UCI reportedly considering giving Chris Froome a provisional ban

alansmurphy wrote:

Can Valbrona be Scum Half-wit?

 

Under-qualified. A whole half?

Martyn_K wrote:

For a moment there i thought i had stumbled in to a rugby forum................................................

 

We should stop here. Have a scrummage and hope that cycling related conversion pops out at the feet of the number 8.

or, in the interests of balance, the loose forward

barbarus wrote:

@behindthebikesheds Only you could bring this round to your loyalty to an inferior code of rugby. If this week's cat 3 news from France proves anything then it proves that people cheat, in all levels of sport and in all disciplines. And that includes rugby league. Just ask Kudangirana.

Only you could bring this round to outing yourself as someone who doesn't understand the gaping difference in quality between the sports and that onion has been playing catchup for over a 100 years and still never quite getting there. Is RU watched more, has more money, has better marketing/better leaders and great athletes, yes it does.

I never said athletes in RL don't cheat, my point is that sports with a lot of influence get off a lot more lightly than those that don't. This is the case with RU compared to league as is union, soccer, tennis compared to cycling.

barbarus wrote:

inferior

This is an excellent example of how someone outs themselves as knowing not a lot about rugby. Rather than being castigated for it, the poster should be thanked for saving their would-be debater the time of actually being drawn into a debate with them.

It's a signposted no-contest. It's a punt after the first tackle. It's releasing the ball forwards. It's textbook, and should be encouraged to spread to other topics. Well done, barbarus.

Yours, long-time player and coach of both codes, with sons now playing both.

grumpyoldcyclist wrote:

All this talk of cycling and dopers. The sport in the the UK with the largest number of suspended participants due to failed drug tests is rugby. How come they never get any press time?

And the sport with the biggest amount of $$ in it never has a problem, despite players regularly keeling over on the pitch.

grumpyoldcyclist wrote:

All this talk of cycling and dopers. The sport in the the UK with the largest number of suspended participants due to failed drug tests is rugby. How come they never get any press time?

Because the UK press love rugby and hate cycling, it's a national sport. Plus rugby never had a Lance Armstrong

maviczap wrote:

grumpyoldcyclist wrote:

All this talk of cycling and dopers. The sport in the the UK with the largest number of suspended participants due to failed drug tests is rugby. How come they never get any press time?

Because the UK press love rugby and hate cycling, it's a national sport. Plus rugby never had a Lance Armstrong

Let's be clear, the 'rugby' doping is mostly in onion, the sport is virtually untouchable just like tennis and soccer because there is so much money invested in it and run by people with a lot of influence.

Cycling is actually far more popular than rugby of either code but RFU are quite able to supress a lot of the shit that goes on, the less popular (numerically) and not so influential RFL get targetted often in the media when even some tier two/three player is busted, when one of the best England players of last year was caught taking a bit of coke it was in the media on a big scale and was accordingly banned, yet cheating/doping in union is very much underplayed or simply brushed under the carpet.

cycling has been far more open about doping than most sports, you only have to look at the ridiculous situation in athletics were the Eastern bloc and the Americans were at it big time from as far back the late 60s, the women in particular in the sprint and strength events and even female gymnasts were forced into getting pregnant at 13/14 as it was seen as a way to give an advantage without actual doping. This situation still isn't sorted as they've allowed the records to stand in the womens which stretch back as far as the early 80s when doping was at its peak.

By comparison the armstrong doping scandal and others is a drop in the fucking ocean but has had far more fallout from it

Jimnm wrote:

Am I correct in saying that blood doping thickens the blood, which in turn causes breathing difficulties, hence the use of inhalers to relieve said symptoms .

 Just a thought! 

Don't think it does, and unlikely salbutamol would remive them if it did.

oldstrath wrote:

Jimnm wrote:

Am I correct in

saying that blood doping thickens the blood, which in turn causes breathing difficulties, hence the use of inhalers to relieve said symptoms .

 Just a thought! 

Don't think it does, and unlikely salbutamol would remive them if it did.

Risks of Blood Doping

By increasing the number of red blood cells, blood doping causes the blood to thicken. This thickening forces the heart to work harder than normal to pump blood throughout the body. As a result, blood doping raises the risk of:

blood clot
heart attack
stroke

oldstrath wrote:

Jimnm wrote:

Am I correct in saying that blood doping thickens the blood, which in turn causes breathing difficulties, hence the use of inhalers to relieve said symptoms .

 Just a thought! 

Don't think it does, and unlikely salbutamol would remive them if it did.

A good question which raises 2 points (blood doping & asthma drugs) but which are actually unrelated.

In the days of massive EPO abuse, it was taken as it promotes the body to produce red blood cells (and so carry more oxygen) but it only, therefore, increases the number of RBCs in a steady volume of blood. More RBCs in a person's "8pints" of blood means less physical space for the aqueous component of the blood, so yes, blood viscosity increases. This wont make breathing harder. The lungs are an oxygen exchange mebrane and the blood will still simply flow through the capillaries in them even if it is a bit thinnner or thicker - the organ which WILL feel some stress is the heart as this has to work harder if it is charged with pumping thicker blood down the same pipes.

