Forums >Racing>Doping question
not bad for mile 25
Meb (in his mediocre book) mentions being tested randomly all the time, in addition to after wins. I assume the same goes for all pros.
Yeah, and (Meb said) they have to keep the testers informed at all times as to where they can be found; kind of like being on parole.
3) The return of an old favorite, blood doping. Freeze your blood in the off season, reinject it during the competitive season. Almost impossible to detect.
Why is this "bad" or "illegal" or "doping" if you naturally produced it in the 1st place?
Is it dangerous for the athlete (other than the obvious dangers of transfering blood during the physical process)?
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Why is this "bad" or "illegal" or "doping" if you naturally produced it in the 1st place? Is it dangerous for the athlete (other than the obvious dangers of transfering blood during the physical process)?
While the blood being re-injected was produced naturally, dumping a pint or two back into the bloodstream at a strategic time is not. It circumvents natural control mechanisms and physical limitations of the hematopoietic system.
As a non-real analogy....say someone developed technology to harvest muscle fibers (which the body would replace) and later re-attach them. Would it not be thought cheating if Usain Bolt toed the line with brand new octruceps to propel him to an 8sec 100m? After all, he grew those muscles himself...at one time or another...
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Out-of-competition testing occurs outside competitions and may be conducted by testing representatives from USADA, IAAF and WADA. If you are ranked among the top 50 in the World or one of the top 15 performers in your respective event domestically, you are subject to out-of-competition drug testing. The rankings are provided by the IAAF, Track & Field News and the Road Running Information Center. If you are subject to out-of-competition testing, you may be responsible for keeping USADA, the IAAF and USATF informed of your most current address as well as your daily 60-minute window.
Top 15 in your event domestically? Poor DB. Little did he know that he has to report his weekend getaways.
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The dopers figure out ways to rationalize/excuse their behavior.
While the blood being re-injected was produced naturally, dumping a pint or two back into the bloodstream at a strategic time is not. It circumvents natural control mechanisms and physical limitations of the hematopoietic system. As a non-real analogy....say someone developed technology to harvest muscle fibers (which the body would replace) and later re-attach them. Would it not be thought cheating if Usain Bolt toed the line with brand new octruceps to propel him to an 8sec 100m? After all, he grew those muscles himself...at one time or another...
Regarding the blood part, not the muscle fiber part...
I don't know if I agree with the "doping" part. It truly seems technical and advanced, but provided there was no tampering from the time it left his body until the time it entered it, it seems much more in the gray area than any synthetic type of doping.
I don't know blood.... what does the off-season blood contain that fatigued blood is lacking? It seems like it would also include a natural component that's missing due to excessive training.
(Is this the Floyd Landis situation that gained attention a few years back?)
It's about boosting the number of red blood cells above normal levels. Oxygen carrying red blood cells are particularly important in endurance sports and boosting their numbers provides an immediate improvement in aerobic capacity.
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Regarding the blood part, not the muscle fiber part... I don't know if I agree with the "doping" part. It truly seems technical and advanced, but provided there was no tampering from the time it left his body until the time it entered it, it seems much more in the gray area than any synthetic type of doping. I don't know blood.... what does the off-season blood contain that fatigued blood is lacking? It seems like it would also include a natural component that's missing due to excessive training. (Is this the Floyd Landis situation that gained attention a few years back?)
There is no difference in the blood, which is why it is hard to detect. That is not the issue. What is the issue, is that you are boosting your levels of RBCs beyond what can be acheived naturally. THAT is not natural and meets any definition of cheating.
Referencing back to my prior post...I don't recall the exact numbers...but say the average person has a hematocrit of 35 (I'm making this up). Even trained, my recollection is that the level is not boosted appreciably UNLESS you go to altitude. The cutoff to flag your sample for chemical doping is around 50. So by injecting blood back in controlled amounts, you can artificially elevate your level to 48-49 and gain a distinct and real advantage over everybody who is trying to better themselves through training. This is exactly what they saw happen at cycling events when they instituted the cutoff number to flag samples for automatic bans even without proof of chemical doping. Even going to altitude (which involves intensity and recovery tradeoffs) will not usually boost your hematocrit as high as blood doping...or we'd see a lot of people who train at altitude over-shooting, which we don't.
There is nothing natural about maintaining a completely artificial hematocrit, even if the substance used to do it is natural. It has real effects on recovery and performance which cannot be duplicated through training.
Doping control is not about "natural" vs "artificial" substances. There are plenty of artificial substances that are not banned. Substances are only banned if they artificially boost performance. Blood doping artificially boosts performance. The logic is consistent.
(And, no, Floyd Landis tested positive for synthetic testosterone.)
Re: blood doping, there is also the health risk to the athlete from the increased blood density. (Even if you reintroduced the saved cells and plasma, your body would re-equilibrate back to a "normal" volume ... and you'd still have all those extra blood cells.) Increased risk of stroke, blood clots, etc.
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That, in my opinion, is why it should be banned. I was wondering if there was medical concern for those that boosted their performance this way.
Although I agree with Spaniel's response as well (and followed the logic), there seems to be other things that artifically boost performance (ie. in race Gatorade / electrolytes consumption, Salt Tablets, gels, etc...). It seems like those added items replace things that you've lost along the journey of the day and enhance your performance during the last part of the race.
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there you go with big confusing words again
That, in my opinion, is why it should be banned. I was wondering if there was medical concern for those that boosted their performance this way. Although I agree with Spaniel's response as well (and followed the logic), there seems to be other things that artifically boost performance (ie. in race Gatorade / electrolytes consumption, Salt Tablets, gels, etc...). It seems like those added items replace things that you've lost along the journey of the day and enhance your performance during the last part of the race.
You don't see a difference between
a.) drinking water with salt and sugar in it
and
b.) drawing a few pints of your own blood, storing it until your body has replaced the lost red blood cells, and then re-injecting it back into your blood stream just before a competition to boost red blood cell counts to levels that your body could never sustain on its own?
Okay then.
You don't see a difference between a.) drinking water with salt and sugar in it and b.) drawing a few pints of your own blood, storing it until your body has replaced the lost red blood cells, and then re-injecting it back into your blood stream just before a competition to boost red blood cell counts to levels that your body could never sustain on its own? Okay then.
of course I see a difference, Mike.
I just think that the medical risk is more important reason.
But, up until a couple hours ago, I hadn't spent 2 hours in my life thinking about it. Now I've spent 2 hours in my life thinking about it.