Chris Frome potentially in serious trouble
Discussion
Ayahuasca said:
toastyhamster said:
Asthma is a side effect of the type of training they inflict on their lungs, it's highly prevalent in road cyclists.
If they get asthma and have to retire, so be it. toastyhamster said:
Ayahuasca said:
toastyhamster said:
Asthma is a side effect of the type of training they inflict on their lungs, it's highly prevalent in road cyclists.
If they get asthma and have to retire, so be it. Ayahuasca said:
If they can manage to play / run without drugs, great. If not, goodbye.
Thinking about it, I do have some sympathy for that viewpoint. It's controversial but does have some merit.If you're a normal guy, train to a level without needing an inhaler, that guy is clean. If the same guy uses EPO to be able to train longer, harder & build more muscle then by definition he's doping.
But the guy who pushes himself into illness during training to build better muscles and then uses chemicals to restore his health is, by current definition, clean.
If you take the view that such things are simply levelling the playing field, then why do we not allow everyone to dose up to a 50% hematocrit level ? That would be a leveller, wouldn't it ? Funny old world....
Ayahuasca said:
toastyhamster said:
Ayahuasca said:
toastyhamster said:
Asthma is a side effect of the type of training they inflict on their lungs, it's highly prevalent in road cyclists.
If they get asthma and have to retire, so be it. What if someone was treated for a condition as a child that would have prevented them from reaching professional levels later in life? Perhaps they were premature and needed care? Can those people compete?
Yipper said:
There should def be a "free for all" Olympics.
Let the athletes and cyclists take as many drugs as they want.
Would be great to have watched Usain Bolt do the 100m in ~8secs. Like watching Road Runner in the cartoons. Meep meep.
I think hes already as fast as he can be on drugs.Let the athletes and cyclists take as many drugs as they want.
Would be great to have watched Usain Bolt do the 100m in ~8secs. Like watching Road Runner in the cartoons. Meep meep.
A tweet with wada stats on asthmatics winning Olympic medals
https://twitter.com/procyclingstats/status/9421141...
https://twitter.com/procyclingstats/status/9421141...
JPJPJP said:
A tweet with wada stats on asthmatics winning Olympic medals
https://twitter.com/procyclingstats/status/9421141...
I'm not sure I'd pay too much attention to that - probably too much risk of confounding variables.https://twitter.com/procyclingstats/status/9421141...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding
dangerousB said:
Any evidence? Or are you just having a wild guess?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1318486?access_num=1318486&link_type=MED&dopt=AbstractGoogle is your friend. Its anabolism effect is proven, its respiratory effect is equivocal over a number of small studies. BTW have you ever tried a salbutamol inhaler?
Sprinting athletes spent a lot of concentration trying to get their heart rate up prior to a sprint. Salbutamol does it automatically. If you try salbutamol you feel a slight buzz from it. Take a few puffs and you will start to get a hand shake from the buzz. Your flight or fight response is getting supercharged from the inhaler taken at high dose. I have little doubt it is overused amongst athletes who are claming exercise induced asthma.
The current push of asthma guidelines is to get people onto steroids or LAMA inhalers rather than take high dose salbutamol. Neither of the other two have any effect on performance so athletes will have a little difficulty explaining why they are on high dose salbutamol without any other inhalers on purely medical treatment grounds.
To suggest that Froome's medical & training teams haven't thoroughly examined his performance data & the effect that salbutamol dosage has on it is incredibly naive
Either dosing up to the allowed limit suppressed the negative affect of asthma on his performance, or improved (aspects of) his performance.
Maybe both.
As I have said previously, it looks as though his dosing regime was designed to keep him just under the allowed limit and, in this case, something went wrong and he went over.
Whether that slip him costs him any more than it already has remains to be seen
But I am in no doubt that many riders are operating similar regimes with a whole host of substances - dosing right up to the allowable limit of anything that their studies show offers an advantage.
