164. Doping, with James Witts

0:00It kind of pains me to admit this as a cyclist, but I rather like cars. And I think I've just been driving around in the nicest car I will ever, ever drive. And that's the Maserati Gricali, which it turns out is what happens if an Italian supercar company designed an SUV for people like me, for cyclists. Now, the Gricali is fast, like 0-60 in 4.1 seconds fast, but it is also, it's just delightful to sit in. It has the legroom of a first-class flight to Singapore. it's arguably more luxurious inside than my own house. And yet, I kind of can't believe I'm saying it because of what it is. It's a genuinely practical car.

0:36I could happily chuck a dirty bike in the back of it, then do the shopping, and then go and pick up the rest of the family. Now, I've been driving the electric Fulgori version, which has the equivalent of a 557 brake horsepower dual electric motor with a 360 mile range, which sounds incredibly impressive, I know. But let's just put that in cycling terms, which we actually understand. That is the same power output as a thousand Tadej Pogacchas all racing Milan-San Remo at once and then racing back again. Now, as well as the electric version, there are multiple engine options too, and prices start from£59 ,990, which, when you think about it, is something of a bargain, given Pogaccha's Tour de France-winning Colnago from last year sold at auction for£143 ,000.

1:23You could have bought two brand new Maserati Gricalis for that. Now you can find out more and also find out where your local Maserati dealer is at maserati.com, where else? So that's maserati.com and check out the Maserati Gricali.

1:42Welcome back to the Cyclist Magazine podcast. I'm your host James Spender and joining me down a wire, it has to be that way because if we're in the same room I think one of us would destroy the other. It's Mr. Will Strixen. Will, how are you doing? Hello. Do you think you'll ever get over the fact that the headphones have wires? No. I think as a child, I was absolutely fascinated by this set of toys that my sister had, which was basically a slightly better version of two plastic cups with a bit of string between them and you could talk. Did you ever, I can imagine from that, that you probably enjoyed at one point powering something with a potato?

2:18100 absolutely my potato clock circa 1992 how did you know and you can do it with lemons really yeah just lemon can you do it with limes or is it lemon exclusive i reckon you can do it with limes because let's face it lemons limes they are interchangeable i was once shown by means of testing with my eyes closed by some foodie person how i actually can't tell the difference it's just your brain tells you there's a difference because one's a different color some people disagree with that yeah i'm not sure you can definitely tell the difference when something's lemon flavored or lime flavored so possibly yeah because they're more personifications of flavors aren't they like roast chicken crisps being vegetarian yeah exactly or a prawn cocktail crisps which tastes like nothing on earth not even prawns but somehow they're delicious or cocktails yeah a natural prawn cocktail would be disgusting anyway we should move on because today we've got an amazing guest in the form of author, also contributor to Cyclist Magazine.

3:21We are a magazine, by the way. Do buy Cyclist Magazine. I just say that because I really, I've got a kid now who is of an age where she's starting to get into magazines and I suddenly realised how important magazines are, not just ours. Buy any magazine, just go out and buy a magazine this week. They are amazing and if you don't buy them, they won't exist because everything will just be digital AI slop. But that's a little side quest. We are the Cyclist Magazine podcast. And today's guest is James Witts, who has contributed, as I say, to our mag, also to Rouleur. He used to be the editor of Triathlon 220 and writes for The Guardian, also edits the ASO's Tour de France official guide every year.

4:03But we know him, or you might know him best, and we're talking to him in the guise of paid up wordsmith author who has just written a book called Dope, which you might be able to guess what it's about. It's about doping. So we talked to James about doping in not just cycling, but across all sports today, whether it exists, what it is that people might be up to, what people used to do, how it's policed, how murky the world of policing it is, because obviously you've got one, obviously, I learned this today, that you've got the people, you know, the IOC or ASO or UCI funding the very bodies that are there to police and to try and detect anyone that's doping, cheating with performance enhancing substances.

4:49So it's a really fascinating chat and it is a long one. So do buckle up, get your cup of tea on and get a little glossary of terms out to look up some medical things because James is pretty in depth but before we move on some really sad news that we just wanted to um you know just kind of acknowledge name check if you like which happened over the weekend uh which was the tragic death of finn tarling so yeah will what happened basically what it seemed from the reports that um it was at the volta portugal that um uh vehicle i think it was a van but i'm not sure it really was got onto the but wasn't involved in the race got onto the course and yeah sadly Finn died and yeah really tragic for you know obviously his teammates his family his staff that work with him you know it's pretty pretty horrible thing to happen and you can't imagine I mean I think the team pulled out from the race after that which is I'm not sure how you could continue yeah to be after that yeah no it's utterly tragic um finn's 19 um his brother josh races for inios it's just yeah it's just horrible it's just utterly horrible and it doesn't do to do any further speculation you know how why these things happen it's just a horrible tragic accident so um yes our thoughts and condolences are with uh finn's family and friends and team um and um There was a GoFundMe set up by Jamie Barlow, who's a manager, which was officially been recognised by the Tarling family to try and raise funds for supporting the next generation of Welsh cyclists in Finn's honour, which I think is a nice thing to do.

6:29Excellent stuff. We'll put some notes for that, a link in the show notes for that GoFundMe page. But yeah, as ever, it's a weird thing in these sorts of situations, news, podcasts, to then move into something a bit lighter. It is jarring. So I'm sorry that we've kind of switched from one thing to some really tragic news to then, hey, listen to this chat with James Witts. But there we go. That is unfortunately, that's just life. And I'm not a news presenter. I shouldn't be. I'm not good enough at anchoring these sorts of things. So I'll just say, we'll just move on. And welcome to the show, Mr.

