Road Bike Racing - Oh, oh....Serious concerns about the urinary EPO test...

Say it ain't so... (http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2005/sep05/sep23news3)

I find these developments interesting. Reliability of Urine test for EPO now in question.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2005/sep05/sep23news3

Question: "3 Day window for reliable testing?" I THOUGHT THAT TEST WAS RELIABLE TO 1999?

Is it no wonder UCI and WADA are now pointing fingers at each other in the most recent Armstrong allegations? The legal ramifications against both organizations could be large. The Multi-sport racing organizations are already in CYA mode.

Where's Barry Bonds when you need him? :rolleyes:

Ah you beat me, I was just posting about that same article and I did not see your post.

I especially thought this sentence of great interest regarding the test itself

".....which up until now has been believed to have been quite robust, even if comparatively ineffectual given its maximum three day testing window. ...."

I find these developments interesting. Reliability of Urine test for EPO now in question.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2005/sep05/sep23news3

Question: "3 Day window for reliable testing?" I THOUGHT THAT TEST WAS RELIABLE TO 1999?

Is it no wonder UCI and WADA are now pointing fingers at each other in the most recent Armstrong allegations? The legal ramifications against both organizations could be large. The Multi-sport racing organizations are already in CYA mode.

Where's Barry Bonds when you need him? :rolleyes:

The 3 day window refers to EPO being metabolized in the body. After 3 days there is no longer enough to reliably test for. With frozen samples is an entirely different issue. In both cases the time involved can only result in false negatives, not false positives if using the same standard for positive as a normal test.

Right. The 3 day window refers to the fact that the drug had to be taken within the 3 days before the test. If you shoot EPO, piss 2 days later, then freeze it - 50 years later the test will still show that you were positive.

Did you guys read this - off the initial link? http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=features/2005/epotest_problems Read the section about false positives. It sounds like some of the assumptions behind the interpretation of results are not quite correct.

Funny, the thread on the General Cycing forum had 22 pages, 13,896 hits and 548 posts fueled by a few folks who were duped into thinking that an article written in a newspaper was factual and the jury was in....

Evidence to the contrary....and they all seem to have gone away.....

Agenda?

nahhhhh....... :eek:

I find these developments interesting. Reliability of Urine test for EPO now in question.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2005/sep05/sep23news3

Question: "3 Day window for reliable testing?" I THOUGHT THAT TEST WAS RELIABLE TO 1999?

Is it no wonder UCI and WADA are now pointing fingers at each other in the most recent Armstrong allegations? The legal ramifications against both organizations could be large. The Multi-sport racing organizations are already in CYA mode.

Where's Barry Bonds when you need him? :rolleyes:
And, how many ways can you spell "appeal" and "law suit?"

I'd say the test is very suspect, the whole peleton knows how to beat it.

I'd say the test is very suspect, the whole peleton knows how to beat it.

Validity and reliablity - two very important concepts in research and medical testing :)

Funny, the thread on the General Cycing forum had 22 pages, 13,896 hits and 548 posts fueled by a few folks who were duped into thinking that an article written in a newspaper was factual and the jury was in....

Evidence to the contrary....and they all seem to have gone away.....

Agenda?

nahhhhh....... :eek:

this is not news... the two triathletes tested positive due to unusually high levels of proteins in their urine under extreme exercise induced stress... they went through the process... showed that positive results were repeatable and were cleared... what we do know is that Armstrong has been taking EPO tests for 5 years now and has never tested positive.. until this retrospective test of a period that athletes knew the testers could not detect EPO... so no extra proteins in his urine!! can he show that he can repeatably test positive as the other athletes did?? oh, sorry, i forgot, he's not even going to try because he's tired of the whole thing ;)

the majority of the SIX positive results attributed to Armstrong are not even close to borderline positives meaning that this interpretational element is almost nil...

bottom line is that these revalations about the test are irrelevant in this Armstrong case...

but i would have to agree with Smoothie104, it is a pretty pathetic test since is can be beat so easily... just ask David Millar former TT world champion... is it Michael Rogers that got the gold when Millar had to give his back? he passed the test and got caught with a used vial in his house by the police and broke down and spilled the beans...