Imagine how good Ulrich would have been in 2004 without that spare tires. At least a chance to break the "streak".
And yet your evidence is a list of top-10 cyclists rather than runners.The question is not about morality, or the prevalence of doping in runners, but about how EPO helps cyclists in the grand tours, and if these mechanisms helps runners in the same way.In another thread some wrote about Tyler Hamilton (?), saying that in cycling, EPO didn't necessarily help in 1 day events, but allowed you to remain stronger for longer in the third week, after so many hard efforts.
newname wrote:
rekrunner wrote:No. It doesn't follow.
Because 100% of the top cyclists dope and have doped for 80 years now. Not because they want to, but because they recognize the benefits, and they cannot be at the top without it.
Top distance runners are not more moral than the top-tier talent is in cycling, and have nothing else that prevents them from the same doping prevalence. Cycling has 1-2% of athletes test positive each year, the same as track and field.
You are just so dense. Of course it helps in one day events. It helps in freakin' sprint training for gawdsakes (Tim Montgomery, Marion Jones). Do you think that elite athletes don't get an advantage from training hard for weeks with better recovery at every step, much less between bouts or hard days? Tyler was probably commenting on how you needed it just to hang with the peloton for weeks, much less winning a stage.EPO works, get over it.
rekrunner wrote:
And yet your evidence is a list of top-10 cyclists rather than runners.
The question is not about morality, or the prevalence of doping in runners, but about how EPO helps cyclists in the grand tours, and if these mechanisms helps runners in the same way.
In another thread some wrote about Tyler Hamilton (?), saying that in cycling, EPO didn't necessarily help in 1 day events, but allowed you to remain stronger for longer in the third week, after so many hard efforts.
newname wrote:Because 100% of the top cyclists dope and have doped for 80 years now. Not because they want to, but because they recognize the benefits, and they cannot be at the top without it.
Top distance runners are not more moral than the top-tier talent is in cycling, and have nothing else that prevents them from the same doping prevalence. Cycling has 1-2% of athletes test positive each year, the same as track and field.
rekrunner wrote:
I wouldn't be surprised if Lance was involved in framing Pantani.
If you are referring to the Madonna di Campiglio high hematocrit reading of Pantani in 1999 Giro, it is almost impossible that Lance had anything to do with it. In spring 1999, Lance was a recovering cancer survivor with only a very few connections to anywhere. Although there are some mysterious elements in the Giro episode, even Pantani-biographer Matt Rendell seems not to believe in any conspiracy regarding the issue.
pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:
1. Yes, too much EPO kills. Before the Internet, under-23 Dutch cyclists were dying of heart attacks. There's no "proof" as public health officials would never imagine the cause and we're talking about burying young adults... Leader of the UCI at the time, Hein Verbruggen did nothing at the time.
The evidence that EPO killed some 20+/-few cyclists in Netherlands and Belgium in late 1980s and early 1990s is almost non-existent. There were several sudden deaths but not all were young cyclist and most occurred in OFF-season. There is actually very little evidence that EPO was even widely used before 1990 or 1991 as the drug was available in only a few European countries and not necessarily even in pharmacies but in dialysis centers. You simply couldn't walk into a Swiss pharmacy and buy the product without prescription as it was possible after mid-1990s.
Even if PDM team doctor Peter Janssen has a motive to whitewash the deaths, his logic is very sound in what he tells in his book Lactate Threshold Training in 2001:
This scandalous media story is simply untrue. These tragic deaths all occurred during the late 1980s and early 1990s, a time when EPO was not used yet (...) But if EPO was really as dangerous as alleged, many riders would have died from 1991 to 1997, because the use of EPO was unlimited and uncontrolled before January 1997 (...) The 18 deaths would have nothing to do with this EPO story if they were not constantly used as an argument to intensify the campaign against doping in general and EPO in particular.
All this doesn't discount the notion that a hematocrit reading too high could be dangerous. On the other hand this isn't always too obvious. For instance, a researchers didn't find higher than normal level of heart or circulatory system-related deaths in the family of cross-country skier Eero Mäntyranta.
Due to mutation in his erythropoietin-receptor gene, he and many of his relatives were overproducing red blood cells. His own natural hematocrit was 68.
Yet the only top-10 lists filled with "admitted dopers" are cyclists. A better argument that top runners doped would be the same list for runners.Good luck.
