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The debate over the long-term effects of doping is a fierce one full of emotion. Photo: Tim De Waele | TDWsport.com

Our celebrities have meltdowns, chop off their hair, interrupt awards shows, and get pulled over driving drunk. And, for punishment, they get to tour the talk-show circuit, sign new contracts, and revitalize their careers. Politicians sleep with interns, misappropriate funds, email pictures of their less-public sides, and, sometimes, still win elections. Even when our athletes cheat on their wives repeatedly, their “brands” are often salvaged by means of a simple “image readjustment.”

In cycling, however, forgiveness is a foreign concept.

A first offense for doping — what would amount to sitting on the bench for a few NFL games — often brings a two-year ban in cycling. It can end a career. And for those who do return, they are sometimes faced with cold shoulders and limited contract opportunities. Lately, even our heroes are rewarded for their grand tour victories with cries of “not normal” and demands for power files and blood profiles.

It doesn’t quite seem fair. If Toyota can build cars with life-endangering flaws, then apologize, offer a factory recall, and be forgiven, how hard is it, really, to excuse a few pro cyclists?

Some claim that there is good reason not to forgive. While WADA bestows a two-year suspension, partially to ensure any gains from doping have cleared an athlete’s system, some believe that a temporary ban, no matter how long, isn’t long enough.

Years of cycling while doped, the thinking goes, allowed athletes to train abnormally hard, resulting in increased capillary and mitochondrial density and improved oxygen delivery, all of which are permanent benefits. Some believe these athletes would have an unfair advantage no matter when they returned.

“That is the most ridiculous thing,” said Christian Vande Velde (Garmin-Sharp) when asked if the effects of doping were permanent. Like his Garmin teammates Tom Danielson and Dave Zabriskie, Vande Velde served a six-month, off-season ban from the sport after admitting to doping while supporting the United States Anti-Doping Agency investigation into Lance Armstrong. “I didn’t dope that much. It was just a few times. It didn’t even help that much … but it’s crazy to think that there’s some long-term effect or benefit.”

Proponents of lifetime bans are quick to counter with the fact that many cyclists, such as Zabriskie, Vande Velde, and Levi Leipheimer, enjoyed their best results after they claimed to have stopped doping. “It shouldn’t add up that these riders, who improved with doping, would continue to perform at a much higher level after doping,” pointed out one Velo reader. (And, of course, this assumes that they all actually stopped doping when they said they did.)

Jonathan Vaughters, Garmin-Sharp team manager and an admitted former user of PEDs, attributes those performance increases to the sport cleaning itself up. These riders are only better relative to other, now-clean cyclists. Zabriskie also attributes it to a change in approach. Where athletes used to just focus on what to take and when, now it’s about adhering to legitimate training science. “Me and Christian… we never trained as hard as we train now,” Zabriskie said in August, at the USA Pro Challenge, before announcing his retirement. “It’s not the same. It wasn’t the same level. There weren’t guys like [physiologist] Allen Lim out there measuring lactate, figuring out inflammatory diets, with rice cakes and special electrolyte drinks,” he said.

This debate is heated and emotionally charged, with members of each side claiming strong science to back their beliefs. But the fact is, as Vaughters puts it, the science is imperfect. “We’re relying on studies from rats and cancer patients,” he said. Few are willing to admit that their evidence is mostly anecdotal.

We’ll attempt to strip out the emotions and hyperbole and see what the science does and does not say. Then you can decide how forgiving you want to be.

Doping vs. The body

Possibly the best argument for forgiving our flawed heroes rests in the fundamental driving force of our physiology itself — homeostasis, or state of equilibrium. Simply put, homeostasis means that our bodies strive to stay in balance.

At the forefront of this “lasting-effects debate” are two researchers in Europe, Dr. Cristóbal Belda-Iniesta and Dr. Jo Bruusgaard. Belda-Iniesta is the head of the Biomarkers and Experimental Therapeutics for Cancer Group at Madrid’s University Hospital. His research on cancer markers has led to novel ways to identify doping even years after the fact. He looks for changes in homeostasis; according to Belda-Iniesta our bodies are, naturally, very well balanced. Almost everything in our bodies has an equilibrium point — a set body temperature, fluid volume, hematocrit, blood sugar, and countless others.

