Doping piece that's worth reading

Chips Lovell

William Fotheringham has a retrospective on the anti-doping battle on Cyclingnews.com today that's worth a read. If you've ever been puzzled by the attitude of many riders towards blood boosting, it might be interesting to read what the head of the UCI said only a dozen years ago:

At the time, I remember being disconcerted by Verbruggen's approach to anti-doping. It was simple for me: EPO = doping = against the rules = wrong. The UCI chief saw it thus: "You can have long intellectual discussions about why you have to forbid EPO but accept riders training at altitude... EPO works, so what we are doing is saying, 'OK, you get the same effect if you go to the mountains or into an oxygen chamber'."

I didn't quite get this so I asked him to clarify by asking, 'the essence of the argument is that there's no difference morally between injecting EPO and altitude training?' "You must agree because you said you want everyone to be on an equal footing," replied Verbruggen. I was puzzled by the response and it seems totally incongruous now.

victorcarrera

That reminds me of an interview of a pro team doctor I read in either "Breaking the chain" or "The death of Marco Pantani".
He gave an example of a situation where a rider 2 weeks into a grand tour presents with dangerously low levels of a naturally occurring substance such as testosterone. He was making the point that it was his duty as a medical practitioner to prescribe and administer drugs primarily to alleviate this medical condition and sometimes these drugs had a performance enhancing effect as in the case of testosterone, but not to administer would have been medical negligence. He maintained that all he was doing was restoring the balance of chemicals in the body and was no different to taking carbohydrate/vitamin or protein supplements to replace what was depleted during exercise.

tunney

i don't understand this article, it dones't make sense given there is no doping in the pro tour and LA and AC are clean.

ednwireland

tunney wrote: »

i don't understand this article, it dones't make sense given there is no doping in the pro tour and LA and AC are clean.

ahh but there used to be especially B.L. (before lance's second coming anyway)

petethedrummer

Yeah that was Verbruggen, it's different with McQuaid in charge.

Chips Lovell

Verdruggen, you mean.

pgibbo

victorcarrera wrote: »

That reminds me of an interview of a pro team doctor I read in either "Breaking the chain" or "The death of Marco Pantani".
He gave an example of a situation where a rider 2 weeks into a grand tour presents with dangerously low levels of a naturally occurring substance such as testosterone. He was making the point that it was his duty as a medical practitioner to prescribe and administer drugs primarily to alleviate this medical condition and sometimes these drugs had a performance enhancing effect as in the case of testosterone, but not to administer would have been medical negligence. He maintained that all he was doing was restoring the balance of chemicals in the body and was no different to taking carbohydrate/vitamin or protein supplements to replace what was depleted during exercise.

There's a chapter at the end of In Search of Robert Millar that has details / quotes very similar to this also.

victorcarrera

pgibbo wrote: »

There's a chapter at the end of In Search of Robert Millar that has details / quotes very similar to this also.

Thats probably it OK as I read that one also around the same time. Thanks.