Wiggins/Froome Asthma

Chuchote

Apparently some drugs are banned in some sports and not in others; alcohol is banned in motorcycling, archery, karate air sports, powerboating and automobile sports. Odd that it's banned in motorcycling but not in cycling. And in karate but not in other kill-'em sports.

https://www.drugs.com/wada/

In relation to asthma drugs:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1475552

Some nonasthmatic athletes who are aware of the improved performance of asthmatic athletes when using pre-exercise medication have been known to take antiasthma medication in the hope that it might improve their performance. Current evidence indicates, however, that the permitted medications are not ergogenic and do not give the asthmatic any advantage over the nonasthmatic athlete but merely removes the respiratory disadvantage under which he/she competes.

Perhaps all the asthmatics and epileptics, etc should move to separate contests for the disabled; we might then have the world records being set by disability competitors.

pelevin

Anyone read David Walsh's ST article today presumably centring on Wiggins & Sky? Just wondering what kind of attitude he takes in it.

terrydel

pelevin wrote: »

Anyone read David Walsh's ST article today presumably centring on Wiggins & Sky? Just wondering what kind of attitude he takes in it.

Nope, but I might buy a copy. But isnt he firmly inside the camp pissing out now?
The amount of top level sports people with life affecting illnesses really is remarkable!

pelevin

terrydel wrote: »

Nope, but I might buy a copy. But isnt he firmly inside the camp pissing out now?

Certainly in general though he did have a pretty scathing article o nSky a while back after I think Froome's TUE from Romandie came out, after Walsh had been assured by Sky of how they would pull riders from races rather than do such things.

Interesting article on CyclingTips by Shane Stokes with South African exercise physiologist Dr. Jeroen Swart who in 2015 carried out extensive physiological testing on Chris Froome. . http://cyclingtips.com/2016/09/team-sky-tue-controversy-why-one-medical-expert-has-real-concerns/

"Jeroen Swart @JeroenSwart
1/3: I've said all along I would believe in Team Sky until I saw proof of anything untoward.
However: The contradiction of these TUEs for Wiggins in comparison to his previous statements and the Team's stated policy...
...the timing of the TUEs and the silence from the team thus far. Together it looks bad. Very bad."

I don't see how it can look anything but very bad on the Wiggins side of things.

Macy0161

Doc07 wrote: »

I wouldn't except that for diabetes but I would take your point re some other illness and actually mild asthma is probably a good example where TUE could be abused to benefit asthmatic athlete over non-asthmatic.

But the treatment for mild asthma no longer requires a TUE anyway, so non asthmatic people could take it (only the evidence is no benefit if you're not asthmatic, which is why the need for TUE was removed for the likes of salbutamol)

Doc07

Macy0161 wrote: »

But the treatment for mild asthma no longer requires a TUE anyway, so non asthmatic people could take it (only the evidence is no benefit if you're not asthmatic, which is why the need for TUE was removed for the likes of salbutamol)

Correct about inhalers, it was corticosteroids I meant in relation to the potential to muddy the waters. If someone with asthma has a flare up they might be given a short course of steroids ( the anti-inflammatory kind not the bodybuilder kind) . Having a TUE for this potentially would allow the athlete take steroids to help performance as the TUE could protect them. Corticosteroids can be performance enhancing, eg release energy better, reduce inflammation and pain, all ideal in a stage race. Long term use has plenty of side effects and a doctor should not prescribe to someone who doesn't need them.

For example I might get a TUE for a genuine reason to get steroids. I then might top myself up for performance reasons over the next few weeks.

Itziger

Doc07 wrote: »

Correct about inhalers, it was corticosteroids I meant in relation to the potential to muddy the waters. If someone with asthma has a flare up they might be given a short course of steroids ( the anti-inflammatory kind not the bodybuilder kind) . Having a TUE for this potentially would allow the athlete take steroids to help performance as the TUE could protect them. Corticosteroids can be performance enhancing, eg release energy better, reduce inflammation and pain, all ideal in a stage race. Long term use has plenty of side effects and a doctor should not prescribe to someone who doesn't need them.

For example I might get a TUE for a genuine reason to get steroids. I then might top myself up for performance reasons over the next few weeks.

This is more likely. Anyone who thinks it's just about an inhaler or two must be new to cycling or has descended in a recent shower.

I was wondering if there's some kind of masking agent issue. Anyone????

Inquitus

pelevin wrote: »

Certainly in general though he did have a pretty scathing article o nSky a while back after I think Froome's TUE from Romandie came out, after Walsh had been assured by Sky of how they would pull riders from races rather than do such things.

