Greg Lemond Says Lance Armstrong ‘Transparency’ Is Not Enough
PARIS, Oct 10, 2008 (AFP) - Former three-time yellow jersey champion Greg Lemond has played down the anti-doping efficiency of self-policing by cycling teams - and says Lance Armstrong must do more if he is to prove he is 100 percent clean.
Lemond, the first American to win the Tour de France, in 1986, has been a strong critic of Armstrong throughout the 37-year-old Texan’s seven-year yellow jersey reign.
It started over seven years ago when Lemond criticized Armstrong for admitting to working with Italian sports doctor Michele Ferrari, who famously declared that the banned blood booster EPO (erythropoietin) was not dangerous.
Now, Lemond has criticized his fellow yellow jersey winner for trying to be too transparent.
When he makes his comeback at the Tour Down Under in January, 2009, Armstrong will do so alongside anti-doping expert, Don Catlin, whom he has employed in a bid to prove that his performances will be beyond reproach.
Following in the footsteps of such teams as CSC and Garmin-Chipotle, who have similar anti-doping experts working with them, Catlin will put the results of Armstrong’s blood values and testosterone/epitestosterone ratio online.
But LeMond believes it is a mixed blessing.
“What they’re doing is good, but really that testing has got to be done by an independent group, and not policed from inside,” Lemond told cyclingnews.com on Friday.
“What good is self-policing? It’s like a wolf guarding a hen house. You’ve got to have a group with no self-interest. It should be up to a group like WADA (World Anti Doping Agency).”
Lemond says the authorities would get a better idea of who the cheats are if they started analysing such parameters as VO2max and the power output via the hi-tech SRM systems used on bikes, and not just blood and urine samples.
“If anybody read half of what’s out there about physiology and how you produce power in aerobic sports… It’s very simple.”
He added: “There are certain physiologists who could blow the sport apart.
But they all earn their living by the sport, too, so they have something to lose, so there’s this omerta (code of silence).”
Cycling’s doping scandals this past decade can be blamed mainly on the popularity of banned blood booster EPO (erythropoietin).
EPO enhances performance by raising the volume of red blood cells in the blood, otherwise known as the haematorcit, thus allowing more oxygen to be pumped to the muscles which in turn can work harder and longer.
Despite efficient anti-EPO tests, Lemond believes athletes can still easily escape being caught using either EPO or (autologous) transfusions of their own blood.
“It’s all very well checking blood values. But if you’re a smart doctor, you just always keep your rider’s blood values high,” he added. “EPO is only detectable within a few days, and that’s why it’s hard to detect it.
“Autologous blood transfusions, however, are not detectable at all - except through a carbon monoxide test, which is something Michael Ashenden (project co-ordinator of the Science and Industry Against Blood Doping) has proposed.
“It tests the volume of haemoglobin (which transports oxygen to the
muscles) in the body, and can prove a positive for autologous blood transfusions. That’s the kind of testing we must do, along with profiling athletes’ natural oxygen intake and watts.”
Lemond said another key to checking who is cheating is to analyze the power output, in watts, of cyclists on some of the big climbs.
“Cycling is so black and white when it comes to watts and we can have that data now - it’s not a mystery. Last year there were climbers doing 450 watts but weighing 58-60kg - that’s nearly 8 watts per kilo,” he added.
“That’s impossible - unless we’ve all had some kind of genetic mutation over the past 15 years.”
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Greg needs to get off of this on-going rant about Lance. Greg, you had a great career and made huge stride for US Cycling, you had some very bad luck as well as teammates. You missed a shot at having or holding the record for TDF wins. But, that was then, this is now.
This article implies that Lance won’t be tested by WADA and / or Race Organizers. This is simply not true, he must (is required to) comply with the requirements of the UCI and Race Organizers as well as his home country and world anti-doping agency requirements.
You lived in a day where there wasn’t effective testing. While you may have personally not knowingly taken any performance enhancing drugs, how many times did you get a Vitamin shot from your team doctor. How many times did you have extraordinary days. I would contend that in that day, not only did riders not know, but still might not be aware of what was done to them to achieve wins.
You now simply hurt the sport of cycling with your on-going obsession with Lance and his amazing success.
Please stop!
Jim is flat out wrong.
Lemond’s points, no matter how entrenched in sour grapes they may be perceived as, are SPOT ON.
We need baseline WATTAGES. Blood work is all good, as he says, but until we use comprehensive testing that is above board, we’re sunk. The sport will continue on with the next CERA, or gene doping, or whatever is next in the labs.
Keep on telling the TRUTH Greg. Don’t let Lance’s PR army of sycophants knock you off pace.
One day, we’ll know just how dirty Lance was. Whether he is or not anymore remains to be seen, but anyone who thinks the Postal/Discovery years were amazing success without doping involved, is uneducated on the subject.