A new positive doping result from the 2008 Tour de France is making the rounds of the media today. This time, it’s Bernhard Kohl, the Austrian climbing sensation who finished third overall when this year’s survivors crossed the final finish line in Paris. According to a number of media reports, two samples given by Kohl (on July 3 and July 15) have come up positive for CERA, the same drug that Ricardo Ricco and Leonardo Piepoli and, more recently, Stefan Schumacher were all accused of using.
The articles I’ve seen do not make it clear, but they give the impression that Kohl’s results are for A sample tests, and not the B samples. According to Agence France Presse (AFP), French anti-doping agency/laboratory AFLD released the following statement today:
“The AFLD confirms that its laboratory at Chatenay-Malabry has found two abnormal samples showing the presence of EPO Cera in blood tests done on July 3 and 15, before and during the Tour de France, on Austrian cyclist Bernard Kohl.
“The official notification to the athlete was done through the Austrian Anti-doping Agency (NADA Austria). This means disciplinary proceedings can be taken against the athlete by the French and Austrian national disciplinary authorities, as the 2008 Tour de France was not included in the UCI (world cycling’s governing body) calendar.”
No mention there as to whether it was just A or B samples. But going on a bit further the AFP article states:
Geert Coeman, the Silence team boss, told Austrian agency APA however that Kohl’s contract would be annulled if this positive test was confirmed.
“We have not yet been able to talk to Bernard,” Coeman said. “But if the test is confirmed, we will take the necessary action. His contract with us would be made null and void.”
Marc Sergeant, the sporting director of Silence, told Belgian television station Sporza: “This has been a real slap in the face. We spent a lot of time and energy getting him to join us, thinking he was a great recruit. I feel betrayed.”
Right. Well, that sort of suggests it was the A samples, doesn’t it? More evidence that it might be the A samples comes from a deutsche presse agentur (dpa) article published by the Bangkok Post:
The test showed Kohl, 26, had used the substance EPO CERA, said Andreas Schwab, the head of Austria’s national doping agency, after having been informed by the French doping agency.
“On one hand I am very disappointed that he tested positive, because of his fantastic performance at the Tour de France,” Schwab said. “On the other hand, I am happy one can detect more than was expected.”
Schwab stressed that Kohl was considered innocent until conclusive evidence was brought forward.
Conclusive evidence. Hmm. There’s an interesting, but vague, term. Does that mean it’s not a done deal until the B samples confirm the intitial results? Or is Schwab saying that they’re waiting for formality of receiving the complete documentation of Kohl’s new test results before they pronounce him guilty? Good for Herr Schwab that he is upholding the “innocent until proven guilty” line for the moment, anyhow. It will be interesting to see how this case develops.
At the rate this is going, how many more will be suspected or declared guilty of doping before the next edition of the Tour rolls out next July? And that being the case, when will the results be considered official? Ever?
Speaking of things not ending, Jacques Rogge noted recently that the full story of the 2008 Beijing Olympics won’t be written until 2016, given the 8 year statute of limitations on bringing cases of doping to light. Tom Knight of The Telegraph penned an article about the testing of 5000 samples from this year’s games for CERA. Knight notes that the testing will be done at the Swiss anti-doping lab in Lausanne. In the article, he quotes Rogge as saying:
“This is the first stage of retroactive testing.
“We are going to keep, to preserve the urine and the blood for eight years.
“If, for example, we have a new chance to test next year or within two years because science can teach us that you can test for one substance or another which you cannot test for now, we will do that in the future.
“The Beijing Games will only be completely closed in eight years’ time.”
At least we have a real end date for the Beijing Games. I’m sure there’s at least a few athletes who are anxiously awaiting the outcomes of their events.
Rant, some quick (well, quick for me!) observations.
First, the objective evidence now indicates that the 2008 TdF was no cleaner than any of the previous races. Schumaker and Kohl were both high-profile riders. If I’m counting right, we’ve had 6 AAFs coming out of the Tour.
Second, I’m not hearing the usual refrain that “everyone” knew that Schumaker and Kohl were doping, that their performances were “too good to be true”, etc., etc. It would be wonderful if we could ALL conclude from this that you cannot reasonably guess whether a rider is doping based on the rider’s performance.
Third, the Kohl – Schumaker AAFs are evidence that targeted testing does not work, at least not at this point. If you remember, the AFLD focused its testing during the TdF on riders that they deemed to be “suspicious”, based mostly (or partially — we know nothing about how AFLD selected its targets) on blood tests performed on the riders at the beginning of the Tour. We know that Ricco was targeted, and we suspect that Beltran was targeted, but we suspect that the others were not targeted.
Fourth, an observation: we’ve all noted that per WADA rules, the results of “A” testing are supposed to be confidential until the “A” tests are confirmed by “B” tests (or the athlete has waived “B” testing). We’ve also noted that for in-race testing, it’s practically impossible to keep “A” results confidential, as teams are required to pull riders from races if they have an adverse “A” test that has yet to be confirmed. But the Kohl – Schumaker tests are being announced well after the TdF was run. Are these riders currently racing? If not, then what’s the excuse for disclosing the results of the “A” tests?
