Tour de France 2020

[Nick H.]

What's the verdict on Indurain? He had one issue with salbutamol/asthma TUE, but I was always prepared to buy the argument that he was a physical freak - you could see his lungs inflating where there ought to have been just stomach. There are others making the physical freak argument for Pogacar, whose blood processing capability is said to be once in a generation.   

[spesh]

Kelly's record is tainted to a similar degree to Merckx et al.  The odd positive test with plausible denial.

Popped twice (1984 and 1988). The first time was quite funny in retrospect - according to Willy Voet (remember him?), he'd tried the old urine switcheroo to mask taking ephedrine to treat bronchitis, not realising that the team mechanic who supplied it had been taking Stimul in order to stay awake while driving the team truck.

The second time was for codeine - his excuse being that he'd swigged from a bottle of cough medicine between the end of the race and attending doping control, the eejit...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Kelly_(cyclist)#Doping

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Indurain was likely on EPO but didn’t want to take dangerous amounts to beat Riis.

[rafletcher]

PDM had to pull out of the 1991 Tour de France because of a doping problem.
http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/results/archives/dec97/dec1.html

I remember that at the time, but was the IV feed that caused the problem illegal?

[LittleWheelsandBig]

I thought no needles was well after PDM (20 years?) but don’t keep too much track of that sort of minutia. PDM sticks in my memory because I worked in a shop that sold Concorde race bikes at that time.

[Nick H.]

Is there a list of untestable substances which today's dopers are suspected of using?

[Peter]

You want some?!

[αdαmsκι]

Synthetic hemoglobin is one thing:

https://runningmagazine.ca/the-scene/the-new-drug-in-endurance-doping/

https://www.stickybottle.com/latest-news/new-unknown-blood-doping-drug-used-for-years-in-cycling-investigators-find/

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/operation-aderlass-investigators-discover-new-doping-product/

[rob]

Kelly rode for PDM 1989-91.

Sorry to bust some illusions. I didn’t enjoy learning this stuff as a callow youth either.

Kelly gets mentioned in David Walsh’s book on Lance.  I think their relationship wasn’t really the same afterwards.  Also see Kimmage’s tough anti-doping pieces and how he fell out with Roche afterwards.

[rob]

Kelly rode for PDM 1989-91.

Sorry to bust some illusions. I didn’t enjoy learning this stuff as a callow youth either.

I didn’t make the link at the time as I was also pretty young.  I do remember the whole team withdrawing and blaming it on illness.

[Karla]

What's the verdict on Indurain? He had one issue with salbutamol/asthma TUE, but I was always prepared to buy the argument that he was a physical freak - you could see his lungs inflating where there ought to have been just stomach. There are others making the physical freak argument for Pogacar, whose blood processing capability is said to be once in a generation.

The issue with that is that your lungs are seriously overspecced, which is why smokers and people with one lung can still lead relatively normal lives, and is why Dr Hutch hasn't yet beaten Eddy Merckx, despite having an absolutely huge pair of lungs. 

Your lungs aren't the limiting factor: that's the ability of your heart and your blood to transport oxygen from your lungs to where it's needed.

[andyoxon]

...There are others making the physical freak argument for Pogacar, whose blood processing capability is said to be once in a generation.

Any source/info for this?

[fd3]

From a skill POV, in Football (of any code) if you take EPO you can keep running for longer, this won't help you ,,,,,,,,,, run round the opposition. 

Yes it would.

I think I see what you did there, but I disagree.  Running about in circles for 45 mins will not give you a significant level of fatigue that EPO will alleviate.  In association footy you don't get a significant drop at the end of matches unless you're in a cup tie with teams in very different leagues.  You'll see this more often in Rugby, but there it's fatigue that makes them make wrong decisions or drop passes.  I don't think EPO will help with that either.
Do correct me if I'm wrong.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

EPO is used by 100m sprinters to help them train harder and to recover better from high training volumes.

[Mr Larrington]

Football players know the game is only going to last 90 minutes too, so when a cup-tie goes into extra time they drop like flies.  A family friend who used to coach the Army Apprentices' footie team reckoned that his junior squaddies were fitter over the longer haul than the foopballers.

