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news
Greg Van Avermaet at 2021 Tour de France (Copyright ASO, Fabien Boukla)Greg Van Avermaet suspects Covid-19 vaccine could explain loss of form
Greg Avermaet suspects being vaccinated against the coronavirus may explain his current poor form, saying that results of recent blood tests “show that something’s not right with my immune system.”
Speaking to the Gazet Van Antwerpen after yesterday’s individual time trial at the Benelux Tour, the former Olympic road champion said: “My body is fighting an unknown enemy and it could be the vaccine. The results of blood tests really aren’t good.
“The blood values are the same as always and this should confirm my form, but other values show that there’s something not right with my immune system.”
The 36 year old, who has received a double dose of the Pfizer vaccine, continued: “I’m sleeping well, I’m training well and I feel well, but I’m missing that 3 per cent to be at my best.
“Normally, in a time trial like this I’m in the first 20,” explained van Avermaet, who finished 104th, ceding 1 minute 31 seconds to stage winner Steffan Bissegger of EF Education-Nippo over the 11.1km parcours in Lelystad.
“The good news is that I know something’s wrong, but on the other hand little research has been carried out on the effect of the vaccine on athletes’ bodies.”
Van Avermaet’s big goal for this season is Paris-Roubaix, a race he won in 2017 and which is postponed this year until 3 October, but the Belgian accepts that he may be forced to miss the race as well as a world championships on home soil in Flanders the previous week.
“In the coming days I’m going to see some doctors and take their advice,” he said. “If that means I have to stop racing, so be it.
“At the moment there’s no sense talking about the world championships. There are many Belgians who are riding more strongly than me and who therefore are more deserving of being called up,” he added.
Van Avermaet is not the first top professional cyclist to raise concerns about the effects of the vaccine on his performance.
In July, following the Tour de France, Astana-Premier Tech’s Jakob Fuglsang, who did not start the final stage of the race due to illness and sat 38th overall following the previous day’s individual time trial, said he believed that being vaccinated lay behind his lacklustre performance in the three-week race.
> Jakob Fuglsang blames second Covid vaccine for anonymous Tour de France performance
“The only explanation that we can find is that I had my second COVID vaccination after the Tour de Suisse and that it’s limiting me and my body is still working on it. I got my first shot after the Classics and I did tests at a Tenerife training camp and I had high lactate for my power and in Switzerland I was good,” he told Cyclingnews.com.
“Then I got the second shot and a second test in the race showed the same results that I had in Tenerife, that my numbers are basically where they are in December or even worse. That’s just how it is but at some point, it will go away and that’s what we’re waiting for.
“My general feeling is okay. I don’t feel that bad but I can’t push myself to my limit. I feel limited that I’m not able to push my body like I normally I can. That’s meant that I’ve not destroyed myself and I don’t feel as tired.”
Meanwhile, Fuglsang’s team confirmed today that he has undergone successful surgery after breaking his collarbone on Monday's opening stage of the Benelux Tour.
‘’Being disappointed is an understatement,” he said. “The season hasn’t been great as everyone knows, but after the Olympics I trained so hard and felt in good shape for the final part of the season, with Il Lombardia my main goal.
“It’s pretty sure that my season is done, that’s a hard one to swallow but something I have to accept. I want to thank our medical team which arranged my surgery immediately here in Belgium, so I can now start my recovery.”
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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I haven't read all the comments, and Covid/vaccines are an emotive subject.
With that in mind, let's start with something non-contentious: getting the vaccine(s) is the right decision for 99% of people. It's also quite likely that GvA is simply wrong; to me, simple ageing is the most likely explanation.
That said, there are well-known and documented side-effects to all vaccines. Most of those side effects are mild and transient, but not all/always. CV19 vaccines are no exception to either of those rules. This is the subject of considerable literature and beyond serious dispute. With that in mind, GvA's comments are not implausible (merely unlikely)
I don't believe there are any studies of the effects of the vaccine on elite athletic performance, but I could be wrong.
When all's said and done, someone has pointed to a possible but unlikely cause of an apparent drop in performance, and because of what that is (i.e. his hypothesis), some people are now championing him, and others are criticising him loudly. Haven't we all got bigger concerns?
For the benefit of anyone coming afresh to this topic: much of it can be summarised as 'new nutters join resident nutters to talk tripe about vaccines'. You can safely ignore them.
Oh facking hell. Someone's set the Furby off again.....
I like your choice of wording there. Incorrectly conflating the very differing likelyhoods of severe impact from Covid vs severe impact from the Vaccines.
The latest data from the US suggests the unvaccinated have a 450/100,000 roughly 0.5% of a hospitalisation from Covid and some of those will go on to die.
The orders of severe reactions to the Vaccines are around ~15 per Million doses so 0.0015%. getting on for3 orders of magnitude lower. You are over 300 times more likely to get hospitalised with Covid than you are with a vaccine.
Hardly Tiny vs Tiny is it?
This is true when talking about death but of course this is not the real issue. The risks of long COVID are much more relevant when discussing this demographic. Prolonged fatigue and malaise, shortness of breath etc are far more likely after COVID compared to the vaccines and are way more relevant to athletes.
