First off, it's probably useful to know what EPO does and when it came into
existence. It's an erythropoeitin that increases the body's formulation of
red blood cells. It was first developed in Croatia in 1988, when Croatia
was still part of the Soviet Bloc, and God only knows how long it took
before it reached Europe, and undoubtedly the U.S. came later. BUT! It may
have been "fast rtacked," because it was/is a critical life saving drug in
the cases of severes aneamias, some naturally occuring, some that result
from chemotherapy for cancer treatment.
They were brought into cycling because they are believed to be a "safer" way
to increase the blood's oxygen carrying ability than actual blood doping:
the act of drawing your own blood, centrifuging it, putting it back just
before a race.
Whether using EPO or actually blood doping, there are serious health hazards
in both cases.
The long tradition in cycling was to increase the body's ability to carry
more oxygen in the blood by training at altitude. The higher, the better.
But the benefits are fairly short lived when you go from Colorado's
plus-ten-thousand-feet training grounds to sea level. A few days at best.
The optimum way to gain from altitude is to grow up there so that you have
much larger lungs than the average person, and that *will* serve you well
long term at any altitude.
In the '80's, there was a lot going on in research of ways to enhance
performance through increased ability to perform in an anaerobic state. I
thought one of the more creative -- and thoroughly legal! -- ways was the
Francesco Conconi method, in which you boosted your anareobic threshhold
through a specific training program. It was develped specifically for
Francesco Moser, who set major world track endurance records using it. I
trained a couple of cyclists using it in the late 80s, and it does work.
The problem with it is that once you start regular races where you do go
over your anaerobic threshhold, then the efficacy of the threshhold training
is pretty much a thing of the past. But still, you start a head of the
game.
When you start manipulating the component balance of your blood, such as
incresing the number of red blood cells, you are taking on a whole lot of
heavy risks. To do it without extremely well educated medical direction is
Russian roulette.
For me, it not only is a great danger to the individual, but it's like
cheating on a crossword puzzle. How will you ever know if you could have
done it on your own? And yes, I think the team administrators who push the
damned stuff are the ones who should be gone after, not the cyclists they
push to use them...
Caroline
