Few informed observers doubt that that EPO is part of the performance tool kit of many athletes headed for Rio. But for most, including the Australian swimming team, it will only be the EPO their own kidneys have secreted in response to oxygen starved altitude training camps.
This phenomenon carries none of the stigma of the synthetic variety of the erythopoietin hormone which revolutionised blood doping in the latter part of last century.
But should the practice be totally stigma free? While not banning it, the IOC has labelled altitude training “against the Olympic spirit.”
After all, much of the broader doping debate turns on concerns of fairness and health risks.
Altitude training is known to place certain athletes at risk of stroke and heart attack. It could therefore be said to discriminate against the risk averse, and seems unfair to athletes denied the resources and assurances of institutional backing.
That national programs can be nervous about their involvement was shown when Swimming New Zealand was caught out concealing the 2014 hospitalisation of top distance swimmer Lauren Boyle during altitude training in Spain.
Team coach David Lyles issued a press release claiming there had been “no major illnesses or disasters”, only to be corrected by chief executive Christian Renford, who could only tell the press “we are trying to discover the actual nature of her illness”.
Altitude training camps have been on offer, if not compulsory, for Australia’s “high performance pathway” swimmers for some years.
I know, because I refused to allow a 17-year-old swimmer I coach to attend one. If she’s still with me when she’s 21 she can make up her own mind, but I’ll probably counsel against it.
Apparently the ideal duration of such camps is between two and four weeks, and at an elevation of around 2,000 metres. The optimal performance benefit from the adaptations occurs three weeks afterwards.
Advocates say there is still no ‘one size fits all’ approach to the practice, although a ‘live high, train low’ approach has recently become popular.
This requires the locating of low altitude training facilities near high altitude dorms. The major such facilities are in Spain’s Sierra Nevada region and various US venues.
There are also sea level proxies such as altitude simulating tents and ‘high altitude houses’ where the oxygen is artificially regulated to 75 per cent of their low altitude neighbours.
Physiological adaptations beyond simply ramping up the red blood cell and haemoglobin values can include improved glucose transport, glycolosys, and PH regulation.
Another, more worrying benefit, is angiogenesis, whereby new blood vessels grow rapidly from existing ones, raising concerns about accelerated tumour growth.
Let’s not also forget that blood viscosity associated with high red blood cell counts can raise blood pressure and precipitate vascular trauma.
One of the reasons a total ban has never looked like “getting off the ground” is that some athletes actually live at high altitudes through no fault of their own.
It’s either where they were born or where they work. You can hardly go around telling sportsmen they have to come down to sea level to live and train. Or can you?
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