Team UAE and carbon monoxide, it's over. But don't think that this is to please the UCI, which had asked the teams to stop using this gas during their preparation at altitude. The training of three-time Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar simply no longer needs it, and at the same time denounces a “sensationalist” controversy around a technique “validated twenty years ago”.
Suspicion of doping
The International Cycling Union asked the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) at the end of November to “take a position” on carbon monoxide inhalation, a legal but controversial technique used by riders like Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard during their preparation at altitude.
During the last Tour de France, the specialized site Escape collective revealed that at least three teams – UAE, Visma and Israel PT – had used it. The site explained that if used repeatedly, the technique could be diverted to create artificial hypoxia by recreating the effects of exercise at altitude.
“It's a sensationalist article that speculates on something that would be frankly complicated to implement and I don't see anyone doing it. It doesn’t seem realistic to me,” said Jeroen Swart, performance coordinator of the UAE team, on Tuesday.
“Carbon monoxide inhalation is a very standardized technique that was validated twenty years ago and used by climbers, endurance athletes and athletes around the world to measure hemoglobin mass. There is no other way to quantify the benefits of altitude so precisely,” he added.
“That's why we decided two years ago to use this technique to see if our runners react as well to altitude as we hoped. We did that over a period of 18 months,” explained the South African. So this is no longer the case. “This process is complete. The results showed that our high camps were perfectly calibrated for our runners and the results show it. We no longer need to do such tests and we do not plan to do them,” assured Jeroen Swart.
France
Cycling
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