i’ve learnt more about TUEs and these medications too. i guess thats the biggest thing, this whole area is quite secretive - you certainly get the impression that nobody wants the public to know too much about it which suggests they acknowledge it to be questionable at best.
reasonable article on cyclingnews about this
http://www.cyclingnews.com/...tue-system-at-large/
Many of the athletes who Salazar coaches have been determined to have low thyroid hormone levels and have been prescribed thyroxin. Thankfully Mo Farah and Galen Rupp’s low thyroid levels have been normalized thanks to modern medicine. Now people like Farah and Rupp can lead normal lives without being crippled by low thyroid.
I stand corrected!
. It does surprise me that most of the stimulants and glucocorticoids on the lists are not outright banned: going longer and recovering faster during off-season training could lead to huge boosts in performance in-season!
I’ve done a few courses of prednisone (never competed on it).
In the short term (3-5 days) it makes you feel like a god. But coming off of it has the exact opposite effect - like a bad hangover - that’s why they usually taper down the dose instead of going cold turkey.
Taken longer term, it has all sorts of side effects like reduced immunity, weakened bone density, weight gain. None of which are conducive to athletic performance.
Given the above, I can’t see how it would be helpful to train on the stuff OOC, and then go off of it to compete. To the contrary, I’d think it’d be detrimental to performance. A few months ago, when I was really struggling with allergies, my doctor suggested that I just go on a maintenance dose of prednisone to get me through the fall. I declined. Because I’d have to go off of it to compete, and based on my past experience, I know that being on prednisone, and then coming off of it to compete would result in worse performance than just suffering without it.
(we tried a prescription anti-histamine instead - Clarinex - and it’s been working wonderfully. Totally legal under WADA.)
I can understand how it would be really beneficial to someone to go on prednisone, starting a day or two before a race, and then to stay on it through the race (excepting 3 week grand tours). No question in my mind that the athlete would get a huge boost in performance. That’s probably why it’s banned IN competition. But allowing it OOC also makes sense to me. There can be very good reasons for needing to take it, and there’s no advantage from training on it, and then coming off of it to compete.