Taken from VeloNews By Rupert Guinness
The Daily Telegraph, This report filed September 1, 2005
Cyclists can still race the Tour de France on the illegal drug EPO without testing positive, a top Australian doping scientist has revealed.
Dr. Mike Ashenden, project manager of the international consortium Science and Industry Against Blood Doping, told The Saturday Daily Telegraph that an unreleased study shows how riders can still get away with EPO use four years after testing was introduced for the endurance-boosting protein hormone.
“There have been persistent rumours over the past years that athletes have learned to manipulate their EPO injections to escape the urine test,” Ashenden said.
"We (SIAB) have now replicated this in our own research and we know how it can be done. Our research shows that if an athlete had an expert doctor helping them, it would be possible to use EPO throughout the Tour de France without being found positive.
“If the athlete followed the program given by their doctor, the urine samples would be declared negative according to strict criteria used by anti-doping authorities.”
Ashenden is known for the development of the homologous blood-doping test, first applied at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.
The EPO research was conducted at the University of Montepellier in southern France and then analyzed at the Laboratoire National de Despistage du Dopage at Chatenay-Le Malabry near Paris.
It is at the LNDD where the six positive EPO tests of seven-time Tour champion Lance Armstrong from frozen B-samples from the 1999 race were made retrospectively - much to the protest of the Texan who has consistently denied his guilt, most recently on CNN’s Larry King Live.
The SIAB research into how EPO use can be manipulated without levels exceeding a legal threshold lasted “three to four weeks.”
It involved monitoring of a carefully timed and administered program of EPO use on two human guinea pigs or “well trained endurance subjects” who had blood and urine samples taken from them throughout the study. The doses given were similar to what a rider would use in a major event like the Tour.
They were based on regular low doses that ensured EPO readings fell under the threshold within 12 hours but held the maximum allowed level of hematocrit (the blood’s percentage of oxygen carrying red blood cells) - rather than high doses that can surpass the allowed level and then lead to a positive test.
But it did not include the added administering of undetectable drugs like human growth hormone or insulin growth factor which is a widely suspected process that can also heighten the impact of a low dose of EPO.
“We boosted their hematocrit, but kept it below the allowed 50 percent,” said Ashenden. "Then we reduced the dosage of EPO slowly over a matter of weeks, giving them two or three injections a week.
“We monitored their blood to make sure their hematocrit was high. By the end of three or four weeks, the dosage was low but the hematocrit stayed high,” he said, adding that none of the riders’ urine tests met the standard for a positive result.