He is a little better at the one race a year he specifically targets and no one else does.
yah nobody else tries to peak for the tour they just go in there “hoping” for a good result becasue you know what they say about thinking positively. it the biggest most important race in cycling his rivals are also trying to peak, he blows all of them away.
Everyone always says you have to dope to win, so if no one doped then no one would win?
what type of logic is this? i don’t know what to say. i picture a pack sprint where everyone slams on the brakes, gets off their bikes just before the finish line and goes, “see you tomorrow richard”, “take care jacque”, “make sure you say hi to the mrs eric.” then an empty podium.
Look at the results for the tour right before EPO and steroids. Sure its faster now according to average speed, but when you factor in the time trial bicycles and the fact that riders attack from the gun rather than wait until midway through a stage it doesn’t seem so out of line.
right before drugs? and what year would that be?
I’m not saying doping isn’t a problem, its hugh but I just don’t think everyone does it.
i think the problem is people turning a blind eye to a big problem in sport.
Post:
How can you use positive drug tests by a small minority of riders as proof that allriders are positive.
the world’s best are doping. how is the average guy going to try and compete with that? You are using circular logic. Sure some of the best are doping, but that doesn’t prove all are. The average guy can’t compete anyways (hence average).
If you believe that the testing is never wrong then they prove that most riders aren’t doping.
you’re kidding right? david millar never tested positive. testing negative doesn’t mean innocent, it sometimes just means you didn’t get caught that time. Exactly my point. Whenever someone tests positive and says the test is wrong everyone says no way, the test is infallible. Whenever someone admits to doping and never tests positive, then suddenly the tests are not always right. I am highly skeptical whenever someone says a test isd in error, but I defend thier right to challenge the test (while under an interim suspension).
Also, regarding LA he isn’t much better than most other superelite riders. He is a little better at the one race a year he specifically targets and no one else does.
yah nobody else tries to peak for the tour they just go in there “hoping” for a good result becasue you know what they say about thinking positively. it the biggest most important race in cycling his rivals are also trying to peak, he blows all of them away. **** ** **Okay so who else has a team devoted solely to one rider and one race? Even Ullrich and Hamilton had other teamates with other objectives all year long. Ullrich will even lead out part of the sprint train for Zabel in the early stages of the tour.
Everyone always says you have to dope to win, so if no one doped then no one would win?
what type of logic is this? i don’t know what to say. i picture a pack sprint where everyone slams on the brakes, gets off their bikes just before the finish line and goes, “see you tomorrow richard”, “take care jacque”, “make sure you say hi to the mrs eric.” then an empty podium. Again my point exactly. You always hear people state as proof of widespread doping that you can’t win a tour without doping. Of course you can. If no one was doped then someone would still win.
Look at the results for the tour right before EPO and steroids. Sure its faster now according to average speed, but when you factor in the time trial bicycles and the fact that riders attack from the gun rather than wait until midway through a stage it doesn’t seem so out of line.
right before drugs? and what year would that be? Well I said right before EPO and Steroids. Approximately the early 80s for EPO and early 70s for steroids. Before that the drug regimines probably hurt performance more than helped.
I’m not saying doping isn’t a problem, its hugh but I just don’t think everyone does it.
i think the problem is people turning a blind eye to a big problem in sport. **** Totally agreed. If I ran the world any needles would be banned in races (so dehydrated you need an IV, fine, but you are out of the race). Big tours would have a central team of doctors who would have to control the administration of all medicine or your suspended. Any athlete caught taking a “soft” banned drug (basically abusing OTC drugs) would be suspended for a year with the team fined something significant (5% of their budget?). Anyone caught taking a “hard” drug (EPO, Steroid, etc) would be banned for life and the team suspended for a month and fine a large amount.
I agree with you - it’s a really big problem. However, they random test Lance ALL the time, in season and off. How do you explain the fact that they have never found anything?
Like Secretariat was - Lance is a genetic mutant.
Can you enlighten me? I’m really curious to know how they beat the tests. I have followed the EPO/doping scandals pretty closely since I worked at AMGEN as a biologist for 5 years.
Its going to be hard to get good answers, mainly because the people who really know how to beat the tests aren’t going to give up their secrets. For urine tests the “classic” way is to have clean urine put in your ladder. For blood tests I suspect that beating the test involves knowing when to avoid testing and when to stop doping. Depending on the test “masking” agents have been taken, but when these come to light they are added to the banned list.
Styrrell
The drugs are pretty maliable. They simply develop a variant that goes undetected by the current test. Then the wait for the doping commission to catch up and then they move again – HGH, EPO, next drug, next drug. Sort of like the US looking for Osama Bin Laden. You know he is there but you can’t catch him.
If you want to get some insight into the history of doping and how people cheat tests, read Willie Voets book. It’s poorly written and he has motive but it is in fact insightful.
I think the fact pattern in cycling seems to indicate that a broad range of cyclists are on PEDs or have been on PEDs at some point in there career. I find it hard to believe that LA is in fact the “one clean cyclist”. Your off-season random testing concept is in fact not all together true. Lance is tested the same amount as everyone else, and if cycling is anything like other pro sports then you have ample knowledge that the “pissman” is coming.
Maybe those dopers are only pros because they had to dope. So there doping just allows them to get along in the peloton. I would say that’s where the majority of dopers are. Also look to those who are very good for only a short while. Those at the top and then flounder are certainly suspect.