7:06James Witts.

7:12I was looking through your, can I call it Palmares as a writer? Can a writer have Palmares? I mean, it's probably just your bibliography, but I like Palmares better. No, let's call it Palmares when I'm looking for cycling-specific work. And one of them, because we'll come to doping, oh, sorry, we'll come to dope. We can edit that out. What a blooper to make. James's new book is called Dope. But one of your earlier books is Riding with the Rocket Men. So just quickly, tell me about Riding with the Rocket Men. I remember seeing that come our way and knowing that you were riding the ETAB, so a stage of the Tour de France, and you were using lots of the science that you gleaned from pros and other training tips and techniques that you got specifically for that cause.

7:54Just fast forward to the end. How did it go? Did you do it? I finished. You finished? So did it work? Can you apply tips from professionals to your average amateur and it makes you better, or does it only really work in a pro context? well you sort of can the major issue i had was uh in fact a chap had it i think in the on gcn of i had stomach issues like the day before so it all unraveled overnight so without going into too much detail i was feeling very sorry for myself for being up all night uh but i did feel lighter come the actual um always rides yes so no it actually it was an interesting one to do because Basically, it was almost built on the first book I wrote, which was the Science of the Tour de France, which was 10 years ago now.

8:43So it was really, I think the pitch to the agent was supermen meets every man sort of thing. So what can we pick from the pros that we can apply to age group performance, amateur performance? Does it actually transfer? And I guess some bits did, I would say. I mean, I'm on the very basic level, just sort of a consistent training plan. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, and actually that was probably the main thing. Actually, the biggest loss weight wise, should we say, disappointingly was really cutting back drinking, which is fairly obvious. Yeah. But yeah, I had a couple of spells of not drinking for sort of four or six weeks at a time.

9:27And that was the real time when I did shed weight, which obviously helps. because it was an Alpe d 'Huez stage. I think it was similar to this year's attack, but we did Guilherme Bay, Quai du Ferre, yeah, and then Alpe d 'Huez. I can't remember if there's a number one thrown in there somewhere. It's a few years ago now. But yeah, I'm not designed to cycle five kilometers plus sort of mountains or altitude in a day because there's only sort of 100 miles or so. But yeah, it was tough, but I finished. So sorry to ruin the end if anyone has bought it. I mean, not many people did. so there's plenty available there's plenty available i'm gonna say i mean thank you for um that synopsis and thank you for um quenching my curiosity but i'm gonna say i'm sure that loads of people bought that book but even more i reckon will be into buying dope because that's a very punchy title it's a very thorny subject particularly in cycling but let's let's face it It's got to touch.

10:25One would imagine all sports on some level at some point in time. So I guess, I don't know, let's start with why do this book now? And it sounds kind of hard to ask this question, but what is doping in sport? Okay, well, we'll start off with why. That's why I pitched the book, had the book commission, wrote the book. I guess on one hand, I've written several features over the years, especially if you'll find magazine and website about doping and cycling, whether it's at elite level or even amateur level. So I had a sort of professional interest piqued. And also there was an element that the book is about all sports.

11:03This isn't just cycling. Cycling naturally is touched upon, as it would be because of my background and cycling's background. But it's almost like a little bit of an elephant in the room. I mean, WADA, I think their figures come back that I think it's about 0.7 % of the samples they test shows up with an adverse analytical finding so that's not necessarily saying an athlete is cheated it's just saying the prohibited substance has been found which we might come on to later but could be explained by you know the therapeutic usage exemption certificates but say it's about 0.7 percent and you've had surveys over the years saying up to 57 percent of athletes had admitted in the previous year to doping this was um in athletics in about 2011 2012 it was sort of the famous turbingen study i think which was allegedly oppressed by what was then world athletics for four or five years because the results that was anonymous results yeah yeah and again it's i do cover it in the book it gets a little bit technical of some of these results coming out i think the anti-doping agencies might question the validity of some of the testing models used.

12:14But basically, there was a big gap between what is tested and what is actually mooted as these are the figures. Many of the experts I spoke to sort of settled on a figure of about 20%, 25%, which is still obviously a high figure. So there was that element really, almost the philosophical side of it. You know, I certainly have covered a lot of features with training, you know, the nutrition, the technology, all these legal gains. but if these stats are believed to be true there is this element in the room of like well what about these illegal performance enhancers so yeah that was sort of the element you know where i was coming from what actually constitutes doping is according to the wider code where there's three criteria and you need to tick two of them basically so a substance must enhance performance it must be proven to cause harm and slightly vague against the spirit of the sport which could be i guess It's a catch-all term-ish.

