Steroid News
News bot on steroids
New Test, Introduced Without Warning, Could Give Antidoping Officials an Edge
By JULIET MACUR
Published: October 9, 2010
Antidoping scientists who conducted the drug testing at this summer’s Tour de France used their best weapon: the element of surprise.
Unbeknown to the riders competing in the three-week race, those scientists used a test so new that it has yet to be validated by the World Anti-Doping Agency. The test detects a chemical called a plasticizer, which is commonly found in blood-storage bags and leaches into the blood stored in them. High levels of that chemical could suggest that a rider had undergone a banned blood transfusion to increase endurance.
The test caught at least one rider, the three-time Tour winner Alberto Contador, off guard. Contador, a person briefed on the results said, had high levels of the plasticizer in his blood on at least one day of the Tour. That person wanted to remain anonymous because he had agreed to keep the information confidential while Contador’s investigation was continuing.
Scientists are probably using the new test on other riders’ blood samples. Antidoping experts would most likely want to compare Contador’s levels of the plasticizer with those of his peers before moving forward with any charges, said two people with knowledge of the case.
Contador, who had not failed a drug test until this year’s Tour, has said he never doped. Still, he faces a two-year suspension and the loss of his Tour title, even if no one can prove that he used a blood transfusion to gain an edge.
At the Tour in July, he also tested positive for a low level of clenbuterol, a potent weight-loss and muscle-building drug, but blamed the result on his consumption of tainted beef from Spain.
“We are just so shocked because we didn’t know about any analysis of the plastic levels,” Anxo Rodríguez, one of Contador’s lawyers, said last Tuesday. The plasticizer test is just a rumor, he said, because he had not seen proof of it.
“Alberto does not know that the test was done,” Rodríguez added, “and it was not legal to take his blood to test for this.”
On Friday, Rodríguez said he had learned that it was indeed legal for antidoping scientists to conduct new tests on a cyclist’s urine and blood because the International Cycling Union adheres to World Anti-Doping Agency rules. Those rules do not require drug testers to tell athletes what they will be tested for.
Using new tests, often introduced without warning, is a common and effective tactic because athletes who dope are often a step ahead of the drug-testing system.
No cyclist knew about the existence of a reliable test for blood transfusions using someone else’s blood until the American cyclist Tyler Hamilton tested positive for that banned method in 2004. After mounting a defense that was based partly on the test’s being new and unproven, Hamilton was barred for two years.
And no cyclist knew about a test for CERA, the new-generation of blood boosting EPO, until there were positive tests at the 2008 Tour. Those riders were barred as well.
Jonathan Vaughters, the director of the Garmin-Transitions squad and an outspoken critic of doping in cycling, said: “They can introduce a test pretty suddenly, which you’d think should send a message to riders that they really shouldn’t mess around with doping because they might actually get caught. But some athletes still go ahead and take the chance, so you’re asking me, ‘Why is everyone so dumb?’ I don’t really know.”
Vaughters applauded the new test for plasticizers, saying: “If it’s true, then it’s the best news I’ve heard in the last eight years. It’s one of the last bastions of doping that people can sneak under the radar.”
Don Catlin, the former chief of the U.C.L.A. Olympic Analytical Laboratory who now runs the Anti-Doping Sciences Institute, said the test to detect autologous blood transfusions — using one’s own blood — could help curtail a longstanding problem in sports. He said blood transfusions, banned since the 1980s, became popular not long after a test for EPO was introduced before the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The athletes sought a new way to gain endurance-boosting red blood cells without being caught, he said.
“When there is a new test out there, the athletes find a way around it quite quickly,” he said.
As an example of how advanced athletes could be when it came to their doping, Catlin referred to the 2006 case involving the Austrian Olympic biathlon and cross-country teams.
At the Turin Games, the Italian police raided the apartments of those teams, seizing used syringes, blood bags and other transfusion equipment — including a machine that allowed the athletes to monitor their hemoglobin levels. Six athletes were subsequently barred for breaking antidoping rules.
Catlin said the Austrians were infusing their own blood just after their morning drug tests and removing that blood after they competed. They would then flush their systems with saline to erase any evidence of the transfusions. Those athletes, like many others, were skilled enough in the science to manipulate their blood values and skirt even the most advanced doping tests, he said.
Some antidoping experts say that athletes receiving transfusions with their own blood are hard to catch, even in a sport like cycling, which uses a biological passport system that monitors athletes’ blood values over time. Any fluctuations in those values could indicate doping, but transfusions often do not result in volatile changes to those values, experts say.
So, in trying to rid sports of athletes using transfusions, a method that has gone undetected for years, antidoping officials will now rely on the plasticizer test for help.
Even though the test is not fully validated — meaning it may not be foolproof evidence in a doping case or a subsequent lawsuit — antidoping experts say it is promising.
Michael Ashenden, a blood-doping expert from Australia, said the test might be accurate enough right now to catch cheats, without any corroborating evidence.
