Subway Surfers wrote:
... Currently my Occam's Razor says that rHuEPO created super human endurance athletes via superhuman training. But I am a flexible minded person. ?
I am also flexible minded person, but for these reasons I don't believe that rHuEPO gave any significant training boost or at least it wasn't "common knowledge":
- The alleged benefit from increased training load is barely mentioned by anyone vs. hematocrit elevation-induced boost.
- The mechanism hasn't been established. There might be some non-hematological benefits, but just being able to ride/run faster when doing workouts doesn't mean that there is extra stimulus and superior training adaptation.
- A very few scientists discussing about rHuEPO or reviewing the material bother to mention the alleged increased training load at all. The Birkeland et al quote is more an exception than the rule.
- No scientist has been interested to find out how training with artificially high Hct improves performance vs. normal Hct.
- The evidence that rHuEPO was used OFFSeason is almost nonexistent and - to the contrary - many best athletes of the era such as Pantani, Chiappucci and Mühlegg have history of huge seasonal variation in Hct (from 35-40 % to 55-60 %). This doesn't preclude the possibility that there is some non-RBC related mechanism to improve recovery if they took rHuEPO shots now-and-then.
My reading of the material is that it is mostly a myth to explain the 1990's if one takes as the starting point that every change must be PED-related. Even if one looks at the world through the PED-lense, it is equally plausible that the availability of rHuEPO vs. transfusions caused it to have a larger impact, when up to 90 % of cyclists used the drug. Particularly cycling but also running has draft effect, so the more of the "peloton" has access to the effective methods, the larger impact on even the fastests.