UCI testosterone testing limits?

[ghostinthemachine]

The main factor isn't tech, but nutrition, recovery and early identification of genetically gifted riders. They nowadays find those aliens, train them smart and fuel them proper.

TBH, one of the pros of yesteryear, it *might* have been lemond, said that the best cyclist of our (being his) generation is probably smoking a packet of cigarettes a day and watching TV with a beer in his hand.

FWIW, my younger brother did a sports science degree and was tested for VO2max as part of a project, they repeated the test 3 times, with increasing levels of rigour and oversight from the course leaders until the decided that the machinery wasn't broken and he really *did* have a VO2 max of around 80. Most of the rest of his course (mostly those with some athletic intentions) were between about 50 and 70.
Though as a larger, beer drinking, cigarette smoking, 19 year old rugby prop, he never did bother exploring his potential in any sort of endurance sport and has been occasionally walking with a stick since his mid 30's.

These days they've have had him off the beer and ciggies and wired up on a treadmill within about 20 minutes.

[TobinHatesYou]

While cycling is the sport most heavily skewed toward power output and least reliant on technique, in order to be elite you still have to tick all the boxes, not just one box like VO2max. You need VLamax, genetic disposition for fast recovery, flexibility in all the right places, intuition/tactics, bike handling skills, the ability to turn off your lizard brain, etc, etc.

[AJS914]

Plus you have to want to train and be on a bike 20+ hours per week. Most people don't want to do that.

[OnTheRivet]

The main factor isn't tech, but nutrition, recovery and early identification of genetically gifted riders. They nowadays find those aliens, train them smart and fuel them proper.

Armstrong, Pantani, Ullrich and Co. made stupid mistakes in training and racing by todays standard and still went crazy fast.
Imagine how fast they would've climbed those mountains if they weren't constantly underfueled but consumed 120gr of carbs per hour during a hard stage.

Exactly this. Recovery is insane now with current tech and understanding. That is what makes or breaks a Grand Tour winner.

[OnTheRivet]

While cycling is the sport most heavily skewed toward power output and least reliant on technique.

This is simply not true. Being able to ride all day in a bunch shoulder to shoulder without using nervous energy requires immense skill. There is plenty of anecdoctal evidence of riders moving to the world tour level because they have the engine and simply didn't have the skill to use it. Phil Gaimon is an example. Dudes a spaz on a bike, from first hand knowledge.

[warthog101]

Plus you have to want to train and be on a bike 20+ hours per week. Most people don't want to do that.

Yep. We had a young bloke here with the body to compete at a very high level. Could climb like a Billy goat. Went over to Europe and achieved some reasonable results but just didn't sustain it due to lack of interest and work ethic. The mind needs to be there too. That was that

[TobinHatesYou]

While cycling is the sport most heavily skewed toward power output and least reliant on technique.

This is simply not true. Being able to ride all day in a bunch shoulder to shoulder without using nervous energy requires immense skill. There is plenty of anecdoctal evidence of riders moving to the world tour level because they have the engine and simply didn't have the skill to use it. Phil Gaimon is an example. Dudes a spaz on a bike, from first hand knowledge.

Nervous energy exists in every sport… Name another sport where basically 97% of the power output at the legs goes toward forward movement.

Besides the point of my post was to say a big engine doesn’t make you elite.

[TheKaiser]

The CIR test is very expensive and is not used very often. You can use it to catch people who are on TRT and get generic testosterone from their pharmacy.

In elite/pro sports you are more careful about the source, administration, dosage of testosterone

Am I correct that you are suggesting that top athletes who don't mind spending the money on the right gear can get special testosterone made to have the same CIR as their endogenous testosterone? If so, that is pretty wild, but makes total sense for those trying to beat the WADA tests.

[Aeo]

https://sci-hub.ru/https://www.jstor.or ... e/20762198

But at least it is proven that Jenapharm since 1983 produced the so called "Epitestosterone", a product having no pharmaceutical purpose at all. It served exclusively as a camouflage for testosterone doping. However Epitestosterone was no invention made by Jenapharm, but produced according to "Staatsplan (national plan) 14/25". Unfortunately, there are no statistics about the amount of production; it remains also unclear how it was distributed. Usually, staff members of the "Forschungsinstitut fur Körperkultur und Sport (FKS)" in Leipzig, an institution doing research in sports, went to Jena to pick it up.

This was being done 40 years ago. There are no limits to your imagination

https://sci-hub.ru/https://doi.org/10.1 ... /43.7.1262

GDR sports medicine had an additional strategy to circumvent the doping test. Since 1983, VEB Jenapharm had produced preparations of epitestosterone propionate, a biologically inactive compound that had no commercial value but was prepared exclusively for the governmental doping system. As Riedel reported in 1983, the sports physicians of the GDR had determined the dosage of epitestosterone necessary to be injected, simultaneously or sequentially, “to bring the T:E ratio back into the normal range.” The injection of epitestosterone, alone or together with testosterone, was then frequently incorporated into the program—but only for the top athletes in international competitions.

[TobinHatesYou]

And then? Exogenous testosterone or epitestosterone is detected by CIR.

[robertbb]

And then? Exogenous testosterone or epitestosterone is detected by CIR.

You're going in circles, Aeo already addressed that in the previous page.

I tend to believe that well resourced teams are well ahead of the game insofar as being able to engineer substances that now appear endogenous.