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“So thither is no doubtfulness in my nous he (Gig Armstrong) took EPO during the ‘99 Hitch.”

Dr. Michael Ashenden began his calling as an practice physiologist with the Australian Constitute of Athletics. Later assisting in the growing of an EPO tryout for the Sydney Olympic Games, he odd the AIS to focalise on battling lineage doping. In 2005, Dr. Ashenden was among of radical of scientists who questioned the validness of a physiologic field on Shaft Armstrong, a altercate that led him to assist as an proficient informant in an arbitrament cause involving Armstrong and a incentive requital for fetching the Hitch. Dr. Ashenden charitable agreed to mouth with us and throw around new igniter on that disputation. He too helped us canvas the 6 positives from Armstrong’s ‘99 Circuit samples with a layer of item ne’er earlier made world.

Personal ground, the 2000 Olympics, EPO examination

Andy Shen: Can we commencement with a piddling scope on you, start with the Australian Establish of Variation? I guessing at that metre you were doing approximately oeuvre on bloodline doping, but you were too doing approximately oeuvre on execution sweetening.

Michael Ashenden: I was employed as an exercising physiologist with the AIS, and my job was to do physiologic examination on the athletes, for model, to dedicate the coaches feedback and help with their education programs. At the like metre I was doing my PhD dissertation that was perusal what happened to athletes’ descent when they were uncovered to false el, hypoxic tents and such which let since get pop.

And that dovetailed nicely with inquiry at the clock that was look for collateral markers of EPO, because not coincidently I hypothesis, the changes in the ancestry that we see with EPO were sometimes like to changes you’d see at elevation, though dramatically on dissimilar scales. But it was loose for me to conveyance my inquiry and my cognition thither ended to this EPO airfield and I guessing that’s where I began my calling in anti doping, organism share of the squad in Australia who were operative on what’s since been called the Sydney Ancestry Exemplar. And from thither I odd the establish and I’ve been operative as a independent investigator not just in EPO doping but former kinds of bloodline doping. Ancestry tranfusions, origin substitutes, passably often any boulevard I cerebrate an jock mightiness be tempted to revilement, we try to deportment inquiry in those areas.

AS: The sour you did for the Sydney Olympics, that was in 2000?

MA: Yeah, at that clock thither was no run at all for EPO, and the UCI was exploitation a 50% haematocrit regulation to blockage athletes from competing, but it couldn’t go any farther than fillet them competing. So, thither was a radical in France that was researching what’s since go known as the weewee trial for EPO, and we collaborated with them, we divided samples with them, to assistant the enquiry actuate onward. But we took a unlike scheme, we looked for collateral tell.

We were look for changes in the bloodline that were not just evident in the point when the jock was exploitation EPO, and that’s the point when EPO is hush in the piss, but bloodline clay mad for various weeks aft you blockage winning EPO as easily. The piddle essay can’t service you thither, but the lineage tryout silence gives you a touch, depending on how practically EPO you took, a mates of weeks afterward you closure injecting.

AS: The EPO tryout was enforced for the 2000 Olympics?

MA: At the Sydney Olympics they had the two contribution run. Thither was an initial lineage cover, and if those results exceeded the brink that were put in berth, so the piddle was analyzed. And the criteria backbone so was that you had to go both the descent and the weewee essay in rescript to be launch shamed of having secondhand EPO.

Since that clip WADA has revised the principle and now you but birth to break the piss exam. Whether your parentage fails criteria or not is not interpreted into explanation in nowadays’s trial.

AS: So just to be elucidate, the weewee essay looks for the existent mien of synthetical EPO, but EPO leaves your organization in two or ternary years?

MA: EPO is a endocrine, it’s a selfsame diminished mote, and it’s represent in real selfsame low concentrations in the bloodstream, fifty-fifty depress concentrations in weewee. And the one-half aliveness of EPO is something in the region of ogdoad to 12 hours, so one day subsequently you’ve had an injectant the levels are dramatically frown. Ordinarily leash or foursome years subsequently you’ve had an shot all traces of EPO let remaining the circulation or at least aren’t deliver at a eminent plenty layer for the water exam to be a classical slice of tell that EPO is organism victimised.

AS: When you trial plus in a water run, it’s not a yes or no matter, it’s a share and a doorstep, is that castigate?