13:10But yeah, for a substance to go onto the banned list, of which there are more than 400 now, it needs to fulfill two of those criteria. And typically, because I don't just want to focus this on cycling, that's not why we're doing this podcast. We're not trying to unearth something or tell anybody anything. And your book, of course, is looking across sports. But typically, through the cycling lens, we'll all think instantly of EPO. that's like synonymous with the word doping or performance enhancement can you explain epo because i think that's something else that people will say yeah doping epo and as you might go okay we'll explain what that is and how it works and people go uh don't know it makes you faster i think you inject speed into your veins and you go faster so what's epo and a rider still not riders again i'm sounding horribly biased could athletes still be using epo well yeah so epo and um i always pronounce this incorrectly but it's it's basically a hormone erythropoietin uh apologies to exercise physiologists out there but basically it's a hormone that you naturally produce in your body to produce red blood cells basically so we're producing it all the time to create red blood cells because red blood cells hold on to oxygen and obviously without oxygen we wouldn't be having this conversation now so it's basically epo red blood cells oxygen seen for a cycling lens obviously you know the more oxygen you can you know process absorb and assimilate in theory the basically longer and stronger you can ride so it's a natural substance but like many substances in the body there's also a synthetic version which was created it was late 80s now to treat anemia really so you've got low blood cell count inject EPO produce more red blood cells so you know your life enabling really with the actual exogenous version cyclists got wind of this all their support teams and realized yeah well actually if you just top up your normal levels in theory you can up the amount of oxygen you're taking and as i said right harder stronger longer and hence we know years ago that lance armstrong and crew were all over this so yeah that is what it does and why it is so compelling for an endurance athlete because endurance athlete is all about processing or a big part of it is obviously processing oxygen to ride further and faster is it still being used i mean it is it's still up there sort of in like the anti-token database i think steroids are still leading the way should we say in the um the illegal world but epo is still up there the gap in the time to testing at the moment or one of the gaps is the microdosing of EPO.

15:54So this came off the back of the biological passport, which was introduced years ago, which has been a real boon, I think, for the anti-doping agencies. It's really boosted their defenses because you're monitoring the indirect markers of taking a drug. So you're seeing if the new blood, red blood cells, how they naturally flow or unnaturally flow. And in the doses they were taking years ago, it was showing up. But basically, as is the way in the world of doping uh they just tweak their practices so there's certainly an antidote uh many experts spoke to this was one of the glaring blind spots was microdosing not only microdosing epo but microdosing epo altitude it very much unpicking because essentially you're trying to do the same thing you know you go to altitude to starve the body which then your body is like oh Jesus, I need to produce more red blood cells.

16:50So you produce more EPO, produce more red blood cells, go back to sea level and you're basically naturally topped up. So you're looking to do the same thing to the blood and they find it very hard to unpick between the two. I mean, I might be jumping the gun, but this, the microglossin side is one of the reasons given, or certainly mooted by me anyway, of the nighttime testing that gained so many column inches during the tour of Pogaccia tested during the night in vinegar because actually traditionally you know generally you're you're tested between 6am and 11pm and actually there's talk that if you do microdose ipo it can be out your system as quick as four five six hours and it's the same with blood bags as well so there is this blind spot so actually if you are doping and you know this blind spot why on earth would you not try and actually capitalize on it there's an incredibly long-winded way of saying what epo is basically and cycling obviously has i mean i feel like it's a disproportionate view in the world of people that associate cycling with doping but having looked more into all sorts of sports where does cycling really rank on like actual dopers caught or maybe are cyclists better at hiding it than other ones or other sports hiding it better or not testing as much as cycling how does cycling actually stuck up well i mean there are various figures out there according to the mpcc which is the movement for well basically the movement for incredible cycling really which was a sort of voluntary organization which i'm sure you're aware of teams sign up to it to basically say yeah we're not going to dope i mean that's a very very quick soundbite but actually cycling now i think is ranked 10th and the worst offender should we say athletics uh then it's weight lifting then it's tennis so you know that is obviously showing cycling in a good light what i will say is i think from many decks that i spoke to are saying cycling has led the way in their anti-doping programs in the last few years very thorough programs certainly compared to something like football which i mean i've always felt it's a little bit of an anomaly that the the specter doping sort of looms largest when there's money involved, I would say, in livelihoods.

19:11And for me, it would seem sort of a little illogical that these sports with the most money flowing through them aren't really touched by doping scandals at all. And I don't know if you two are football fans at all, but every now and then it'll pop up. Paul Pogba was banned for a short term, Chelsea player, Mudrick, but he's back playing again. I think that sentence was reduced. But it doesn't really seem to get splashed over the pages like cycling always was. So, no, I think cycling is actually, on paper, cleaner than, you know, many, many sports. You could argue it's cleaner than ever. But it's such a complex subject, Will.

19:51I mean, I spoke to this chap, David Hellman, who's chair of the Athletics Integrity Unit, who is seen as a really, like, almost the leading light in the anti-doping world. and um i asked them i was like because they're catching so many especially top kenyan runners and i was saying why you looked upon us you know sort of setting the example for others and he was like james it's because we're intent on catching the real top stars and i was like well yeah that's that's an interesting point you know the implication being that some sports might throw a few sort of um victims to slaughter but they won't be the high profile ones so yeah it's quite a i've got chapter about where you know about the politics of doping which is more interesting than it sounds because it's um yeah it's it's very nuanced but yeah i would say broadly cycling is certainly more vigorous in their approach to anti-doping than many sports coming back to the biological passport which wasn't a thing back in the epo years of cycling and i'm not sure what other sports were doing but it seemed that it was developed almost expressly for cycling to catch cyclists based around red blood cell count or hematocrit levels so at this point I'm going to stray into territory where I'm overstepping so correct me when I get the sort of science wrong but just to kind of flesh that out am I right in saying you basically have I don't know however many parts per milliliter of blood has got red blood cells in it and that's your kind of baseline So your biological passport looks at you as an athlete across a timeline and goes, okay, we believe this is what your natural state is.

