Did Lance Armstrong dope? The science says Yes

I said of the original USADA statement in my blog of August 24:

“I personally would like to know what was the basis for the USDA statement ‘Additionally, scientific data showed Mr. Armstrong’s use of blood manipulation including EPO or blood transfusions during Mr. Armstrong’s comeback to cycling in the 2009 Tour de France’ ”.

True to my request the scientific evidence against Armstrong is clearly presented, though somewhat buried in the report (only 6 of the 164 pages go into the tests). The controversy of the 1999 Tour de France EPO test is discussed of course. It pains an Englishman to admit that a Frenchman and Australian were right, but I think this is pretty unequivocal now. The French journalist, L'Equipe's Damien Ressio, correctly identified six positive samples as Armstrong’s [1] and the Australian blood doping expert, Michael Ashenden, got the details of the story spot on in this interview [2].

Interestingly Armstrong’s samples accounted for 46% of all the EPO positive samples found. It does look like he was taking EPO throughout whilst others hoped their pre-tour red blood cell increase would be enough to last the Tour.

The second piece of evidence – and this is new – is the blood samples taken from Armstrong during his comeback. Again an Australian – in this case Chris Gore – analysed the data in detail. Endurance cycling, day after day, increases your plasma volume and decreases your red blood cell concentration. This happened to Lance Armstrong through the 2009 Giro. However, in the subsequent Tour de France, the situation was different. His plasma volume rose, as expected, on days 1-7 of the Tour, But rather miraculously this volume decreased over the next three days and the red cell count increased. The only sensible conclusion is that he had a blood transfusion on or around day 7.

Gore also concluded that in many of Armstrong’s blood samples there was a dramatic reduction in the number of young red blood cells. These young cells, called reticulocytes, are formed when you are in the process of making new mature red cells. If you transfuse blood to supermaximal levels, your body tells you to stop making new cells. Therefore there is a large decrease in the number of reticulocytes. Armstrong showed exactly this effect on a number of occasions. This is the relevant quote from the report "Prof. Gore concluded that the approximate likelihood of Armstrong’s seven suppressed reticulocyte values during the 2009 and 2010 Tours de France occurring naturally was less than one in a million”.

The final piece in the analytical jigsaw comes from the 2001 Tour de Suisse. Here there are a number of suspicious EPO samples attributed to Armstrong. UCI have not released this data for further discussion. So this part of the story remains unfinished business between USADA and UCI.

In short, I don’t thing Armstrong’s supporter’s can realistically claim that he has not failed a doping test. He may not have been officially sanctioned due to a test, but the circumstantial evidence is far more damning than several people I note in my book who have lost medals due to positive tests through no fault of their own e.g. the Rumanian gymnast, Andreea Răducan.

[1] http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/photos.php?id=photos/2005/interviews/damien_ressiot/cycling-usa-armstrong-fr-41

[2] http://velocitynation.com/content/interviews/2009/michael-ashenden