MA: I guess that’s disputable. It’s a quiz that discriminates, it puts in pap gel, synthetical EPO and lifelike EPO. Now, thither is no muddiness when you see it on the gel, when thither’s celluloid EPO in the taste. It’s just in a dissimilar office to where the instinctive EPO occurs.

So when you say it’s not yes or no, you can see visually if thither is man-made EPO in the gel. They figure in about tolerance, about margin, the favourableness criteria that are in billet now follows particular rules. And eve though thither’s EPO in the gel, unless it fails those particular criteria a imprimatur isn’t imposed.

AS: Ok, so in otc language, the examiner bequeath recognize you’re victimisation it, but you won’t be broken for it if you’re beneath a sealed act.

MA: Yeah, and thither are situations care that vagrant some tod. Where it’s distinctly a convention that an jock has been exploitation synthetical EPO, but for dissimilar reasons the rule doesn’t adopt a particular criteria. So the solution is, yes, patently they’re victimisation EPO, but they weren’t ratified because the samples didn’t bomb a selfsame particular criteria that were applied.

AS: And this act is a portion of isoforms?

MA: That was the beginning contemporaries of tests. Since so the positiveness criteria has been limited, and now it looks at various unlike aspects, not just the portion of canonical isoforms.

AS: I wish to go to the ‘99 Turn samples. Just to set the aspect, in ‘99 thither wasn’t a quiz in position for EPO, and Frankie Andreu told us thither was no anxiousness approximately exploitation it, because as hanker as you made surely your haematocrit was downstairs 50% you knew nada could hap to you. Would it be funfair to say that at that metre it was moderately promiscuous for cyclists to meter the tryout, or use EPO with impunity?

MA: Well, I wouldn’t say that it was loose for them to heartbeat the trial, because thither was no exam. Unproblematic as that. Thither was no way, earlier the Sydney Olympics in 2000, where an jock could be plant shamefaced of victimization EPO, because thither was no exam in gambling. Thither’s no understanding for an jock to be thrifty exploitation something for which they can’t be caught.

AS: As farseeing as they unbroken their haematocrit downstairs 50.

MA: And that’s a comparatively soft affair to achieve. I signify, you can either use measured adjustments of your dose, or you can use saline to adulterate the descent. It’s a comparatively dim-witted and fasting process to fetch your haematocrit under 50.

AS: Yeah, in fact, from the meter you’re notified of a essay you can really thin your line flying plenty to rhythm the essay.

MA: Yeah, it was rather perturbing for me to be told that compensate up until maybe 2004, the UCI weren’t really chaperoning riders ‘tween the coating contrast and doping ascendance. So not just was thither an chance for them to thin their lineage earlier a line exam in the cockcrow, thither was too a rattling veridical chance for them to fake or masque their piddle ahead they provided their doping ascendence sampling. That wasn’t crucial pre 2000 because thither was no piddle exam for EPO, but later 2000 thither was stillness, to me, intolerably great loopholes for an jock, level if they’ve been victimisation EPO, to hush leakage sensing. Specially by cover their piss, in ‘tween the clock they crossed the finishing job and locoweed ascendancy.

AS: Let’s go binding to the ‘99 weewee samples, these were B samples which were preserved. Was it for pedantic reasons that they re-tested, to get a signified of how things were at the clock?

MA: I mentioned originally thither’d lower-class what the incontrovertibility criteria were. Initially it was 80% canonic isoforms. The enquiry that was conducted with these samples was ratting them of whether new criteria they were considering applying would let been efficient in contracting athletes in old events.

The but tolerant of samples that are utilitarian in that setting are samples that suffer got EPO in them, ‘campaign so you could say by criteria A you’d break, but by criteria B you didn’t betray, and by criteria C we saw naught at all. And that was the function of the Paris probe - to go backrest, to flavor at samples, and to see how the unlike criteria applied. And it was, I don’t guess it was misanthropical, it was naturalistic, they realised that the virtually potential samples where they would receive EPO were samples self-contained earlier the EPO tryout was introduced. And that was the ‘99 Enlistment de France.

AS: So out of the 87 useable samples that they collected, they got 13 positives and 6 of them belonged to Gig Armstrong.

MA: Deptermination on which criteria you applied. Yes, six of them failed the classic criteria. Thither were another two samples in fact where the EPO was visually thither in the gel. You could see it was thither, but for one cause or another, the pct isoforms weren’t deliberate, or had to be re-analyzed, or it was a niggling bit too deliquium to get …