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Just Like Pro-Wrestlin'
Jul. 25th, 2007 08:36 amSo the Tour de France once again blows up with a doping scandal: Vinokourov's hugely entertaining John McClane Die Hard battle has been seasoned with blood doping; he's under serious investigation and the Astana team have left the Tour under a cloud.
Blood doping is where you inject some extra blood into an athlete. Have you ever given blood and felt a bit weak and woozy afterwards? Blood doping is the exact opposite: you get blood and feel like Superman; all those extra red cells transporting buckets of oxygen to your hungry muscles. And if it's your own blood, taken a couple of months before while at peak condition, then it's very hard to detect. If you stay just below the critical red-cell count (haematocrit: there's a level beyond which no normal human can sensibly go, after all)
Vino's blood allegedly had blood from someone else in it. That's a schoolboy error: it most likely means that his blood was mixed up with someone else's in the Secret Performance Lab. Hey, who hasn't mixed up two bottles in a fridge? Especially when they're not labelled "Vino" and "Fred" but "Aardwolf" and "Echidna" or "34783" and "34985" or some other super-secret no-we're-not-doping-honest code?
Actually, the idea of doping with my blood isn't too unpleasant, but a pint of someone else's is just groady. Still, sports fans, don't be disillusioned by the seemingly systemic doping that takes place in the Tour. There's a huge pile of cash riding on performances here, so the temptation to tweak is as strong as it gets. Just think of it like pro-wrestling. You still get the spectacle and the blood, the opportunity to yell at your screen and buy tie-in products - you just lose the nobility.
Blood doping is where you inject some extra blood into an athlete. Have you ever given blood and felt a bit weak and woozy afterwards? Blood doping is the exact opposite: you get blood and feel like Superman; all those extra red cells transporting buckets of oxygen to your hungry muscles. And if it's your own blood, taken a couple of months before while at peak condition, then it's very hard to detect. If you stay just below the critical red-cell count (haematocrit: there's a level beyond which no normal human can sensibly go, after all)
Vino's blood allegedly had blood from someone else in it. That's a schoolboy error: it most likely means that his blood was mixed up with someone else's in the Secret Performance Lab. Hey, who hasn't mixed up two bottles in a fridge? Especially when they're not labelled "Vino" and "Fred" but "Aardwolf" and "Echidna" or "34783" and "34985" or some other super-secret no-we're-not-doping-honest code?
Actually, the idea of doping with my blood isn't too unpleasant, but a pint of someone else's is just groady. Still, sports fans, don't be disillusioned by the seemingly systemic doping that takes place in the Tour. There's a huge pile of cash riding on performances here, so the temptation to tweak is as strong as it gets. Just think of it like pro-wrestling. You still get the spectacle and the blood, the opportunity to yell at your screen and buy tie-in products - you just lose the nobility.
