Cycling/ Cheating etc
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Quite an interesting article here
Paul Kimmage: The greatest ever or just another drug cheat? After all the bullshit, why should we care?
'Chris Froome's secret battle: Eight doctors, six clinics, four countries and five different illnesses . . . the remarkable personal struggle of Great Bri...
An excerpt
*"Given the list and nature of his ailments, it is no surprise that supplements are his friend: protein drinks and fish oils, beetroot juice and energizer greens. He has used Tramadol but only for back pain, an anti-histamine called Loratadine for an allergy to sun creams; Fluticasone, a preventative spray for asthma, and Ventolin (Salbutamol) when he's racing and about to make an effort.
"Is that not using the inhaler to boost your performance?" I asked him once.
"I eat breakfast before a long race," he replied. "Is that not boosting my performance? If I don't eat I won't have any energy; if I don't have my inhaler before a really big effort I'm probably not going to be able to breathe very well. I know I'm not going to breathe very well."
"But is that (health) not the essence of competition?" I suggested."Inhalers are not performance-enhancing," he said. "If any normal person who doesn't have asthma takes an inhaler, they're not going to ride any faster. Their lungs are not going to open any larger than they were before. But someone who does have asthma, the airways are going to close up and that inhaler just helps them to close less. It just helps me to be more normal and I definitely don't see that as an unfair advantage."
But that depends, obviously, on how much is used."*
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@crucial He's clearly doping. I said it from the beginning. The ludicrous argument that Team Sky wouldn't for blah fucking blah - the same shit US Postal tried. Sign number one: Nobody comes out of nowhere in a short time to become a world beater.
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@chester-draws said in Cycling/ Cheating etc:
I think all "therapeutic use exemptions" need to be fully publicised, to try to cut down on this legalised cheating.
World Rugby has a pretty liberal TUE policy, most sports do until they get the public eye is on them.
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@crucial it's salbutamol right? Ventolin?
I'm asthmatic and can't say I've ever felt like it's a caffeine hit at all. I used to accidentally take too much when younger too and it puts you completely out of kilter and dizzy, can't say it'd help my cycling! That's inhaling it though.
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@bones said in Cycling/ Cheating etc:
@crucial it's salbutamol right? Ventolin?
I'm asthmatic and can't say I've ever felt like it's a caffeine hit at all. I used to accidentally take too much when younger too and it puts you completely out of kilter and dizzy, can't say it'd help my cycling! That's inhaling it though.
I'm only going by my experience, I guess it affects different people slightly differently. If the side effects Froome has help him then no doubt Sky would use it as an advantage.
"Common side effects include shakiness, headache, fast heart rate, dizziness, and feeling anxious."
You get a bit of shakiness, I get a bit of fast heart rate. What does Froome get?
I have no idea what benefit he may actually get but there is a good chance that if it was detrimental his usage would be minimal. The fact that they are happy to boost his intake to high levels points to it being beneficial to him.
He claims it only ever brings him back to a level playing field.
There is a study here on use by non-asthmatic athletes http://thorax.bmj.com/content/56/9/675 but they don't seem to administer in the range that Froome was.
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I have a very simplified view on TUE's.
They are bullshit and competitors shouldn't be allowed to compete on them.
If you are sick, and require medication, then you aren't going to be fit or strong enough to win the Tour De France - so why should you then be able to take a banned substance to make yourself not sick? Being sick / getting injured is part of life / sport.
In my world, lets just say for whatever reason you need to take a banned substance to help with health. At that point you then declare it to the governing agency, who tell you h ow long your mandatory stand-down from the sport is.
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@majorrage so can't play premier rugby if you're asthmatic?
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@bones said in Cycling/ Cheating etc:
@majorrage so can't play premier rugby if you're asthmatic?
salbutamol doesn't require a TUE.
It just means that you need to take it at 'normal' levels and not massive amounts.
I think what @dogmeat is getting at is that if you need to take a banned substance in order to compete because of illness then you shouldn't be competing at all.
Plenty of rugby players don't play when the have a bad cold rather than dosing up on codeine and pseodoephidrene.
