"Technical probs" with Heras B sample tests

mbear37 said:

All I know is that until Roberto admits that he used recombinant EPO, I will continue to believe that he was and is clean. There's just something about his persona and the way he's carried himself throughout his career that to me speaks of honesty and integrity. So go ahead all you non-believers: ridicule him and call him names. But just remember: there were no WMDs and there are error rates with every test. And on cold, miserable days here in Chicago, I will continue to put in my tape of the uphill Vuelta time trial and watch with amazement (it never fails) as Roberto overcomes an almost two minute deficit to Ysidro Nozal. (Especially enhanced by the non-believing call by Phil and Paul) Incredible!! And Bobke forever!!

mbear37

thanks so much for starting my day with a good laugh - particularly the bit about 'honesty and integrity' that'll have me chuckling all day...

Heras may be the nicest guy in the peloton (and from your familiar 'Roberto' I assume you know at first hand) but that doesn't mean that he wouldn't do a little extra to win that historic 4th title - after all, as you may or may not know, with the EPO test, 80% is a failed test - so your best buddy Roberto may have been at 79% every other day.

Seems to me that you need to check your facts before shouting the odds.

mbear37 said:

Millar admitted he doped.

No he didn't.

At the Cofidis team presentation in 2004, Miller denied any involvement in what he called the Gaumont affair.

"At the January 2004 Cofidis Team presentation, David Millar wearing the world champions winners band on his jersey (ITT) said 'I don't want to comment on this (gaumont affair) - except to say that I have never used drugs, and I am convinced that this controversy doesn't include anyone else in the team. I wish to re-iterate I have never used illegal products"

mbear37 said:

Virenque finally did also.

.......but for 4 months in 1998, he treied to deny that he cheated.
(See Cycle Sport edition July - November 1998).

Read [censored] Voets book "Breaking the chain".

mbear37 said:

And while you're checking your facts, I think you should read up on the history of the Middle East.

When you read up on your history of cycling, we can then discuss the Middle East because you haven't got a grasp of either, I suggest.

hombredesubaru said:

I am not sure what your point is.
I was responding to a post that said life is grey, sometimes there are not black and white answers.
My point exactly. If a lab test cannot give a yes or no answer, it should not be used to provide a legal and binding result on a riders legal staus as a doper and banned for two years.

It may be an OK lab test within certain parameters, it may even sometimes be useful in detecting doping.
But if there are grey areas, and it is clear by now that there are grey ares, those need to be defined or quantified roughly so that UCI and WADA dont treat a grey zone test as black and white.

The lab did give a yes or no answer. The lab said that Heras' B sample was positive. People here seem to mistakenly believe a inconclusive result to mean not guilty. This is wrong. The lab had to redo the test because the results did not give enough information to either convict or exonerate him. Obviously, this time there was enough info from the test for the lab to declare the sample positive. It seems to me behond belief that a lab would declare a rider positive, and ending his career, if they were not 100% sure of the result.

tcklyde said:

Lim, I wish you were wrong, but, unfortunately, I feel the same way.

Frankly, the only question that remains for me is whether the whole peloton is doped or it's just a few. I'm leaning strongly to the position that the vast majority of the riders are doping. Not a single professional has stepped up and taken a stand against doping in the last couple of years. The ones that have in the past have been shouted down by people like Lance.

I'm a fan and I'm upset. I might not mean much to the riders, but sponsors won't put up with this forever. Doping will kill the sport.

I agree with you TCKLYDE.

As a fan, I feel short changed because when I watch a performance I don't think "what a great ride", I think "is he or isn't he, clean".

And I take your point, no other sport that I can think of would tolerate what this sport has endured for the past 5-10 years.

Riders dying prematurely, the winners of it's major events (the grand tour winners since 1999, Heras, Armstrong, Simoni, Garzelli, Gonzalez,) have been caught doping.
Wholesale denials when people are actually caught.

Aaah, if this wasn't a serious topic, it would be a joke.

I've said it before and I will say it again : when a racing licence is issued all professional must agre to waive their employment right if found to be doping and they're automtically banned for life from the sport (as is the case in rowing).

In addition, all of their records and wins should be expunged from the record books and they should also be held to repay all prize money won during their careers.

Now on a result of Heras positive, Menchov is credited with the victory. I got to think this is the weirdest feeling to have. Your awarded with a win in a major Tour Race, in which you never got a victory celebration, all the prize money got divided, so you never were able to receive the satisfaction and rewards of being a major winner.

