Researchers in the Netherlands say that EPO appears to have no effect on well-trained cyclists in a race after they staged one on Mont Ventoux this weekend in which half the participants had been injected with the banned substance, with the rest given a placebo.
Some 48 male amateur cyclists from the Netherlands participated in the race, arranged by the Centre for Human Drug Research (CHDR) in Leiden, which is investigating “the effect of recombinant human erythropoietin (EPO) on the bike performance and potential side effects in well-trained cyclists.”
> Get paid to ride up Mont Ventoux – on EPO
The riders, none of whom know whether they had been given EPO or a placebo, had already ridden 120km before tackling Mont Ventoux during the weekend’s race.
According to a report on NOS.nl, the group that had been injected with a placebo took an average of 1 hour, 37 minutes and 45 seconds to complete the ascent, but those riding on EPO were on average 38 seconds slower.
The team carrying out the research, who launched the study because they had doubts about the performance enhancing benefits of EPO say that their initial impression from the race is that it makes no difference in a race situation, and point out that their investigation is the first to seek to gauge its impact in such a scenario.
Clearly, these are preliminary findings only, and it will be several months before the study is published in a scientific journal.
One point of note however is that among those who had been given EPO, only 38 per cent believed afterwards that they fell into that group; among those given a placebo, 74 per cent thought they had been riding with the aid of EPO.
The trial lasted three months, with participants making 15 three-hour visits to the CHDR and undergoing an eight week course of EPO or the placebo, depending on the group they fell into, while continuing to train normally.
The research facility has questioned the benefits of EPO for improving performance in cycling before.
In 2012, after Lance Armstrong was banned from sport for life, CHDR professor in clinical pharmacology Adam Cohen, writing in the British Journal of Pharmacology, insisted it was “rather naïve” to believe a race could be won solely due to a rider taking EPO.
> Study claims no evidence that EPO boosts performance of elite cyclists
-1024x680.jpg "“Clear anti-cyclist bias”: Lawsuit filed against Toronto police after cop doored cyclist… before ticketing rider over incident")
47 thoughts on “EPO of no effect in bike races, claim researchers who staged Mont Ventoux race”
Well that’s at least a couple
Well that’s at least a couple of titles Armstrong really won then! 😉
Yorkshire wallet wrote:
Agreed….why am I your only like???????????????????????????????
There has to be a control
There has to be a control problem here or something. There’s no way EPO doesn’t boost performance. In an article I read recently a guy who was taking EPO, HGH and testosterone saw a boost of 70w on his FTP. When Dwayne Johnson (the rock) was 18 he took steroids “once” and said they don’t work. Look at that chap now and tell me steroids don’t work.
Ciarán Carroll wrote:
It’s pretty obvious what the Rock’s cooking!
Ciarán Carroll wrote:
And there definatelly no control issues with “I read recently a guy… ” 🙂
MikeKlemin wrote:
http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/dan-stevens-gives-evidence-parliament-harley-st-doping-doctor-233264. Here’s the link, read it yourself smartarse.
Ciarán Carroll wrote:
This is no scientific study but he undoubtedly saw performance gains while using EPO. Do you seriously think people use it for no reason Mike?
Interesting but my
Interesting but my understanding is that to get the proper benefit of EPO, you need to take it for a number of weeks rather than a one off dose?
barongreenback wrote:
The article actually says that “The trial lasted three months, with participants making 15 three-hour visits to the CHDR and undergoing an eight week course of EPO or the placebo, depending on the group they fell into, while continuing to train normally.”, so it wasn’t just a one off dose (that was my first understanding of the article as well
)
However, what I find tricky is the “while continuing to train normally” bit. I always thought that taking EPO would allow you to train harder, and that extra training would be what allows you to go faster (not the EPO itself). So, from my understanding, if a bunch of guys had taken EPO but didn’t train harder (they have their lives, etc.) they woulnd’t go faster. Is that wrong?
I thought it was the case
I thought it was the case that substances like EPO, taken over a prolonged period, allow people to train harder and longer. So the major impact of EPO is not on the racing itself, but rather on increased intensity it enables you to bring to training, which you then bring to races…???
I’m surprised at these
I’m surprised at these findings. But what I find puzzling is why they didn’t test hermatocrit rather than the speed up a given mountain. Surely, in the aid of science, it would be better to use as many fixed variables as possible (and so do an FTP test in a laboratory), and test improvements in wattage and hermatocrit?!