21:34So when we retest you every now and again, we're looking for deviations from that natural baseline. And if you deviate enough, then we can pretty much say, we might not be able to catch with EPO in your system, but we'll say this is a red flag. There's something up here. so therefore the micro dosing creates smaller fluctuations smaller deviations which could look normal because it changes all the time anyway a little bit doesn't it and particularly if you lost loads of blood then your hematocrit would be all over the place as your body tries to you know make more blood then going to altitude which is typically what well pretty much every team does now i think probably all the world teams have altitude camps they go up to ad in tenerife or and that changes your blood values too because your body is trying to adapt to a lack of oxygen higher up so to compensate it creates more red blood cells which isn't technically doping because you're not taking epo you're not stimulating that you're just living somewhere else for a bit and your body's adapting and so then within that fluctuation you might be able to mess around a little bit with some you know with EPO say because again how can you detect it because the the athlete is going up the mountain yeah the biological passport tester is expecting to see changes and lo and behold there are changes so is that is that the kind of broad strokes of the microdosing and how biological passports work yeah absolutely you can um you can write dope too James the return of I don't know that that's spot on I mean basically each athlete has their atoms on their app which is basically their anti-doping management system so if you were a pro you know at the top level you'd have one Will would have one I would have one and within that you feel various details including your whereabouts which is an hour each day and when the anti-doping agency can test you going back to the nocturnal testing it's usually between 6 a.m and 11 p.m but yeah as part of that you would also flag up things like if you were at altitude so wada and the national anti-dermot agencies they do have an awareness of like okay they are altitude that might explain it but yeah there is very much a sort of like because you are aiming for the same thing essentially i think it gets a little more complicated as well because like you said so many teams where they're not only just altitude training they seem to be spending longer and longer at altitude to try and stimulate these great sort of you know gushing amounts of epo and oxygen so yeah that's that's basically it but the biological passport like i said it's used um really by many sports i'd say some sports take it more seriously i mean the fact like you said it arguably this was again cycling's nefarious pass meant it was a great driver because it was actually introduced to cycling first in 2008 and then it was 12 months later it's introduced to other sports which obviously showed where cycling was at the time but yeah this monitoring because i think the thing is when epo was first created like any drug there's a certain time period where you've got that patent on it i don't know if it's 10 years or you know i'd have to double check the book but um once that patent ran out suddenly you had you know new versions coming a lot from china for example and and india and antidoping agents and like we have one epo now we've got 10 20 30 we've got to devise a test for each one this costs a lot of money you know it's got to be so legally watertight to hold up especially like at the court of arbitration of sport but that's where the biological passport stemmed from so it's like okay we won't look at direct markers essentially these drugs are trying to do the same thing like you said increased red blood cells so that was the idea with the biological passport it's still the strongest tool but um there are gaps but one of i did speak to one chap who's a very um getting onto the podcast actually professor janice bits of lardis a geneticist i don't know if you've ever spoken to him used to be based down at brighton university and he's currently working on a genetic test which he has been for years which i think he would say basically it'd be a supercharged biological passport so it would just detect the genetic markers are a much deeper level than the biological passport does at the moment but yes so I've only jumped to mind because I spoke to him recently and he said there's a big meeting in Rotterdam in September okay so something could come out of that so yeah watch that genetic space but yes you're absolutely right that is how the biological passport worked and there's been a bit of talk recently kind of controversial maybe introducing a power passport what is that and why people not like it why would it help in this sort of thing well that is yeah so that i spoke to james actually james hopker is uh one of the originators of the power passport yeah that's been his work for many years so i mean really the premise is that okay are the figures this athlete is producing do they look natural over time if you've suddenly got a spike of like i don't know 20 on your max power output over like a five minute period and you you know you're in your 30s example on this slide whether that that physiologically seems improbable so yeah that that is the basic premise it has already been rolled out in it's been used in swimming i think where much part of the uproar is it's not just cyclists these athletes now are measured to within an inch of their life aren't they i mean every every process in their body is magnified which is quite oppressive i think you're living that world so i think there was that element there's an element as well that it's on paper it's potentially stronger in controlled sports so like track cycling swimming where you haven't got a multitude of other factors like you do in the dynamic outdoor world of cycling but yeah the premise really is is this rider are the power is the power they're producing or does it look like a great leap so i think one of the issues they've got is obviously you know I'm sure we've all used power meters, various power meters.

27:38The results can be a little inconsistent between power meters. So I think that is probably part of the ironing out period that they're undertaking now is just trying to account for that. And I do think things like AI and machine learning probably can iron that out much easier or quicker than humans could do. So it probably makes it... I'd be very surprised if it isn't rolled out in the next year or two across the peloton because it just, beyond the human rights issue, I think it does sort of make sense it's not you know it's just an added tool I think it's another piece of the jigsaw and what about do you think there could be something similar to do with athletes weight because thinking of things that now fly very close to the hard stop the boundary of this is now on the banned substances list but they're not quite yet would be something like weight loss drugs which I think stem from treatment for diabetes is that right so it's it's one of those classic cases where they develop a thing to help a group of people it turns out there's this wonderful side effect the conjecture is that athletes again particularly cyclists because it's all about power to weight are using this and becoming incredibly lean very quickly a is that what's going on and do teams even sort of admit to that because it's not technically illegal and b yeah would that be something that you could one could look at and go wow you were 80 kilos just after christmas and now you're 63 that's not really possible yeah that was i mean it's actually on the monitoring okay list now so while they do have you have your prohibited list you have your non-prohibited list or you know basically that's not prohibited but then you have that in between the monitoring of which um tramadol was on seen for a cycling lens for many years and now that eventually was bound and that's a painkiller yeah so that was a powerful painkiller which was used regularly in the peloton especially these you hear of the finishing bottles where riders would take tramadol with you know the sprints coming up so you know it's quite painful obviously riding for many hours so yeah just to neutralize the pain so yeah as you're coming up to your main event either sprinters you know max power for x amount of seconds minutes if you're killing the pain you can essentially dig deeper But one of the side effects they prove with the tramadol is really you start to lose your cognitive side a little bit.

