Twos-day + 1

A few articles caught my eye over the last couple of days. In one, a different form of anti-doping test is proposed. It sounds interesting, but there’s at least on major gotcha that I’d want to see overcome before such a test being adopted. And then there’s an alternate take on the alleged positive test for Dynepo that’s been claimed in the latest English-language story about Danish cyclist Michael Rasmussen. But before I get to either of those, there’s the latest from Rachel Cohen of the Associated Press, in which Lance Armstrong breaks his silence about the decision in the Floyd Landis case. (Thanks to regular reader and commenter William Schart for pointing the story out.)

Although the arbitrators faulted the lab’s practices in their ruling and warned that future errors could result in the dismissal of a positive finding, the panel still upheld Landis’ positive doping test.

“When you are giving someone the death penalty, which they essentially did, you cannot tolerate shoddy work, which they clearly did,” Armstrong said. “I don’t understand that type of rationale. I don’t understand the verdict.

“It’s tough for Floyd; it’s tough for cycling. But at the same time, it’s also really tough and unfortunate for the fans of all athletes. You never know when you’re in that position, when an athlete’s in that position, and you want to make sure that everything’s done right.”

Armstrong’s absolutely right. When you’re taking away a person’s livelihood, the evidence used to make that decision better be rock solid. The arbitrators’ ruling, in which they say these same kinds of errors in the future could cause a case to be thrown out, is a cop-out. If they think that these errors are so much of a problem that future cases should be thrown out, then what was so different about the Landis case?

Saying that it’s tough for Floyd is a bit of an understatement. It’s about time Lance stood up and commented on the ruling. He goes on to make another important point, one that’s all too often lost on sportswriters and the general public.

“But I think all of sport is going through a tough time,” he said. “You can look at cycling and say, ‘Oh, they’re all cheaters.’ But you know what? You can look at the New England Patriots and say they’re cheaters, too. You can look at the McLaren Formula One team and say they’re cheaters.”

What’s often lost in stories about doping (especially when the stories involve cycling) is a sense of perspective. Doping happens in every sport. And given the temptations, where money is a major factor, doping is more prevalent. Some sports, it seems, are immune to the taint of doping scandals — even when those scandals stare sportswriters and fans squarely in the face. Whenever a doping scandal hits cycling, the taint sticks. It’s not fair, but unfortunately, that’s how life is sometimes.

And now for something completely different …

Or, given the general topic I seem to be writing about, maybe not. A couple of days ago, I wrote about the differences between VeloNews’ story of the alleged Michael Rasmussen Dynepo positive test and CyclingNews.com’s story. There’s another version of the story that trumps the comparisons between those two, and it’s the version published by The Canadian Press.

In both VeloNews.com’s story and CyclingNews.com’s story, you would get the impression that Pierre Bordry, the head of the AFLD (France’s anti-doping agency) told the press that one of Michael Rasmussen’s anti-doping tests from the 2007 Tour de France came up positive for Dynepo, a synthetic form of EPO made from human cells. Current tests, however, can confuse natural EPO and Dynepo. That being the case, WADA does not yet list Dynepo as a banned substance.

In The Canadian Press’ story, Bordry’s comments are reported in a different light.

However, Pierre Bordry, the head of France’s anti-doping agency, told The Associated Press that the results – if reported accurately – could not be treated as a positive test because Dynepo is not banned under World Anti-Doping Agency regulations.

“EPO as a synthetic product is forbidden,” he said, but “EPO made from a biological element … does not appear in the analysis the same way as EPO.”

“The World Anti-Doping Agency must absolutely get laboratory standards modified so that we can recognize (this kind of EPO) as forbidden,” Bordry said. “If (the Rasmussen affair) allows us to resolve this question, all the better.”

Far from being the source of information about Rasmussen’s “positive” test, Bordry is rather circumspect in his comments reported above. Which raises the question of who is actually leaking information to L’Equipe, where this story broke out into the wild. The lab, in theory, only knows the athlete’s ID number. They aren’t supposed to know which athlete matches which number. The UCI, as the agency responsible for collecting and delivering the samples to LNDD, has the answer key.