Whilst that can be done within the rules, many will question whether it is riding clean.
Whilst I don't really like the principle of it, I am guilty of enjoying watching the racing it produces. I regard it as operating within the rules and I expect it happens in many sports other than cycling.
I would like to see allowable limits of all 'drugs' reduced massively by the UCI / WADA.
Either dosing up to the allowed limit suppressed the negative affect of asthma on his performance, or improved (aspects of) his performance.
Maybe both.
As I have said previously, it looks as though his dosing regime was designed to keep him just under the allowed limit and, in this case, something went wrong and he went over.
Whether that slip him costs him any more than it already has remains to be seen
But I am in no doubt that many riders are operating similar regimes with a whole host of substances - dosing right up to the allowable limit of anything that their studies show offers an advantage.
Whilst that can be done within the rules, many will question whether it is riding clean.
Whilst I don't really like the principle of it, I am guilty of enjoying watching the racing it produces. I regard it as operating within the rules and I expect it happens in many sports other than cycling.
I would like to see allowable limits of all 'drugs' reduced massively by the UCI / WADA.
All this inhaler gate is a bit of a storm in a teacup tbh. Lots of people out polishing their pitchforks and getting angry, nothings decided yet or proven. LOL Tony Martin and Wiggins's wife getting all shouty and then backtracking the next day!
Makes me laugh the people who go all grandiose and say "well that's its , ive been let down by professional cycling too much"...this always has and always will be part of professional cycling
Part of me thinks that whatever the reason , Sky with all their monitoring and data should have been on top of it and for whatever reason its a joke
Another part of me thinks that if you monitor someone closely and push them to the edge of their limits in tough conditions once in a while you are going to get some mad readings concerning medication they are on .
As for asthma I am asthmatic, cycle every day and have entered amateur events.
To think that being asthmatic means you "get out of breath" is naive and stupid , Ive ridden 100 hard miles and felt fine riding . Three hours later i've been on my sofa watching TV and all of a sudden my lungs have just closed off, its like someone has shoved a sock down my throat and i'm drowning. 5-10 puffs of inhaler and the breathing sorts itself out and recovers. All the studies Ive read show inhalers to be a performance enabler rather than enhancer and Froome has been an asthmatic all his life .
Makes me laugh the people who go all grandiose and say "well that's its , ive been let down by professional cycling too much"...this always has and always will be part of professional cycling
Part of me thinks that whatever the reason , Sky with all their monitoring and data should have been on top of it and for whatever reason its a joke
Another part of me thinks that if you monitor someone closely and push them to the edge of their limits in tough conditions once in a while you are going to get some mad readings concerning medication they are on .
As for asthma I am asthmatic, cycle every day and have entered amateur events.
To think that being asthmatic means you "get out of breath" is naive and stupid , Ive ridden 100 hard miles and felt fine riding . Three hours later i've been on my sofa watching TV and all of a sudden my lungs have just closed off, its like someone has shoved a sock down my throat and i'm drowning. 5-10 puffs of inhaler and the breathing sorts itself out and recovers. All the studies Ive read show inhalers to be a performance enabler rather than enhancer and Froome has been an asthmatic all his life .
I have to laugh at the term "performance enabler".
So basically if you are crocked in some way/have sub-optimal genes etc. you can avail of means that enables your performance to get closer to people who are not so limited as you?
It's an enhancer. It enhances your performance from the level that mother nature decided for you, or that were unlucky to acquire, to a higher level unshackled from such limitations.
Sports like cycling are in very large part a fitness test. If a condition makes an athlete not as fit as other competitors, I don't see why there should be special allowances. Otherwise they might as well run the races on a handicap basis.
So basically if you are crocked in some way/have sub-optimal genes etc. you can avail of means that enables your performance to get closer to people who are not so limited as you?
It's an enhancer. It enhances your performance from the level that mother nature decided for you, or that were unlucky to acquire, to a higher level unshackled from such limitations.