30:00And they certainly aimed at being responsible for several sprint crashes. It's obviously very hard to unpick something like that. I'm saying, oh, yeah, it was tramadol, not just because I lost corrupt concentration for other reasons. But, yeah, so these GOPs, they are on the monitoring list. I know there are experts who I spoke to are like they just want it banned immediately because they're like in a weight, you know, a sport that relies on you know low weight essentially of which cycling is one even in today's you know but they seem a bit more muscular than this day and age but yeah weight matters so i think there's certainly an argument that beyond it being dangerous it's not a great look either of like you suddenly start taking a drug to lose extra weight but i mean no one admitted directly that it was being used to me but certainly anti-doping agent experts did they were saying it they hear tales of it being used in cycles so like you said there probably you know an example could be you've had your off season you put on a little bit weight and you just go on a GOP for four weeks and shed the weight quickly I don't know how much it would take on or not because actually there's certainly studies showing that you're not just shedding fat you know you're burning free muscle as well which obviously isn't particularly a you know a compelling reason take it if you are a cyclist but um yeah i think that is certainly an area to keep an eye on and i i think the concern there is it really could again spiral into a sort of disordered eating yeah um so it'd be interesting to see where they go with that because i think it would be very hard to ban some of these drugs and how detectable they are or not as well.

31:45But yeah, I think it's certainly Wadarick even an eye on it. Is that part of sort of a more general trend? I feel like for years you have all the things which are very obviously doping, they're illegal, but people try and take it in ways where they don't want to get caught, blah, blah, blah. But sort of since the Lance Armstrong era, it sort of feels like there's been an increase in just trying to play to the line of where, not cross it but get as close as you can or like try and get ahead of new technologies to be like everything we're doing is legal now but we're trying to push the limits with tramadol with carbon monoxide was the other one that they banned in the last couple of years do you think that is more the case that in sports especially in cycling it's more that they're trying to push the envelope of the legal stuff rather than trying to sneakily do illegal things uh yeah there's definitely a case for that well i mean i think that is the increased medicalization of sport and this isn't just cycling i guess as an aside i think this is the gap that the enhanced games and the team behind that are looking to exploit is that you know medicines are everywhere you know and they are in sport now i mean you have obviously ketones which are legal but you know there's a certainly that sort of pushing the boundaries i mean i guess the still the standout of that is the tuve system the therapeutic usage exemption which for listeners who aren't aware you can take a prohibited substance for you know therapeutic reasons to allow you to ride so it's supposed to be performance enabling rather than performance enhancing but um you know you certainly had like you know i think the fancy bears hack you remember that years ago that the russian hacking group yeah the russian hacking group had sort of got hold of a load of the athlete files and um it suddenly seem like you know half the athletes in the world were extreme asthmatics you know it was like how are they getting through so yeah again so beautiful is a drug which you can take to a certain threshold but yeah that i think the tue system is on paper ripe for exploitation i spoke to the manager of the tue system at wada who was uh he was saying actually they did analysis themselves and they were like, well, we looked at the medalist and I think about 0.15 % of medalists have either applied for a TUE in the build-up to their medal or throughout their careers.

34:08But again, I think it's probably part of that puzzle of just pushing the boundaries of what is deemed legal and what is illegal. And I think this is part of the issue while they have. I think it is a very thankless task. They are there to be shot at a bit because everyone has a, you know, that was part of the idea behind the book it's like if someone tests positive you know there's no black or white in doping in sport it's like they're the devil incarnate you know there's no rehabilitation program someone commits murder they go to prison there probably is a rehabilitation we don't get that in doping in sport but um anyway i'm wandering off on a tangent but yeah it's it's it basically is pushing the limits as legally as you can but obviously i'm sure at times that does cross over that leads perfectly into the kind of i guess the psychology and the philosophy of doping and cheating in sport but before we do that just quickly on the carbon monoxide because again that's something that i think lots of people have read about you wrote about it for cyclist magazine hey we are a paper product as well as this wonderful audio broadcast a very good paper product thank you very much james um no yeah there's no back scratching going on here um but yeah take us through quickly what was carbon monoxide they're not they're not busy smoking fags around the back of the bike sheds are they what were they doing to and what and why and also they're not just sucking an exhaust pipe off a car presumably yeah that's what they're doing you know in the service course no they're um so basically the carbon monoxide re-breathing method is a fully legal method i guess one of a better word it's to measure hemoglobin mass so you basically you inhale a bolus of carbon monoxide and through various calculations and processes you can then measure the hemoglobin mass so it's an oft used tool for many years to see you know to measure the effects of altitude training but i mean i was at the i go every year to the science and cycling conference which is just prior to the grand depart so it's in the same city two or three days before the first stage of the tour de france and it sort of kicked off a couple years ago now there's a presentation by a swedish dude called daniel cardinal and he'd done a study where i don't know how he got it through the ethics committee but basically putting athletes on a regime of inhaling carbon monoxide and seeing if there was a performance at effect because i think essentially obviously with carbon monoxide you are starving the body of oxygen.

