mr-marty-martin said:
im wondering, could riders be using doping in training ( so not to get cuahgt on it in races ) and could this not ean they could train longer harder hours etc?
Lots of out of season testing, that is one reason why riders are testing +ve for the likes of cocaine etc, which they are using in the same way any other dickhead does, ie recreationally, but many performance enhancers would need fairly regular usage to maintain the effects rather than just improving the outcomes of training.
An example is EPO, which is a hormone that boosts the bodys ability to produce red cells. Produced synthetically to be used in medical situations such as chemotherapy related anaemia etc, it was used to excess by some riders, to the point where their very low resting heart rates combined with circulating blood that was much thicker than it should be resulted in "unexplained" deaths of young previously fit riders in the middle of the night - basically their blood started to thicken & clot in their arteries!
Because red cells last really for a max of 120 days then some riders may take the chance of dosing with such a substance (there are newer ones than EPO now) in the run up to a competition, then stop to avoid being positive during competition. But leave it too long and the benefits will start to fade as the body returns back to its normal rate of red cell production, and old cells are broken down & recycled. The closer a rider dopes up to the race, the better the effects of the doping generally, but leave it too close and you'll probably still test positive, substance dependent.
