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Originally Posted by Mike P
That's not correct. Blood manipulation via synthetic EPO and autologous transfusions can make a much greater increase in performance. Up to and beyond 10%. It all depends on the blood values that nature gave you.
The UCI set a 50% hematacrit (HCT) standard as the limit for competition. People with a HCT level of 48% don't even need to engage in blood manipulation. In fact, they really can't due to the risk of busting the 50% threshold, which would cause them to have to wirhdraw from an event and stay out of ompetition until their levels dropped below 50%. However, if your HCT level is 42%, you can get a much bigger boost in performance by adding a few red blood cells. You can take synthetic EPO to stimulate their growth, or you can re-infuse a pint of your own blood that's been in cold storage. The more red blood cells you have, the higher your oxygen uptake. More oxygen transported to the cells increases performance endurance and short term power.
BTW, that 50% threshold didn't exist in the Armstrong era, so Lance could theoretically raise his HCT levels to 60% via transfusions and EPO. He could use EPO with impunity during his first 3 wins because the test for that wasn't used in cycling until about 2001-2002. And it's only been in the last 3-4 years that they've developed ways to detect doping via transfusions.
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But in doing so would put you at much greater risk of detection. The 3-5% is what I've read cyclists believe they can realistically get and not put themselves at terrible risk.
Yes, the greater your natural hematacrit levels the less you have to dope and stay within legal bounds, but you can only do so much with transfusions alone. After that you need to microdose EPO which is hard to detect.
I believe the 50% hematacrit threshold testing was started in 1997. It was EPO at that time they couldn't detect yet. And as you've noted, now they test for plastic chemicals (clenbutyerol or something?) in the blood bags. According to Contador it's very common in beef
As EPO testing became normal they started micro-dosing EPO to avoid the tests.
Did you read the Tyler Hamilton book? It was pretty interesting.
-spence