Drugs, Doping and Contador

I've been getting some questions on this subject from people who are a bit new to cycling, so I thought I'd put all the answers in one place, rather than reply individually.

Those of you who already know all about it, sorry! Come back tomorrow! Mind you, you could read on anyway, you might learn something new.. or I might make a mistake and have to be corrected? You know you all love telling me when I am wrong!

OK, Drugs In Cycling. Contador. What's the score?

Contador's hearing has now taken place, it took most of last week, and we can expect to hear the results by the end of December, or possibly not until the new year. So don't hold your breath. There has been so much written about it that I can hardly bear to go over it again - so in a nutshell, Conti tested positive for a banned substance, Clenbuterol, partway through the Tour last year. He said he has never taken drugs, and that it can only have come from him eating contaminated meat. Unfortunately, he was the only member of the team that ate the meat and was tested, so he can't prove it.

There have been other instances of athletes, in cycling and in other sports, showing positive for this drug and claiming it was from eating contaminated meat. All of those athletes had their appeals rejected, and had to accept their bans. Contador has the money and the political support to fight his case, and although legally this is the right thing to do, it hasn't won him any friends.

There is a school of thought that says he should have accepted the ban: his view was very much " I didn't do it, and I'm not going to be labelled as a drug cheat for the rest of my life"

Firstly, I would reassure you all that cycling is one of the least drug-tainted sports there is. No other sport has the level of testing that cycling does. It always makes the headlines when someone is caught for drugs, but that's not the true picture.

So, lots of info, so I'll divide it up into headings.

1)Why does everyone hate Contador?
2) What drugs are we talking about?
3) Is Doping not the same as doing drugs?


Errr, not easy to answer that lot neatly. But I will try.

Firstly, the abbreviations.

UCI = Union Cycliste Internationale. International Cycling Union, the blokes that run cycling. Based in Switzerland, therefore assumed to be neutral.

WADA World Anti Doping Agency. Nothing to do with the Wombat Anti-Defamatory Association, as was suggested a while ago when I was having trouble with the internet and it looked as though it were due to Wombats in the Wiring. It turned out to be Wallabies disguised as Wombats, hence the involvement of the second WADA.

PED = Performance Enhancing Drug.

Right, you are now ready to Read On:

1) Contador.

At last year's Tour, his doping control tests showed that his system contained Clenbuterol on four of the days after a rest day. Tiny, tiny amounts of it; but it's on the banned list. He said "not guilty, must have been in that contaminated meat wot I ate." This defence has been tried before, and has failed. WADA and the UCI say "athletes are responsible for what they ingest." Not knowing that you were accidentally eating something on the banned list is not a defence. Athletes have been banned for this, many times.

So, other athletes have tested positive for this same chemical, and have been banned, but Contador wasn't. He was initially given a one-year ban - half the normal length - but a few weeks later the Spanish authorities overturned it, and told him to race again. UCI and WADA appealed.

This does just seem a bit unfair. Other athletes have had to swallow their pride, accept their bans, and get on with it. Of course it's immensely hurtful to be accused of taking drugs, of course it's going to be "on your record" for the rest of your career, but it happens. Contador, however, had a lot of money and the support of the Spanish president, and his legal team found a loophole, claiming that he did not have to be banned if he could prove it was the result of accidental ingestion.

I leave you to imagine how crushingly hurtful this must have been to all the other athletes who had innocently taken medicine or had indeed accidentally ingested a banned substance.... there is a lot of feeling that he was only let off because he had important backing.

There is also the lingering possibility that he could have been doping......

....we'll come on to doping in a minute.



2) Drugs.  Cycling as a sport says "you can train as hard as you like, but no PEDs."


This ruling is enforced by the UCI, who are the blokes who run cycling, and WADA which is the World Anti-Drug Association. As you already know.

Anyway - drugs.  The list, which is ever-increasing,  includes all the stuff you would expect, but it also includes a huge range of other drugs/chemicals that might not help the athlete in themselves, but would cover up their use of PEDs. I'm not a chemist, so you'll have to accept that somewhat simplified explanation.

Some drugs are completely banned - zero tolerance - and some are allowed in certain, specified quantities.

At one point, caffeine was on the banned list, but as it appears in tea, coffee, cola drinks and a ton of other stuff, they had to agree to allow a certain amount of it!

This is why athletes can't just grab some cough medicine when they feel a bit poorly, or take a few tablets if they have a headache, as we do: they have to be extremely careful about everything they eat/drink/swallow, in case it contains any banned substances.