Along with that, eventhough you are recognized as the winner, the "best clean rider" but many will people will not look at it in history as the race Menchov won, or even the best result by a a rider who didn't test positive, but the 2005 Vuelta wil be looked back on as the race where the winner was stripped of his title.

Talk about the ultimate empty victory.

limerickman said:

......but for 4 months in 1998, he treied to deny that he cheated.
(See Cycle Sport edition July - November 1998).

Read [censored] Voets book "Breaking the chain".

When you read up on your history of cycling, we can then discuss the Middle East because you haven't got a grasp of either, I suggest.

[font=Verdana]Nice return of serve LM... to make things even more precise Virenque didn't actually admit to doping until the police trials in 2000 ! Almost 2 years after he was hauled off the TDF in tears. Virenque even wrote a book on his innocence prior to 2000 ! The same with Milller he only admitted when the courts were going to put him in jail..... like Heras they will keep saying they are innocent until there is no other way to turn... if you had the choice of prison or to keep lying you would tell the truth as well....[/font]

You raise some very good points here.... why do the riders and teams agree to the tests if they could be flawed ? If my place of work was testing for cocaine and the test was flawed I wouldn't take it !

acrafton said:

It seems that the only time that the riders (or teams) have an issue with the accuracy of the tests is when they get caught. If the tests really were as bad as Heras, Hamilton, etc. said, why did they (and more importantly all the pro teams) agree to the UCI testing protocols?

Think about it - on your job. If you knew your employment (and reputation) was based on a test you would be repeatedly given, that is wildly arbitrary you would not agree to work there (at least I wouldn't). Ditto for the company (ie team) you work for - if one of their customers were going to insist on randomly checking the quality of a product with a test that was 'known' to be inaccurate and lead to false positives, no one would do business with them.

It is the same here. If the riders, unions, and teams truly believe that the tests are flawed they would not agree to them. They only say they are flawed AFTER they get busted.

limerickman said:

Seems to me that you need to check your facts before shouting the odds.

No he didn't.

At the Cofidis team presentation in 2004, Miller denied any involvement in what he called the Gaumont affair.

"At the January 2004 Cofidis Team presentation, David Millar wearing the world champions winners band on his jersey (ITT) said 'I don't want to comment on this (gaumont affair) - except to say that I have never used drugs, and I am convinced that this controversy doesn't include anyone else in the team. I wish to re-iterate I have never used illegal products"

.......but for 4 months in 1998, he treied to deny that he cheated.
(See Cycle Sport edition July - November 1998).

Read [censored] Voets book "Breaking the chain".

When you read up on your history of cycling, we can then discuss the Middle East because you haven't got a grasp of either, I suggest.

My recollection is that Millar kept a vial of EPO in his apartment, and when a search by authorities found it, he then admitted that he used. He claimed that he had felt guilty about using, and intimated that he had kept the vial not only as a remembrance, but perhaps hoped that someday it would be found and he would be forced to come clean.

My deep concern is that every test has an error rate, and that a positive test result may implicate someone who didn't cheat, thus ruining his career. And how do you ensure that the rider doesn't take a substance inadvertently-e.g., a kitchen worker at the hotel where Team A is staying adds a little something extra into the food that night because he is an avid fan of Team B. I'm not against testing. The system today is in the right direction. But what I don't like is when the heads of WADA or the UCI act like the tests are 100% accurate and refuse to entertain the idea that there can be false positives. Perhaps there needs to be a process in place in which a rider who tests positive can at least ask for further tests or further investigation. I certainly don't have all the answers.

And cycling isn't alone. Baseball is finally addressing this issue, and football (American) is having to deal more with stories of past/present amphetamine use. And I'm sure football (soccer) has its share of problems. So don't tell me professional cycling is dead as a sport, as some forum writers state, because no one is saying that all professional sport is dead due to cheats.

mbear37

But it isn't black and white. EPO is produced in the body naturally, it's the mechanism by which the body regulates red cell production. Separating the natural from artificially introduced EPO is the tough part, and it can be a subjective process. Cyclingnews.com has an excellent writeup on the LA/L'Equipe/LNDD mess of last summer, including an explanation of the EPO test that the LNDD lab invented. It's interesting reading, and will have you yearning for the days when cycling discussions revolved around equipment, teams, and personalities... now, we talk about proteins and magnetic fields.

A critical point - this was a Spanish lab that confirmed the positive. I suspect that Heras, the top cyclist in a nation that prides itself on cycling, has already received any benefit of the doubt that could have been applied.

