Kloden gets bitch slapped !

Packeteer

Most people on these forums are argueing about doping that have no idea how it is done. You are mostly speculating on something you dont understand.

You can catch someone doping with their own blood because you can measure the level of reticulocytes vs. RBC count. If there are many mature RBC's and low reticiculocyte count that points to a tranfusion.

Also as far as taking straight EPO one way to get around the testing goes like this. You take EPO and your crit goes up. Before testing you inject saline into your blood thinning it out down to a normal crit level. You take the test and have a normal crit. Your body then passes out the extra water soon thereafter and you have high crit again.

Where there is a will there is a way. Anyone who thinks they are certain someone is cheating is wrong. Not to say everyone is cheating, i just mean that you can only be certain they ARE cheating. Unfortunatly you can never REALLY prove someone is clean.

We just have to watch and enjoy regardless.

fscyclist

Just curious, where does your understanding come from?

Reticulocyte index has never been used to find someone guilty of a doping offense. If I'm wrong, please correct me.

Packeteer

I dont know what evidence everyone who has been caught for doping has had used against them. I do know however that reticulocytes can be an idicator of doping although it would not surprise me if it cant be used in a court or arbitration. Just because someone s not convicted doesn't mean they didn't do it.

Most of my understanding comes from my experiance in bodybuilding from before i started as a cyclist. PED's are discussed fairly openly in the bodybuilding community. Once i got into cycling i was of course curious about how the cycling community viewed the drugs used in our sport.

I am not only a memeber of this forum but other forums dedicated to bodybuilding as well as forums dedicate to PED's exclusivly. Look online and you can find where people discuss openly the facts of how easy or difficult each drug is to use and not be caught with.

In my opinion doping is unpreventable. That may be the case but i also believe cycling is getting cleaner and cleaner. The big problem i see is when we go from a fairly even playing field of dopers to a future peleton where almost nobody dopes. At that point doping would give someone a huge advantage and i believe most of those future winners would be dopers. The cost benefit balance would shift towards doping being a benefit and would make it impossible for some to resist. This will lead to many champions being dopers and inevitably being caught.

The future looks pretty bleak to me but i hope that it can be solved. I wish i had the answer myself.

fscyclist

Agree with your last post, but in the previous posts, you stated you could catch a doper with a retic count. It is certainly a marker, but not enough to definitively state someone is transfusing. Could it be used in arbitration as supporting evidence? I don't know - more of a legal question, but it would definetely have to be used in conjunction with more solid evidence.

Also, retic count won't help if someone is tranfusing with whole blood (in short term testing). I've still been unable to find out how Fuentes was transfusing, with whole blood or PRBCs. If anyone knows, please post. If you get a transfusion of PRBCs your retic count (%) will drop which would be a good marker of autologous tranfusion. However, if you receive whole blood the retic count will remain the same until your body supresses rbc production which would take days to weeks. And if you're using EPO, it won't drop at all. For someone transfusing for a certain special event or stage it would remain undetectable at the time of the race or shortly thereafter. Whole blood is rarely if ever used for transfusion purposes in medicine, but I am very curious to know if doping 'doctors' are using it for these purposes.

On another subject, I've noticed a lot of former bodybuilders who start cycling on this forum. Do you race? And if so, how do you fare? I raced for a long time, and I can guarantee you no one mistook me for a bodybuilder. Just wonder how all that muscle mass affects your performance.

Packeteer

As for the reticulocytes you are right that is more of a legal question if it can be used against someone. It can however be used by me and you to get a good guess if someone is doping.

I am also very curious what methods the doctors use, particularly Fuentes. I personally know much more about EPO and steroids/testosterone than i do about blood doping. Fuentes obviously got away with it from a testing perspective, he knew something we still dont. Not only do me, you, and all the admitted dopers i have discussed this with not know how he got away with it but all the anti doping agencies haven't seemed to figure it out yey. This is why i think its silly for people to assume Lance was clean. Ullrich didn't get caught but we still all know he doped however Lance and Jan are matters for a different discussion.

To me the facts are quite clear. Doping is widespread because it is so easy to pass the tests. 100% negative tests in the peleton does not mean everyone is clean unfortunatly.

I do race but I am actually not a big bodybuilder, i never competed as a bodybuilder. I was somewhat overweight as i got into cycling. At the time i was not cycling competativly, it was just for general fitness. I took up bodybuilding and filled out my thin frame that i was born with at the same time i worked off all the fat. When i was doing bodybuilding i never intended to get huge, just very well defined and keep my weight down. I ended up loving cycling more than bodybuilding so that is what i do now.

