But both he and Ribeiro got suspended in 2005 because of their hematocrit levels.

along with Beloki, Davis, Paulinho, and Contador.

because really, there’s stupidity and then there’s stupidity.

We all do know they test for it. So maybe you can get away with microdosing (as Ricco says, he tested positive 3 times, but didn’t test positive a bunch of time) some of the time. But by now it has to look like a dumb move whatever quantity you take.

My first reaction—WTF, you need a new, colombian doctor for a Spanish team, just for the Vuelta? Unless he claims to be great at stitching crash gashes, what’s a doctor supposed to do, starting part-way into the race, that your existing doctors can’t do? Feh. I’d be willing to believe that the grape vine was telling them he could give riders an extra boost.

My considered reaction?

On the other hand, the first rest day would have been Sept 2. Even with non-micro EPO, you don’t see results from erythropoetins in under two weeks or so, mostly because it takes 10+ days for RBC’s to mature and enter circulation (picture). And at least some of the indirect tests for EPO (CERA or otherwise) are most effective while the drug is being given, while the effect of the EPO (CERA or otherwise) lasts (as you might expect) for a couple (regular EPO) to several (CERA) weeks after the drug is last used. So the XG riders were riding pretty well before anything the new doctor did, EPO-wise, could be having an effect. Plus it’d have been brain-numbingly stupid to keep dosing with CERA during the race, when the benefits should / could persist from doping that ended before the race.

On the third hand, if CERA takes its sweet time to break down (as it does) perhaps it actually gets easier to detect in urine over time (this is a total guess) and teams are now trying to microdose as late as possible, rather than using a larger dose longer in advance.

Let’s see.
Zeke:
stage 2 (flat) 40
stage 3 (flat) 45
stage 4 (flat, major crash) 153
stage 5 (mostly flat, Sept 3) 29th
stage 6 (hilly) 39th
stage 7 (flat ITT) 54th
stage 8 (mountain) 9th—Sept. 6th
stage 9 (mountain) 13th—Sept. 7th
stage 10 (rolling) 39th
stage 11 (mountain) 22nd
stage 12 (mountain) 4th—September 11th

Veloso Vorganov, Garcia etc. also all did well before any Epo-related doctoring that happened on or after Sept. 2 could have even theoretically started to help them.

stage 13 (mountains) 2nd—September 12
stage 14 (mountains) 4th—September 13
stage 15 (rolling) 29th—September 14th (Herero 2nd, Serafin Martinez 8th)

This is the range where a major dose of something on the 12th could in theory have started to help, but in reality, performance enhancement has not been described anywhere near this fast, so far as I can find…and I can’t figure any way that a single microdose could help (no, I’m not an exercise phys, just a geneticist).

stage 16 (flat) 16th
stage 17 (flat) 41st
stage 18 (mixed) 24th
stage 19 (mountain) 6th
stage 20 (ITT) 64th

So the guy consistently does well in the mountains, as we knew. By the numbers, there’s nothing terribly startling about Zeke’s performance relative to the new doc’s arrival, and that makes me happy.

Eh, if anyone has the time to do this for their other riders, I guess we could try Veloso, because he did so well today (crappy reason to pick on a guy, mind you!). Microdosing some helpers to (for example) pull your climber better on the flats, or make them a bit more climby to help at the beginning of climbs would be a possibility, and of course that tends not to show up on the GC. But by the later points of the race, the GC guys tend to actually clump together to mark each other, so the helpers are not as helpful.

By and large, I tend to hope this doctor connection is a total coincidence.