Let's see... evading controls, two minute improvement in his time trialling... who knew? For once, though, it's nice to close the book. Imagine if he'd stayed in and won, and now this came out? Disaster!

http://www.lequipe.fr/Cyclisme/breves2007/20070928_082618Dev.html

''Mais, problème : si médicalement, ces tests sont positifs, juridiquement, ils ne le sont pas. La Dynepo et ses avatars sont parfaitements connus des laboratoires antidopage, et leur signature repérable, mais ayant été créées bien après que les critères de positivité ont été élaborés, ces hormones ne peuvent mener, en l'état actuel de la législation, à une déclaration de positivité.''

If I'm reading this correctly, the gist of it is... There's a problem.  Even if the tests are positive, they wouldn't be judged so.  Dynepo is well-known among the labs, but it was created well after the anti-doping criteria were established, so this test result can't lead to a positive declaration given the state of the rules.

Cycling is so weird.

-Greg

I am not a scientist and the report at cyclingnews is a bit confusing to me.  Here are the parts I find interesting:

While legally not a violation of the anti-doping code, Danish rider Michael Rasmussen was found to have taken Dynepo  in the 2007 Tour de France.

...the WADA criteria of positivity of a test [for Dynepo] are not yet adapted to the advances in the pharmaceutical market.

It sounds like it is impossible to have a positive test from taking Dynepo because there are no standards for what constitutes a positive sample.

Could they create a list of approved supplements?

The cut-off for any medical test is artificial, in some sense.  There's a trade-off between "false positives" and "false negatives."  Usually, a test doesn't go on the market unless that balance is achievable and definable.  

For medical purposes, the cut-off us commonly set so that either the total error rate or the "false positive" error rate is slightly below 1%.  When doctor's say "the test could be wrong" or "we want to do more tests," that's where the uncertainty comes from.  (It's also why, if you take your healthy pet to the vet, and the vet talks you into doing 50 tests "just to see if there are any hidden problems," there's a pretty good chance that one will come back positive...cost you lots of cash tracking down the problem...and turn out to be a false positive.  But I digress.)

Anyway, a doctor can recognize that results are truly, freakishly outlandish, in terms of absolute numbers, but not have an official cut-off (because the doping agent is new enough that they don't have a strict cut-off for false positives and false negatives.

The legal issue is again separate:  How much alcohol can you have in your blood, and still drive?  Depends on where you are.  Are you functionally drunk at that level?  Depends on where you are, and on who you are.

On a separate issue, my understanding (because I have not seen the original lit) is that at least part of danger from EPO has the same source as the benefit of EPO, namely, proliferation of red blood cells.  When the heart is going all-out, having RBC sludge for blood is useful.  When the heart is at rest (and for elite athletes, that's a very low heartrate indeed), the blood-sludge just doesn't move enough.  

What the body senses when you feel breathless isn't oxygen deprivation, it's excess CO2. (I should say, that's what it senses acutely and directly. That's why if you pop up to high altitude, you can pass out if you don't remember to breathe.) I'm guessing that RBC sludge doesn't alter removal of CO2 all that much (CO2 dissolves fine in blood).  If that's true, any means of suddenly boosting RBC's way, way past their normal level would be about equally dangerous.  (Altitude / tents would be less sudden, and presumably allow the body to excercise some feedback control.)

I'm just hypothesizing, but with supportive evidence to back it up. For example, lower levels of EPO are used all the time, for example in cancer patients following chemo...and they are not usually in stellar physical condition, by that point.  So the EPO per se is presumably not the problem.

Same with other "boosters." Sure, pro cyclists beat hell out of themselves.  But so did the hunters, subsistence farmers, messengers, etc. in our past.  We've had a lot of selective pressure to optimize our biochemical functions.  As a result, anything that we can use to artificially boost function, short term,  will probably "take down our fitness" in the long term.  And I mean that in the sense of "live less long, less healthily, and /or interfere with reproduction."  Like, for example, boosting our risk of dropping dead.

P.S.  Thinking about it...I'm betting alcohol or other relaxants don't help, either, when you're at the edge.

Must say I got very angry when I heard this news.

It's the same as always with the French, the Chatenay Malabry lab and L'Equipe. The lab director blabs to a reporter and just happens to mention the name Rasmussen.
Oh, why not? He's down and out, so why not kick him some more?

I just hate this kind of news. Not because of the fact that it's about doping, that's life. Some of the riders do. I can accept that, they get banned when caught.

There should be rules to this kind of 'publishing facts'. I'm not defending Rasmussen, nor any other rider, but I just think you can't come out calling a name and saying that there's nine more without revealing their names too. Then consider the fact that they can't even test for DynEPO, just because a test isn't developed yet to make sure of usage of the product. So, are they guessing that something's wrong, or what? And they take themselves seriously as a laborotory?
Now it looks like ASO did the right thing when they didn't have any clue, but just didn't like the situation at that time.

I, for one, will never buy a L'Equipe paper. The way people take part in a selective slander campaign, captained by monsieurs Prudhomme and Clerc, executed by L'Equipe and the infamous lab makes my blood boil, even without EPO!