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I'm an asthmatic and all I can say is that if you need to use up an inhaler in just one week then no farking way you'll be able to cycle up a hill let alone compete in the Tour de France.
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@rancid-schnitzel said in Cycling/ Cheating etc:
I'm an asthmatic and all I can say is that if you need to use up an inhaler in just one week then no farking way you'll be able to cycle up a hill let alone compete in the TSF.
Need really really good drugs for that.
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@booboo said in Cycling/ Cheating etc:
@rancid-schnitzel said in Cycling/ Cheating etc:
I'm an asthmatic and all I can say is that if you need to use up an inhaler in just one week then no farking way you'll be able to cycle up a hill let alone compete in the TSF.
Need really really good drugs for that.
Especially in the politics forum
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@booboo said in Cycling/ Cheating etc:
@rancid-schnitzel said in Cycling/ Cheating etc:
I'm an asthmatic and all I can say is that if you need to use up an inhaler in just one week then no farking way you'll be able to cycle up a hill let alone compete in the TSF.
Need really really good drugs for that.
Bloody autocorrect.
Wheeze (takes 200 shots of ventolin).
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@majorrage said in Cycling/ Cheating etc:
I have a very simplified view on TUE's.
They are bullshit and competitors shouldn't be allowed to compete on them.
If you are sick, and require medication, then you aren't going to be fit or strong enough to win the Tour De France - so why should you then be able to take a banned substance to make yourself not sick? Being sick / getting injured is part of life / sport.
In my world, lets just say for whatever reason you need to take a banned substance to help with health. At that point you then declare it to the governing agency, who tell you h ow long your mandatory stand-down from the sport is.
Fuck me there's a lot of vitriol being spewed around this.
Tom Fordyce balances things out here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/42350159 -
Nah, that's bullshit Scribe.
Exactly, exactly the same bullshit was written to exonerate Lance Amstrong.
He's been caught. People don't want to believe he's been caught.
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For the record there are two issues here.
Asthma is not cured by excessive Salbutomol. So taking more doesn't improve breathing.
But that assumes he's taking it for asthma. He wasn't. He not asthmatic. He was taking it for the other benefits, notably aggression.
Floyd Landis took steroids in the stage he won late to win the TDF. He didn't take them to build muscle mass, since it was too late for that. He took them for aggression.
Saying that it doesn't improve breathing is to miss the point of the other benefits.
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@chester-draws as I said, a lot of vitriol being spewed.
He is asthmatic.
Salbutamol does temporarily open the inflamed and constricted airways to their normal levels, which by implication allows a person to breathe normally.
That fact that his levels were double doesn't necessarily mean that he took more than the allowed dose. The point he must prove has already had a precedent set - the rider got off ( although conversely Ulissi couldn't prove it and got banned).
I would much rather wait for the process to run fully rather than hanging him in the court of social media.
Given Froome's standing there is a huge amount riding on this for the UCI and cycling in general. It seems to me that the UCI and doping authorities are moving warily as despite what many people choose to believe in isolation, this is not a simple case.
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Can you say cognitive dissonance?
The thing is with these tests is that the thresholds are set at a very high level, so it's not like a zero or low tolerance approach like Froome wants everyone to believe.
By my calculations to get the reading he go he would have been going at ~35 standard puffs of Ventolin a day - which I don't think you could possibly do without thinking - jeez we might be getting close to the limit here.
He's a cheat. He's just cheating with a socially acceptable substance. He is like the prescription drug addict who for years has sneered at those on street drugs.
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I hung out in Cycling forums a few years back. It was impressive then how people could have all the facts and still say Lance Armstrong was clean. All the tests covered up, all the ex-riders like Swart saying he was dirty, all the hanging out with dirty doctors, yet many just didn't want to face it.
He might get away with it -- after all so did Armstrong -- but Froome isn't properly clean. Not a cheat in the Armstrong mode, but dirty like Sharapova.
Suspicious packages, hanging out with known dirty doctors, and failing tests. Is there more evidence you want that Sky isn't clean?
