Comment by mariusor

He was working with doctors who were knowledgeable of techniques the UCI was not testing for yet, and in masking. That’s why he got popped on the stored samples. They have rules against doping that are set up to cover substances they don’t have tests for yet and that is part of why they store samples.

But they were also using “blood doping” which is essentially giving blood transfusions to yourself. One of his lieutenants, Tyler Hamilton, got busted for it a few years before Lance got caught. He claimed he was innocent and maybe it was chimerism or an absorbed twin. But this dumb fucker had already been caught doping several times before, one of which stuck and the other failed on a technicality (frozen backup sample could not be tested) My guess is they switched bags and he’s lucky he got a compatible bloodtype and didn’t stroke out. He got caught doping again in 2009 and received an 8 year ban, and retired. And later was stripped of his gold medal as well.

The only legal form of blood doping is altitude training and that effect doesn’t last long enough for the Tour or the Gira. But could allow someone to get an early lead.

As for Lance not getting caught between 1998 and 2005, that’s only barely technically true. He was caught using corticosteroids in a test in 1999, but explained it away with a topical steroid allegedly for saddle sores. He confessed later that it was a cover up for his doping. He also tested positive for EPO six times during this period but as the tests were still experimental, there was some clever lawyering that kept it from sticking.

Laurent Fignon and Eddie Merckx have both been accused of stimulant use which cost them only one or two races instead of years.

Richard Virenque was a popular French rider who won the King of the Mountain many many times, when he went down it was for an entire cocktail of drugs including HGH.

And I had forgotten that Christian Vande Velde was caught in the postal service bust. He’s a commentator for NBC now. I wonder what Liggett thinks of that.

Sources: a bit of memory but mostly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doping_cases_in_cyclin... which, by the way, has become ridiculously, alarmingly long. Jesus Christ.

nonameiguess 11 hours ago

Fair enough. I should specify he never failed a drug test from the period in which all of his UCI and Olympic wins were rescinded, which I believe was 1998 to 2005. I'm also reasonably sure he never got popped specifically for EPO. There has been a test to find recombinant EPO since 2000, but it can only detect its presence for something like 18 hours after injection and you only need to inject weekly. Out of other ways to blood dope, only tranfusion from another person is detectable by any means whatsoever. It's why they use the athlete biological passport instead and look for increases in red blood cell count or hematocrit that are not physiologically possible without doping.

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hinkley 8 hours ago

He was working with doctors who were knowledgeable of techniques the UCI was not testing for yet, and in masking. That’s why he got popped on the stored samples. They have rules against doping that are set up to cover substances they don’t have tests for yet and that is part of why they store samples.
But they were also using “blood doping” which is essentially giving blood transfusions to yourself. One of his lieutenants, Tyler Hamilton, got busted for it a few years before Lance got caught. He claimed he was innocent and maybe it was chimerism or an absorbed twin. But this dumb fucker had already been caught doping several times before, one of which stuck and the other failed on a technicality (frozen backup sample could not be tested) My guess is they switched bags and he’s lucky he got a compatible bloodtype and didn’t stroke out. He got caught doping again in 2009 and received an 8 year ban, and retired. And later was stripped of his gold medal as well.
The only legal form of blood doping is altitude training and that effect doesn’t last long enough for the Tour or the Gira. But could allow someone to get an early lead.
As for Lance not getting caught between 1998 and 2005, that’s only barely technically true. He was caught using corticosteroids in a test in 1999, but explained it away with a topical steroid allegedly for saddle sores. He confessed later that it was a cover up for his doping. He also tested positive for EPO six times during this period but as the tests were still experimental, there was some clever lawyering that kept it from sticking.
Laurent Fignon and Eddie Merckx have both been accused of stimulant use which cost them only one or two races instead of years.
Richard Virenque was a popular French rider who won the King of the Mountain many many times, when he went down it was for an entire cocktail of drugs including HGH.
And I had forgotten that Christian Vande Velde was caught in the postal service bust. He’s a commentator for NBC now. I wonder what Liggett thinks of that.
Sources: a bit of memory but mostly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doping_cases_in_cyclin... which, by the way, has become ridiculously, alarmingly long. Jesus Christ.

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