Re: Froome's achievement
Posted: July 7th, 2018, 12:53 pm
According to an article in the Times Sports section today, a Glaxosmithkline scientist said there's a 10% chance of a "false positive" result if athletes take the maximum asthma medicine allowed. (Unfortunately, this is a bit meaningless without giving a time period - obviously it's not 10% chance for every sample taken, but is it a 10% chance of one "false positive" if an athlete takes the maximum dose every day over a 30 year career? The headline under the article is "10% of tests could be false positives" - but that can't be right, otherwise there would surely be lots of AAFs in cycling.
The article also rather misleadingly says Wada permits a level of up to 1,200 but that's actually the decision level - the limit is 1,000 and the decision limit has 20% added as a contingency factor (so anyone with a reading up to 1,199 is OK). Froome's reading was 2,000 but reduced to 1,430 after allowing for dehydration effects.
Wada have confirmed that from 2013 to 2017 there were 57 AAFs for salbutamol across all sports, leading to sanctions in 30 cases. This rather implies it's a bit of a dodgy test, as an athlete can exceed it with almost a 50% chance of no sanction. Would be interesting to see the relationship between sanctions and how high the samples were over the limit.
UCI, Brailsford and Froome have all now said they're happy for the full decision process to be made public, so unless this is all just spin for the media, we'll get to see more evidence.
The article also rather misleadingly says Wada permits a level of up to 1,200 but that's actually the decision level - the limit is 1,000 and the decision limit has 20% added as a contingency factor (so anyone with a reading up to 1,199 is OK). Froome's reading was 2,000 but reduced to 1,430 after allowing for dehydration effects.
Wada have confirmed that from 2013 to 2017 there were 57 AAFs for salbutamol across all sports, leading to sanctions in 30 cases. This rather implies it's a bit of a dodgy test, as an athlete can exceed it with almost a 50% chance of no sanction. Would be interesting to see the relationship between sanctions and how high the samples were over the limit.
UCI, Brailsford and Froome have all now said they're happy for the full decision process to be made public, so unless this is all just spin for the media, we'll get to see more evidence.