This may prove something about the placebo effect more than it does about EPO as it stands. Or, perhaps the experiment was meant to look at ‘human’ factors such as perceived effort and response to PEDs. Either way, this doesn’t seem to me the most scientific approach and I remain unconvinced of its findings as reported here……
I think there are a few
I think there are a few things to consider
firstly if you took the top few % of athletes all equally physiologically talented, but used EPO would they have been able to train/prepare better – effectively a marginal gain rather than maximal gain
Also, EPO enables someone to keep heamocritt RBC levels high through out a three week stage race, rather than see diminishing levels keeping performance levels highe
athletes of the time felt it was possible to be competitive over one day races without EPO – simulating what they had seen here, basically saying a properly trained and recovered athlete could beat a lit one over 1 day but prob not over 21 days consecutively.
EPO will enable someone to keep their RBC high when emaciated through strict dieting (I.e. Pantani – slice of watermelon) so it would enable someone to get their weight down but keep their athletic performance high through training.
Tyler Hamilton in his book describes that when you took a bag in the effort was still as painful etc etc, but you just had to push yourself harder than before and the body would cope with it – similar to a placebo effect, these guys thought they weren’t juiced so didn’t necasserily perform maximal levels of intensity, just as hard as they thought they were used to going etc – as discussed above. Generally you would assume ‘Pros’ can go to the levels of complete exhaustion with their efforts through years of mental conditioning to fatigue and bloody mindedness
Colin Peyresourde wrote:
Perceived effort is one of the reasons I got a power meter. How you feel and what the meter says are often very different. Some days you can feel rubbish but the figures look good and it boosts you on, where as before I’d have coasted a bit more.
This is a ridiculous story!
This is a ridiculous story!
How can time taken up a climb determine whether EPO works or not? Differences in body weight can make a huge difference and influence climbing time so why on earth would you use that as your test? Unless of course, all those involved in the test have exactly the same weight, height, FTP, haemocrit and identical training plans.
Power to weight is at its most important on climbs so a 100kg climber ascending at the same pace as a 65kg climber is putting out much more power and more power is what EPO is likely to give you (through the increased training load and intensity it provides), not necessarily speed.
Also, have they ever done the climb before? How does the two groups pre and post times up the climb measure up?
What the headline should be saying is simply that “taking EPO doesn’t necessarily make you faster!”
Without having read the original Dutch story, which may have much more detail, this is just a complete non-story
Christ on a bike, someone shoot me now!!!!!
Perhaps all the folk on EPO
Perhaps all the folk on EPO had been out bashing the KOMS on all their local segments in the lead up to the race so were a bit burnt out. 😉
Using average times on one
Using average times on one test as the headline number is very strange. Surely they must have done the route off the juice and then on it. Since, obviously what matters is the improvement, not the times in and of themselves.
EPO increases red blood cell
EPO increases red blood cell production over a period of time so injecting people at the bottom of a mountain before they ride up it and saying there is no effect is fucking daft and about as unscientific you can get.
You’d assume if people were
You’d assume if people were and still are risking their careers taking it, then there’s probably something in it.
“The riders, none of whom
“The riders, none of whom know whether they had been given EPO or a placebo, had already ridden 120km before tackling Mont Ventoux during the weekend’s race.”
Maybe they should have given them the EPO at the start, and not after 120km? I doubt if Armstrong stopped after 100km or thereabouts to inject. He’d have had it in him from the get go. Maybe that’s where the difference lies?
Jesus wept. Some people need
Jesus wept. Some people need to re-read this article again. They dosed them for weeks in advance, so they didn’t just turn up, jab them and told them to ride.
Though, what dose they gave them will have impacted the result. If they gave a low dose then the body might adapt to the input and shut off its own EPO production, so in the end the benefit is nil. You have to ‘overdose’ so that it keeps the level jacked.
Taking EPO is different to a BB – you quote Hamilton’s book and he makes this clear: on EPO it’s effortless, with a BB you feel like crap, but can still churn out the big wattage so that feeling is not really in point.
The whole thing just seems like a spurious jaunt to Province. Good effort.
Colin Peyresourde wrote:
Indeed; this comments thread reads like an advert for reading comprehension classes.
There’s obvious control
There’s obvious control issues if all their comparative performance data is pitting one group of ~20 riders against another on one stage. E.g., it could be the placebo group just happened to have much stronger riders to start with.
To make this a bit better they should have at least done a cross-over study. So the members of each group should have both gone through placebo and EPO phases (and some in one order, others the other way), so that aggregate individual improvements could have been determined – while controlling somewhat for time-of-year effects.
