Lance Armstrong explains to Bill Maher how it's easy to cheat with EPO and not test positive

#1 Many Kenyans have already been busted for EPO despite it having a short detection window.

#2 The consistently high number of Kenyans running world class times for such a small country.

#3 Prize money is life changing and does not get returned after a bust. So the disincentive to dope is not strong.

All these point to a high percentage of Kenyan dopers. Of course it is somewhat speculative without proof.

Nonsense. There was never ever a tdf where 3/4 tested positive. Stop spreading false rumors, and remember Biology!

It's a hormone that is secreted naturally by your kidneys. It causes you to produce more red blood cells. The more red blood cells you have, the better you will perform at endurance sports.

If you live at high altitudes, where the percentage of oxygen is lower due to less atmospheric pressure, your body will use EPO to ensure your body is getting enough oxygen. That is the key principle behind "altitude training" and you are then free to compete at sea level with more red blood cells than you would normally have. It is not considered cheating, and many successful endurance athletes sleep is specialized chambers that have lower concentrations of oxygen to get the same benefit of training at altitude without leaving sea level.

Injecting EPO is another matter, entirely. You are not using natural conditions, and can give yourself a much higher dose of EPO than you would even if you could train at 30,000 feet (which you cannot; that is why oxygen masks are on each and every plane in case the cabin loses pressure). Some endurance athletes who abuse EPO (dope with it) ended up with red blood cell counts so high that they had to set alarms to wake them up in the middle of the night...so they could exercise. If they didn't, their red blood cell count grew so high that they were at risk of cardiac failure!

So, to answer your question more directly...it isn't a steroid that builds muscle mass or a drug that improves performance while it is in your body. It's a natural substance that can be abused by virtue of its effects on the body when abused.

The idiots who downvoted this are the clueless of the clueless. Go ahead and slam your face in the door a few times…it can only improve your situation!

What then in the marathon would be considered too good to be true? Sub 2:06, 08, 10? Whatever fastest person you know runs?

The marathon is where most of the dopers get caught. That's where the money is.

retrospective test out of 60 44 positives 7 negatives 8 undetermined

you could have looked that up, or maybe you did, do you gave a refuutation other than “that’s just wikipedia”

dhnet.be

1998 plane sur le centième Tour de France

E. d. F.

Une liste d’anciens coureurs contrôlés positifs sera révélée en plein Tour.

Open link

source material (in french)

Good math. Unless I missed it somewhere else in this thread, I don't think Armstrong was quoting scientific evidence as much as just using the term "half life" to make the point that it clears quickly. Maybe 4 hours was his empirical window for a clear test.

This idea will never make sense to me. There is some guy out there who never doped and was the best non-doped cyclist. Even if he never got to participate in the tour because all the top guys were doped, he is the only fair-and-square winner.

No he’s not. He’s only fair and square, not a winner. The rules of the sport are that the winner is the one who has the fastest time amongst those not caught.

I'm surprised by the math ignorance here. Just because its half life is 4.5 hours, doesn't mean it's gone. ((((100/2)/2)/2/2) = ~6. So in 4 half lives (about 18 hours), the number would go down about 94%... Not to zero. I do wonder how precise current testing is.

How does that work? You'd have to report to an authority every location you ever go, and wouldn't be able to go hiking for example or even work your job delivering pizzas.

In the US at least, you need to report where you will be for a 1-hour window every day, which I think is not really tolerable already (wouldn't put up with that intrusion for any normal job), but that gives you 23 hours to not have to report every single place you visit in your day. That also gives dopers 23 hours for dope to diminish to below detectable levels if they know the amount to take right after the 1-hour window ends.

As others have noted doing the math is not just doing minus 4 hours, that only takes you to half the concentration. You'd need to know the dose, detection limit, etc.

It's a team sport. Just because a few undoped domestiques weren't doped because they could pull off after doing their work doesn't mean they deserve the title as winner. It doesn't make sense in the context of the sport. This isn't running, where you could argue that drafting is relatively low in importance and everyone in the field is trying to minimize their elapsed time.

Lance played the game the way the game was set up. And the game wasn't set up by him - doping was endemic in the sport since the beginning (more than 100 years ago) before there were any doping rules at all.

4 hours half life ??? How does it come we have guys test positive in competition like Zane Robertson etc. then ? They must be complete idiots.

As far as I know it works as followed: You can be tested also outside of the reported one hour window. But of course you have to be found by the testers… (This is not only a theoretical thing -actual athletes have reported being tested outside their one hour window, f.ex in the middle of the night).

He looks terrible for 52. Already has dewlaps. Skinny legs too

probably never used sunscreen on his rides

Context:

189 riders competed at the Tour in '98. 44 retroactively tested positive, which is 23%

If anyone would like to cherry pick any other races, I highly recommend reviewing the Seoul 100m final

That's still pretty problematic. What if you were delivering pizzas or otherwise doing your other job/obligation where you can't take a break at that moment? Or you paid good money for tickets to watch TayTay or other show and they get to ruin your experience? Would those count as test refusals?