Nogman, re EPO / steroids. Pleasse take notes, there will be an exam at the end of the season

I don't know a great deal about anabolic steroids, as they're not usually that prevalent in endurance sports, where carrying a lot of muscle mass might not be helpful, but what you write sounds about right.

As for EPO, yes, it does work on anyone regardless of training, to increase production of red blood cells.

This raises hematocrit, which is a measurement of red blood cell blood density, but it also raises total haemoglobin mass. I'm not sure whether total haemoglobin mass in itself is particularly helpful, as the heart can only pump a maximum volume/minute anyway, so I assume that it's hematocrit which is the important factor.

How EPO is used though is a bit more complicated. Pre EPO there was already doping by autologous blood transfusion (extracting and reinfusing your own blood), though it probably wasn't all that common as it's a bit messy and dangerous. Recent stories have included Riccardo Ricco nearly killing himself with a blood bag he'd kept in his fridge that had gone off and some horror stories you can find in Hamilton's biography. Pre EPO blood transfusions include Moser when he broke the hour record (it wasn't illegal at the time) and I think the US cycling team in the 84 Olympics. Blood transfusions during e.g. a TdF require a lot of work - getting the blood safely transported to the rider undetected and in good condition. An EPO vial is a lot easier to hide that a refrigerated blood bag.

When EPO first arrived it was undetectable, and a lot safer and simpler than transfusing blood - if you didn't get your blood so thick that your heart stopped. A lot of young riders in the early 90s died in their sleep though, so it wasn't that safe. Some riders used to set alarm clocks for the middle of the night so they could exercise a bit and make sure the heart kept pumping. The UCI eventually set a maximum hematocrit level of 50%, on health reasons, but it also worked as a proxy dope test - though a rider would only be withdrawn from a race for exceeding it and couldn't actually be sanctioned (see Pantani's exclusion from the Giro in 99).

When EPO first became detectable there was a return to transfusions - though where this had been rare before the increased performance levels set by EPO doped riders meant it now became far more common - they'd set the bar and had to continue at that level.

Autologous blood transfusions are almost impossible to detect, though they do leave some tell-tale clues. This is where the bio-passport comes in.

Transfused blood is made up of old blood cells - they continue to age even though they've been taken out of the body. By monitoring the ratio of old blood cells to young blood cells (reticulocytes) you have a possible signal of a blood transfusion. The problem is that these levels can vary quite a bit, depending on e.g. how much stress the body is under, training at altitude etc. The bio passport needs to establish the natural levels and variation for an athlete before it can flag up any changes as suspicious. This requires fairly frequent testing and is bloody expensive. It also looks at other factors, such as hematocrit.

The prupose of the bio passports isn't to detect drugs themselves, but to detect the effects of drugs. The theory is that if you manage to change your blood values with some undetectable method we'll see that you've changed your blood values.

But this is where EPO micro-dosing comes in. A small amount of EPO will be undetectable after about 12 hours - so if you take it in the evening you're fine when the testers arrive in the morning. You can use this to maintain an artificially high reticulocyte baseline - you basically don't show the variations that would trigger the bio passport software to flag you as suspicious. Some members of the bio passport review panel have actually stated that there are riders whose blood values are TOO stable to be entirely natural(I think this argument was used in Contador's arbitration case).

EPO microdosing can also be used to hide an influx of transfused old blood cells - if you get the reticolucyte production raised at the same time you get your transfusion the ratio stays stable.

As for EPO during training - it does enable you to train harder and longer, and to recover more quickly from maximum exertion efforts. So it's still very beneficial there.

It isn't used to "make the blood thick" before extracting it for later transfusion - the red blood cells are separated from the plasma by spinning before storage anyway. It would also look even more dodgy if you had a bio passport test - just taking blood out causes a reticulocyte increase as the body tries to replace the missing blood cells. Adding an EPO boost to that could give you a pretty wild swing that the passport might pick up.

There's some good stuff on whether the bio passport has been effective here: http://www.sportsscientists.com/2011/03/biological-passport- effective-fight-or-futile-failure/