Our bodies respond to anything that stresses these levels. The classic example is our set 98.6-degree Fahrenheit body temperature. When it gets hot, we’ll sweat, and when it gets cold, we’ll shiver, but our bodies attempt to stay at 98.6 degrees.

Homeostasis also explains our training adaptations. You may lift weights with the desire to get stronger and impress your friends, but that’s not what motivates your body. Lifting weights damages muscles, which is another homeostatic stress. Do enough damage and the body will say, “I don’t like this damage so I’m going to build the muscle back bigger and stronger. That way, the next time this stressor is thrown at me, I can homeostatically handle it.”

Detraining is just the reverse. Remove the constant stressor and your body will no longer feel a need to maintain such large muscle tissue. Soon enough, you’ll have to head back to the gym.

And how does homeostasis accomplish this amazing balance? Hormones. Sensors throughout our body detect any imbalance and tell the brain to release the appropriate hormones to make us sweat, feel thirsty, release glucose, or whatever may be needed to restore balance. Once the stressor is gone, the hormones break down.

Most doping products are just synthetic versions of our natural hormones. They use the body’s normal pathways, but they fool our bodies into responding to a bigger stress than what’s really there. They intentionally cause the body to get out of balance. But, as Belda-Iniesta pointed out, “Athletes don’t need to be balanced at the time of competition.”

“Our bodies try to balance even artificial changes in our bodies,” he said. So, once the athlete stops taking doping products, what’s left in the system will break down rapidly and the body will, over time, find its true levels again. The athlete will “detrain,” no differently than if he had simply reduced his training volume. When asked how long this would take, Belda-Iniesta replied, simply, “Months.”

All gains, honestly achieved or not, dissolve. Mitochondrial and capillary density, often cited as permanent benefits of doping, start decreasing within days. Slow-twitch muscle fibers convert back to fast twitch in short order, and improvements in VO2 max can be reversed in 12 weeks.

The post An analysis of the long-term effects of performance-enhancing drugs appeared first on VeloNews.com.

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<img alt="Episode 1004: Das ” height=”800″ src=”http://ift.tt/1jfezbZ” width=”600″ />

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Yep, to celebrate the 50th display season for the RAF’s Red Arrows aerobatic team – the first one was May 1965 – they have revealed a nifty new design on the tailfins of their BAE Systems Hawk T1s featuring a reworking of the Union Flag (although Lord knows what that will look like if Scotland decides to part company with the rest of the UK).

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Original source An anonymous reader writes “Here’s a neat story out of Britain, with good news about long-term success for the patient involved, and for others who might benefit from similar procedures: three years ago, surgeon Craig Gerrand successfully printed and implanted an artificial pelvis (actually, about half of one) into a patient suffering from a rare form of cancer. Other techniques were ruled out, because the patient would be losing so much bone. So, after careful scanning, additive printing with titanium was used to create the replacement: ‘In order to create the 3-D printed pelvis, the surgeons took scans of the man’s pelvis to take exact measurements of how much 3-D printed bone needed to be produced and passed it along to Stanmore Implants. The company used the scans to create a titanium 3-D replacement, by fusing layers of titanium together and then coating it with a mineral that would allow the remaining bone cells to attach.’ Now, three years after the procedure, the printed pelvis is holding up just fine, and the patient is able to walk with a cane.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Antonov An-124-100 landing with a strong corsswind

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Marco Pantani’s biographer is calling much of the coverage around the 10th anniversary of the Italian’s death “self-indulgent and profit-oriented, and not entirely honest.” Photo: Tim De Waele | TDWsport.com

Matt Rendell, the English journalist who wrote the definitive biography on Marco Pantani, has watched with a mix of bemusement and disgust as the media has tried to outdo itself to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the death of the Italian cyclist.

“I am not enjoying the spectacle of the media today,” Rendell told VeloNews on Friday. “All of this so-called commentary, it feels so self-indulgent and profit-oriented, and not entirely honest. The media itself are often times doped.”

Rendell’s detailed biography, The Death of Marco Pantani, published in 2006, helped peel back the layers of the Pantani myth to reveal a complex and ultimately tortured soul who could not bear the weight of his own celebrity. Many of the revelations of Rendell’s book, namely that Pantani doped throughout his career, have been confirmed in subsequent police investigations.