I’m not sure I agree that drugs are pretty maleable and varients easy to formulate that are effective and safe. If so many athletes are using untested varients, it’s a wonder we haven’t seen mass mortality. IMO
There are a number of young American cyclists who have developed serious medical conditions as a result of what they believe, in hindsight, to have been doping. A year or two ago I think 20/20 or one of the other news magazines did a story on some of them. I believe that a lot of the folks who were doping back in the day, probably had little if any idea what they were really putting their body through and what the consequences were.
I think BALCO’s ability to create numerous steroids and steriod delivery mechanisms in a short period of time is, to me, an indication of how maleable this stuff can be to some funded and motivated scientists.
I read a lot of David Millar’s “confessions”. He says that the main way they avoid testing is to take their drugs while they at their training camps, combined with intense training. These are usually done in places such as Spain where the national federations do not do a lot of testing, and they are able to hear about random testing in advance. EPO can usually be detected in the urine a few days after taking it.
Millar does say that he doesnt think Lance uses PED’s, just that he has an “obsession with winning that borders on the pathological”. That might or might not be true.
As they start to push to have the WADA jurisdiction increased rather than relying on national federations these drug riding vacations may no longer be available.
In the early 80 a lot of riders were dying in their sleep in the netherlands, likely due to, but never proven to be drugs.
Also I would be curious to see studies of the mortalily rate of athletes compared to the general population.
Or a study on the number of bald pro riders vs the general population.
I am not saying Santiago Perez and Tyler Hamilton are innocent, b/c the jury is still out on them in regard to the validity of the tests. Lots of cancer testing done in the past that was thought to be infalliable has turned out to product false positives and inaccurate results. Personnally, at this point I have to believe that they are in fact guilty…it is hard to believe that the UCI and IOC would use an illegitimate test. However, I believe it is possible that the IOC, WADA, UCI, etc…have the potential to adopt a drug test without it being fully tested and determined to be sound 99.999…% of the time. I do have some concerns in regard to this quote:
“the work of its scientific panel is being made difficult by the fact that neither the UCI nor the IOC will release a full set of documents describing the tests” Cyclingnews, 01/11/04
If the above is true, and I am not saying it is, but if it is one has to question why the organizations have not released the scientific documents in regard to the testing methods. As a result, one must ask the question, is the UCI/IOC trying to hide something. Is it possible the organizations know there are potential cracks in the testing methods which will result in the testing being deemed invalid, but is trying to cover their tracks. This is of course unlikely, but if the above statement is true, one must question the fairness of denying crucial information to alleged dopers who are attempting to prove their innocence. Innocent until proven guilty is still important in my books.
I am not saying Santiago Perez and Tyler Hamilton are innocent, b/c the jury is still out on them in regard to the validity of the tests. Lots of cancer testing done in the past that was thought to be infalliable has turned out to product false positives and inaccurate results. Personnally, at this point I have to believe that they are in fact guilty…it is hard to believe that the UCI and IOC would use an illegitimate test. However, I believe it is possible that the IOC, WADA, UCI, etc…have the potential to adopt a drug test without it being fully tested and determined to be sound 99.999…% of the time. I do have some concerns in regard to this quote:
“the work of its scientific panel is being made difficult by the fact that neither the UCI nor the IOC will release a full set of documents describing the tests” Cyclingnews, 01/11/04
If the above is true, and I am not saying it is, but if it is one has to question why the organizations have not released the scientific documents in regard to the testing methods. As a result, one must ask the question, is the UCI/IOC trying to hide something. Is it possible the organizations know there are potential cracks in the testing methods which will result in the testing being deemed invalid, but is trying to cover their tracks. This is of course unlikely, but if the above statement is true, one must question the fairness of denying crucial information to alleged dopers who are attempting to prove their innocence. Innocent until proven guilty is still important in my books.
this quote is quite interesting and brings up some good points. the fact of the matter is the “guilty” athletes are the ones put this “invalid spin” on the testing procedures. realistically wada isn’t going to institute a crappy test for that sake of testing itself. they know they are going to be challenged legally on the best of tests. how could they ever be able to get positve result from a bad test to stick? in the process they would piss away a small fortune. they are like any company with on a budget. focusing on tasks they can afford and passing on others that aren’t financially viable.
and think about this. tyler isn’t talking. he’s not giving reasoning for the positive. it almost looks like he’s looking for an answer himself. wada giving phonak info is like funding tyler’s defense. phonak has no business being involved really. this is between tyler and wada with phonak being an interested on looker. let tyler do his own research and present it and see it holds up to the wada’s data.
wada giving phonak info is like funding tyler’s defense. phonak has no business being involved really. this is between tyler and wada with phonak being an interested on looker. let tyler do his own research and present it and see it holds up to the wada’s data.
First let me say, I find it hard to believe that both Tyler and Perez are clean.
But with that said, if the WADA tests are to be believed they should be willing to forward all of the data that was used as a basis for developing the test. If they don’t if gives the impression that the validity of the testing is suspect and they are hiding that fact. Also how can someone defend himself from a test when he doesn’t know how the test is performed and the details of how a positive is generated.
Second, Phonak has a lot of money invested in Tyler and they would like to make sure their investment pays off. If Phonak believes he is clean they should help him in his defense, it is in their best interest. But if they find out he is not, then he should (and will) be sent packing in a heartbeat.
I wonder what the reaction would have been if Perez tested positive first and then Tyler tested positive a couple of months later.