Contador -- Latest news on positive doping test for plasticizers (N.Y. Times)

Once again, The Onion nails it:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/nondoping-cyclists-finish-tour-de-france,2268/

August 30th - Non-Doping Cyclists Finish Tour De France

The really isn't any difference between cycling, running or any sport WWW wrestling. They are all for entertainment. Pure sports went out with amateurism.

Uh, might want to look up your figures there. The LD50 of caffeine is around 200 mg/kg, so for a typical athlete you're talking 65 pills

LD50 is a lab value, the dose at which a significant percentage of people would be killed, but I understand and accept your point. I am just saying you *can* die from a 2g dose, not that you will or even would be likely to.

common wrote:

LD50 is a lab value, the dose at which a significant percentage of people would be killed, but I understand and accept your point. I am just saying you *can* die from a 2g dose, not that you will or even would be likely to.

Well, it's the dose at which 50% would be killed.

And, yes, a much lower dose would be needed than that resulting from a controlled LD50 experiment. Testing the stress a Grand Tour stage, after being challenged with a high dose of caffeine, in a lab, would be impossible.

Also, another point:

DEHP (Bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate) is probably the plasticizer that was found in his sample. This is no way could have entered his system through contaminated meat, if his meat was cooked relatively well at all. . .

I wasn't trying to start an argument but since you felt it necessary. If altitude tents don't produce any performance enhancement then why does almost every rider on the tour de france sleep in one? Not to mention all the guys in the oregon project who are redefining US distance running. Also people have been living and training at altitude for decades to enhance their performance were they all just idiots? Caffeine HAS been banned in the past in the IAAF (not sure of its current status) and is still currently banned under NCAA rules. How do you know how much faster EPO makes you? Are you an expert in quantifying the effects of PED's. I sincerely doubt that there are many studies on increased performance of EPO athletes, why because EPO is really bad for your body and no legitimate doctor would be a part of such a study.

Also I disagree that substances are fundamentally banned based on just performance enhancing ability. There are lots of substances on the banned list that are there because while they may provide minor performance enhancing benefits they are extremely harmful to a persons health i.e. meth amphetamines. Lots of things are performance enhancing B12 shots, vitamin supplements, antigravity treadmills, altitude tents etc etc, none of these things are natural and none of them are banned but all of them make people faster other wise why would people use them.

All I was saying is if we are going to draw a line in the sand why not make it where it poses a risk to health, no one should have to harm their body, or risk their long term health to become the best. And there isn't a person on this board that doesn't want to be faster (or wanted to be faster in their prime) and would take a substance or use a product that made them faster if it was healthy, obtainable and fair/legal under the rules of our sport. Why not allow people to be better and faster if its safe. Athletes from 50 years ago would have killed for the stuff we take/do every day. Are we going to ignore advances in science and be like the Amish and freeze ourselves in some arbitrary time so that no ones "performance" is enhanced?

Your whole post is a mess of incoherence and ignorance. First of all, show me where I claimed altitude training doesn't work. Right, I didn't claim that. Altitude, whether artificial or natural, works to increase RBCs for *most* people, but not all. It is, however, much less efficient and effective than blood packing and EPO at accomplishing the increase in RBC count.

Google the stuff about caffeine. I don't care enough to look it up for you.

Amphetamines as a class are performance enhancers--not just a little, a lot. The fact that an illegal street drug happens to be extremely dangerous has little to do with anything.

"Lots of things are performance enhancing B12 shots, vitamin supplements, antigravity treadmills, altitude tents etc etc, none of these things are natural and none of them are banned but all of them make people faster other wise why would people use them."

What an absolute mess. I can't begin to help you here. treadmills as PEDs? Seriously? I'd give you an 8/10, but I don't think you're trolling.

The athlete's health is a moral concern, not a performance concern. The ostensible goal of the sporting organizations is to provide a fair and level playing field, not necessarily a safe one. Are you going to argue that the administration of HGH, testosterone, anabolic steroids, EPO, and hundreds of other performance enhancing drugs couldn't be safely done by trained professionals to any person who desired to improve their health? Think about that for a second. Our medical system does this for average people every day. Every single day hundreds of thousands of people take drugs, including supplemental hormones such as estrogen, testosterone, HGH, and a variety of steroids for the sole purpose of improving health and performance in their daily lives. The reason professional athletes aren't allowed to do it (without declarations) isn't because of safety concerns, because when the drugs are administered and monitored my professionals, they are demonstrably safe. Drugs aren't allowed because they unfairly increase performance beyond what could be reasonably achieved naturally.

Your argument fails based solely on the fact that PED's are illegal. If they are only trying to level the playing field, they would make PED's legal.

Hey idiot, you don't realize that athletes won't stop at a "safe" dosage of EPO. Do you really think Contador would say "oh, well more EPO might make me faster, but it would put me in danger of blood coagulation, so I won't use any more" if we legalized drugs? Hell no, he'd keep going. It would make sports unfair for anyone who wasn't willing to put his long-term health on the line. Doping is inherently unsafe because of the culture it creates. Could athletes have medical professionals oversee their doping? Yes, but no way in hell they'd stop rampant drug abuse--athletes would be dropping like flies.