Partially in response ot the “how do we get there from here” question, I think we now have even more evidence that targeted testing, random testing, and OOC controls simply do not work. Shumy won 2 stages at the 08 TdF. The proceudre is to test the yellow jersey and the stage winner each day. Well, the new stage winner for each of Shumy’s win days wasn’t tested, was he? And Shumy also wore yellow for a time. Meaning had he been DQ’ed at the time, someone else would have been tested. How would the race tactics play out with somone else in yellow those days? SHuffling the deck 3 months later ain’t cutting it. Who won polka dot? If Kohl was really out, maybe someone else jumps into a breakway, or contests a sprint to a KOM point.
In the end, there will be no complete and effective anti-doping effort, until each and every rider is tested at the end of each competititon day, with independent labs doing proper analysis to established, incontrovertable standards. Results need to be overnight or before the medal ceremony. Athletes must approve the integrity of the labs by observation or independent analysis. In the end, will this happen? Absolutely not. It costs too much money. It makes the spectacle less valuable to those who control it, and those people are not the athletes. The athletes then become expendable resources to those that are “putting on the show.” They test only to make that spectable more marketable. ASO and IOC have no interest in catching cheaters, and indeed would prefer they simply go away. But consumers apparently are demanding proof that sport is really sport, and not a freak show. They’re not buying, so IOC and ASO are forced to doing someothing. And they will do the bare minimum to meet the consumer demand.
Gota say though, there is probably a good market for someone to collect blood and tissue each and every day to independent evidentiary standards for storage purposes. Sell that service to athletes. How can they afford not to employ it? Kohl sure wishes he had a freezer of samples and someone (two observers?) that can vouch for its integrity.
Larry,
Even if your speech is smaller as usual I have fund few points to disagree with you.
To say if the TDF was cleaner we cannot use the number of positive cases, especially if we are comparing years with UCI as leader of doping un-fight. With no retro-testing only 3 riders will have been caught and Ricco caught with an unexpected test!
With no biopassport Ricco and Beltra would have been not caught too.
So we would have only one serious case : Duenas and one minor Fofonov.
We know too that there is a lot of other undectable EPO but maybe some of the suspected would be caught later by biopassport.
The speed of the race was clearly slower for most of the riders. The grupetto is slower than under the EPO era. The biggest rides cannot climb but Cancellara, Voigt seems to beat the physical law of gravity!
Schumacher was labelled as doper before TDF since his mother covered a doping case with a back dated TUE. He was caught with some drugs by police too during the last winter.
For your last points, I think it’s because the samples were tested by 2 labs and 2 different method. So there is few doubt about a positive case.
Jean C, as usual you make good points and it is a pleasure to discuss these matters with you.
My main concern with AFLD testing is the lack of “transparency” — we just don’t know what they’re thinking. We don’t know who they targeted during the Tour, or why. We don’t know how they’re conducting their retro testing. We can’t tell if they’re “A” testing, if they plan to do “B” testing, if there are two labs involved, etc. But to be honest, I think that AFLD has done a reasonably good job here, especially given the fact that they’ve never been in charge of the entire Tour effort before.
As for whether a Tour is “clean” or “dirty”, all we have to go on is how many guys got caught, and how highly placed they were. Sure, it’s possible that the AFLD caught a higher percentage of dopers this year than ever before and that there just were not that many dopers. There’s no way for us to know.
I think that the overall speed of this year’s Tour was relatively high. Still, I don’t think you can tell anything from these kinds of statistics, as race speed is affected by the difficulty of the route, weather conditions, race tactics, etc.
As for who was suspected of doping: yes, Schumacher was caught by the police with drugs, but if anyone suspected that he was using PEDs during this year’s Tour, I heard not a word of it. Ditto for Kohl. It always seems to be the case that AFTER a guy is caught, lots of people say “I told you so”, but I’ll only pay attention to suspicions raised BEFORE someone is caught.
My bigger point is this: during the Tour, we understand that AFLD targeted like 60 riders. Of these 60, Ricco was caught, and perhaps Beltran (I’m not sure that Beltran was targeted). So that’s 2 out of 60, or about 3.3% caught. We have 4 guys caught out of the 120 riders not targeted, the same 3.3% percentage caught. There’s no point in targeting a group that does not appear to be doping in greater numbers than the non-tergeted group.
Larry,
Thanks I enjoy our short or long discusion too.
Quickly, Schumacher raised suspicions by beating Cancellara at the first ITT. The first mountain stage confirmed that suspicions.
Schumacher and Kohl as other riders were pointed in cyclismag http://www.cyclismag.com/article.php?sid=4392
About AFLD targeting, I do think that the 60 riders were the total number of riders targeted before and during TDF. Some riders were controlled often before TDF because of their “bad” biopassports. Riders don’t only dope during the race, doping during training is needed too. Some of the riders dope outside France but are worried with France’s jail, so a part of them came “clean” in France.