The Uni. of Glasgow WADA “micro”-dose EPO study used that methodology, and as far as I know their preliminary results showed benefits to EPO. Though, I’m not aware of them having published yet.
What I want to know is, how
What I want to know is, how much faster will I be with a hidden motor and on EPO?
As far I understood, EPO was
As far I understood, EPO was/is used to improve recovery, so that you can ride harder day in/day out.
Also, with LA, there was the blood transfusion thing as well…
There’s something not right
There’s something not right about this “study”.
Last month I completed the “Mont Ventoux Cingles” challenge. This involves climbing and descending all 3 tarmaced routes to the summit in the same day. On the first ascent I actually pushed my wife up most of the way, on the last two I was riding solo. Yet even my final climb of the day (the longer, more gradual route from Sault) only took an hour and a half.
I’m just a 45 year old 70kg club cyclist, although I do quite a lot of climbing since I live in North Wales.
I don’t know what kind of training regime this study involved, but it wasn’t that effective, regardless of the use of EPO!
This study design is what is
This study design is what is called a double blind placebo controlled study. The numbers of riders may not have the power to provide statistical significance, but if designed propely, it will. Done properly this is exactly the type of study to asnwer the question they are asking. you would have to control for confounding factors such as intensity of training, but otherwise the methodology looks sound, the riders may have been paired or randomly assigned to each group. Wait for the paper to be published, not ethe quality of the journal, and then make your judgement, not before
risb98 wrote:
The methodology for their experiment does look sound, as far as all the statistical and experimetnal design basis goes. The problem is that the very idea of their test is stupid, that simply isn’t how EPO works! It is not a one-shot, instant-action chemical.
risb98 wrote:
I agree. I have a feeling that there is only half a story here. It seems unclear on how the results were evaluated. Average speed between the two groups would seem odd as the variance between the two groups could be larger than the benefit however if you assume that they are a similar bunch then this variance is reduced by taking average speed.
In addition it seems they wanted to evaluate effect on racing rather than individual effort so I guess this was a bunch race to the top. After all the effects of epo on an individual system have been reviewed a number of times before but not the actual effect on a race situation.
From the article it’s difficult to understand what conclusions can be drawn apart. Just Remember drugs don’t work and no one has been kicked off a race for taking a placebo.
Time up the climb is a very
Time up the climb is a very poor measure of the efficacy of EPO.
There are too many variables (pacing, weather etc) to make it a fair measure.
EPO works by increasing your body’s production of red blood cells. This increased production leads to each litre of blood having a greater number of red blood cells and hence a greater amount of haemoglobin (the oxygen carrying component of red blood cells).
The amount of oxygen a litre of blood can carry is directly proportional to the amount of haemoglobin it contains.
The more oxygen you can carry in your blood the more oxygen you can deliver to your muscles, this increases your anaerobic threshold.
So riders taking EPO can sustain a greater effort for longer as they remain beneath their anaerobic threshold. Aerobic work is much easier to recover from than anaerobic work so less time above threshold will lead to faster recovery times.
If they analysed the riders under laboratory conditions and found no change in VO2 max then they might have been onto something but by choosing an external climb they essentially invalidate their results.
Finally the article doesn’t mention if the riders’ blood tests showed any change after the EPO dosing. If there was no change in the blood tests then the EPO dose was insufficient anyway.
Blimey – there’s a lot of
Blimey – there’s a lot of scientific illiteracy in this thread. Let’s break this down
Tommytazzer wrote:
The use of Ventoux invalidates the whole experiment.
No two ascents will ever be exactly the same so the results will not be reproducible.
They also fail to address the role that the Athlete themselves plays.
Put me in a slightly faster car than Lewis Hamilton and he’ll still beat me round an F1 track because he is so much better at driving.
Give a pro 40 more watts and they’ll squeeze every ounce of benefit from it. Give me 40 more watts and I’ll probably set off too fast, go into the red and blow up halfway up the hill.
Climbing successfully is not all about power to weight, there is a considerable amount of skill involved (notwithstanding variables such as weather, traffic, mechanicals etc) unless they found a way to control for that then the results are worthless.
Stick them on turbo trainers and measure their FTP pre and post EPO. That would be scientific.
