Performance Enhancing Drug Used by ALL Pros.

Apparantly some riders used to slip in a caffeine suppository on the approach to the final sprint..............

I have been using* this drug daily for the whole time I've been racing and I'm still rubbish.

I have a double-dose (150mg) caffeine gel in my bag, still hesitant about actually using it...

* 2 or 3 large mugs of ground coffee.

You want to ban the coffee stop - be gone from here!

Some studies show a performance enhancement from taking Salbutamol, most don't.

The science is pretty inconclusive right now.

Given the potentially fatal consequences of an asthmatic rider not taking enough Salbutamol, the unreliability of the urine test and the lack of conclusive evidence for performance enhancement it makes far more sense to treat Salbutamol in much the same way as caffeine and raise the threshold for an AAF considerably.

Food is performance enhancing.  So is sleep.  And training, apparently.  The rules ban way too much.  Only substances that have a seriously deleterious effect on medium or long term health should be banned.

Silly question but are riders allowed any alcohol in their system?

I think the main reason for banning certain drugs is that they aren't considered 'safe'. A safe drug (e.g. caffeine) can be used by almost all athletes without side effects so it's not a problem whereas steroids can often cause damage to organs if taken for too long a time, so a ban is supposed to protect the athletes that don't want to damage their health but also want to compete effectively.

Also, there's the issue that caffeine is so widespread that it's tricky for people to avoid it just for a race when they'd be consuming it every other day of their lives.

When I started racing in the late 80's caffeine was 'banned', and 2 cans of coke was enough to get you a positive.  This was changed ( I think) because of the relatively limited effect of caffeine.

"very well proven to be massively performance enhancing" I think you'd have to qualify or quantify the statement.  

Both substances have a limit to their use (which kind of  negates your query, neither is accepted in performance enhancing quantities.) Incidentally the reason salbutamol is controlled is because it is necessary for some people, but is a likely PED if taken orally or intravenously, hence the limit placed on it. As a steroid the effect of salbutamol if taken by illegitimate routes is potentially considerably more poten than caffeine. 

To get an effect (approx .5 - .8% increase in exhaustion time in 1 hr TT) a minimum of 2 mg / kg (for a 75 kg rider = 150 mg of caffeine - about  1/2 litre of cappucino / latte) is needed. This is not a massive enhancement. The limit is set at about 3 times this amount at which point you may be seeing increased muscle recruitment making  high intensity endurance efforts more effective. 

To break the limit an individual (according to WADA's own research) would have to knowingly consumed a very large amount of caffeine prior to exercise, so it means it is  a concerted attempt to take something to enhance performance ( which is against the rules, regardless of the status of the substance).  Caffeine is in so many substances in our diet that a limit like that for clenbuterol (trace) would see every rider out, so they set a limit that is outside of most performance enhancing effects, but enables the athletes a limit for normal use. Just like salbutamol.

I imagine the simple reason is that Salbutamol does enhance performance (yes it does). It says so in the article you linked to (yes it does).

The problem we have is that a test result cannot be worked backward into an ingested quantity, nor can it determine how the drug was ingested. 

I guess the coffee tests are a lot more straightforward.

I seem to recall an athlete in the 70s being stripped of an Olympic medal and also sprinter Inga/er Miller in the late 90s for caffeine 'doping', also I'm sure there was a case of excessive caffeine at a winter olympics but that might have been passive smoking of marajuana, same but different ;o)

It should be controlled far more IMO, caffeine that is.

Caffeine is the most widely consumed psychoactive drug in the world. Everyone takes it everywhere in the world. Yes, it’s performance enhancing, but it’s so baked into everyday life as to be utterly meaningless. You may as well try to ban food and drink and make the riders cope on whatever food they can consume before the race starts.

Try sending this to UCI reportdoping [at] cadf.ch. It is monitored by staff of the Cycling Anti-Doping Foundation (CADF), the independent body mandated by the UCI to plan and carry out anti-doping activities in cycling. Interesting to see if they reply back to you with facts, gibberish, or ignore your mail.