The real targeted riders were those who had anormalous blood markers at the TDF pre-control.
A brief piece of information
Waiting B samples to reveal a positive case is an UCI rules but it was AFLD specific rules for that TDF.
Larry,
Realistically, you can hardly expect skeptics to name riders they suspect of doping before there is any evidence. Not only does that seem unfair to the riders, it also takes the fun out of the race.
Still, in the cycling forums I frequent, Schumacher (and Kohl) was named as a potential doper. On the other hand, this is the case for nearly every successful climber/TTist who isn’t American or on Team CSC.
From my perspective, the evidence indicates continued omerta and widespread doping. However, there is still hope that the controls are becoming an increasingly substantial deterrent. If in the future every rider in the Top 10 is faced with these retroactive tests, then teams and riders will have to reevaluate the cost/benefit ratio of their doping programs.
Ludwig, I think we see eye to eye here. My beef is with people who think they tell whether a rider is doping based on how the rider LOOKS on the road. I think that such claims are nonsense, pure and simple. Some of these claims are the ones you describe, where the “expert” claims that everyone is doping, and when anyone is caught doping, the “expert” says “I told you so.” The other claims are made by people after the fact, which is of course easy to do, hindsight being 20-20.
I also hope that dopers are being increasingly deterred, though the 7 dopers caught in this year’s Tour (sorry, I counted wrong in an earlier post) is about on par with earlier Tours widely considered to be “dirty”. Jean C may be right that we’re now catching a higher percentage of a smaller pool of dopers, but I doubt it. There appears to be too many ways to cheat and get away with it to imagine that doping testing is a real deterrent. The 2008 Tour is unusual in that for once, the ADAs actually had a test in hand for a PED (CERA), and no one knew they had the test. It was an anti-doping sting. Now of course, no one in their right mind would dope with CERA. Sadly, since we now know that large pharmaceutical companies are willing to cooperate with WADA, no doper in his or her right mind would dope with a PED made by big pharma. Luckily for those inclined to dope, there are plenty of PEDs available from small drug companies in China, India and elsewhere. Many of these PEDs should be undetectable. This being the case, where’s the deterrence?
It would be interesting to gather some science on the limits of storing blood and urine for future testing. My understanding is that urine is a lot more stable than blood, but even with urine, I doubt that it can be stored indefinitely. But I haven’t seen any studies. If urine CAN be stored for years and retested, then there may be some deterrent in being able to threaten current dopers with the prospect of being caught when tests improve. But I don’t think this deterrent would be significant. If we were truly capable of being scared today by possible consequences years down the road, then few people would smoke cigarettes.
Jean C, points taken. I note that the article you cite also cast suspicion on Sastre, which is unfortunate any way you look at it.
Indeed does the 7 riders represent a larger fraction of a smaller pool of dopers, or just business as usual? There is no way of telling and we are again faced with a situation one interprets based on beliefs about the doping situation, which can be colored by many things.
If there was some good way of getting a handle on the amount of doping in the Tour, we then could make some judgement about whether the number of dopers is going up, down or staying the same. Testing every rider every day is so expensive that, for all practical intents and purposes it is impossible. Perhaps one could devise some plan where all riders were subject to some sort of inexpensive screening, with results kept anonymous and not used for any action against any rider or team, just for informational purposes only, but I don’t know how practical that would be. For one thing, as alluded to above, there are perhaps many ways of doping, and not all of them may be detected by commonly used tests.
I too don’t think that one can tell if any rider is doping just by observing performance – there are too many other variables involved.
Oh, and as far as that 2016 deadline for Beijing testing: according to a program I caught for a bit today doing some afternoon channel surfing, the world is going to come to an end in December of 2012, so they’d better get cracking on the testing if they want to nail people before then!
Larry,
Probably Kohl has learnt comedy before TDF… Sure now the “How look the rider” is useless today. But there is still good information that can be collected when the camera is not on the rider. Inside peloton riders are able to hear how are breathing the other riders. Better they can read the heart rate on the bar of their neighbors.
(I just do think that monitoring the heart rate of athletes could be used to help the detection of cheaters). So riders knows more about “doped” riders than they officialy
say.
About deterrence : a full deterrence is not possible, that is similar to death penalty. Reducing slightly the ratio of dopers is the goal to restore confidence in athletes and to give them the fame that they deserve.
Most of the pro-riders (PTT) don’t accept to dope with many risks so they use only already proved PED. That is why EPO were used inside pro-peloton many years after Continental riders or less.
Maybe that could change…
We don’t have to forget that the current peloton is cleaner (not clean) than peloton of end 90’s with at least 90% using EPO!
Storing blood on long period it’s possible by separating plasma and so.
I think that evolution of performance can show a potential doping. A significant change in performance, especially physical, can be explained. Among population physical abilities like most of the thing are distributed. Sometimes a guy is outside the normal Gauss curve but generaly a good reason canbe easily found ( tallest man, smallest,…). So there is no reason than human become suddenly stronger than a minimum.