In comparison with the scale of performance gain available courtesy of EPO or blood bags, I can't help thinking that 1-2% is neither here nor there. Mind you, if usage up to a certain threshold doesn't require a TUE, that's an invitation to healthy athletes to take the piss. Personally, I'd prefer to see
any use of salbutamol by an athlete require a TUE if they're competing in an event under WADA rules. And I'm not too sure about supermarket pharmacies selling inhalers either, even though it could be handy if you mis-timed dealing with the repeat prescription and you ran out before you the new scrip back from your GP...
Regarding Armstrong and medical exemptions, Armstrong himself denied having any TUEs at the press conference in Tarbes during the 1999 TdF, round about the time that a French paper had got a tip that he had returned a positive for steroids.
When the team discovered that the newspaper had received the tip, panic hit Armstrong and his inner-circle, according to Emma O'Reilly, a soigneur from Ireland who worked with the team and specifically with Armstrong. She was in the hotel room after the 15th Tour stage when, she says, Armstrong and team officials devised a plan.
"They agreed to backdate a medical prescription," O'Reilly tells SI. "They'd gotten a heads up that [Armstrong's] steroid count was high and decided they would actually do a backdated prescription and pretend it was something for saddle sores."
In violation of its own protocol requiring a TUE for use of such a drug, officials from the UCI announced that Armstrong had used a corticosteroid for his skin and his positive result was excused.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/magazine/05/23/lance.armstrong/index.html#ixzz29TP3Vy9tSpeaking of which, never mind the alleged personal donation from Lance to the UCI "for a Sysmex machine"/to cover up the 2001 Tour de Suisse positive (depending on one's POV), the latest juicy allegation is that Nike paid the UCI $500,000 to cover up the cortisone positive:
The NY Daily News reports that Kathy LeMond testified under oath during a 2006 deposition in the SCA arbitration case that Julian Devries, a mechanic for Armstrong’s team, had told her and others that Nike and Thom Weisel –the San Francisco banker who sponsored and part-owned Armstrong’s team - had transferred $500,000 to a Swiss bank account that belonged to Verbruggen.
The money was apparently sent to cover up a 1999 positive drug test for corticosteroids, which Armstrong had used to treat saddle sores.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/report-did-nike-pay-dollar-500000-to-verbruggen-to-cover-up-armstrong-positiveInterestingly, check this report from 2005:
http://velonews.competitor.com/2005/09/news/former-german-cycling-president-blasts-ucis-handling-of-armstrong-case_8889“There is obviously a strong relationship with Armstrong,” Schenk added. “The UCI took a lot of money from Armstrong – to my knowledge 500,000 dollars – and now there is speculation that there are financial connections to Armstrong, as well as the American market. I do not know what sort of connections Verbruggen has.”