Ah Nigel, Nigel. The link you have provided says that the risk of long covid is between 2 and 14%. This is at least 4 orders of magnitude higher than the risk of an adverse reaction from the vaccine.
As a helpful hint, try reading things before you link to them and rather than just casting sly aspersions insulting people with genuine health problems, educate yourself on pubmed first.
Or just shut up when you dont know anything about a subject, but from past evidence that is not going to happen...
Even if it is 2% that is still an enormously more biggerer number that the risk of an adverse reaction to a covid (or any other) vaccine. You also forget that in a similar way to what you described above the risk of an adverse reaction varies enormously and a super fit athlete will have a lower risk as they will also have a lower risk of being badly affected by covid.
Whatever way you look at it the risk of the vaccine is far lower (orders of magnitude smaller) than the risk of covid.
Even if the risks were equal for both vaccine and disease for this particular person he should still get the vaccine to reduce the risk of passing covid on to his older directeur sportif or mechanic or granny
Hi Nigel. Several points:
1. Interesting tactic asking for the risks of long covid in athletes. Of course data is out there about the risks of long covid in fit and healthy adults, just as it is in children. If I link to it, you will say that you refuse to acknowledge that you are wrong by 4 orders of magnititude until I provide a link to athletes. And then when that proves you are still wrong, you will say that it doesn't apply to cyclists. And then road cyclists. And road cyclists whose name begins with G...
Just face it, you are wrong. Go and look it up. You are wrong. Your original assertion that there equvalence between the risks of the vaccine and covid in athletes is wrong.
2. Your second point is equally flawed. As you quote "IF ALL those with long covid were to report..." without providing any evidence or data that this is correct. It is also possible that those with debilitating long covid symptoms are less likely to have the time/energy to respond to requests from researchers and this could bias the results the other way. So we need to stick with the estimates given.
3. Even if your second point is true, because you have failed to understand the concept of orders of magnitude a fall in the risk of long covid from 8% to just under 2% does not change the orginal assertion that you are wrong by at least 4 orders of magnitude.
I know you like to make a habit of being wrong, by being this wrong is surely a new low?
Also no attempt at justifying the fraudulent slur on long covid sufferers?
Ah, the good old Tory/Trumpian way, create a narrative without any apparent knowledge or proper supporting evidence and then accuse anyone who doesn't fit that narrative of being a criminal or a shirker.
Perhaps he was referring to "fraudulent" rather than "psychosomatic"?
Stupid people being so impressed that they know a long word they think other people won't know it, love it.
When I said criminal or a shirker I was referring to your use of the word "fraudulent", which implies that people are either making totally false claims (criminal) or are making claims because they're trying to get out of work (shirker). If you need any more assistance in parsing totally straightforward basic English sentences, just ask.
IAF I think it predates both of them. Isn't it the Victorians who started the division of 'the poor' into 'the deserving poor' and 'the undeserving poor'?
Plenty of Tories about in Victorian times!
True. I mean: I read somewhere that Dominic Raaaaaaaab was born in 15 something and survives by bathing in virgins' blood...
Thought that was Moggie.
I don't know. I actually find Raaaaab scarier than Rees-Mogg, never been sure why...
Maybe it's his sheer banality. You just know he has a lock-up garage somewhere with the inside shrouded in plastic sheeting...
Is that why someone closed the Sea to him, to stop him dumping bodies like Dexter?
Maybe, maybe...
He's a pugilist.
With his previous views on pensions now known, I wonder if he was cheering the deaths of anyone over 65 when they were happening each day. "Yay, that will reduce pensions being paid out to them freeloading shysters."
Tory/Trump also likes to aim its "anti benefit fraud" guns on the most vulnerable section of society, where there are typically very low levels of fraud - disability. The moral bankruptcy of right-wing ideology is so disgusting it's not even funny anymore.
I wouldn't care if they were competent. However, governance is stripped back (mostly due to corruption and/or laziness - "oh the markets will sort it out", "too much governance, that's the problem!", or some such shit) and then catastrophic issues resulting are addressed on the fly by throwing sticking plasters at them (still in the wrapper usually), if these issues are addressed at all. As the issues disproportionately affect the vulnerable (as societal issues tend to), who knew?; rich, incompetent privileged sociopathic public school boys and girls aren't bothered - keep troughing peeps!
satire=on
"We must stop electoral fraud by making everybody, especially the poorest or most foreigh-looking, present photo ID to vote. What do you mean, there've only been two known cases in the last five years? Well, there might be some in the future, and if there ever is then we've done something about it!"
satire=off
I'll be honest I did wonder the same when I got my 2nd dose...power right down to a level I'd not seen.
3 months later and things seem to be back to normal.
Don't regret having it for one millisecond though - it's a first world problem for me (if it actually exists and is not yet another pathetic excuse
)
Two events happening at a similar time does not mean one caused the other
Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'. (https://xkcd.com/552/)
Imagine how it would have been had he got covid itself?
Who knows, maybe fine. he may have covid, may have a vaccine side effect, may have a cold or seasonal flu.
Having 2 covid vaccines won't stop you catching covid, or long covid for a couple of months after
Or maybe it is 'psychosomatic'.
..... attic, insane.
(as I used to know it anyway).
Oh dear! Nutter Anti-Vaxxers have even arrived on here.