Interesting article on CyclingTips by Shane Stokes with South African exercise physiologist Dr. Jeroen Swart who in 2015 carried out extensive physiological testing on Chris Froome. . http://cyclingtips.com/2016/09/team-sky-tue-controversy-why-one-medical-expert-has-real-concerns/

"Jeroen Swart @JeroenSwart
1/3: I've said all along I would believe in Team Sky until I saw proof of anything untoward.
However: The contradiction of these TUEs for Wiggins in comparison to his previous statements and the Team's stated policy...
...the timing of the TUEs and the silence from the team thus far. Together it looks bad. Very bad."

I don't see how it can look anything but very bad on the Wiggins side of things.

Reading that it seems Froome has been open and honest with the press about all his TUE's and nothing new has come out, looks a lot murkier on the Wiggins front.

fishfoodie

Inquitus wrote: »

Reading that it seems Froome has been open and honest with the press about all his TUE's and nothing new has come out, looks a lot murkier on the Wiggins front.

Well except for him never mentioning asthma in the course of his biography, or any other article, ever ... until he was seen on camera huffing on an inhaler, & then it was something he had suffered with his entire life.

Or we could discuss the personal phone call to the UCI to get him an expedited TUE during Romandie, (which he still won despite being near death)

So actually Sky have had two leaders, who once they started getting TUEs, suddenly started winning stage races ....

terrydel

pelevin wrote: »

Certainly in general though he did have a pretty scathing article o nSky a while back after I think Froome's TUE from Romandie came out, after Walsh had been assured by Sky of how they would pull riders from races rather than do such things.

Interesting article on CyclingTips by Shane Stokes with South African exercise physiologist Dr. Jeroen Swart who in 2015 carried out extensive physiological testing on Chris Froome. . http://cyclingtips.com/2016/09/team-sky-tue-controversy-why-one-medical-expert-has-real-concerns/

"Jeroen Swart @JeroenSwart
1/3: I've said all along I would believe in Team Sky until I saw proof of anything untoward.
However: The contradiction of these TUEs for Wiggins in comparison to his previous statements and the Team's stated policy...
...the timing of the TUEs and the silence from the team thus far. Together it looks bad. Very bad."

I don't see how it can look anything but very bad on the Wiggins side of things.

Read the article by Walsh today, and its damning in my humble opinion, tho Im no expert. The 2012 tue looks to me nothing more than getting access toa drug they knew worked for him.
Wiggins is the latest full of **** cheat in my book.

godtabh

terrydel wrote: »

Read the article by Walsh today, and its damning in my humble opinion, tho Im no expert. The 2012 tue looks to me nothing more than getting access toa drug they knew worked for him.
Wiggins is the latest full of **** cheat in my book.

Must have been hard for Walsh to write it. He is so deep in Sky that to repeat stuff like DiggerForum must have hurt

Chuchote

It's always possible to, as The Wire would say it, juke the stats. It's also possible to develop an illness.

pelevin

http://cyclingtips.com/2016/09/jaksche-on-skys-tue-controversy-we-used-the-same-excuse-in-my-era/

Very strong follow-up piece by Stokes interviewing Jorge Jaksche. He was involved in the Operacion Puerto controversy and later admitted to blood doping during his career. He became a whistleblower about illegal practices in the sport. He goes into things like Sky's non-membership of the MPCC in the interview - Brailsford claiming it was to have higher standards again now looking obvious bs. Beyond simply Wiggins, Brailsford's credibility seems to me now kind of in tatters.

“I personally did it, as well as a lot of cyclists that I know from my era. We always said we had the same thing, the same allergy, but it was actually just for performance-enhancing."

“It was always the same procedure [to get the drug]. You would apply for a TUE, telling WADA that you had hay fever. Your team doctor would tell them you were having certain problems like [watering] eyes, blah blah blah. You would get 50 mg injections before the Tour. It was an old and traditional way of doping. It makes you very skinny. It burns fat. If you do it at the beginning of the Tour, you are going to lose another one to two kilos in the first week. You are going to suffer less. You are going to be less tired as your recuperation is faster because of the anti-inflammatory effects. It is the old school of doping.”

“For me, personally, I don’t trust Brailsford. In my personal opinion, when someone claims that Sky is better than the rest because they train harder and their training is more effective than doping, it already shows me how he thinks. He deliberately makes nonsense of anti-doping in order to justify the exceptional performances of his team. I don’t trust him. I think he is a very clever person and I think he tries to outsmart the audience.

“In the past Brailsford said that TUEs have a bad reputation because of Armstrong and the abuse of them. For me, what happened with Wiggins shows how Sky is really working. As I said, for me, they are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem. Bunch of hypocrites.”

Chuchote

“I personally did it, as well as a lot of cyclists that I know from my era. We always said we had the same thing, the same allergy, but it was actually just for performance-enhancing."