Also, caffeine is a big performance booster, you clearly have not done your homework. It is very, very safe though. Unlike EPO, steroids, hGH, and others.

How would that be more fair than not permitting the use of PEDs? It would be much less fair, due to geographic and economic factors, just to name a couple.

Your argument fails.

You clearly have not done your homework. Compare the efficacy of blood doping versus caffeine supplementation. There is one double-blind, placebo controlled study that I can find for blood doping, and many caffeine studies. When I say that caffeine is not "highly effective" as a PED, I mean that in the context of all PEDs. Where caffeine might improve your 10K time by 1-2 seconds per mile, blood doping might improve your 10K time by 15-20 seconds per mile. EPO is "highly effective" and caffeine is "not" in that context. Ben Johnson was caught with anabolic steroids in his system because they were "highly effective" for his purposes compared to a protein shake and an extra nap.

What the f*** do you know about how safe EPO, steroids, HGH, etc. are, anyway? Are you a doctor? Work for the FDA? Chemist? All you know is what you've been trained to think by the media. All of the substances you mentioned are very safe when used for their intended purpose, in the correct dosages, and continue to be safe for many off label uses in even higher doses. Like almost any substance, they can be deadly if misused. Water is a great example.

And I do think that Contador, and virtually every other athlete would stop due to a risk of death. You're probably only eleven years old, so you don't remember the 90s, when cyclists were dropping like flies because they didn't understand that more EPO isn't better. That was ignorance causing deaths, not greed. Once they figured out what was going wrong, they fixed their dosing. And if you think doctors aren't supervising and guiding athletes doping, you're crazy. This is big business. Show me a team owner who wants his big dollar athletes dying, and I'll show you a bankrupt former team owner. Doping regimes are not simple plans put together by average athletes. Doing it right takes expertise and money.

Also, I am not in favor of legalizing PEDs. You're confusing my post with someone else.

Actually, I do happen to be a chemist, though it doesn't take one to read up on the adverse affects these medicines can have even at clinical doses for medical conditions. To give just one example, chronic HGH usage has been strongly linked with diabetes, thickening of the heart wall, and high blood pressure. These risks are weighed when a clinician makes the decision to prescribe HGH to a patient with low growth hormone levels, chronic wasting, or another underlying condition. But for a perfectly healthy patient, no self-respecting doctor would recklessly hand out powerful ergogenic drugs.

The long-term effects also are not known for many of the new drugs, so even if they aren't dropping dead now, it may not (and probably WILL NOT) be safe in the long-term.

I do believe there are doctors and such overseeing doping programs; I do not agree that they have the long-term health of the athlete in mind when designing the doping program. They have short-term goals--the Olympics, the Tour, etc. And no athlete will stop when they know another is doping harder.

finding an "out" wrote:

the aforementioned thought of a claim that dehydration led him to have a need for an IV with replacement fluids will likely be the reasoning/explanation for having the plasticizer in his system.

also a banned method (as of 2008 I believe)

man, im hoping they nail one of these top guys. lance is pretty much untouchable at this point.

common wrote:

you don't remember the 90s, when cyclists were dropping like flies because they didn't understand that more EPO isn't better. That was ignorance causing deaths, not greed. Once they figured out what was going wrong, they fixed their dosing.

As a potential alternative causality, UCI's 50% hematocrit rule was instituted in 1997.

I agree that 50% rule reduced the number of cyclists dying in their sleep from trying unsuccessfully to pump sludge through their hearts. However, the primary reason for doing that was as a "test" of EPO and blood doping abuse in the absence of a chemical or biological test for those methods of doping. I would argue that increased safety was an ancillary benefit of a rule created to catch PED abusers.

I think it was Bjarne Riis who was found to have crit levels in the high 50s, and some on his team were as high as 60% before this rule was implemented. Not sure if there is a critical percentage (LD50 or similar) where death is imminent or likely, but I would think it's very possible at those levels.

No question that people would still be dying without that rule, because there are still athletes dying in spite of that rule. There are certainly fewer athletes dying because they don't want to get caught. But they certainly don't want to die, provided they know, based on available information, where that risk lies.

I can't find it at the moment, but wasn't there a survey done some years ago among athletes in which they were asked if they would take a hypothetical PED which was guaranteed to be undetectable and guaranteed to ensure them a gold medal, but which would kill them by some young age, and a surprisingly high percentage said they would do so.

Yes, I remember the survey you are talking about. I would counter that if you changed the question to reflect a risk of death more like Russian Roulette (1 in 6, for example) every single time they doped, many fewer athletes would choose that risk. The question in that survey was basically asking 20 year old athletes if they would be okay dying at 30 holding a gold medal in their casket. Most 20 year olds I know would take that bet because they lack maturity and have a much different system of value when it comes to life experiences. Hell most of them I know would consider doping for free beer, let alone an Olympic medal. ("You mean I could run a minute faster PR, AND get a free case of Busch Light!?")