Could it be someone at the UCI leaking the information? Or a combination of information from one source being verified by another? And in the verification, the rider’s identity is given away? Hard to say, exactly. But someone at the UCI may well be playing a part.

In which case, it’s fair to ask why they would be releasing this information at this point in time. Given that Pat McQuaid was quite clear that he didn’t want Rasmussen to win, this is another reason to bolster McQuaid’s opinion. It still doesn’t explain how the UCI mucked up Rasmussen’s out-of-competition test at the end of June.

[Didn’t hear about that? It turns out Rasmussen actually did send the UCI the right forms at the end of June, informing them he’d be training in the Pyrenees about 10 days before the start of the Tour. Just like they blew the OOC test for Valverde earlier in the month.]

Seems to me, there’s some games being played by the release of this information. And the real story behind the story has very little to do with Michael Rasmussen or the subject of doping in cycling. Power and money may well be the name of the game here. Especially with the recent “divorce” between the Grand Tours and the ProTour.

A new form of anti-doping test

An op-ed piece by pediatric cardiologist Darshak Sanghavi in The Boston Globe offers a different approach to anti-doping testing.

There’s a better way to detect doping that relies on a more advanced detection system: the human body. All human hormones – including steroids like testosterone – are controlled by natural feedback loops, much like a thermostat controls a furnace switch. When it’s cold in a house, a thermostat turns on the furnace, and when the temperature rises, turns it off. Now pretend you “dope” some houses with space heaters. You can easily tell what houses are “performance enhancing” by checking how often the built-in furnace turns on.

Similarly, when an athlete uses anabolic steroids or human growth hormone, the brain turns off the signal to produce natural hormones. These signals – called lutenizing hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone in the case of anabolic steroids – can be measured. Since the precise kind of steroid doping is irrelevant (just as the brand of space heater is irrelevant) one could simply measure a handful of feedback hormones instead of dozens on specific banned drugs.

That’s also why many endocrinologists couldn’t understand the uncertainty over Bonds’s alleged use of growth hormone. A simple blood test looking for suspicious levels of a feedback hormone called IGF-1 would provide evidence for growth hormone doping.

Sanghavi’s article goes on to tell us that:

[I]n a major shift, use of these so-called indirect markers was endorsed by the World Anti-Doping Agency in 2003. According to Olivier Rabin, the agency’s science director, indirect markers are “really what we are developing now,” and tests for IGF-1, lutenizing hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone in tLH, and FSH could become standard in several years. Additionally, Rabin endorsed the concept of an “athlete’s passport,” where hormone levels would be tracked over long periods of time to establish an individual’s baseline and then assess for any sudden shifts.

Certainly, what Dr. Sanghavi suggests sounds intriguing. But here are a few things that immediately come to my mind. Are there any medical conditions other than doping that could suppress the production of LH or FSH? If so, what are they and how prevalent are they among athletes? Could such an approach detect low-dose usage of testosterone or other drugs? Could such an approach detect occasional or one-off use of banned drugs or techniques?

To use Dr. Sanghavi’s analogy of the thermostat and the furnace, if all you do is measure how many times the furnace turned on, but not other factors, you could easily draw the wrong conclusion. And would these tests be any more precise in determining whether any real performance enhancement had been achieved?

That said, I agree with his conclusion:

And the larger questions of what constitutes natural or artificial talent still loom. But for now, if we all do agree that performance enhancing drugs are unfair, then we at least should demand reliable enforcement.

Yes, and as we’ve seen lately, sometimes athletes get convicted based on unreliable (or just plain sloppy) testing and enforcement. Is Dr. Sanghavi’s approach a more reliable technique? It certainly sounds like something that should be considered in greater detail. But before these types of tests get used, we need to be sure that the scientific underpinnings are sound.