Team CSC launches anti-doping programme

Triathlon Forum
1

I just received this from CSC, sounds like they are doing thier best to set things right starting in their backyard:

This week, Team CSC and Department Z at Bispebjerg Hospital in Denmark launch their joint anti-doping program.

The project will be the most comprehensive test system in professional cycling today with close to 800 tests being collected from Team CSC riders starting December this year throughout the 2007 season. The main part of the tests will be collected Out of Competition and Rasmus Damsgaard, MD, PhD, will be supervising the program.

”This program is a truly unique piece of anti-doping initiative. It is groundbreaking in both its shape and content. For me the most important thing is to guarantee the Team CSC riders a better protection of their health. They should be able to compete in a safe and healthy sport, and this project will definitely enable them to do just that. Hopefully it will also create a stir within the world of sports in general, hereby adding pressure so that more programs like this will see the light of day. This project with Team CSC will help show just how serious and uncompromising anti-doping work should be,” says Rasmus Damsgaard, who will begin his work in South Africa at Team CSC’s first training camp ahead of the new season.

”Our ambition is to be pioneers in the work against doping, so we are very proud to initiate this program. We have worked closely with Rasmus Damsgaard to develop the program and we think it gives us a unique possibility to do something for the future of cycling and maybe sport in general. I have no qualms about submitting our riders to the most rigorous tests out there, because we want cycling sport to be a clean sport. I have faith in the fact that our riders have the right attitude and I would like for them to be able to show this to the world. I am hoping this initiative will pave the way for other teams to follow and as a result help rid our sport of doping altogether. We have taken a very big step towards this and it will help demonstrate how serious we are about anti-doping, and at the same time we firmly believe that given the right conditions professional cycling has a great future ahead of it,” announces Bjarne Riis.

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“The results of the checks will be kept in a data bank that will be made available to the UCI and WADA upon request and, at the end of the 2007 season, a dossier of results will be provided to the press.”

I thought the bit about the dossier of results was interesting.

It would be encouraging if all ProTour had weekly blood/hormone profiles on all of their riders and let the results be totally transparent on a UCI website for everybody, riders and fans, to see. Then everybody could see everybody else’s profiles and the natural rhythms those profiles followed. This would be good for the riders as well in that they could closely monitor their bodies response to their training.

Plus people like numbers, and it’s one more way for a fan to track a rider. If I was a DS, I’d be doing this already, and making it public.

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Yes, it seemed a very well thought out and credible programme to me too. Let’s hope it gets taken up by other teams too.

4

Looks like CSC is not winning anything this year.

5

Looks like CSC is not winning anything this year.

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I think they had a rather good season this season given the loss of Basso and that is borne out by the fact that they won the UCI Protour team rankings again.