The base of all physical ability in endurance sport has to be the amount of power you can generate sustainably. Mentality and technical ability are supporting factors, but if you cannot go fast in the first place, no amount of technical ability is going to help you sustain speed that you didn’t have in the first place, nor will a good mentality help you go faster, if your body can really just not go any faster. It is for this reason that dopers always try to enhance their ability to generate more power for longer times.
The basic measure for physical ability in endurance sport is the VO2Max. It measures how much oxygen an individual can use, for every kg of muscle weight he has. The average healthy man will have a VO2Max of 48. A top Endurance athlete will have a VO2Max of over 80, some cases close to 90. How much of a difference is that? I’ll try to clarify.
When an athlete trains exactly right, follows a healthy diet and sleeps enough, over time, the maximum difference he can make to his VO2Max is between 10 and 15%. It is possible to see no increase at all, in spite of training real hard. In many cases the only difference an athlete will see in his performance after training for weeks, is due to technical improvements and improvements in mentality. Frequently you will see that on a course where technical ability plays a small role, that an individual shows no improvements even after months of training. But best case scenario remains at between 10 and 15%. I have encountered one guy that trained hard for 18 months. Monthly he did a time trial over a 40km course to test himself. After 18 months his average speed was exactly the same as what he started with. A few subtle changes to his training program yielded significant improvements in just 3 months.
Now assume you have a few individuals of different talent, but with the same technical ability and the same mentality. Well start with Bob. He is an average healthy male with a VO2Max of 48. If he were to train perfectly, like a professional athlete, and eat healthy and sleep enough to sustain his training. He will eventually get to a VO2Max of 55.2. Now we have John, he is a slightly talented guy with a VO2Max of 58. In his untrained state, he will be a better endurance athlete, than Bob, even after Bob has followed a professional level training program for years. So you could forgive John to think he is talented. Fact is he would most likely win quite a few races in his junior years. If he then follows the same training program, diet and sleep habits that the professional athlete follows, also for years, he will eventually have a VO2Max of 66.7. I encountered two guys, one was similar to Bob, the other similar to John. They were both use to racing. The John got an injury and couldn’t train for more than a year. He had a race against the Bob, which was having the best training year of his life. The John won. Now we have Paul who has a VO2Max of 68. He is a very talented individual. When John reaches his top fitness level achievable to him, Paul will be better than John, even in an untrained state. Paul will most likely encounter very few people in his life that is better than his is. If Paul now follows the same training program for years, with healthy diet and enough sleep, he will after years of training achieve a VO2Max of 78. He will be able to mingle with the professional athlete of our world. Now we look at Fabian who has a VO2Max of 86. Even in his untrained state, he will relatively easily mingle with professionals. He will need to adjust to the feeling of pushing himself hard (mentality), he will need to gain the technical skill to travel at speed, but he will have the physical ability. Once he gains those skills, he will be much, much better than Paul. The likes of him comes along only once every 10 years or so. Purely physically speaking , what Fabian can do in his untrained state, is impossible to achieve for Paul. For John and Bob it is so far removed from their reality, one could forgive them for thinking that it is simply not possible. They will however be entirely incorrect. What is completely impossible for them is very much within reach for both Paul and Fabian. What is impossible for Paul, is simply a matter of hard work and dedication away for Fabian.
Now Barnard Kohl might claim it is not possible to win the Tour without dope, and partially he is correct. If Barnard Kohl shares Pauls abilities, it would be impossible for him, yet, he is a very good cyclist and in fact better than most people he will encounter in his life. But he is simply not talented enough. To claim that no one is talented enough is very arrogant, and ignorant. We know that Greg Lemond achieved a VO2Max of 89 before EPO was invented. We know that the young Lance Armstrong had a VO2Max of 86 when he was 16, before he was a professional athlete, and at a time when he was dependant on a single mother. This was also before EPO. There was no doping influence on that figure.
If a cyclist such as Kohl has done everything he can to achieve the highest VO2Max possible, he can now start looking at EPO and drugs like it, that will increase his anaerobic capacity. There are very few ways to achieve this.
1. Increase the blood’s ability to transport oxygen thus getting more oxygen to the muscle, and enabling the muscle to do more work. Effectively pushing up your VO2Max. EPO and CERA does this by creating more red blood cells in your blood. The % of red blood cells as a part of your blood volume will increase.
2. Increase the amount blood by taking a blood transfusion.
3. Take a blood transfusion of only red blood cells (same effect as EPO). You cannot manipulate the blood in any of these 3 ways, without changing the values of a group of 9 parameters that are checked as part of the blood passport system. Increasing one value will have effects on all the others. Not only does each value have legal ranges, but they also have to be in certain ratios to each other. Any doping method that does not influence these values will be ineffective in endurance sports, because every process ultimately depends on the availability of oxygen.
If we abandon the fight against doping, and say that it is a free for all, then people like Kohl will do well in a sport which no longer tests the physical ability of the athlete, but rather the ruthlessness of the athlete. If we believe Mr Kohl that it is impossible to win the tour without doping, then we are encouraging the practise of doping, by essentially claiming that it is the only way to reach the top, and by suggesting that it is possible to get away with it. The increase of doping positives in the time since the doping passport has come into effect, if proof, that it is not possible to get away with it. Anyone using the level of performance of any athlete as “proof” for the fact that athlete dope, simply doesn’t understand how much better the best athlete is than the average.
