Legal doping
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From the Times, some of the article by David Walsh.
Wiggins’s case is very different. Though there is no evidence that he has abused the system in any way, questions arise over the dates when he obtained the three TUEs in his Team Sky years, and in the detail of the treatment. Since 2008, Wiggins has had six TUEs; three of them while riding for the Garmin team, and a further three at Sky. His Garmin TUEs were for the asthma drugs salbutamol, formoterol and budesonide, which he could inhale, two puffs, twice daily.
These are not performance-enhancing drugs and can now be used without a therapeutic exemption. It is the TUEs Wiggins received while riding for Team Sky that are problematic. First, the timing. In 2011, three days before the start of the Tour de France for which Wiggins was one of the favourites, he was given a TUE to have a one-off 40mg injection of the powerful corticosteroid triamcinolone acetonide.
A year later he was the favourite for the 2012 Tour and four days before the race was given permission for another one-off injection of triamcinolone. Ten months later and 12 days before the start of his major target for that year, the 2013 Giro d’Italia, Wiggins got another TUE for a 40mg injection of triamcinolone.
Between the second and third TUEs Wiggins wrote an autobiography, My Time, that covered his 2012 Tour victory. It may be understandable that Wiggins did not want to mention the TUEs, fearing that fans might think he was seeking an unfair advantage, but he went further than not mentioning them. “In British cycling culture, at the word ‘needle’ — or the sight of one — you go, ‘Oh s***’. It’s a complete taboo ... I’ve never had an injection, apart from I’ve had my vaccinations and on occasion I’ve been put on a drip, when I’ve come down with diarrhoea or something.
Yesterday Wiggins insisted that what he had meant in his reference to “needles” was that he had not had IVs, that is products fed into his system intravenously. In their seven-year history, Team Sky have applied for 13 TUEs. Given the number of races, especially the number of grand tours, that is not a high number. What is surprising is that Wiggins should have accounted for three, and the timing of them: shortly before his biggest race of that season.
Opinions differ on the performance-enhancing qualities of triamcinolone acetonide but there is agreement that it is a potent steroid. In his first Tour de France “victory” it was the corticoid found in Lance Armstrong’s urine and the American only avoided a doping ban because his team backdated a medical prescription, which the cycling authorities then accepted.
One former Postal rider, who asked not to be named, said that in his career he had used the two drugs given to Wiggins and Froome under the TUE system. “Oral prednisolone works on clearing your airways but it doesn’t affect performance. Injected Kenalog [triamcinolone], that’s different. That is a powerful drug and it sure as hell helps performance.”
David Millar described having the same intramuscular injection given to Wiggins in 2011, 2012 and 2013. “It is probably the most potent drug out there,” he said, before adding: “With the right prescription it could be used legally.”
Team Sky have been reluctant to get into any debate about the medical information leaked by Fancy Bears, citing medical confidentiality. Trawling through Wiggins’s own accounts of the 2011 and 2012 Tours, it is clear he did get ill in the week before the 2011 race and it might be argued that he needed his corticosteroid injection to treat that.
The 2012 injection is far more difficult to explain. Wiggins had won all of the prep races for the Tour that year and had been impressive in his last pre-Tour race, the Criterium du Dauphine. In his book he writes of his great form going into the Tour. There is no mention of any illness.
Though they say they cannot publicly discuss Wiggins’s case and the rider provides no detailed explanation as to why he needed the injection, it is believed the TUE was sought for preventative reasons, to combat asthmatic symptoms that could have arisen during that Tour de France. Few if any of Wiggins’s teammates knew he had been granted that TUE; the same for the support staff.
The team that wanted to be seen as whiter than white had been dealing in shades of grey. What they did was legal but it was not right.
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This is one of those times you go "Oh no!" hide your head in your hands and hope it all goes away. Say it aint so Brad.
Smells fishy though, doesn't it?
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Can't stand the Russians and their pathetic attempts at trying to get back at everyone else but this really isn't a good look. I'm fine with there being exceptions, IF they're legit, but there needs to be a hell of a lot more transparency around the whole thing.
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@Unco said in Legal doping:
Can't stand the Russians and their pathetic attempts at trying to get back at everyone else but this really isn't a good look. I'm fine with there being exceptions, IF they're legit, but there needs to be a hell of a lot more transparency around the whole thing.
The Russians may lift the lid on a lot of this doping malarkey. We are just starting to see what is in there, and this shit is the legal stuff.
Remember kids - if there hadn't been a whisteblower (who promptly got banned) WADA and IOC and IAAF would have no idea of the pervasive, state sponsored doping that was going on.
any bets on when we may see this in the olympic sport 7s?
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@infidel something like 80% of cyclists are registered as 'asthmatics'...
amazing how they can compete in a grueling sport like that when you're an asthmatic huh!?
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Ah, I knew Asthmatics were the master race... at least when they get access to their meds!!
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@WillieTheWaiter said in Legal doping:
@infidel something like 80% of cyclists are registered as 'asthmatics'...
amazing how they can compete in a grueling sport like that when you're an asthmatic huh!?
Are you asthmatic?
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@Bones said in Legal doping:
@WillieTheWaiter said in Legal doping:
@infidel something like 80% of cyclists are registered as 'asthmatics'...
amazing how they can compete in a grueling sport like that when you're an asthmatic huh!?
Are you asthmatic?
no. but my missus is so i just use her sh*t. ha.