Every cycling team has a team doctor, and they would probably do most of the work in training their cyclists not to take any over-the-counter medicines, or to take any herbal supplements or health foods without checking with the doctor first. Because you never know what they might contain.

This leads to a rather specialised research war: the cyclists try to find new additives or supplements that can help them perform better, but are not on the banned list. WADA investigate every new item, to assess how harmful it is and then, if appropriate, to ban it.

Quite often there is a "craze" for a new product, everyone takes it for a while, then the UCI or WADA decide it's not a good thing, and it goes on the banned list.

This is for the benefit of the cyclists, actually: it's well documented that some athletes will kill themselves with drugs if they think it will give them just one more season, just one more win.....

3) Doping. Blood Doping.

No, this is not quite the same as taking drugs. It works like this:

During a long stage race, your blood has to work hard to deliver oxygen, and remove wastes. (This is the simplified version, ok? I did Biology to A level but I don't want to bore anyone...) The longer you force your blood to work hard without taking a rest, the less well it performs. In the normal world, we call this "getting tired" and we stop for a while. But when you are pedalling every day for 2 weeks or more, you can't just stop.

So, a few weeks earlier, when you were fully rested, fully fit, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, you take out some of your own blood and store it carefully. Your body makes up the loss with no problem.

Later, at the race, you are feeling exhausted, so you inject the "bouncy" blood back into yourself.

Now, you might well be thinking that this sounds like an insanely dangerous thing to do. Well, yes, it is. 
 
The trouble is, regarding injecting blood into yourself, that when you are an exhausted cyclist, it IS a good idea, because suddenly your blood is fresh and oxygenated, and you can whizz away the next day with a spring in your pedals. (The name "Landis" comes to mind...)

And it's a particularly "good" idea for cyclists, who have to undergo doping control, as there are no drugs: it's your own blood, so it doesn't show up on any tests.

(side issue: they never say whether you have to take out the same amount as you are about to put in... images of Ricco with bulging eyes and balloon-taut skin due to the amount of extra blood....)

As I understand it, the only chance WADA has to spot this sort of thing is the Biological Passport which records haemocrit levels in the blood: if they suddenly spike, that would indicate that someone has been fiddling with their blood. But it's not a foolproof system, yet.

And of course that leads us back to Contador: the suggestion was that, as his clenbuterol levels were so ridiculously low, he could not have been taking the drug at that time: but he could have been taking it earlier, during training, and he could have withdrawn some of his blood at that point, injecting it during the TdF for that "super boost" during the race.

The fact that the first reading occurred during/immediately after a rest day was considered to be a bit of a pointer as well.

The supposition is that the injected blood still had traces of clenbuterol in it.

As a general point, yes, who would be so stupid as to do something with so many risks: not just "being caught" but infection etc: and you can't remove, store, and inject blood without at least a couple of sidekicks. It's not like taking a tablet, that you can just slip into your mouth when no-one is looking. (*throws hands up in despair*) Other people MUST know about it - even if you could hide it from roommates and team members, you can't just disappear for an hour or so during a Tour, without someone noticing.

I suppose you could have a convenient "girlfriend".... that you slip off to see every day or two... (*shakes head*)

As Figgy said in a comment during an earlier discussion of this topic, this whole culture of "winning by cheating" is beyond us, but I guess we have to assume that if you are not quite a top-class athlete, and you have trained and trained but still can't quite win races, you feel so desperate to win that you WILL do what it takes, and you WILL stand there on that podium, smiling and accepting the accolades, not caring that you cheated to get them.

It's possible that such a second-rate person (both in athletic terms and morally, ha ha) might reason that other competitors have better kit, better team support, better nutritionists, access to wind tunnels, individual coaching etc whereas they just pound around the roads to get fit... so if their competitors can take benefit from their advantages, then they (the bad guy) can take advantage of a simple blood exchange. After all, it IS his own blood, it's not like he was taking drugs or anything..... I am sure they find ways to justify it to themselves.

And there's the contractual problems as well: if you are good cyclist but not a brilliant one, your team might be saying to you that if you don't win something, you'll be fired. Or you won't be allowed to ride the big races. And if all you can do is cycle, then the thought of being sacked - well, people do do desperate things when they see a black future ahead of them.

So, the answers are:  Everyone "hates" Contador because he either cheated, or he used money and influence to get himself declared innocent where other athletes, similarly innocent, have had to take the punishment.

Drugs are bad.

Doping is particularly bad.

There, I hope that cleared up a few points.