[/quote] The use of Ventoux invalidates the whole experiment. No two ascents will ever be exactly the same so the results will not be reproducible. They also fail to address the role that the Athlete themselves plays. Put me in a slightly faster car than Lewis Hamilton and he’ll still beat me round an F1 track because he is so much better at driving. Give a pro 40 more watts and they’ll squeeze every ounce of benefit from it. Give me 40 more watts and I’ll probably set off too fast, go into the red and blow up halfway up the hill. Climbing successfully is not all about power to weight, there is a considerable amount of skill involved (notwithstanding variables such as weather, traffic, mechanicals etc) unless they found a way to control for that then the results are worthless. Stick them on turbo trainers and measure their FTP pre and post EPO. That would be scientific.[/quote]
But the control and intervention group all climbed the same mountain right? As I said I’d have to read the paper, but that doesn’t invalidate it.
Tommytazzer wrote:
Unless you can guarantee that the conditions on the mountain were identical for every rider then it does invalidate the results.
Conditions at that altitude can change so quickly that even a 15 minute difference in start times can completely alter the nature of your ride.
We know EPO (when correctly dosed) increases red blood cell production (it is medically licensed for this purpose).
We know red blood cells carry oxygen.
We know muscles use oxygen when doing work.
It stands to reason that (correctly dosed) EPO would therefore increase your aerobic capacity and your anaerobic threshold/ functional threshold power.
If you really wanted to test that theory you’d just need to do reproducible indoor threshold testing on the two groups.
Even if the EPO group did increase their thresholds they may not have been able to utilise that in a real world climb due to their lack of experience.
An elite pro on the other hand would make the most of every extra watt.
Rich_cb wrote:
But the control and intervention group all climbed the same mountain right? As I said I’d have to read the paper, but that doesn’t invalidate it.
— Rich_cb Unless you can guarantee that the conditions on the mountain were identical for every rider then it does invalidate the results. Conditions at that altitude can change so quickly that even a 15 minute difference in start times can completely alter the nature of your ride. We know EPO (when correctly dosed) increases red blood cell production (it is medically licensed for this purpose). We know red blood cells carry oxygen. We know muscles use oxygen when doing work. It stands to reason that (correctly dosed) EPO would therefore increase your aerobic capacity and your anaerobic threshold/ functional threshold power. If you really wanted to test that theory you’d just need to do reproducible indoor threshold testing on the two groups. Even if the EPO group did increase their thresholds they may not have been able to utilise that in a real world climb due to their lack of experience. An elite pro on the other hand would make the most of every extra watt.— Tommytazzer
nothing “stands to reason” in physiology and medicine. Everything needs testing. An organism is so much more complicated than you seem to think – just because oxygen carrying capacity is increased doesn’t mean performance necessarily also increases. Maybe the increased haematocrit cause micro obstructions in the capillary bed leading to areas of hypoperfusion. Or maybe some other unforeseen effect occurs. The point is we don’t really know until we do the study. And the outcome of the study should be the thing were interested in – in this case how much faster does epo make a cyclist go up a hill. So time the subjects going up hills. Measuring their power on a watt bike is a surrogate marker of epo’s efficacy.
Tommytazzer wrote:
I agree with the need to test whether increasing your haemoglobin does increase your FTP but it needs to be done in a controlled environment.
Ventoux has so many variables (that can’t even be easily measured) that doing the experiment there makes it essentially worthless.
Surely you must have cycled up a hill in a headwind before? How different was it to a still day? Or a day with a tailwind? What about a very hot or very cold day?
These things affect performance so much that a gap of a few seconds between two groups becomes meaningless.
Power in a static bike is not a surrogate marker, it’s a reliable, reproducible figure. You can even reproduce the effects of altitude.
Rich_cb wrote:
nothing “stands to reason” in physiology and medicine. Everything needs testing. An organism is so much more complicated than you seem to think – just because oxygen carrying capacity is increased doesn’t mean performance necessarily also increases. Maybe the increased haematocrit cause micro obstructions in the capillary bed leading to areas of hypoperfusion. Or maybe some other unforeseen effect occurs. The point is we don’t really know until we do the study. And the outcome of the study should be the thing were interested in – in this case how much faster does epo make a cyclist go up a hill. So time the subjects going up hills. Measuring their power on a watt bike is a surrogate marker of epo’s efficacy.
— Rich_cb I agree with the need to test whether increasing your haemoglobin does increase your FTP but it needs to be done in a controlled environment. Ventoux has so many variables (that can’t even be easily measured) that doing the experiment there makes it essentially worthless. Surely you must have cycled up a hill in a headwind before? How different was it to a still day? Or a day with a tailwind? What about a very hot or very cold day? These things affect performance so much that a gap of a few seconds between two groups becomes meaningless. Power in a static bike is not a surrogate marker, it’s a reliable, reproducible figure. You can even reproduce the effects of altitude.— Tommytazzer
I very much doubt the study design separated the control group from the epo group and made them ride up Ventoux separately. That would be almost comically inept design. Almost certainly they were sent up the hill in a random order and that randomness is what makes the test more valid. Obviously you’d have to get the number of participants right or the trial would be underpowered but there are various statistical methods to ensure that.