36:35So again, it goes back to this whole idea of you're putting stress on the body to create... More red blood cells. Yeah, and then take on more oxygen. And he did find there was a significant impact on the hematological profiles of the athletes who were following this course of carbon monoxide. I think you would say to save levels. I don't think you would have obviously gotten past the ethics committee if there was a dangerous side of it. But that then lit up and I don't think anyone put their hand up and said, yeah, I've taken it as a performance answer, but there were certainly rumors. I spoke to one rider who said, yeah, he'd heard of his teammates in the past taking it for performance reasons.

37:17So yeah, it's now banned, but it's banned for performance rationale. So you can still use it to measure your hemoglobin mass, but I think it's like, yeah, you can't take five a day or along those lines. Because I think, in a way, and I think, again, this is the problem we've had, one of their experts was saying they were almost forced into it because, obviously, it's not a great look. If you start mentioning carbon monoxide in the sport, like you said, you start thinking of exhaust, cigarette smoking. It's just like, yeah, that's probably not great, you know, if you're trying to spread the word of the sport and influence the youngsters to choose a better path.

37:58So, yeah, that was it, really. So, yeah, you can still use it, the haemoglobin must, but if you're caught taking it at a certain level, you will be banned. What I thought was interesting when you said earlier about the chap who runs the TUE list and saying that when they'd looked at podiums, you had a fraction of a percentage of people who actually were still on podiums who raced or competed with TUEs. does that point towards something that comes up in your book which is mad to think but most people in sport aren't doping to win they're doping to continue so they're not the podium contenders that's why you're not seeing top athletes getting popped for for doping or why you're seeing tuis on podiums because it's the people in the middle of the pack who just want to get paid and get a contract next season well yeah and again i think it was wilder or you or you saw it might be wider had done research in this area, undertaken research in this area.

38:53And yeah, they'd sort of noticed that it was almost two ends of the age spectrum. So you might have had the younger athlete who is more impressionable, naive, as told, you know, this will make you faster, you'll be fine, you won't get caught. But they're certainly of the other age where say they were taking it, like you said, the performance continuation. So it wasn't to like suddenly become, you know, top of the tree. it was just to keep your career going but actually it was interesting there's a chapter in the book on sort of reasons to dope which sounds ready obvious really didn't it it's just to ride faster or run faster or recover quicker but um like this amanda hudson i think her name was a works on the education side of anti-doping she said you know you're not born wanting to take steroids you know you don't play youth sport thinking brilliant i really want to take steroids so what what factors come into it and there are a multitude of factors beyond that age side of things i mean there's the team around you and there was quite a sad case actually it was there was a kenyan study and i spoke to the uh researcher behind it byron juma i think his name was and he was saying you know he he managed to gain the trust of half a dozen of these kenyan athletes who were banned for doping ostensibly EPO, this was marathon running.

40:15And he was just saying, you know, it really should be like the support teams who should be being banned as well. Because, you know, you can have athletes who are 18 years old. You know, you are from a background which isn't particularly wealthy, shall we say. And if you get a reasonable result in a road race, I'm talking running now, maybe in America, you can earn enough money to spread through your family and support team. So there is a pressure there that, you know, is coming from the outside and if you are young you know you're naive you might think you know everything at 18 but you know don't know everything in the 30s 40s let alone in your teens so yeah it's and that comes back to this sort of like i said the devil incarnate sort of perception of people who test positive it is more nuanced they're not just evil people yeah they said it might be a desperation to pay your mortgage this time next year and especially let's be honest in a sport like cycling where the business model is fragile to say the least i mean it's very hard to build up support for a team because they could be called something different in 12 months it's not like man united or liverpool is it or you know so yeah it is it's very nuanced and yeah it's certainly not all about just hitting the um the top of the podium yeah are we as fans are we naive to think that any sport could be clean you know just taking cycling as an example you know way back in you know tour de france first tour de france 1903 won by maurice garin who was working class guy and they were and riders were competing for 15 francs a day which was like a stipend by the organizers at the time and i think it's equivalent of like i don't know about 60 quid not a lot of money big incentives to not be a chimney sweep or work on a farm or a laborer much better to race around france so that's the first year but the second year they had the first three or four riders i think disqualified for cheating point being there's an example of cheating just exists in sport partly for the prize money the kudos of winning everything else but partly just to be able to do it because you sort of need to get to the end and so are we naive i know that you know things have moved on a lot of since people getting on trains which was what was happening in the 904 tour or towing themselves on a on a cork tied to a piece of fishing line tied to a car and the cork was held in their teeth and then they get dragged along and then if the commissaire came along you'd let go of the cork and you were fine and you couldn't be busted for it are we asking just too much or are we ourselves making it so we're pouring our hearts and souls into supporting football teams like loving certain tennis players and turning up at the side of the road to watch the tour de france and that puts money into the sport and enormous pressure on the riders in this kind of circus-like way to perform so we are indirectly responsible because we're baying for this like victorious blood and these poor guys are going ah i just need something to get to the end and no one's protecting them like you said the staff aren't protecting them everyone's involved in wanting to just perpetuate their position at the very least so they're gonna cheat that's just human nature and it's also just implicit in the way we set sport up yeah absolutely although i'd love to see a big ride with you the cork in your mouth james i mean that's the bit you don't see on camera uh but you're right i mean ultimately on the basic level it does come down to sort of human nature i think it's sort of back to the ancient olympics i think they were you know whether they were actually obviously not taking synthetic substances but you know you'd be eating cow's testicles and that you know it was you they knew that they were trying to get sort of you know richness of substance in their body to perform so yeah i think there's an innate aspect of humans isn't there that you know you sort of want to achieve sometimes to achieve you might have to sort of you know put your moral compass aside to reach where you want to reach i i think the and i guess the clearer example of that actually is in the amateur side of sport because i guess you know on the professional side you can at least argue that you know you are paying for a lifestyle or your family's lifestyle whether that is in monica or that is literally just existing but you know we all know it's quite tiring every month to have you know the mortgage or the rent and you know it gets a bit tedious that's a pressure in itself so if your sport is reliant on that but yeah on the amateur side and i'm sure we've you know we've seen cases over the years like the grand vondo racing it always seems to be a lot well I say a lot but they're always coming back with positive tests or regularly and it is yeah I think it is that sort of and ostensibly let's be honest it is on the male side of um of things and I spoke to actually Joe Papp I don't know if you've come across no Joe Papp so Joe Papp he was erasing the time sort of the Lance period shall we say he he tested positive he was banned but But then Joe supercharged it and he was then caught drug dealing.

