On 7/30/2010 2:19 AM, Mike Jacoubowsky wrote:
"Anton wrote in message
...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2004...cling.features

Pantani's body had grown so dependent on these injections that it
could no longer produce red blood cells.

On his arrival at Turin's Centro Traumatologico Ortopedico at 3.20pm,
doctors were startled to discover blood values that were abnormal,
almost bizar his haematocrit, or red cell count, was 60 per cent
(50 per cent is high); his haemoglobin was 20.8g per 100ml (18g is
noteworthy). These values then plummeted: on 25 October, with 15.9 per
cent haematocrit and 5.8g haemoglobin, it took a transfusion to save
his life.

After which the anaemia miraculously cleared. Someone, it seemed, had
injected Pantani with the genetically engineered blood-booster
erythropoietin, known in sport as the doping agent EPO. At the age of
just 25, Pantani's body had grown so dependent on these injections
that it could no longer produce red blood cells.

Not that I should be taking your post so seriously, but if I recall
correctly, there's never been any evidence that Lance had an
outrageously-high hematocrit level, only that it hasn't, at times,
fluctuated in the normal manner one would expect during a three-week
event. Pantani, like Ricco, apparently doped to the gills. If Lance
doped, it was evidently far more carefully managed than Pantani, and I'd
assume far less likely to have long-lasting health effects.

Try as one might, Lance's phenomenal success cannot be attributed solely
to (alleged) doping. He rode for one of the most well-organized&
disciplined teams, with a clear focus (contrast that with Telekom!).
While other teams stayed at hotels sponsored by the TdF organization, US
Postal and Discovery usually had their own, considerably-upgraded digs.

I suppose that all of that was just a cover, a way to make it appear
that Postal& Discovery had all manner of reasons that made them better,
in order to get people to overlook the idea that they were doping?

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com


OK. A hard working doper. And.............?