lies wrote:
You cannot just look at the Hct values. . . .
That's not what they're looking at:
At USADA’s request, these blood test results were examined by Professor Christopher J. Gore, Head of Physiology at the Australian Institute of Sport. Prof. Gore observed that a cluster of five Armstrong samples during the 2009 Tour de France and his two samples during the 2010 Tour de France contained an unusually low percentage of reticulocytes.
Reticulocytes are immature red blood cells created naturally by the body. When an athlete adds additional red blood cells to his circulation by transfusing his own stored blood, the body’s production of reticulocytes is suppressed. This is reflected by a decrease in the athlete’s
reticulocyte percentage. When Prof. Gore compared the suppressed reticulocyte percentage in Armstrong’s 2009 and 2010 Tour de France samples to the reticulocyte percentage in his other samples, Prof. Gore concluded that the approximate likelihood of Armstrong’s seven suppressed reticulocyte values during the 2009 and 2010 Tours de France occurring naturally was less than one in a million.