http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/mcquaid-says-there-will-be-no-contador-verdict-until-2011
"McQuaid favours more lenient penalties for certain other substances and thus appeared to open the door to a potentially reduced sentence for Contador, should he ultimately be sanctioned in the Clenbuterol affair."
A sentence to expire just before the start of the Tour p'haps?
He either cheated or he didn't. As far as I'm concerned, cheating with Clenbuterol is no better than cheating by blood transfusion or EPO.
If he's found guilty he should miss at least 2 tours.
Rob Warners column in Dirt mentioned the shockingly high incidence (i.e. they all have a Docs note for it) of Asthma amongst pro level XC riders, and how he can't understand how this isn't held up as an example of great people overcoming their illness to compete at the highest level 😉
Verdict before the hearing the man should be removed forthwith. You're either clean or not.
If UCI or the spanish Authorities don't ban him for two years WADA will. They've already said that. McQuaid is poison in the sport, he needs to go.
The Spanish authorities won't want to ban him, I guess there's a question mark over the UCI - my own thought is that he'll get a suspended sentence, fudged because of the low levels found. It'll be a fix, but everyone/nobody ends up happy.
My boss says there's a theory doing the rounds that the nature of the test results (from zero level to positive test in a day) suggest that Contador was blood doping, and injected positive blood by mistake. Not sure how much mileage that has though.
Rob Warners column in Dirt mentioned the shockingly high incidence (i.e. they all have a Docs note for it) of Asthma amongst pro level XC riders
How does asthma medidcine help a fit and healthy person exactly?
Would it not be a touch more feasible to think that participants of an aerobic sport are more likely to develop exercise induced asthma than yout typical couch potato?
How does asthma medidcine help a fit and healthy person exactly?
[url= http://articles.muscletalk.co.uk/article-clenbuterol.aspx ]Clenbuterol as a sports drug...[/url]
Various other asthma meds are popular too. I know a couple of people that only [i]suffer from asthma[/i] during sport!
Lets be honest here, doping control in road cycling couldn't possibly be any more of a farce so nobody should be surprised by anything that comes out of this. Unless they come up with something that's realistic and effective, that'd be weird.
A "diagnosis" of asthma might be helpful because:
Asthmatics use inhaled (& sometimes systemic) cortico (not anabolic) steroids to damp down inflamation in the airways. The permitted presence of traces of corticosteroid in the blood may mask the fact the rider has been receiving cortisone injections to aid recovery.
Asthmatics also use B-agonists such as ventolin to dilate up the airways. This would give a performance advantage in itself due to improved gas exchange, but these drugs also have a stimulant effect on the heart and the central nervous system, increasing the cardiac output and therefore oxygen delivery and also making the user feel charged up. This point can be more readily appreciated if it is understood that the endogenous ligand for the B receptor is adrenaline.
Hope this helps.
Gasman Jim
MB BCh, FRCA.
Northwind: yes and no.
There was a recent case in Britain of an Elite category rider caught for doping - he never did much in the way of high level events, he just ticked away with enough points in easier races to maintain his Elite. Basically he was a bit of a Walter Mitty, just wanted the kudos of having a licence with ELITE on it but he wasn't in a big team or anything. Roadies are like that...
Anyway, he got caught, procedure was followed and no-one knew anything of it until he was finally banned for 2 years.
The Tour is such a media circus that any slight rumour gets run with, talked up/down, twisted, gets confirmed, it's all over the press and then the armchair experts on forums come up with their own theories etc, it then drags on and on and there's never going to be a fair trial. Technically Contador is guilty - any amount of Clenbuterol is a positive but he's the Tour winner, they've gone through this with Landis and it turns into a farce. If Armstrong had ever been found guilty of doping during his time as Tour winnner it would have killed the Tour and quite possibly cycling as a sport, that's no exaggeration.
So it makes it really difficult to handle correctly - every reporter on the Tour wants a scoop, the riders (used to) bury their heads in the sand and pretend it's OK (never ever underestimate the power of a cartel like the elite few who can make it to ride the TdF), the officials want to be seen to be doing right while not rocking the boat, there's so much more at stake here than one positive test, especially with the news in the public domain for the last few months.
Gasman Jim - MemberA "diagnosis" of asthma might be helpful because:
Asthmatics use inhaled (& sometimes systemic) cortico (not anabolic) steroids to damp down inflamation in the airways. The permitted presence of traces of corticosteroid in the blood may mask the fact the rider has been receiving cortisone injections to aid recovery.
Asthmatics also use B-agonists such as ventolin to dilate up the airways. This would give a performance advantage in itself due to improved gas exchange, but these drugs also have a stimulant effect on the heart and the central nervous system, increasing the cardiac output and therefore oxygen delivery and also making the user feel charged up. This point can be more readily appreciated if it is understood that the endogenous ligand for the B receptor is adrenaline.
Hope this helps.
Gasman Jim
MB BCh, FRCA.
That's the response I was looking for, cheers.
Don Simon
MoTD, MOT, ATV, OP.
Can't say I feel any particular boost when I take my Ventolin. Sometimes don't feel it's having much effect in doing what it is aimed to do. Still shouldn't be allowed apart from for athletes who have an actual medical condition.
As for McQuaid and the UCI - what can you say without resorting to bad language? The man should be down the road today for comments like that. Trying to now introduce a sliding scale of doping enforcement? Irrespective of the product/system used, it indicates that the athlete is prepared to cheat and therefore the sentence should be the same irrespective.
"an adverse analytical finding for Hydroxyethyl starch during the Vuelta a España"
Hetastarch, WTF ? - does that offset effects of dehydration or something ?
aah, soz, JFG'd it - masking epo
My boss says there's a theory doing the rounds that the nature of the test results (from zero level to positive test in a day) suggest that Contador was blood doping, and injected positive blood by mistake. Not sure how much mileage that has though.
plasticizers that are used as a stabiliser for the blood bags were present also but that can't be used in evidence as it's not on the banned list, and they can be found in blood of non-transfusers (not in the same levels of course)