Although some athletes may be taken by surprise by the news, Ashenden called the new test “reliable analytical evidence of a transfusion.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/sports/10cycling.html
By JULIET MACUR
Published: October 9, 2010
Antidoping scientists who conducted the drug testing at this summer’s Tour de France used their best weapon: the element of surprise.
Unbeknown to the riders competing in the three-week race, those scientists used a test so new that it has yet to be validated by the World Anti-Doping Agency. The test detects a chemical called a plasticizer, which is commonly found in blood-storage bags and leaches into the blood stored in them. High levels of that chemical could suggest that a rider had undergone a banned blood transfusion to increase endurance.
The test caught at least one rider, the three-time Tour winner Alberto Contador, off guard. Contador, a person briefed on the results said, had high levels of the plasticizer in his blood on at least one day of the Tour. That person wanted to remain anonymous because he had agreed to keep the information confidential while Contador’s investigation was continuing.
Scientists are probably using the new test on other riders’ blood samples. Antidoping experts would most likely want to compare Contador’s levels of the plasticizer with those of his peers before moving forward with any charges, said two people with knowledge of the case.
Contador, who had not failed a drug test until this year’s Tour, has said he never doped. Still, he faces a two-year suspension and the loss of his Tour title, even if no one can prove that he used a blood transfusion to gain an edge.
At the Tour in July, he also tested positive for a low level of clenbuterol, a potent weight-loss and muscle-building drug, but blamed the result on his consumption of tainted beef from Spain.
“We are just so shocked because we didn’t know about any analysis of the plastic levels,” Anxo Rodríguez, one of Contador’s lawyers, said last Tuesday. The plasticizer test is just a rumor, he said, because he had not seen proof of it.
“Alberto does not know that the test was done,” Rodríguez added, “and it was not legal to take his blood to test for this.”
On Friday, Rodríguez said he had learned that it was indeed legal for antidoping scientists to conduct new tests on a cyclist’s urine and blood because the International Cycling Union adheres to World Anti-Doping Agency rules. Those rules do not require drug testers to tell athletes what they will be tested for.
Using new tests, often introduced without warning, is a common and effective tactic because athletes who dope are often a step ahead of the drug-testing system.
No cyclist knew about the existence of a reliable test for blood transfusions using someone else’s blood until the American cyclist Tyler Hamilton tested positive for that banned method in 2004. After mounting a defense that was based partly on the test’s being new and unproven, Hamilton was barred for two years.
And no cyclist knew about a test for CERA, the new-generation of blood boosting EPO, until there were positive tests at the 2008 Tour. Those riders were barred as well.
Jonathan Vaughters, the director of the Garmin-Transitions squad and an outspoken critic of doping in cycling, said: “They can introduce a test pretty suddenly, which you’d think should send a message to riders that they really shouldn’t mess around with doping because they might actually get caught. But some athletes still go ahead and take the chance, so you’re asking me, ‘Why is everyone so dumb?’ I don’t really know.”
Vaughters applauded the new test for plasticizers, saying: “If it’s true, then it’s the best news I’ve heard in the last eight years. It’s one of the last bastions of doping that people can sneak under the radar.”
Don Catlin, the former chief of the U.C.L.A. Olympic Analytical Laboratory who now runs the Anti-Doping Sciences Institute, said the test to detect autologous blood transfusions — using one’s own blood — could help curtail a longstanding problem in sports. He said blood transfusions, banned since the 1980s, became popular not long after a test for EPO was introduced before the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The athletes sought a new way to gain endurance-boosting red blood cells without being caught, he said.
“When there is a new test out there, the athletes find a way around it quite quickly,” he said.
As an example of how advanced athletes could be when it came to their doping, Catlin referred to the 2006 case involving the Austrian Olympic biathlon and cross-country teams.
At the Turin Games, the Italian police raided the apartments of those teams, seizing used syringes, blood bags and other transfusion equipment — including a machine that allowed the athletes to monitor their hemoglobin levels. Six athletes were subsequently barred for breaking antidoping rules.
Catlin said the Austrians were infusing their own blood just after their morning drug tests and removing that blood after they competed. They would then flush their systems with saline to erase any evidence of the transfusions. Those athletes, like many others, were skilled enough in the science to manipulate their blood values and skirt even the most advanced doping tests, he said.
Some antidoping experts say that athletes receiving transfusions with their own blood are hard to catch, even in a sport like cycling, which uses a biological passport system that monitors athletes’ blood values over time. Any fluctuations in those values could indicate doping, but transfusions often do not result in volatile changes to those values, experts say.
So, in trying to rid sports of athletes using transfusions, a method that has gone undetected for years, antidoping officials will now rely on the plasticizer test for help.
Even though the test is not fully validated — meaning it may not be foolproof evidence in a doping case or a subsequent lawsuit — antidoping experts say it is promising.
Michael Ashenden, a blood-doping expert from Australia, said the test might be accurate enough right now to catch cheats, without any corroborating evidence.
Although some athletes may be taken by surprise by the news, Ashenden called the new test “reliable analytical evidence of a transfusion.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/sports/10cycling.html