And the current EPO test is under some fire, but it has not been discredited. There are methods of attack that a legal challenge can take - Heras was found positive on one stage only, and on the surface, that appears to be a bit odd. Or were his samples on the other stages marginally close to positive? That isn't being made public right now. Did his hematocrit show any unusual activity? If he is innocent, he has some ways to challenge the judgment.

Professional cycling is a commercial venture, and doping (in this case) is not being investigated as a criminal matter. The rules of evidence that are so stringent within most democratic criminal systems don't apply here. The presumption of innocence, a cornerstone of modern criminal jurisprudence, is not present. (and that has a great influence on how the judgment will be rendered) To a degree, the rights of the individual cyclists are subserviant to the desires of the governing organization, just as in a corporation, the good of the individual employee takes a back seat to the good of the stockholders. Even with some doubts and a few false positives, the LNDD EPO test, at this time, is presumed to be accurate. Heras has to show exactly how it went wrong in his case - the burden of proof is upon him.

In the end, the cyclists, and the organizations serve the fans. And the fans will provide the final judgment, by spending or withholding the money that fuels every aspect of professional cycling. Without money, it's back to the club criterium. I get the feeling that, right now, the fans are placing a greater emphasis on cleaning out the dopers than protecting the stars from false accusations. Right or wrong, that's the way it's going.

hombredesubaru said:

I am not sure what your point is.
I was responding to a post that said life is grey, sometimes there are not black and white answers.
My point exactly. If a lab test cannot give a yes or no answer, it should not be used to provide a legal and binding result on a riders legal staus as a doper and banned for two years.

It may be an OK lab test within certain parameters, it may even sometimes be useful in detecting doping.
But if there are grey areas, and it is clear by now that there are grey ares, those need to be defined or quantified roughly so that UCI and WADA dont treat a grey zone test as black and white.

Excellent Post.

JohnO said:

It's interesting reading, and will have you yearning for the days when cycling discussions revolved around equipment, teams, and personalities... now, we talk about proteins and magnetic fields.

Which has created a loss of interest in it for me.

JohnO said:

Without money, it's back to the club criterium.

And would this be a bad thing? This way we get to see the races live, we know the riders, and we actually participate.

JohnO said:

But it isn't black and white. EPO is produced in the body naturally, it's the mechanism by which the body regulates red cell production. Separating the natural from artificially introduced EPO is the tough part, and it can be a subjective process. Cyclingnews.com has an excellent writeup on the LA/L'Equipe/LNDD mess of last summer, including an explanation of the EPO test that the LNDD lab invented. It's interesting reading, and will have you yearning for the days when cycling discussions revolved around equipment, teams, and personalities... now, we talk about proteins and magnetic fields.

A critical point - this was a Spanish lab that confirmed the positive. I suspect that Heras, the top cyclist in a nation that prides itself on cycling, has already received any benefit of the doubt that could have been applied.

And the current EPO test is under some fire, but it has not been discredited. There are methods of attack that a legal challenge can take - Heras was found positive on one stage only, and on the surface, that appears to be a bit odd. Or were his samples on the other stages marginally close to positive? That isn't being made public right now. Did his hematocrit show any unusual activity? If he is innocent, he has some ways to challenge the judgment.

Professional cycling is a commercial venture, and doping (in this case) is not being investigated as a criminal matter. The rules of evidence that are so stringent within most democratic criminal systems don't apply here. The presumption of innocence, a cornerstone of modern criminal jurisprudence, is not present. (and that has a great influence on how the judgment will be rendered) To a degree, the rights of the individual cyclists are subserviant to the desires of the governing organization, just as in a corporation, the good of the individual employee takes a back seat to the good of the stockholders. Even with some doubts and a few false positives, the LNDD EPO test, at this time, is presumed to be accurate. Heras has to show exactly how it went wrong in his case - the burden of proof is upon him.

In the end, the cyclists, and the organizations serve the fans. And the fans will provide the final judgment, by spending or withholding the money that fuels every aspect of professional cycling. Without money, it's back to the club criterium. I get the feeling that, right now, the fans are placing a greater emphasis on cleaning out the dopers than protecting the stars from false accusations. Right or wrong, that's the way it's going.

Well i dont think there is much more to say except Roberto is over, too bad too since I doubt he is guilty.
Ultimately the technology will advance to get the EPO test better, too bad Roberto and riders dont freez their own urine to prove 5-6 years from now they WERE innocent.

There are just a few teeny concerns with the Heras deal, like why did it take so long for them to decale the A sample positive. Was it one of these we have to run it a few more times to get it right, like the B sample?