[giropaul]

Football players know the game is only going to last 90 minutes too, so when a cup-tie goes into extra time they drop like flies.  A family friend who used to coach the Army Apprentices' footie team reckoned that his junior squaddies were fitter over the longer haul than the foopballers.

I understand that an EPO test on various sports showed the highest % use was in football players, especially in Italy.

[giropaul]

It seems that a branch of the French Police ( not the usual sports doping section), searched Arkea team rooms late last week.
They have just announced that an official investigation has been launched based on that search, which would seem to indicate that they found something. May or may not be pharmaceutical of course.

[Hot Flatus]

They found some equipment

[T42]

Two people being held in custody, apparently Quintana's personal physiotherapist & doctor. "Numerous" health products and medicines seized along with a "plan that could be characterized as a doping régime".  The team and its staff are not concerned.

- https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/bretagne/ille-et-vilaine/rennes/soupcons-dopage-arkea-samsic-equipe-que-son-staff-pas-mis-cause-emmanuel-hubert-manager-general-1876148.html  and reports on the radio

[DuncanM]

From a skill POV, in Football (of any code) if you take EPO you can keep running for longer, this won't help you ,,,,,,,,,, run round the opposition. 

Yes it would.

I think I see what you did there, but I disagree.  Running about in circles for 45 mins will not give you a significant level of fatigue that EPO will alleviate.  In association footy you don't get a significant drop at the end of matches unless you're in a cup tie with teams in very different leagues.  You'll see this more often in Rugby, but there it's fatigue that makes them make wrong decisions or drop passes.  I don't think EPO will help with that either.
Do correct me if I'm wrong.

Check the numbers. Football is basically a game of repeated sprints, and aerobic capacity can help you recover quicker and stop you needing to burn so much per sprint. Players get bought/sold based in part on how much distance they can cover (at a certain speed). The sprinting bit is really important - at Liverpool Charlie Adam used to cover vast distances, but incredibly slowly, meaning he was nearly in the right place for the entire game! It's entirely possible to judge your effort and pace yourself, but if it means choosing to not track a run then you are going to get into trouble. Here's an article with some actual numbers:
https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11661/11996016/premier-league-running-stats-this-season-revealed
It's not just at the end of games, you can see a trend in the numbers from about 30-45 minutes and then from about 60 minutes onwards. As well as reducing your ability to run, fatigue also impacts on fine motor control and decision making, so it impacts on the execution of skills too.
The other area where drugs help athletes, especially those in sports where there are a lot of games and the season is long is in recovery from injury, and masking the pain so you can play through injury. The number of NFL players who end their career addicted to painkillers is significant - missing a game could mean losing your place and having your million dollar contract ended.

[spesh]

Back to the Arkea-Samsic raid for a second, there's an interesting point made in one of the replies to The Inner Ring's mini-thread on Twitter:

I'm hoping this turns out to be stupidity, not cheating. Quintana had an allergic reaction after crashing into nettles four days earlier. Possible that ?steroid? treatment of that is the doping. Strict liability, and a ban would follow, but it wouldn't make him an EPO cheat etc.

https://twitter.com/malaconotus/status/1308205844484575232

Via: https://twitter.com/inrng/status/1308088639482744832

If that is the case, that's a bit of a boo-boo on his/their part - I wouldn't have thought that you'd need a TUE for dock leaves... 

[Séamas M.]

The UK libel laws offer some protection from unwanted publicity. The English language version of Willy Voet's book, Breaking The Chain, has a section that refers to an unnamed cyclist who doped, but only as much as necessary for special events. The French language version of the book names that rider as Kelly.

[rogerzilla]

I thought most doping was now out of competition - take EPO (or whatever) so you can train yourself into a superman, then ride the races clean.  There are out of competition tests but you are much less likely to be caught.  If you win a stage of the Tour, you ARE going to be tested.

How common are blood tests, btw?  What doesn't show up in urine, only in blood?

[Hot Flatus]

Blood passport logs blood values over time, and (in theory) the range of acceptable variation narrows over time

[αdαmsκι]

Other point around Arkea-Samsic is the no needles policy. So even if it is only saline or something similar, it still shouldn't be injected.