45:22So he, you know, he admitted all this and he's quite an anti-doping sort of advocate now. But he said back then, so this is in the 2000s, his clients, I think he had 200 plus. And he was saying 20 % of them were pros and 80 % were amateurs. And he was saying, his mate was saying, it's down to, you know, you might only be winning what a plastic trophy at the end. but it's you know the ego is sort of the pride of just sort of like wanting to be the best yeah which is sort of innate in a human being i think if we forward to sort of now the concern is that the world is becoming more chemical should we say or the western world isn't it if you look on the social medias now and the amount of ads there are for peptides and the like which a lot of them aren't based off any sort of valid research whatsoever, but it's very in your face of like, well, you take this and you can recover quicker.

46:21You can shed this amount of weight. And it almost seems like the Wild West now of information that's presented to you. Years ago, it was just sort of print magazines, newspapers, fanzines. It was quite hard to get access to some of this underground information. Now you've obviously got it at the press of a finger. I mean, I spoke to a chap who worked at Bristol Drug Centre, and I interviewed him, and he was showing me his phone, just going through Telegram, and he was like, so James, what would you like to take tomorrow? You know, should we have some steroids? Let's have some steroids. And then he just goes in his Telegram and said, okay, here's one client.

47:00Right, you've got 40 different steroids or something, right? Have this for a month. That would cost you£100. I didn't have£100, so I didn't pay. But, you know, it's so easy. to access some of these drugs that I think it would, yeah, probably be naive to not think, you know, there are more athletes across all sports taking drugs that potentially boost performance, albeit like I said, in something like peptides, the claims are potentially a little bit dubious. And that is something I think people say, particularly around weightlifting and kind of you know gym life lots of people in gyms or gyms seeing a resurgence of um the use of steroids in a kind of you know like it was back in the days of schwarzenegger and lou free no not to say those guys did they didn't but i'm just saying that era of incredibly muscular huge superhuman men was also beset with steroid use and then now sadly apparently that's that's a thing right in you know for just regular joes and james on the street because you can buy it very easy on the internet and some influencer says hey look at my incredible traps you can get muscles like me because i just do this thing and then lo and behold and it's and the mad thing is it works you know in a way it's obviously got horrendous connotations potentially but it does there is access to this stuff that sort of works is that a horrible truth uh yeah absolutely i mean i spoke to a chap um Imran Khan the other day for a piece for another publication of more of a health publication and um he runs a sort of um how do you describe it I guess like in an expert and enhancement shall we say so and he he said he presented at the house of lords and figures given by the government of like just a million to a million and a half of regular they would say iPad users or Peduce so either image enhancing drug users or performance enhancing drug users so over a million and you know chat was saying he feels it's more like three million in his experience I mean obviously I can't verify those uh figures but he says he's you know he's coming across it all the time and he is he's on the enhanced gains panel so he's actually for enhancement but in a safe way so he was saying he's getting people coming into his clinic who had just taken obscene amounts of steroid testosterone you know again peptides which are not based on much more than the hour they see and yeah it's just so accessible and the thing is like you said it it does work you can see sort of the gym these big sort of uh lads and also like you said women are you know they're they're touched by it now as well it's becoming more and more popular for women in the gym to take some of these substances so it's just sort of there and i think the problem is and again going back to the enhanced games possibly the concern i had with it because there is a chapter on the enhanced games in the book is that it's just this normalization of drugs and he said that you know the problem is you're getting figured the figures don't really tell they don't come back to say this person died 15 years and it probably came down to steroid use it might just be like oh they had a cardiovascular issues they stopped taking storage years ago but it's showing up many years down the line so yeah i think there is a concern they're not just in sport but just the society as a whole it's like well where are we going with some of these uh so-called performance enhancers and actually will be sort of will there be repercussions down the line one thing that i feel like i might have read it in something that you wrote but also came up in the enhanced game stuff was about genetic modifications then passing down to future generations what actually does get passed down say if like a cyclist dope for ages would then their future offspring be a potentially better athlete than if they didn't or is that just other kinds of things i think it's hard to prove i think in theory there might be an element of that but it's interesting with that longevity side or the well i mean the how long does a drug last and the impact is they have done research into steroids especially where they've they've shown that once you've taken the steroids you've basically outage your chemical makeup and i think usually give the analogy of like the spinal tap analogy you know you've raised your physiological limit from 10 to 11 so even when you stop taking steroids i think it's the impact on the myonuclei and various processes in the muscle you've raised your limit so actually you've raised your potential so even if you stop taking it you raise your dial from 10 to 11 so there's certainly compelling reasons that certainly in steroid case if you take steroids you should be bound for life because you could still be enjoying the benefits down the line i think it's one of those where it's very hard to show that okay if you took drugs all your life would that pass down to your offspring and obviously there's more to sporting performance than just genetics but yeah i think there is a concern there and i think this maybe goes back to janice pittsola this is test that if you can find this genetic test which is picking up you know a lot of what the tests out there don't then it really can bolster the anti dope inside but um i think like alluded to earlier i think any test that is brought in it's just it's got to be so legally watertight that it can take years and years studies and studies and then by then the dopers could have moved on.