I currently race and am a pretty good climber. Learning how to keep my weight down and performance up has helped with my cycling. One thing i have noticed however is how rediculously skinny climbing specialists are. Competative bodybuilders are a lot like climbers. They want to get their fat levels down to rediculous levels while maintaining their muscle. It is very hard to get your fat down that low without losing a lot of strength. I can obviously confirm myself you can climb well without steroids. However it is a HUGE help to use them and sometimes i wonder.

TheDarkLord

So what do they do when they transfuse blood to anemic patients or during surgery? I'm talking of cases where donors donate blood shortly before it is transfused into the patient.

Packeteer

I am not a doctor but i am pretty sure this is rare. All the blood used in a hospital is screened for safety. I would guess it is very rare for them to take blood and not process and test it before use.

Crankyfeet

I have talked with another retired cyclist who has doped on steroids. He said that it made a huge difference as well. And once you feel that power and extra performance... it is very hard to race/perform without it.

He also mentioned that he got most of his info...and even sourced the steroids... from bodybuilding forums on the net.

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fscyclist

That sort of case would be exceptionally rare in a modern medical setting. Recepients of blood (at least in the US) receive it from a monitored and highly controlled blood bank; there may be an exception or two out there, but it would be very rare.

Blood is separated into its different components to treat different conditions and avoid waste. As stated earlier, whole blood transfusions are exceedingly rare (in the US at least), but in the doping world it may be different. Don't know, but would like to find out.

Malkmus

Damn. Seriously, my team was considering bringing their doctor to the US during the offseason for some training advice. We should have done it because I would be flying by now.

fscyclist

I don't think Fuentes had any secret solutions. Autologous transfusions can't be detected with a validated, accurate, and 'legal' test. The people who got caught were performing homologous transfusions, which to me is crazy. Defeating the EPO test still appears to be very easy. I also think manipulating the parameters of the new 'blood passport' is going to be rather easy.

When I raced, there was a point where I would get too skinny. You knew it when you got there as you would start to lose power, feel fatigued and get sick easily. To me, that is where the drugs, especially steroids, have got to help. You can continue to lose fat while maintaining muscle mass and stamina. I never used drugs, but I certainly wonder what it would have been like to have them. I think they have to make a big difference in the top amateur ranks even with just a simple steroid plan; especially when you're racing from March to November.

Packeteer

Steroids are a huge benefit to recovery, in fact that is all they really do. Many bodybuilders hit the weights twice a day because their body recovers nearly fully in the few hours between sessions. Imagine if instead of being able to ride a century training ride 4-5 times a week you can ride 2 such training rides a day. Also include some heavy interval work in there and you can imagine how steroids help. Also consider how many local races often have a TT and a crit on the same day with some road races before and/or after.

I have considered steroid use but decided against it. In bodybuilding it is a level playing field but in amateur cycling i doubt many are doping. My main problem is that i do martial arts several times a week which leaves me too drained to ride a bike even just to go on a nice summer ride.

I wanted to justify it and take a low amount of steroids in order to simply participate in 2 sports at once, not have an edge in either. The problem with this is that it would make me doubt every victory i ever had. I would always wonder if it was the drugs winning or my hard work. It really lets me appreciate the circles of rationalization that goes through someone's head when they dope and i feel sorry for those that are simply under too much pressure to resist.

I can feel the pressure the drugs have and my job is not even on the line. I can only imagine how hard it would be to avoid taking drugs if i was a pro. I guess the obvious thing is that until the scandals got REALLY bad nobody even made a real effort to stop the doping.

As for the "Blood Passport" system i dont think it does anything. One of the tactics of using EPO goes like this. You are currently "on" EPO so your hemocrit is obviously too high. When it comes time for testing you simply put saline into your bloodstream right before testing. It doesn't take much and it lowers your crit for the moment. Your body expels the water soon after the testing and you are back to your high crit. This is not the only way people avoid it and it is in fact one of the most simple ways to pass a test. This does however show that just because someone's crit is "normal" does not mean they don't have lots of extra RBC's in their veins.

hawkeye87

Add to the fact that even with a diluted system throwing off other tests, take Di Luca's 2007 Giro case, the authorities cannot make a unusually low result in something stick in arbitration or court. That makes the odds even more stacked against those that would stop doping.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." -- Wayne Gretzsky

fscyclist

You'd be surprised...