Ahhh, TDF today.

[dingoEsride]

for me too, I couldn't care if they do use drugs for performance enhancing after all we use motors and the scenery Is grand on board that chopper, the mountains are the best part especially coming down

[Kin]

Yeah...I think they're still extremely athletic. It might be some sort of sad dark fact that they all dope, but to get that far, and to continue the strategy and bike handleship, I still admire as athletic.

It is a shame, because the top performers (Al la Lance) make bank, but the every other tier, even on the TDF, make barely enough to make by. My brother (previously a college cyclist) argued the intense monetary pressure was a primary reason for the doping. I've also heard it can be team organized?

I kind of like the nicely engineered bikes the most. And the beautiful course. But I'd really appreciate it if I was actually there (and TDF crowds were not).

[JennyB]

I kind of like the nicely engineered bikes the most. And the beautiful course. But I'd really appreciate it if I was actually there (and TDF crowds were not).

But the crowds are half the fun!

I was there the year the year the prologue was in Dublin and the first stage finish was in Pheonix Park. Chatting to the mounted police, trying to get a vantage point that wasn't already taken, counting the national flags and the fancy dress, seeing Boardman flash by in a blur of blue and yellow, getting a photo of The Devil, watching the big screen in the park and cheering as SuperMario's team tried to get their lead-out organised, waiting, waiting, waiting, trying to identify the leaders without actually touching them, cheering on the stragglers... Then, best of all, cycling out of the park through the crowds and into the city in an informal peleton of about a dozen mad keen, mad fit bike fans.

[nicobie]

I would SOOO much rather watch sports with unlimited doping and any chemical or hormonal enhancement they come up with.

yep... who cares what they do to their bodys. We want to see fast. If they want to take a chance, so be it.

I figure, let it up to the racers to decide.

[veloman]

The issue is that those athletes who want compete clean and natural are at a disadvantage. I think two classes would be neat.

[Hillhater]

There was a very revealing Doco' on Australian TV this week called " The Race" ..
http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/program/952
It focused on the 1988 Olympic 100m sprint where Ben Johnson won and set a world record before being exposed for Steriod use.
Basicly, it confirms that in order to be competitive in that period , you had to be using "drugs" ( Steroids)
Including Johnson, 6 of the 8 finalists have since been exposed for drug use, and whilst "Mr Clean" ..Carl Lewis .. still maintains he did not use drugs, there was evidence that he had been tested positive 3 time prior to '88 and there were some interesting implications made ( obviously hidden for legal reasons)
Hint :- look for the teeth braces on adult athletes !
Also, it was admitted that the US ran a program of drug "testing" with the hidden objective being to establish a means of avoiding positive test results for US athletes at the Olympics !

[dogman]

No doubt, they will do everything they can that there is no testing for. Also it has to be very figured out, just how much EPO or whatever can be taken, then metabolized completely during the stage. At that point, it becomes a question of is the drug effective, or is it just giving the athlete a placebo effect.

As a coach, wouldn't you give your guys a pill or something, and tell em it's the latest shit with no test for it?

Back to original topic, yesterdays stage is what it's all about for me. Screaming green alpine meadows, twisty hairpin descents. Wish I was there, riding down the pass on my ebike after the boys suffer by. Got it on DVD, so I can watch it next time we are 120 days without a drop of rain.

So much for Cadel this year. His only hope now is to persevere, and hope dope tests trip up the Sky team. Not that unlikely it will happen.

[Joseph C.]

No doubt, they will do everything they can that there is no testing for. Also it has to be very figured out, just how much EPO or whatever can be taken, then metabolized completely during the stage. At that point, it becomes a question of is the drug effective, or is it just giving the athlete a placebo effect.

Landis showed how to beat the blood passport system. He moderated his own reticulocyte (immature red blood cell) levels at first with a monitoring device and later with a microscope. If the count was low he would boost it with small doses of EPO - traces of which would be gone a day or two later. Of course it helped that the cyclists always knew when they were going to be tested but that is the UCI for you.