Rendell also explored the cultural phenomenon that Pantani became to the Italy of the 1990s, and how his superstardom, mixed with Pantani’s reclusive, almost misanthropic personality, helped seal his doom when officials kicked him out of the 1999 Giro d’Italia for high hematocrit.

Was Pantani a hero, a martyr, or simply another doped cyclist? VeloNews caught up with Rendell on the 10th anniversary of “The Pirate’s” death to explore that question.

VeloNews: Your book came out in 2006, about two years after Pantani’s death, what inspired you to delve deeper into his story?
Matt Rendell: I had written about his death for The Observer newspaper’s sports monthly in the days after he died. About a year later, my publisher asked, “why don’t you write a book about Marco Pantani?” At first, I didn’t want to, because it seemed to me there was enough pain and false controversy already floating around, and it wasn’t something I felt I could contribute to. But when I did take a closer look, it seemed obvious there were a number of different interests claiming to have the right to control this man’s memory.

There were many warring interests, and that opened up some space in which to poke around. There were different versions of Marco’s life and death that were being perpetrated, and I wanted to express a neutral view. There were ethical reasons as a writer not to wade into the Pantani affair, but when I looked closer, there were ethical reasons to do so as well.

VN: Your documentation in the book is impressive, so you obviously spent a lot of time in Italy. How much time did you spend on research?
MR: I went to Italy for a couple of two-week research trips, and very quickly it became obvious the only way of doing this was to go and spend an extended period in Italy. I sold my house and went to Modena in central Italy. I rented a flat, and for the best part of a year, spent a huge time amount of time on research.

I spent the entire advance and then some chasing every possible lead, no matter how wacky. One of the publishers wrote me last weekend to say they had recently re-read the book, and said it stands up to the great spate of doping investigative books that have since been published. If it does stand up, it’s because I was prepared to go all the way. The only thing that counts is the book.

VN: It is surprising how many people agreed to speak with you, everyone from his parents to childhood friends to police, was it easy to gain access to people who knew him?
MR: There are lots of books about Marco Pantani. It’s not my business to pretend to be something other than an investigative journalist. It is very possible some of my interviewees thought I was writing some fanzine. I was open about what I was doing. Perhaps some people didn’t understand what I was doing.

VN: Pantani was such an enigmatic figure. In the course of writing the book did you ever have the sense that you knew the real Marco Pantani?
MR: Yes and no. There are journalists out there who say they were Marco’s friend, and that may be true, but the last thing he needed was another journalist who said he was Marco’s friend. If you’re a journalist, which comes first, friendship or the truth?

I didn’t know Marco personally. I had interviewed him. I did cover the 2000 Giro and I had been around him. I speak Italian. I saw him through the filter of his athletic career and his fame, and that provides a certain viewpoint. When you see how uncomfortable he was with fame, in some respects, seeing him through that filter is in a sense more revealing than knowing someone through the filter of friendship.

I have seen lots of transcripts of police interviews with Pantani, and others, and seen many of the interviews and witness statements during the investigation of his death, which at the time was also being considered a possible homicide, and that provides a different filter. When you’re talking to police, you’re shit scared, the gloss is removed. I would never say I knew Marco, but I got to know some facets of his life, yes.

VN: The structure of your book is quite interesting; the first half examines his athletic career and his rise as a national hero, and the second half delves into his doping history and his fall into cocaine addiction. Why did you decide to write it that way?
MR: I had to write it that way. The reader needs to understand this great affection that Italy had for Marco Pantani. You need to be, to some extent, in love with him like Italy was to understand what happened to him. Understanding that is a complicated thing when you’re not Italian. I wanted to put Pantani in this context, then you can see what it means to feel the shame that Marco felt.

To understand that context, then you can understand what Marco was feeling when he comes out of the hotel at Madonna di Campiglio [1999 Giro d’Italia], to feel the weight on his shoulders, that shame that is making his legs collapse, so much so the Carabinieri have to hold him up.

VN: What do you reflect upon when you think about Pantani’s death 10 years later?
MR: At no point was cocaine or hard drugs, which were and are still a very big part of Italian society, ever addressed by the authorities. That would have given some meaning to Marco’s death. That would have been a worthwhile way of channeling his charisma into a worthy cause. Pantani spent a huge amount of money on cocaine, and he was immersed in the drug culture, and that would have been a campaign worth waging for in Marco’s name. It was a massive opportunity missed.