If someone is blood doping they might extract a pint (I presume!) to a drip bag, the body then senses the loss & makes another pint to bring the volume back up to a point of stasis (Red Blood Cells only live for 30 days anyway so your body is constantly replacing a certain proportion of them) & the cheater then cheats by reintroducing the reviously extracted pint. Again they end up with more RBC but this time by now having 9 pints of blood, albeit at the same RBC concentration as before. Blood pressure will (clearly) increase as the blood volume has increased so again the heart will have to work harder (until the body gradually clears down the excess pint) but again it will simply flow through the blood vessels in the lung tissue where the only thing that happens is that inhaled air transfers some of it's oxyen into the de-oxygenated RBCs contained in the incoming blood, and breathing air in and out should feel no more or less difficult 

Salbutamol and it's analogues are vaso-dilators; medications which act to "open up" the airways in the lungs & is a crucial intervention for asthmatics where inflamation of the airway linings restricts the volume of inhaled air, preventing the usual volume of oxygen reaching the part of the lungs where the membranes (between the airspace of the lung & the blood in the blood vessels beside those "lung walls") are thin enough for inhaled gas to diffuse across the mebrane and into the blood. Basically, the harder you work your body, the more it's oxygen demand increases & the harder the lungs have to work to bring in oxygen (and the heart, to pump that oxygenated blood around so it can be used). People we commonly think of as "asthmatic" can have such an inflamation at relatively sedate levels of activty; we've all seen the poor soul who has to get their inhaler out for a puff just from climbing the stairs. Many people aren't asthmatic to that degree but will show some symptoms when their bodies are under duress. Most of us can remeber at least one occasion where we did some hard activity at full effort until we simply had to stop. Afterward you stop you can feel you heart pounding at full bore and your lungs have that slight rasping sensation until your breathing rate recovers? That rasping is the very beginning point of performance related asthmatic inflamation and it is no (medical) surprise that among endurance athletes, who dont display asthma symptoms at low metabolic rates, extended bouts of extreme effort can induce some degree of asthmatic inhibition. 

Just some basic physiology for you. Blood viscisity shouldn't hinder the lung's ability in inflate/deflate; it's simply the degree of asthmatic tendency which does that and dictates at which level of lung activity a shot from the inhaler becomes necessary to stave off a full on "cant breathe" asthmatic attack.

Doesnt help with the moral dilemma of should an athlete be allowed to use it to compete at the same level as a non sufferer - that's a different matter. 

One last conjecture; I would add that an excess of salbutamol has too many downsides to be considered performance enhancing. Speak to any asthmatic who, in a moment of scared desperation, has had too many puffs of their inhaler and they'll tell you it takes you "over the edge" and instantly makes you feel awful & disorientated.

Jimnm wrote:

Am I correct in saying that blood doping thickens the blood, which in turn causes breathing difficulties, hence the use of inhalers to relieve said symptoms .

 Just a thought! 

In a word, no. If that was the case, then blood doping would be ineffective, as the whole point of it is to increase oxygen transport. It (may) thicken the blood, but doesn't  induce asthmatic type symptoms. However though, Jorge Jackshe tweeted "remember what was in the blood bag" (he would know). Salbutamol is only regulated in competitions so if Chris had done a blood withdrawal for later use after a particularly heavy use of salbutamol....

Jimnm wrote:

Am I correct in saying that blood doping thickens the blood, which in turn causes breathing difficulties, hence the use of inhalers to relieve said symptoms .

 Just a thought! 

no...

Plasterer's Radio wrote:

The most tested man on the planet blah blah.

Heard it all before.

Cycling and doping go hand in hand..History proves it.

Let them dope as much as they like. At least that is genuinely open and transparent.

Yes let's just let athletes do whatever to win, where does it stop, changing your DNA, getting young girls pregnant so they are stronger, how about doing whatever so women look like men (biologically too) and can perform almost the same as men?
How about instead of the feed zone we have a blood transfusion pit stop, in fact keep a stash of cooled blood in the tubes to recycle into the body on the go and a massive hit of cocaine for the sprints.
Yeah, just let them all take it and do whatever...fucking retarded comment, sadly not the only one who thinks that way!

Plasterer's Radio wrote:

The most tested man on the planet blah blah.

Heard it all before.

Cycling and doping go hand in hand..History proves it.

Let them dope as much as they like. At least that is genuinely open and transparent.

This argument uses the assumption that it stops with the doping. Where exactly is the new line drawn? They're not taking drugs for the fun of the drugs. They're doping to get an illicit advantage or balance perceived cheating by others. Whichever way you cut that, it's cheating.

Open drugs up, 'let them take what they want', and do you think it'll stop there?

Here's a couple of clues: Femke's motor and Tyler's third party blood. And that's we know of, with the line where it currently is. Push it back a bit by allowing 'drugs', and prepare to be amazed at the innovation displayed in the quest to unlevel the playing field.

The system needs fixing - quickly - and proper cross-sport and international standards and penalties agreed, inconsistencies regarding TUEs etc sorted. WADA and the UCI are shit at what they're supposed to be really good at and it feels like death by a thousand cuts at the moment. But I can't think of anything that'd kill professional road racing quicker than the audience thinking the peloton is scooting round on mopeds with other people's blood running through their veins.

Cheaters gonna cheat, yo. They don't need more of the reins than they already have.

don simon wrote:

Damage done, he's tainted and can't be considered a clean rider in my eyes.

Really?  Up until this point he was Snow White in your eyes?  But now, pah! Doper.

Interesting.