Tommytazzer wrote:
It states in the article that “The riders… had already ridden 120km before tackling Mont Ventoux during the weekend’s race.”
So they would not arrive at the mountain in any pre determined order or at the same time.
They would also already have had 120km or variable conditions prior to starting the climb.
This makes the results meaningless.
A basic requirement of study design is that the results should be reproducible.
This study fails in that regard.
Tommytazzer wrote:
I think that you’re right for the most part. But either the reporting above is very bad (plausible) and/or the experiment set up is not very scientific. Why would you use a mountain when an indoor trainer can reveal the results so much more effectively? Thereby removing the variables that cycling up a windy mountain at different times while on holiday might have…..
Tommytazzer wrote:
The correct quote is “The plural of anecdote is data.”
Sure, just your neighbours brother in law increasing their threshold power by 70 watts is an anecdote but if my neighbours brother in law did the same, woah, that’s data right there.
Did Lance pay for this study?
Did Lance pay for this study?
Its been a while since i read
Its been a while since i read Tylers book ..however my understanding of EPO use was that it was like old school tuning a car.. the cyclists engine was already finely tuned, and the epo enabled the cyclist to dig even deeper and only then and only IF you were able to rev harder and get the results in and over the red line so to speak.. what i took out of that is that it don’t make a donkey into a race hoss..
I haven’t got time to read
I haven’t got time to read the whole article and I haven’t got the time spare to read everything you wrote, but out of interest what in hell have bottom brackets got to do with EPO
The use of EPO is for multi
The use of EPO is for multi stage races. Not a weekend jaunt.
The idea is to aid recovery. Do you know how good performances get when you’re fully trained and rested at the same time? You’re literally flying up terrains for 200KM+.
“One point of note however is
“One point of note however is that among those who had been given EPO, only 38 per cent believed afterwards that they fell into that group; among those given a placebo, 74 per cent thought they had been riding with the aid of EPO.”
This makes me wonder – why were the placebo group so much more sure they weren’t the placebo group? To me that suggests something other than double-blind testing.
To further validate, they need to re-run the race with the groups swapped (or partially swapped). But maybe they have thought of that and its in the main output that’s yet to be published.
This is really poor
This is really poor journalism.
I actually bumped into a couple of the test subjects over in Tuscany this past week, we climbed San Pellegrino together or at least I tried to.
1 was clearly on EPO and knew it, the other one wasn’t sure as he explained he had lost a fair amount of weight over the past year and wasn’t sure if that was the real driver to his improved performance.
What this article fails to cover, which is of critical importance, is that each of the subjects was given a power meter and monitored for a period before the test started. Thus only when the scientists poor over the data will they be able to make an informed review of whether or not the EPO made a respective difference in performance to each individual.
Its also worth noting that the guys advised those on EPO were getting a 10% boost of what is a naturally occurring in the body. Back in the Armstrong days those guys were pumped up by 30% or more.
It doesn’t aid recovery.
It doesn’t aid recovery. Anabolic and Corticol steroids do that. You might not feel so spent on it, but you don’t take it for recovery.
I’ve never believed the line about one day races. It has always sounded like the last bit of self-delusion from doped up athletes not wishing to condemn their own sport.
if it takes more effort to get beyond your threshold it will help. You might be able to ride and get lucky, but EPO would definitely help. Why do you think the Mapei team placed 1, 2 and 3 in PR back in the nineties?
I think the main thing that
I think the main thing that one can take home from this journalistic report is that their seems from this experiment to be a strong indication that the EPO had little or no effect.
As Tommytazzer has tried to point out we don’t really have enough information from this journalism to know precisely the methodology or the statistical analysis but that from what we have been told it is highly likely (especially considering who was conducting the experiment) that all the variables have been properly controlled for, and from what we do know their is no intrinsic reason that they haven’t been. However without the actual published report, which will include these details of methodology and the statistical analysis used including the figures (which the reporter himself may well not understand) so that we can calculate them for ourselves. So this is just a (interesting) journalists report on what some scientists think they may find.
My only comment is that due to the number of participants in each group the findings may be a little lacking in statistical power, and so to be taken as a (strong) preliminary indicator rather than conclusive evidence.