Pogacar

@TiRed – really enjoying your input on this. It’s all too easy as a punter to think of doping tests as being a pass/fail thing without considering the shortcomings of the testing methodology.

I seem to remember around the time of the Froom case reading that Salbutamol was on the banned list not because of any acute performance gains but because it can be abused as a body composition drug like a corticosteroid. Is that true?

Yes at very high doses (in mice), beta agonists are ergogenic, but at those exposures the tremors and hypokalemia will be an issue. There are better ways of losing weight.

Salbutamol is a threshold drug, you can take it with a TUE, but just not exceed a threshold. That threshold was set for single doses in swimmers. Who don’t get dehydrated. All athletes taking salbutamol will have a diagnosis of exercise induced asthma – you can’t just take it (unlike a double espresso).

Performance enhancing drugs such as anabolic steroids are strictly banned and their effects are well-established, so detection above the very low limit of detection (low ng/ml) carries a ban if the adverse analytically finding cannot be explained. The dose needed to fail is so low as to be incomprehensible. You can fail for contaminated supplements (ostarine is very common), but you can also fail for consuming bodily fluids of another who is doping. Some time ago people failed for a banned diuretic because they took OTC ibuprofen that had a contaminated encapsulation coating!

Generally, the studies in Sports Science are pretty poor quality. Low numbers of subjects, dodgy stats. The quality of the assays is high for detection of substances, but the studies themselves are nowhere near those in design as my day job.

If you are interested, this is a nice survey of contamination of OTC and prescription medicines with diuretics. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8635962/ . The dose can be as low as nanogram per tablet and still be detected. I expect there will be some AAFs at this Olympics.

If I were to advise athletes, I’d suggest a weekly voluntary drug test, especially before the Olympics. That way having a negative test before an event allows one to estimate a level of contamination from a subsequent positive test – you need TWO pieces of information to identify dose and time of dose. A single positive test cannot rule out a big (i.e., doping) dose taken some time ago, vs. a tiny dose (i.e., contamination) an hour ago.

I’ve been an expert witness on many cases since Froome’s, and some are absolutely straightforward, like the ones in this paper. If the AAF is explained adequately, the athlete is not named (unless leaked to the press beforehand). Without the leak of Froome’s AAF, I would never have been involved. It’s an unusual hobby, I will admit 😉

Thanks again @TiRed! Seems like you’re fighting a good fight. Let’s not forget that anti-doping is there to make sport fair which includes innocent athletes being treated fairly.

Performance enhancing drugs such as anabolic steroids are strictly banned and their effects are well-established, so detection above the very low limit of detection (low ng/ml) carries a ban if the adverse analytically finding cannot be explained. The dose needed to fail is so low as to be incomprehensible.

Lizzie Banks (former Team GB and EF Education-Tibco-SVB ) tested positive on those grounds. UKAD eventually (after a very long and expensive fight) admitted the issue but have subsequently appealed.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/may/21/lizzy-banks-ends-cycling-career-after-life-torn-apart-for-nothing-in-doping-case

Her blog is a pretty heart-breaking read, detailing everything she went through. There are definitely wider issues within anti-doping and I guess there always will be. False positives, false negatives, not testing (or not being able to test) for the latest “grey area” supplements / drugs, always playing catch-up…

The moral of her story is to not cut your hair! The low levels detected in her hair over a short period of growth at the time of ingestion gave the necessary evidence for acquittal (levels orders of magnitude lower than that seen in chronic dosing). Hence she did not need to demonstrate the source of contamination, only that the ingested dose was consistent with contamination. I can attest that athletes are rather good at listing their medicines intake (type, time, dose) with excellent records. I’d probably also advise to keep some of the medicine for future testing, especially generics. And weekly voluntary dosing.

And for the record, I’ve worked with the people in her blog, and I don’t charge. It’s a hobby.

Saw an interview with Pogaca, where he is talking about training mostly in zone 2, sounds reasonable right? Then he’s asked what is his zone 2 power, he says it between 320-340 Watts!!!

Just been to the gym and managed 340 for two minutes! Haha