http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/sports/olympics/still-plenty-of-angles-for-drug-cheating-at-olympics-says-former-steroids-kingpin-645230/http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/olympics-2012/balco-founder-victor-conte-simple-chinese-swimmer-ye-shiwen-doping-kick-article-1.1126198While Balco founder says he won't speculate on if Chinese swimmer is doping, he insists cheaters have pool of resources to enhance performance and pass test.By Teri Thompson / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
August 1, 2012
While the talk in London surrounding the superhuman performances of 16-year-old Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen centered on whether she might be benefitting from futuristic doping methods, one former master of performance enhancement doubts that is the case.
According to BALCO founder Victor Conte, whose Olympic clients included Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery and Dwain Chambers, if Ye or anyone else wants to cheat, they don’t have to turn to in vitro genetic manipulation, as U.S. swimming coach John Leonard suggested Ye might have done, or any other form of new-age doping.
RELATED: ANOTHER GOLD - AND WORLD RECORD - FOR SHIWEN IN 200 IM
“You could do all this with old-fashioned blood doping, or EPO,” Conte told the Daily News on Tuesday.
“It’s like taking candy from a baby.”
Conte stresses that he has no idea if Ye is doping but says it would not be difficult for any athlete to pull off an EPO regimen without getting caught.
“If you use EPO by IV injections, like the cyclists do, it clears within about 19 hours,” Conte said of the blood booster that cranks up red blood cell count and increases oxygen transport. “Forget all the new-age doping. This is what they can still do that’s old-school.”
Conte describes a training program in which an athlete uses EPO three times in a week in the “corrective phase” of the first two weeks of a doping cycle.
“Typically, it’s used on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays,” Conte said. “Then during the ‘maintenance phase,’ you use it once a week, typically on Wednesdays. The dosage is about 4,000 IUs per injection. This increases the red blood cell count and enhances oxygen uptake and utilization.”
Conte also described the regimen in a letter to British anti-doping authorities in 2008 when Chambers, his former client, applied for reinstatement following a doping ban for testing positive for banned substances in 2003.
“EPO becomes undetectable within 19 hours after an intravenous injection and 43 hours after a subcutaneous injection,” Conte said. “As you get close to competition, instead of doing a seven-day regimen, you do it every 10 days, or you don’t do it at all during the competition. You would do the corrective phase somewhere in your country before you got to the Olympics and kick up your hematocrit.”
Conte says EPO “delivers more oxygen to muscles and picks up metabolic waste and gets rid of it quicker as well. Every time you take a breath, you’re increasing your oxygen transport.”
What that means, says Conte, is that EPO, which is often associated with endurance events, is equally as effective in training for sprints.
Ye came under suspicion after she swam the last leg of the freestyle in 28.93 seconds, compared with the 29.1 seconds that Ryan Lochte posted in the men’s event minutes earlier, prompting Leonard to call the feat “unbelievable.”
Leonard then compared Ye’s performance to the East German swimmers of the 1970s who were famously exposed as massive dopers.
“It clears so quickly,” Conte says. “It just increases oxygen capacity and gives you a kick at the end.”
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