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@WillieTheWaiter It wouldn't stop anyone from being able to compete at that level, depends how badly affected. The odd puff to clear the airways, but otherwise like normal.
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@Bones said in Legal doping:
@WillieTheWaiter It wouldn't stop anyone from being able to compete at that level, depends how badly affected. The odd puff to clear the airways, but otherwise like normal.
i'm pretty sure froome had a 'proper' asthma attack at some stage this year while racing
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@WillieTheWaiter said in Legal doping:
@Bones said in Legal doping:
@WillieTheWaiter It wouldn't stop anyone from being able to compete at that level, depends how badly affected. The odd puff to clear the airways, but otherwise like normal.
i'm pretty sure froome had a 'proper' asthma attack at some stage this year while racing
Yeah, Froome copped some shit for his TUE one year so refused another even when he obviously needed it. The questions raised are around Wiggins and why he only seemed to need TUEs just before the TdF and that he steadfastly denied having had and 'needles' until came out.
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I know there's what appears to be a remarkable statistical anomaly in the amount of swimmers who have/ had asthma when they were younger. This, of course, ignores that a lot of children with asthma are encouraged to take up swimming to help counter their respiratory condition.
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The crux of the asthma article explains that asthma is often onset by mouth breathing (nose not filtering air) and the intake of cold air into the lungs. Basically this can cause respiratory inflammations.
The other article is at pains to explain that Team Sky are doing nothing illegal but the Wiggins TUEs point to them using the TUE system to it's fullest possibly to gain an advantage. They refer to another cyclist admitting use of the same drug on the basis of a contrived prescription (his admission). He explains its effect in that he lost a lot of weight quickly but felt stronger and had more stamina.
The conclusion is that TUEs should be declared publicly which may curtail dodgy use. -
Well that's a suprise, the British press getting in behind Wiggins and Team Sky, just like they did with Mo Farrah and the Oregon Project.
I read Wiggins book a couple of years ago, and he goes to great lengths to tell the reader "he's never used needles in cycling" ... yet now we find out he has had injections of a very powerful cortisoid in 2011/12/13 just prior to the Tour.
This is a fucking powerful drug, and good luck getting any normal doctor to precribe it for Hayfever... unless it's really fucking bad.
A few current and former pro's have been pretty scathing of this, and rightly so in my opinion.
David Millar breaks it down pretty well I reckon.... and the man definitely knows his drugs, as his record will attest
Drugs used by Sir Bradley Wiggins should be banned, says David Millar
As the furore surrounding Sir Bradley Wiggins’s three therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) for triamcinolone – a powerful corticosteroid – escalated on Monday, David Millar said he “could not fathom” how any doctor could prescribe the drug to a rider about to compete in a...
Or Jorg Jakse, also a well known drug cheat
Jörg Jaksche about Team Sky: “Bunch of hypocrites”
Ten years after Operación Puerto, Jørg Jaksche has a hard time believing much has changed in cycling. A decade on, Jaksche lives in Australia, where he is pursuing a master’s degree in business administration, far away from the European peloton he watches with skepticism in the post-Puerto era....
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I was all against the 'fancy bears' at first, because I think that athletes, as people, have a reasonable right to privacy.
However, this case in particular suggests that it's all dirty - even if it's not officially dirty, it's still ugly and dirty and people are lying and trying to backtrack and say, well, when I said no injections, I was meaning doping injections, even though this is kind of like a doping injection, but wasn't.
I can't see why it is OK to compete while under the influence of drugs that everyone pretty much knows have a significant performance enhancing influence.
All TUEs should be declared openly and available for evaluation.
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Totally agree, rule should be that any TUEs are open to public scrutiny and your opponents know what you're on. Transparency trumps medical privacy; if you want to compete in front of millions of people and be paid millions of dollars, the public/fans have a right to know.
In his instance, know that your asthma that you've had all your life but never mentioned before in several books and zillions of interviews, just happened to flare up right at the most convenient time before the 3 biggest races of your career, so badly that you needed fucking horse steroids, to treat a pollen allergy that happened to occur at different times and different places depending on when and where the Grand Tours were. Horse steroids that any normal doctor would only prescribe an asthmatic that was basically an invalid due to the severity of their condition, and only then after exhausting every other avenue.
Wiggins will never come back from this in the court of public opinion. He'll be lucky to keep his knighthood. One BBC commentator summed it up very well when he said its a bit like the tax arrangements of multinational corporations; legal in the the letter of the law, but doesn't stop people being mightily pissed off when it all comes to light, and rightly so.
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Look I agree that Wiggins has been a bit of a knob over all of this (and it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve thought he was a knob) but I believe him when he says he received the TUEs not to get an advantage, but to get back onto a level playing field. From what I understand he’s a bit of a worrier. Going into the biggest races of the year as a favourite he’d be acutely aware of any little symptom of potential ill health and do whatever it look legally to ensure he wasn’t affected.
I’m no professional cyclist but I do suffer from asthma and hay fever. If I sense even the slightest bit of aggravation before a race I’ve trained extensively for, I dose up fully as a result of being slightly paranoid that I’ll be hamstrung in my ability to perform my best. I think this is where Wiggins is coming from.
That said, I do think there are others in the peloton who probably exploit the whole TUE process; I’m probably in favour of more transparency or an overhaul of what products fall under the TUE umbrella (filtering out any potential borderline cases like corticosteroids)
