Originally Posted by
patentcad
Did they even have an effective test for blood doping (i.e. transfusing your own blood back into your own body) in those years?
EPO tests came on line about 1999. Of course they've evolved over time. When EPO was getting sexy (an old racing buddy of mine's son died last year, racing bikes, from a mis-dosed EPO deal, died in his sleep) then blood transfusing came back. The test for that basically looks at 15 antigens and can detect small amounts of transfused blood. But blood transfusing has been around a really long time. It's been done in all endurance sports...marathoning for example. The latest generation of this test was what caught Hamilton. Understand that Armstrong was still racing in 2004 when this particular test was coming on-line.