Isn't that just another version of "everybody does it, why shouldn't we"? Read somewhere recently that people are more likely to attribute universality to an action they'd normally disapprove of if they do it themselves.

nak

I had cortisone injections, didn't lose any weight (the PIL only had weight gain listed as a possible side effect) and didn't get any faster. I want my money back!

Andy Magic

is there a list of dates and when the kenalog injections were issued? It would be interesting to see that. I get that injection annually (usually in May) for hay fever weed season. My doctor often tells me it will take a couple of weeks to start working.

nak

Andy Magic wrote: »

is there a list of dates and when the kenalog injections were issued? It would be interesting to see that. I get that injection annually (usually in May) for hay fever weed season. My doctor often tells me it will take a couple of weeks to start working.

June 2011 & 2012 and April 2013.

pelevin

Those dates corresponding precisely to just before grand tours Wiggins entered whilst with Sky. Never had those injections prior to then. Maybe he was allergic to the team bus.

DirkVoodoo

Chuchote wrote: »

Isn't that just another version of "everybody does it, why shouldn't we"? Read somewhere recently that people are more likely to attribute universality to an action they'd normally disapprove of if they do it themselves.

Well, no. You can't claim to be clean if you are practicing the same dodgy rule bending that was done during the dirtiest years of cycling.

The issue isn't that sky are doing what everyone else are doing, it's that they laid out there stall very early and drew a clear line between their practices and everyone else's, holding themselves up as the clean saviors of cycling.

Is it the Stokes article that also says they didn't sign up to be part of the anti-cortisone group because they felt they had a much more rigorous system to implement themselves?

There are so many question marks around them now, they claim transparency and yet I don't think we've ever got a straight answer from them. Bit more to their success than banning nutella and individual washing machines.

RobFowl

Have said it before but Wiggins Froome et all were given approval to take cortisone by their own Docs and the WADA approved governing body.
They did nothing wrong although you may argue with the ethics of their treatments.

WADA, their teams and federations as well as prescribing docs though needs to justify their actions IMO.

Sky and British cycling in particular need to be called out for hypocrisy and inconsistancy though.

My own take is that Brailsford and indeed Cookson need to answer questions as to why they claimed to have certain policies in place when that seems to have been complete bollocks ...

Campaign to oust Cookson anyone ????

pelevin

RobFowl wrote: »

Have said it before but Wiggins Froome et all were given approval to take cortisone by their own Docs and the WADA approved governing body.
They did nothing wrong although you may argue with the ethics of their treatments.

WADA, their teams and federations as well as prescribing docs though needs to justify their actions IMO.

Sky and British cycling in particular need to be called out for hypocrisy and inconsistancy though.

My own take is that Brailsford and indeed Cookson need to answer questions as to why they claimed to have certain policies in place when that seems to have been complete bollocks ...

Campaign to oust Cookson anyone ????

I think the implications and level of guilt are much stronger than this, that they did do plenty wrong though not 'illegal', intentionally took something that had known use as a powerful performance enhancing drug, they contradicted lots of stuff they'd been saying about, blatantly lied subsequently about taking it with Wiggins stuff about loathing & avoiding needles, which lying obviously reinforces the thought of the real use of this corticesteroid. And so this now gives one no reason to afford credibility to Brailsford in general about his concerns with 'doing the right thing'. I think he has been shown up massively as undeserving of public trust.

ahlookit

Here's a couple of paragraphs from David Walsh's article in yesterday's Sunday Times. He refers to his months living inside Team Sky in 2013

Hope I'm not quoting too much

These are not performance-enhancing drugs and can now be used without a therapeutic exemption. It is the TUEs ­Wiggins received while riding for Team Sky that are problematic. First, the timing. In 2011, three days before the start of the Tour de France for which Wiggins was one of the favourites, he was given a TUE to have a one-off 40mg injection of the powerful corticosteroid triamcinolone acetonide.

A year later he was the favourite for the 2012 Tour and four days before the race was given permission for another one-off injection of triamcinolone. Ten months later and 12 days before the start of his major target for that year, the 2013 Giro d’Italia, Wiggins got another TUE for a 40mg injection of triamcinolone.

Between the second and third TUEs Wiggins wrote an autobiography, My Time, that covered his 2012 Tour victory. It may be understandable that Wiggins did not want to mention the TUEs, fearing that fans might think he was seeking an unfair advantage, but he went further than not mentioning them. “In British cycling culture, at the word ‘needle’ — or the sight of one — you go, ‘Oh s***’. It’s a complete taboo ... I’ve never had an injection, apart from I’ve had my vaccinations and on occasion I’ve been put on a drip, when I’ve come down with diarrhoea or something.