Sports like cycling are in very large part a fitness test. If a condition makes an athlete not as fit as other competitors, I don't see why there should be special allowances. Otherwise they might as well run the races on a handicap basis.
JuniorD said:
I have to laugh at the term "performance enabler".
So basically if you are crocked in some way/have sub-optimal genes etc. you can avail of means that enables your performance to get closer to people who are not so limited as you?
It's an enhancer. It enhances your performance from the level that mother nature decided for you, or that were unlucky to acquire, to a higher level unshackled from such limitations.
Sports like cycling are in very large part a fitness test. If a condition makes an athlete not as fit as other competitors, I don't see why there should be special allowances. Otherwise they might as well run the races on a handicap basis.
It's an interesting point, but one that is not nearly as black and white as first appears.So basically if you are crocked in some way/have sub-optimal genes etc. you can avail of means that enables your performance to get closer to people who are not so limited as you?
It's an enhancer. It enhances your performance from the level that mother nature decided for you, or that were unlucky to acquire, to a higher level unshackled from such limitations.
Sports like cycling are in very large part a fitness test. If a condition makes an athlete not as fit as other competitors, I don't see why there should be special allowances. Otherwise they might as well run the races on a handicap basis.
What if an athlete survived what could have been a serious bacterial infection due to antibiotics? If you argue for "genetic predisposition only" then you have to exclude anyone who's had an ailment that would be serious or life changing without modern medicine, because without that intervention they wouldn't be able to be an athlete (or might even be dead).
What about the various other medical interventions that we all receive throughout our lives? Your all time top genetic only athlete might not have survived being born if they had grown large and strong enough to pop out the traditional way and were only saved by cesarean delivery, for example.
What about all the vaccinations we have to prevent people who aren't genetically predisposed to being resilient to the various childhood diseases from being affected by them?
How about treatement for muscular issues by physiotherapy? If you're genetically bound to get unbalanced muscles from doing the sport you've chosen, is it ok to have a third party apply their knowledge and physically modify the way your body grows to fix it? If they only use manual techniques? What if they use more invasive ones like needling? Are you allowed to use a foam roller? That sounds like cheating...
Not simple at all!
Edited by BMWBen on Monday 18th December 13:03
julian64 said:
Google is your friend.
Sure is - this isn’t the first time I’ve looked into this question and I can find many, many more disagreeing with you. Just a small selection:-https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF024255... "These results support other findings that an acute dose (400 μg) of Salbutamol has no performance-enhancing properties"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7657418 "Multi-variate ANOVA revealed no significant difference between the albuterol and placebo treatment for the anaerobic power measures: peak power, total work, time to peak power, fatigue index, peak heart rate, or blood lactate"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8781870 "These results support other findings that an acute dose (400 micrograms) of Salbutamol has no performance-enhancing properties"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21327796 "Maximal isokinetic muscle strength was not affected by salbutamol . . . the acute administration of either low or high dose salbutamol does not affect exercise capacity in normal subjects"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1435165 "No difference was found in peak power, maximum heart rate, endurance sprint time, Wingate peak power, or total work”
julian64 said:
Its anabolism effect is proven
Really? Who by? Citation required.julian64 said:
its respiratory effect is equivocal over a number of small studies.
I don’t take "ambiguity over a few small studies" as proof and I don’t think anyone else does either!julian64 said:
Sprinting athletes spent a lot of concentration trying to get their heart rate up prior to a sprint. Salbutamol does it automatically.
So does caffeine. So does Taurine. So does pressing on the pedals harder or upping your cadence. I’m not sure what your point is. A cyclist isn’t going whip out an inhaler prior to a sprint and have a tug on it just to up his HR - they’d want total control over it anyway and have it in the right zone (rather than simply "elevated"), so certainly wouldn’t trust a drug to do it artificially.julian64 said:
If you try salbutamol you feel a slight buzz from it. Take a few puffs and you will start to get a hand shake from the buzz. Your flight or fight response is getting supercharged from the inhaler taken at high dose. I have little doubt it is overused amongst athletes who are claming exercise induced asthma.