Also UCI and Vuelta peole are saying that Roberto was tested every day in the jersey but MAYBE THEY DIDNT RUN EPO TESTS every day becasue its too expensive?!!?!?! WTF? What is 400 dollars per test compared with what we have now?

So...I think that under the stress of the huge exertion a number of athletes excrete other proteins which get tagged as EPO but arent. This was shown in htree previous cases already. The antibody used to tag EPO and separate it in the electrophoresis is not specific for EPO, so until they spend the money to get a monoclonal antibody to EPO (maybe they should get samples from M. Pantani's frozen blood if they have any since he apparently had signs of antibodies to EPO) to use in the test it will be dirty.

Unfortunately, for me the burden of proof sits on the riders. The Festina affair only made the riders more careful. Dope is still central to the sport. Note this from the 2001 Giro:

Quoted post said:

However, for the past five days, the Giro's focus has unfortunately been on drugs, after a surprise police raid last Wednesday night in San Remo uncovered what is turning out to be a significant quantity of illegal substances. Reports in Italian newspapers this morning stated that 68 riders will be questioned by police in relation to illegal products found in their hotel rooms, including common drugs (stimulants) and heavier substances, for example experimental blood substitutes.

cyclingnews.comstage21.shtmlOpen ↗

The culture of doping is central to the sport.

whiteboytrash said:

[font=Verdana]Nice return of serve LM... to make things even more precise Virenque didn't actually admit to doping until the police trials in 2000 ! Almost 2 years after he was hauled off the TDF in tears. Virenque even wrote a book on his innocence prior to 2000 ! The same with Milller he only admitted when the courts were going to put him in jail..... like Heras they will keep saying they are innocent until there is no other way to turn... if you had the choice of prison or to keep lying you would tell the truth as well....[/font]

Of course, they'll deny it - even when they've been found out they still deny it.

As you say it took Virenque months to confront his guilt.

Or they hire a doctor to put forward "mysterious twin" theories etc.

Frigo and Giuseppe Casagrande were given suspended jail sentences arising from the Giro shennanigans in 2001.

There is the missing component of accountability. To date, there have been no penalties levied against the organizations that falsely accused Rutger Beke, damaged his reputation, and kept him out of competition for over a year, although that is just now hitting the civil court system. What motivation do the organizing bodies and labs have to keep their tests accurate and fair?

On the other hand, what if they are right and Heras is dirty? Certainly, there is a great motivation to juice up - the rewards of being a team leader, in terms of money and influence, are great, and it doesn't take much to knock the leader off of his throne - a few bad races or stages. Look what happened to Iban Mayo - from star to peloton straggler in one season.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I have become quite weary of hearing about doped up cyclists. To read the stories the riders tell about constant out of competition testing, one would think that doping is almost impossible today. But, here we go again. Is it really that bad, and what will it take to stop this?

davidbod said:

Possible yes, but doesn't explain the absence in the Vuelta sample of the antigen marker that caused the first test in Athens to be labelled positive. Since there was not sufficient time for this cell population to die off and they were supposedly in his blood in Athens why are they then not in his blood at the Vuelta?

You can't say that without knowing when the transfusion that caused the positive at Athens took place and how old was the blood that was used. The 120 day life span of red cells is a maximum. If the blood was stored for a month, the cells would last for much less than 120 days. Thus they could fall much more quickly to a level that is below the cutoff for detection.

JohnO said:

There is the missing component of accountability. To date, there have been no penalties levied against the organizations that falsely accused Rutger Beke, damaged his reputation, and kept him out of competition for over a year, although that is just now hitting the civil court system. What motivation do the organizing bodies and labs have to keep their tests accurate and fair?

On the other hand, what if they are right and Heras is dirty? Certainly, there is a great motivation to juice up - the rewards of being a team leader, in terms of money and influence, are great, and it doesn't take much to knock the leader off of his throne - a few bad races or stages. Look what happened to Iban Mayo - from star to peloton straggler in one season.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I have become quite weary of hearing about doped up cyclists. To read the stories the riders tell about constant out of competition testing, one would think that doping is almost impossible today. But, here we go again. Is it really that bad, and what will it take to stop this?

There seems to be a lot of confusion about "out of competition" testing because it appears that out of competition testing is non-existant.

Armstrong put a little anecdote about being the most tested athlete on earth in his book - for his American audience, I presume.

I believe he stated something about being tested almost continuously.
The UCI confirmed some time back that Armstrong was in fact only tested
between 10-20 times per year, during his career.

