Who is doped?

Q: But Rasmussen was tested in the race and was always negative. So even if he was screwing around beforehand, he couldn’t be cheating during the race, right?

A: Yes, Rasmussen’s been negative so far. Rasmussen has eagerly assumed the Lance Armstrong mantle of the “most tested man in cycling.” A bit too eagerly – although he claims to have passed 14 in-race tests, the results of all of those are not yet known.

More importantly, know that the tests that currently exist do not catch everything. For some techniques, such as withdrawing, storing and re-injecting your own blood (autologous blood doping) there is no test that can detect them. Vinokourov allegedly tested positive for homologous blood doping, or injecting blood from a donor with a compatible major blood type – there is a clear test for that. To use autologous blood doping as an example, some tests can indicate it, such as blood volume testing or OFF-score testing, but neither of these are approved by WADA. With the severity of a two-year ban for a positive test, test methods must not only be scientifically sound, but capable of withstanding a legal challenge. Most come equipped with standard deviations that allow generous leeway for a rider. For example, the EPO urine test must show at least 80 percent of the isoforms to be considered metabolites of synthetic EPO, even though it’s arguable that a much lower threshold could show EPO use.

But even for techniques that we do have a test for, such as EPO, the window of detection is often limited. (my emphasis) The sensitivity of the urine EPO test is limited to about 72 hours after injection. The blood test, by itself, is not considered legally valid proof of EPO use because it cannot distinguish naturally occurring EPO from synthetic. But the effectiveness of EPO as a doping technique is much more long-lived. An aggressive course of EPO taken in the six or so weeks prior to a Grand Tour can take the rider’s haematocrit, or red blood cell count expressed as a percentage of total blood volume, from a normal level – say, 40 to 44 percent – to close to the UCI threshold of 50. That increase is directly correlated to power output. Over the course of a Tour, it will decline several percentage points, but the effect of the EPO use lasts the entire Tour. By contrast, the administration of the EPO itself ends two to three weeks prior to the race, so by the time a racer is controlled in the race, all legally verifiable traces of its use are gone. The racer gets the benefit, but will never test positive.

This is the reason accurate and timely whereabouts reporting is absolutely essential to clean sport: the most effective doping in endurance sports like cycling takes place not during the race, but preceeding it, and out-of-competition testing is the only way to catch it. Again, over the past 24 months Rasmussen missed two tests outright, failed to report his location on two others, and revealed that two of the responsible agencies had never tested him during that time. No one can prove Rasmussen is doping. But neither can he claim that he’s made every effort to show he’s not.

Click to expand...