The blood passport system works by using two main key indicators reticulocyte and haemoglobin levels. If a cyclist withdraws blood (roughly half a litre) the lost erythrocytes (red blood cells) need to be replaced and so Erythropoiesis begins producing reticulocytes to replenish the system from the bone marrow. If the cyclist receives blood (no doubt boosted by EPO) the reticulocyte levels would be lower than normal as the transfusion would have mature erthrocytes. Blood withdrawals and transfusions have the opposite effect on haemoglobin which drops after a withdrawal and increases with a transfusion.

The testers work off a baseline obtained from continual testing and note any deviations from the previous blood samples. If a threshold is breached (probably more than once as there is a 1000-in-one chance of a false positive) the cyclist has been doping.

The model Landis used - no doubt the same one that Armstrong would have employed (if the allegations by Landis are correct) - beat the system. Landis was caught for testosterone not EPO.

EPO is incredibly effective at increasing performance. A normal adult male will have a hematrocrit level (red blood cells percentage) of about 45 per cent. An elite athletic with extensive altitude training might reach 50 per cent for a short period of time. Normally the hematrocit level falls under intensive exercise such as doing a tour. The dead cyclist Marco Pantani reached 64 per cent and I am pretty sure that was during a tour. In other words, he had almost 35 per cent more oxygen-carrying red blood cells than an elite non-doping athlete (48 per cent hematrocrit level). That's a massive advantage and it showed in his times.

Armstrong has been accused of taking androgen hormones by a former bike mechanic who worked for him at his home. In a research paper published 15 years ago a great insight into the effectiveness of these drugs was provided. An East German female shot put thrower improved by over 20 per cent taking her from being average to a world record holder after being given an androgen hormone. This was after having put in over a decade of training with results of the ordinary variety.

In terms of the Tour de France this year - the cyclists are roughly nearly a minute slower than the times of the known EPO-dopers in previous years during ascents. The top EPO users where putting out 6.4 to 6.5 watts per kilogramme on the hors categorie climbs for 40 minutes and more. Now no one is hitting even 6 watts per kilogramme for those durations. To put that in perspective the lead EPO-user was achieving a performance that was over ten per cent better than what the leaders now can achieve. At these elite levels that is an astounding difference.

I don't know if the Tour is clean or not. Certainly the performances have dropped off and are at least physiologically possible now.

Nevertheless, as Ross Tucker and Jonathan Dugas mention they could have repositioned the bar to recovery-enhancing drugs. You only have to cast your mind back to the Balco scandal to realise that if a garage-run chemistry lab could create 'The Clear' what can professional laboratories in China achieve?

Anyway, it is all here: http://www.sportsscientists.com/

[liveforphysics]

I didn't know about EPO's ability to easily increase your red blood cell levels. Interesting, seems easier than training with a snorkel on like many MMA fighters do to create lower blood O2 levels in training to stimulate the creation of red blood cells naturally.


"Erythropoietin levels in blood are quite low in the absence of anemia, at around 10 mU/mL. However, in hypoxic stress, EPO production may increase a 1000-fold, reaching 10,000 mU/mL of blood. EPO is produced mainly by peritubular capillary lining cells of the renal cortex; which are highly specialized epithelial-like cells. It is synthesized by renal peritubular cells in adults, with a small amount being produced in the liver.[3][4] Regulation is believed to rely on a feed-back mechanism measuring blood oxygenation. Constitutively synthesized transcription factors for EPO, known as hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs), are hydroxylated and proteosomally digested in the presence of oxygen.[5]"


Tape the nose shut and train with a snorkel on. Hypoxia occurs, your body makes more red blood cells (similar to going to high altitude, but perhaps more natural?)



Just curious, is sleeping in a hypobaric chamber to reduce O2 levels in the air you breath while sleeping at night (leading to the creation of more red blood cells) also considered to be cheating by any organizations?

Either way, it seems like EPO would be a lot easier on the brain to get your red blood cells up. Sports amateur's who don't have doc's monitoring them everyday to check on the effects of the doping they are getting don't get tested for any types of doping... It appears you can buy most anything you need for a few hundred bucks online (plenty of off-shore pharm's will sell anything for the right price).