So let#s bury the "out of competition" testing myth once and for all - it's isn't regular testing.

As regards growing weary of the doping stories - I am not weary, I feel short changed by all the doping that is going on.
If the sport was clean and if the cyclists were honest, we wouldn't have this problem.

It's tantamount to blaming the weatherman for bad weather.

hombredesubaru said:

The whole point of a doping test is a yes or no answer, a black and white response, and up or a down. There is no grey allowable in these matters.
Same as medicine, the patient has cancer or he doesnt.

Either the EPO test works does or it doesn't.
Either Roberto is guilty or he isn't.
It's black and white. Right?

Obviously it has to be a grey thing! The riders and their team doctors know what the cut off number for positive versus negative result. Thus a good team that is cheating will keep just below the cutoff (ie the 79% is "clean" and 80% is "doped" thing or a haematocrit of 49.9% is fine even if you have just had blood removed that is then given back to you after the test and before the start of the race). Even though 79% is very, very likely to be cheating - it is clean by definition. We could change the cutoff to 78% and the teams would still cheat the system.

Also - any test for cancer can only detect cancer at a certain stage (eg about 1 cm for CT and about 0.5 cm for MRI). So you can tell a patient that they don't have cancer and be wrong because it is just still to small to be detected. Sounds grey to me.

Further - if Roberto is a false positive like Rutger Beke, he can clear his name. Just like Beke did.

If you really need a black and white world, perhaps you should start a competition where any doping is possible as it is not tested for. Please enjoy it.

limerickman said:

There seems to be a lot of confusion about "out of competition" testing because it appears that out of competition testing is non-existant.

Armstrong put a little anecdote about being the most tested athlete on earth in his book - for his American audience, I presume.

I believe he stated something about being tested almost continuously.
The UCI confirmed some time back that Armstrong was in fact only tested
between 10-20 times per year, during his career.

So let#s bury the "out of competition" testing myth once and for all - it's isn't regular testing.

As regards growing weary of the doping stories - I am not weary, I feel short changed by all the doping that is going on.
If the sport was clean and if the cyclists were honest, we wouldn't have this problem.

It's tantamount to blaming the weatherman for bad weather.

If Armstrong was tested 10-20 times a year, and that's your number as far as I know unless you provide the quote, thats one to two times a month. So even if 10 of those tests are during the TdF and several others are during Amstel, TdGeorgia, that still leaves several other for off season random testing. Thats a lot and short of weekly or twice monthly urines drug addicts give to prove they are clean, no sport or athlete could go so far.

Now I dont think Lance is tested twice a month out of competition but he IS tested out of competition as the example in his book, when he is just home from the hospital with his newborn son, and the UCI or WADA arrives at his door at 6 AM, new baby just home a day or two. Go figure. Or his RANDOM test the day before the tour started this year.

So BTW nonexistant (sic) is spelled "non-existent" just FYI.

And if patch will please get my point, the lab tests ARE grey, the answers are black and white, guilty or not guilty. That does not make sense. Get it?

bobke said:

If Armstrong was tested 10-20 times a year, and that's your number as far as I know unless you provide the quote, thats one to two times a month. So even if 10 of those tests are during the TdF and several others are during Amstel, TdGeorgia, that still leaves several other for off season random testing. ?

I'll go along with lim's numbers as you've gone along as well. According to your maths
20-10-"several"="several"...
Now I don't know how you define "several" but no matter how you do it what you've written doesn't make much sense (unless several=5) and actually makes limerickman's point more valid.
Regarding the tests, if you thought a bit about how a mediocre (at best) time trialist managed to come second to the fastest ever TT you would see that they give a rather black and white picture and definitely not a grey one... TAking patch's comments out of context won't make Heras or Hamilton clean...

bobke said:

And if patch will please get my point, the lab tests ARE grey, the answers are black and white, guilty or not guilty. That does not make sense. Get it?

If you could suggest an alternative then?
Every single test for ANY condition (be it doping, HIV, pregnancy, prostate cancer etc etc) is similarly grey. All tests that are used to give a positive versus negative answer actually give a quantifiable result that statistitians have worked on to find the best cutoff for positive or negative. Doping tests are no different.

If you really want a test that gives zero false positives, you make a test that never, ever gives a positive result. If you want a test that gives zero false negatives, you make a test that always reads positive. Would that be black and white enough for you? Every useful test (that gives both positive and negative results) will produce some false results in either direction. That is a statistical certainty. However, you statistically work out the cutoff to give you the most useful test.