Also, it would have been nice had there been a campaign for clean sport waged in Pantani’s name. In terms of his legacy, I am not enjoying the spectacle of the media today. There is an enormous chasm between what we are seeing in all these stories about Pantani, and the dogged journalistic search for truth. All of this so-called commentary, it feels so self-indulgent and profit-oriented, and not entirely honest. The media itself are often times doped.

VN: There was an open letter from Lance Armstrong published on cyclingnews.com this week. How was Pantani different than Armstrong?
MR: Lance has that controlling type of personality. Pantani was impulsive. You cannot be controlling and sincere at the same time. Sincerity means one has to surrender to contrition. That’s what Pantani appears to have done, and that’s why he is still idolized by the cycling public, because he embraced contrition with his self-destructiveness.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that Pantani had a vicious bullying side as well. I remember in the 1999 Giro, he brought Andrea Tafi to tears in the peloton because Mapei had signed [a pledge for clean cycling]. That’s what made Marco so impetuous on the bike. In a sense, in sharp contrast to that goal-oriented calculation, that is the meaning to Marco to many people. He was not calculating, he was impulsive, and as a society, we find that attractive.

VN: Should Pantani be remembered as a great cyclist in a dirty sport, or simply as a doped cyclist?
MR: I am not sure if this came from Susan Sontag, but she often repeated it: “at any one time, five percent of the people are good, five percent are bad, and the rest can go either way.” As moral agents, we have to go with the five percent who are good, come what may. If you have a dirty peloton, then our heroes have to be those five percent who chose not to, even when everyone else was.

As for the argument that everyone else was doing it, therefore the best riders won, it’s a lot more complicated than that. A lot depends on how your body reacts to drugs. Just as Armstrong had tremendous good fortune to respond well to treatments for his illness, everyone responds differently to doping. Charly Wegelius [now Garmin-Sharp sport director] had a wonderful quote in his book: “I had a naturally high hematocrit, I was the one with the athletic gift, and I was getting penalized for it.”

VN: In your investigation, you make it quite plain that Pantani doped throughout most, if not all, of his racing career, from his amateur days until his final races, is that true?
MR: It seems absolutely clear that he was drugged for his entire career.

VN: So the only way to view Pantani is that he was an exceptional doped climber?
MR: What doping does is take away our criteria for judgment. You just have to put a thick red line through it; we just don’t know, and we cannot indulge in some sort of “what if.” The fact is, that sometime in 1993 and 1994, there was a decision at the highest levels of the sport about what are we going to do about EPO? Do we fight it? Do we confront it? Do we bring it into the public arena? Or do we sweep it under the table? We are still suffering the consequences of that decision.

VN: What was the biggest surprise for you personally during the course of your investigation into Pantani’s career and demise?
MR: There is a such a mass of documentation relating not only to Pantani, but to all of the big riders based in Italy in the mid 1990s, so as a writer, you need to get the documentation. There is an absolute mass of it, so that was kind of the revelation for me. I was surprised that I was able to interview [Francesco] Conconi. I interviewed just about everyone, but when you’re doing these things, you target people whom you know are going to give honest and revealing material. I didn’t target his former teammates or staffers.

VN: Do you believe the sport has changed since the days of Pantani and Armstrong?
MR: I do not think mankind becomes more honest or more dishonest as we evolve. I do think there is merit to the Kerrison argument [Sky coach Tim Kerrison], that assumes that for 20 years, very little was learned in terms of how to train a non-doped physique. I do believe there is a huge area for development. [Chris] Froome’s spinning, whirring attack on [Alberto] Contador on Mont Ventoux [at the 2013 Tour de France], I did look at that last summer and believed I was seeing a technical innovation that I had never seen before. Cycling is a great big circus, and it’s the good five percent that we need to celebrate and support. How lucky are we now, like we were last week in the Dubai Tour, to work with guys like [Marcel] Kittel and [Taylor] Phinney? I’d like to think the sport’s going in the right direction.

VN: After nearly 10 years since the publication of your book, would you add anything?
MR: There’s Operación Puerto, Marco appears in that. There’s the French Senate report that come out, so those are two lines I would have to add. I am very proud of how the book stands up. I wouldn’t update it. It has to stand on its own merits.

The post Pantani biographer sees little to celebrate on anniversary of Italian’s death appeared first on VeloNews.com.