Yesterday Wiggins insisted that what he had meant in his reference to “needles” was that he had not had IVs, that is products fed into his system intravenously. In their seven-year history, Team Sky have applied for 13 TUEs. Given the number of races, especially the number of grand tours, that is not a high number. What is surprising is that Wiggins should have accounted for three, and the timing of them: shortly before his biggest race of that season.

Walsh wraps up the piece saying what Sky did was "legal but it was not right"

Full article is behind The Times paywall

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/it-looks-bad-brad-k9s50whdd

Inquitus

Yep it seems the most controversial of the 13 TUE's all relate to wiggins and nothing much of note is in the rest, as linked to above Jakshe gives a pretty damning insight into the Kenalog injections and it's effects.

“The effect was extreme. Cortisone reduces inflammation in your body, number one. It is also a little bit pushy as it is a hormone. So it causes a certain hormone rush.

“On one hand you are at [race] weight and you are more willing to perform, and then on the other hand it is a strong pain killer and an inflammation killer. So your recovery is shorter and the pain you are going through is less.

“It makes you very skinny. It burns fat. If you do it at the beginning of the Tour, you are going to lose another one to two kilos in the first week. You are going to suffer less. You are going to be less tired as your recuperation is faster because of the anti-inflammatory effects. It is the old school of doping.”

irishrover99

If these TUE's are so common for minor ailments, why hasn't Contador taken the same ones for hay fever when he is well know to struggle with it, like the Dauphine this year. He has always been slated but yet he's been beaten by so called clean riders.
People are also saying they are more suspicious of Wiggins than Froome. If thats the case its another clean person beaten a doper which ins't really reality

Macy0161

irishrover99 wrote: »

People are also saying they are more suspicious of Wiggins than Froome. If thats the case its another clean person beaten a doper which ins't really reality

Froome's one, and subsequent performance, in Romandie was ridiculous but we already knew about that one. Hard to argue with much of what Walsh says about Wiggins there, but it does feel a bit throw him under the death star whilst he was making excuses for Froome.

ahlookit

Macy0161 wrote: »

Froome's one, and subsequent performance, in Romandie was ridiculous but we already knew about that one. Hard to argue with much of what Walsh says about Wiggins there, but it does feel a bit throw him under the death star whilst he was making excuses for Froome.

He seems to be going lighter on Froome as he came clean on the second TUE once the first became known.

And now Mo Farah (amongst others) TUE details have been released by the Bears.

And, as coincidence has it, Mo needed triamcinolone too. Those professional sportspeople are surprisingly unhealthy.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/sep/19/mo-farah-named-fancy-bears-leak

dragratchet

ahlookit wrote: »

He seems to be going lighter on Froome as he came clean on the second TUE once the first became known.

And now Mo Farah (amongst others) TUE details have been released by the Bears.

And, as coincidence has it, Mo needed triamcinolone too. Those professional sportspeople are surprisingly unhealthy.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/sep/19/mo-farah-named-fancy-bears-leak

... and farah was a bit light on the truth, when asked he claimed he only ever had one tue, when in fact he had two. the triacinolone wasn't mentionend.

ThisRegard

dragratchet wrote: »

... and farah was a bit light on the truth,

You can simply leave it as the above, without further qualification.

dastardly00

irishrover99 wrote: »

If these TUE's are so common for minor ailments, why hasn't Contador taken the same ones for hay fever when he is well know to struggle with it, like the Dauphine this year. He has always been slated but yet he's been beaten by so called clean riders.

Do we know though that Contador hasn't taken any TUEs for his hayfever?

fishfoodie

Macy0161 wrote: »

Froome's one, and subsequent performance, in Romandie was ridiculous but we already knew about that one. Hard to argue with much of what Walsh says about Wiggins there, but it does feel a bit throw him under the death star whilst he was making excuses for Froome.

Indeed !!

This incident stank like week old fish at the time; & it hasn't gotten any better..

From the Article at the time:

Cycling News wrote:

UCI scientific advisor Dr. Mario Zorzoli signed off on a request from Team Sky for a therapeutic use exemption (TUE) without submitting Froome’s medical dossier to a TUE committee, which is required under World Anti-Doping Agency regulations.

The WADA code states that applications for a TUE must be reviewed by a committee that “should include at least three (3) physicians with experience in the care and treatment of athletes and a sound knowledge of clinical, sports and exercise medicine.” Furthermore, the code notes that “the majority of the members of any TUEC should be free of conflicts of interest or political responsibility in the Anti-Doping Organization.”

Froome had missed Liège-Bastogne-Liège due to a chest infection and initially consulted with his personal doctor in Monaco, Dr. Bermon, who did not prescribe any oral corticosteroids to treat the ailment.

And less we forget, this was the Sky team for whom Cooksons son Ollie was working for.