[dogman]

Must not be, because Lance used to have a training house at altitude. Then he moved lower because he could when he got his chamber. No doubt the chamber is another way of masking as well. For those not aware, a guy like Lance didn't get tested just during competition. They'd show at his house in Texas in the off season randomly, going give me blood this minuite. Lance always was such a freak of nature, I have to wonder about him. In his youth, blasting through the triathlons, he may not have needed anything at that level of competition. But at the same time, in those years, any gym was a huge easy supply of steroids.

It seems fairly sure the tour is mostly clean, or at least cleaner, now at the upper levels. I've noticed the same thing about the performances. It seems clear that if nothing else, the top athletes are doing less dosage to avoid getting caught. Some of the domestiques though, how they get through the whole tour without help beats me.

One reason I've liked Cadel has been his obvious lack of looking like it's too easy. Figured that others that did get caught were doping, and did get caught. It won't stop, you draw some nice salary for a few years for doping till you do get caught. I just wish they could get a result on the winner of the tour in less than a month.

What about the Schlecks? Coincidence that their new coach is afraid to set foot in France, and this year they haven't shined too well? Ouch! Gotta race clean this year? Who knows. Dope had nothing to do with breaking a pelvis of course. But it does look very odd.

Get's weirder and weirder, will they end up awarding Lance an 8th tour win, then strip all of em? Who knows, takes years to call a permanent winner nowdays.

[dogman]

Odd stage today, still not quite finished. Green jersey rider in the mountial breakaway? Sagan must have really thought the god of thunder was cool last year, winning a mountain stage.

Then there's somebody throwing caltrops on the road after the breakaway went through. Keeps it interesting all right.

[Joseph C.]

Then there's somebody throwing caltrops on the road after the breakaway went through. Keeps it interesting all right.

I don't know how they do those climbs day after day.

I didn't see that. I hope it isn't that attention-seeking nutcase Neil Horan. The Irish ex-priest who knocked the Brazilian marathon runner over in Beijing when he was leading the race in the final stages.

[dogman]

Nobody caught right away, so not likely political. Quite a few nails or tacks were tossed in front of the GC group.

[The fingers]

35 flat tires, they need to put the spectators through metal detectors! (solar powered, of course) Hope the person gets caught, with all the cameras and eyes present how did this happen?

[Joseph C.]

Nobody caught right away, so not likely political. Quite a few nails or tacks were tossed in front of the GC group.

It wasn't him so. He would have been out in the middle of the road dancing as he tossed them out. There are few people that I find nationally embarrassing - he is one of them.

I wonder was another team in some way involved? It seems too deliberate not to have been done to benefit someone in the lead group at the expense of those behind.

[dogman]

I bet it was just a crazed 15 year old. Kind of shit I would have thought funny at 15, getting that first testosterone rush.

I did wonder for a moment, about a photographer. Wanting that close up shot of the stars.

[Joseph C.]

What about the Schlecks? Coincidence that their new coach is afraid to set foot in France, and this year they haven't shined too well? Ouch! Gotta race clean this year? Who knows. Dope had nothing to do with breaking a pelvis of course. But it does look very odd.

[JennyB]

Frank Schleck fails drug test

[TylerDurden]

B sample also failed.

Sure would suck if somebody spiked his food/drink.

[dogman]

Pretty clear he wasn't on EPO this year.

How bout that Thomas in the dots. Thank god one jersey wasn't settled two weeks ago.

[JennyB]

Pretty clear he wasn't on EPO this year.

How bout that Thomas in the dots. Thank god one jersey wasn't settled two weeks ago.

Tommy's always worth watching. Nice to see Cav win a sprint again after all that bottle-carrying. I wonder if Sky can set it up for him again on Sunday?

[dogman]

Bet the odds on Cav for sunday are pretty good. He's just been saving himself for the O's. Imagine, being in shape enough to ride the tour, finish, and still be taking it easy!

[JennyB]

Bet the odds on Cav for sunday are pretty good. He's just been saving himself for the O's. Imagine, being in shape enough to ride the tour, finish, and still be taking it easy!

Well, that was exciting. Four in a row! How often do you see the yellow jersey leading out the final k? If Cav was taking it easy, so were Wiggins and Croome. And Millar. Four British stage winners in the Olympic road race team.