Freemontane wrote:
You are just so dense. Of course it helps in one day events. It helps in freakin' sprint training for gawdsakes (Tim Montgomery, Marion Jones). Do you think that elite athletes don't get an advantage from training hard for weeks with better recovery at every step, much less between bouts or hard days? Tyler was probably commenting on how you needed it just to hang with the peloton for weeks, much less winning a stage.
EPO works, get over it.
rekrunner wrote:
#2 If it's a hill, Pantani would not be anywhere near today's best -- he'd be way in front. Pantani was way more talented than Lance.
Someone apparently forgot how the 2000 Tour went down,
Jeez what a walnut.Tour riders are easier to bust because they must dope while IN COMPETITION. Runners can easily dodge testing by comparison. Only the low-level idiots get caught.
rekrunner wrote:
Yet the only top-10 lists filled with "admitted dopers" are cyclists. A better argument that top runners doped would be the same list for runners.
Good luck.
Freemontane wrote:You are just so dense. Of course it helps in one day events. It helps in freakin' sprint training for gawdsakes (Tim Montgomery, Marion Jones). Do you think that elite athletes don't get an advantage from training hard for weeks with better recovery at every step, much less between bouts or hard days? Tyler was probably commenting on how you needed it just to hang with the peloton for weeks, much less winning a stage.
EPO works, get over it.
Yes I was (in part). Good point. There were certainly some "fishy" elements surrounding that bust though.
Aragon wrote:
rekrunner wrote:I wouldn't be surprised if Lance was involved in framing Pantani.
If you are referring to the Madonna di Campiglio high hematocrit reading of Pantani in 1999 Giro, it is almost impossible that Lance had anything to do with it. In spring 1999, Lance was a recovering cancer survivor with only a very few connections to anywhere. Although there are some mysterious elements in the Giro episode, even Pantani-biographer Matt Rendell seems not to believe in any conspiracy regarding the issue.
Who was talking about "busts" and "dodging tests"?The "top-10" cyclists were rarely "busted IN COMPETITION".
Freemontane wrote:
Jeez what a walnut.
Tour riders are easier to bust because they must dope while IN COMPETITION. Runners can easily dodge testing by comparison. Only the low-level idiots get caught.
I'm only speaking about cycling talent.
i chose D2 wrote:
rekrunner wrote:#2 If it's a hill, Pantani would not be anywhere near today's best -- he'd be way in front. Pantani was way more talented than Lance.
Someone apparently forgot how the 2000 Tour went down,
rekrunner wrote:
In another thread some wrote about Tyler Hamilton (?), saying that in cycling, EPO didn't necessarily help in 1 day events, but allowed you to remain stronger for longer in the third week, after so many hard efforts.
Here's the Tyler Hamilton quote you're most likely referring to from The Secret Race :
Was it possible to win a professional bike race clean during this era?... The answer is, depends on the race. For shorter races, even week-long stage races, I think the answer is a qualified yes... But once you get past a one-week race, it quickly becomes impossible for clean riders to compete with riders using [EPO]... The reason is cost, in the physiological sense. Big efforts - winning Alpine stages, winning time trials - cost too much energy; they cause the body to break down, hematocrit to drop, testosterone to dwindle.
Greg LeMond points also to the same phenomenom in the book Bad Blood by Jeremy Whittle:
If you understand the physiology of cycling, you will know that at the end of three weeks of the Tour, your haematocrit has a descending value. Those who aren't on EPO can start off with a certain power output and a certain amount of haematocrit, of red blood cells. But by the end of the Tour, there's usually a decrease in the red blood cell count, which correlates to a five to ten, maybe twelve, percent decrease in oxygen uptake... When you take the spread between a guy whose level drops to thirty-eight percent, compared to a guy who's racing at fifty-five percent, and then run that over a three week-race - where the difference becomes increasingly pronounced - no matter how talented the first rider is, there's no way he's able to compete against the guy who's taking EPO.
Both LeMond and Hamilton believe that EPO has an independent effect on performance through enhanced oxygen delivery, but it still seems that both think that the main mechanism is its anti-anemia effect in long multi-week races.
Aragon -- good posts.
rekrunner wrote:
Aragon -- good posts.
Thanks... Your contributions have also always been interesting to read.