Sorry that’s b
ks, every word of it. If you experience a flight or fight response, it’s due to the presence of adrenaline, NOT because your heart rate is elevated!julian64 said:
BTW have you ever tried a salbutamol inhaler?
Yup. Twice. Both occasions about 3 months ago and it didn’t do anything like what you’re describing I can assure you!!julian64 said:
The current push of asthma guidelines is to get people onto steroids or LAMA inhalers rather than take high dose salbutamol. Neither of the other two have any effect on performance so athletes will have a little difficulty explaining why they are on high dose salbutamol without any other inhalers on purely medical treatment grounds.
If an athlete feels the need to dope their way to success, there are far better, unequivocally proven, efficient, difficult to trace methods to choose from. Can't think why they'd want to fanny around with Salbutamol.dangerousB said:
If an athlete feels the need to dope their way to success, there are far better, unequivocally proven, efficient, difficult to trace methods to choose from. Can't think why they'd want to fanny around with Salbutamol.
I really can't spend the time to answer your exhaustive list. I've been around here long enough to know you wouldn't believe me anyway.BMWBen said:
JuniorD said:
I have to laugh at the term "performance enabler".
So basically if you are crocked in some way/have sub-optimal genes etc. you can avail of means that enables your performance to get closer to people who are not so limited as you?
It's an enhancer. It enhances your performance from the level that mother nature decided for you, or that were unlucky to acquire, to a higher level unshackled from such limitations.
Sports like cycling are in very large part a fitness test. If a condition makes an athlete not as fit as other competitors, I don't see why there should be special allowances. Otherwise they might as well run the races on a handicap basis.
It's an interesting point, but one that is not nearly as black and white as first appears.So basically if you are crocked in some way/have sub-optimal genes etc. you can avail of means that enables your performance to get closer to people who are not so limited as you?
It's an enhancer. It enhances your performance from the level that mother nature decided for you, or that were unlucky to acquire, to a higher level unshackled from such limitations.
Sports like cycling are in very large part a fitness test. If a condition makes an athlete not as fit as other competitors, I don't see why there should be special allowances. Otherwise they might as well run the races on a handicap basis.
What if an athlete survived what could have been a serious bacterial infection due to antibiotics? If you argue for "genetic predisposition only" then you have to exclude anyone who's had an ailment that would be serious or life changing without modern medicine, because without that intervention they wouldn't be able to be an athlete (or might even be dead).
What about the various other medical interventions that we all receive throughout our lives? Your all time top genetic only athlete might not have survived being born if they had grown large and strong enough to pop out the traditional way and were only saved by cesarean delivery, for example.
What about all the vaccinations we have to prevent people who aren't genetically predisposed to being resilient to the various childhood diseases from being affected by them?
How about treatement for muscular issues by physiotherapy? If you're genetically bound to get unbalanced muscles from doing the sport you've chosen, is it ok to have a third party apply their knowledge and physically modify the way your body grows to fix it? If they only use manual techniques? What if they use more invasive ones like needling? Are you allowed to use a foam roller? That sounds like cheating...
Not simple at all!
Edited by BMWBen on Monday 18th December 13:03
I did mention performance levels that you "were unlucky to acquire", however to expand slightly, I don't see any issue with medical interventions, e.g. one-off or recurring treatments, however my issue is with medical or chemical enhancements in a sport (that is predominantly about fitness on the day) that are taken on the day or even during the event to essentially reverse or make up for chronic physiological performance reducing conditions.
I concede it's a can of worms. Even the use of painkillers raises questions, although they rightly can be taken, there is the likes of Tramadol being used purely to enhance performance.
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