The second question of the original post is also an interesting one, ie. why is Pantani so popular everywhere and particularly in Italy? Even I tend to think him in a very sympathetic light.
Perhaps the whitewashing of his public image has much to do with the fact that after his death (2004) people have more and more considered him as a victim of both bad era that almost forced cyclists to dope and also as a victim of public expectations that transformed him from hero to zero after his troubles began. If the 1999 Tour was "The Tour of Renewal", Pantani was considered as a clean "Man of Renewal" in the 1998 Tour after many heavily doped teams had been expelled or had left the race voluntarily.
The shock must've been high when only 10 months later he had his high hematocrit reading and from that point forward almost year to year another cumulative evidence pointing to the direction that he had doped from early 1990s onwards.
Perhaps the lesson of the episode is that the history isn't stupid. It would be interesting to know how the legacy of Lance is seen in 2030s, 2040s or 2050s.
Aragon wrote:
rekrunner wrote:In another thread some wrote about Tyler Hamilton (?), saying that in cycling, EPO didn't necessarily help in 1 day events, but allowed you to remain stronger for longer in the third week, after so many hard efforts.
Here's the Tyler Hamilton quote you're most likely referring to from The Secret Race :
Was it possible to win a professional bike race clean during this era?... The answer is, depends on the race. For shorter races, even week-long stage races, I think the answer is a qualified yes... But once you get past a one-week race, it quickly becomes impossible for clean riders to compete with riders using [EPO]... The reason is cost, in the physiological sense. Big efforts - winning Alpine stages, winning time trials - cost too much energy; they cause the body to break down, hematocrit to drop, testosterone to dwindle.
Greg LeMond points also to the same phenomenom in the book Bad Blood by Jeremy Whittle:
If you understand the physiology of cycling, you will know that at the end of three weeks of the Tour, your haematocrit has a descending value. Those who aren't on EPO can start off with a certain power output and a certain amount of haematocrit, of red blood cells. But by the end of the Tour, there's usually a decrease in the red blood cell count, which correlates to a five to ten, maybe twelve, percent decrease in oxygen uptake... When you take the spread between a guy whose level drops to thirty-eight percent, compared to a guy who's racing at fifty-five percent, and then run that over a three week-race - where the difference becomes increasingly pronounced - no matter how talented the first rider is, there's no way he's able to compete against the guy who's taking EPO.
Both LeMond and Hamilton believe that EPO has an independent effect on performance through enhanced oxygen delivery, but it still seems that both think that the main mechanism is its anti-anemia effect in long multi-week races.
But somehow at the last stage of a 3 week race Lemond busted out a record TT that even the doped up riders with vastly superior technology and chemistry for 30 years could not beat. All while being clean.
Yeah, that's the ticket.
What!? The time trial on the Champs Elysee has only been done once! It is no longer a time trial, but a victory lap!!!! How do you compare it?
Are upu that dense. No TT to Paris.
1. Elite athletes are not raising their HCT to 60%+ anymore. Enough information exists now to use it without killing yourself unless you are absurdly ignorant.
2. Because people in Italy don't bury their heads in the sand. They understand and accept the role the pharmaceutical companies play in our lives. All of our lives.
We can't really determine how good any of those guys would be today. Most could still ride professionally, but drugs affect people differently, just like altitude and training and alcohol and virtually everything for that matter.
More clueless post above wrote:
Are upu that dense. No TT to Paris.
Really?
21 23 July Versailles – Paris (Champs-Élysées) Individual time trial 24.5 km (15.2 mi) Greg LeMond (USA) Greg LeMond (USA)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tour_de_Francescissorhand student wrote:
1. Elite athletes are not raising their HCT to 60%+ anymore. Enough information exists now to use it without killing yourself unless you are absurdly ignorant.
2. Because people in Italy don't bury their heads in the sand. They understand and accept the role the pharmaceutical companies play in our lives. All of our lives.
We can't really determine how good any of those guys would be today. Most could still ride professionally, but drugs affect people differently, just like altitude and training and alcohol and virtually everything for that matter.
Italians understand that people are doping? Yet, doping is a felony there is it not? I remember reading on here a couple years back that some Italians got arrested for doping and would be facing jail time. I thought Italy was the one country trying to really crack down and clean things up.