52:36They could be miles ahead again. So yeah, it's a constant sort of battle. I wouldn't want to work in anti-doping, to be honest. And that in itself is a big thing, isn't it? The money talks, when doing a bit of research for this episode, came across a case with Tyson Fury against UCAD, so that's the UK Anti-Doping Agency, and it cost them 7 % of their annual budget to go to court with Tyson Fury, who's, I think it was something to do with steroids or testosterone. There's an alabonic steroid that was detected in a sample. This was in 2017, so it was quite a few years ago. But the point being, that's a guy, Tyson Fury, who will get 75 million plus for fighting Anthony Joshua later on this year or next year.

53:23And he's going to court with somebody or an organization who his, you know, per fight wealth probably dwarfs their annual budget. And then they have to make a choice. Do we do that? And do we push this point home or just back off? And in that event, he was handed a retrospective ban. But there was also this lovely little bit where he also got let off something else as part of the package. So again, it's all, it's murky, isn't it? It's really hard because the money talks, right? And that leads me on thinking like, who funds this? And it seems kind of bonkers because the sports themselves do most of the funding to the anti-doping.

54:02But then they also stand to be caught, which would also back up the idea that sport is clean. Because why would you give lots of money to an organization that then turns around and catches the athletes within your sport and makes your whole sport look bad? But equally, it's a murky business because these agencies themselves, poorly funded and also not in the pockets. I'm not going to use that phrase. that's not what I'm getting at but you know they're they're connected to the people they're not completely independent they're connected to the people they're supposed to investigate I'm throwing lots of ideas in there but like how does how does that sort of that landscape look to you what did it come out of in in dope or how did that sort of manifest well you're right James I mean it is particularly murky and it is an opaque situation because essentially there's an inherent conflict between you've got people promoting the sport who are policing the sport or maybe not direct people but you know that's where a lot of the funding is coming from so yeah what what is the real driver you know you don't want your top footballers for example you've got you know spreading the word of your game around the world to be caught so there is yeah there's an incredibly murky area there i mean the anti-doping agencies would certainly argue no they're they're completely independent.

55:21But the perception obviously suggests otherwise. I mean, you have people on the committees of the IOC, International Olympic Committee, who are on WADA's. You know, if you're on the IOC, you don't want your track and field events to be, you know, blighted. I mean, as I lead into the book, it's sort of my first memory of the world of illegal substances in sport. And I was born in 77. was at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, and it was Ben Johnson who won 100 metres. I think it was 9.79 seconds at the time. And then a couple of days later, you had the smooth-tongued Des Linen just received a bit of paper off camera, and he was saying, if this story is true, it'll be the biggest story of this Olympics, and if not of any Olympics, that he tested positive for.

56:14I think it was Stanisola. a lot no I can't say a steroid um but yeah and that lighted sort of you know that games and it's certainly for example me I was 11 I remember that so vividly you know of the 100 meters just that race were actually turned out it was so dirty as well you know the the much missed uh Richard Moore wrote the book on it I don't know if you've read it the dirtiest race in history which is well worth and I think it was only one or two of the eight finalists actually were never had a positive drugs test. I think it was. So, yeah, there is a real inherent conflict of sort of Wilder doing their work and there was so much politics at play.

56:59There was the case of Yannick Simmer, you know, in the tennis a couple of years ago where he tested positive, I think it was Clostable, which was a sort of muscle-boosting hormone. of him but it turns out uh well they believe that it came from his masseuse's cream but he was essentially that both parties agreed to this three-month ban which sounded a little bit dubious anyway and then this ban you know uh from the outside the perception was conveniently it fell before the first grand slam of the year in france so i think you know wad always said that's just how it fell they say the timeline doesn't come into any decision they make which makes sense but again there is that perception that you know you have politics high-end in sports men and women are almost immune to being blighted because it's just not good for the sport on that subject from what you know all your research do you think cycling could afford to catch if pukaccia was doping do you think cycling could afford to actually catch him do you think it would just ruin sport for good Good question, Will.

58:07I mean, I guess, you know, you look back to, you know, Lance meets Oprah. And, you know, that was as big as Pogaccia feels. I mean, it doesn't feel like Pogaccia has perhaps transcended, you know, beyond the world of sport like Lance did and his foundation and, you know, raising X amount of hundreds of millions of dollars for the Panzer charity. So, and I guess, you know, we can certainly say cycling has recovered i mean all three of us are in the industry you know clinging on in the world of publishing but you know it's it's um you know it's still got a big fan base there's more money being invested into the world tour teams than ever before isn't there so there's certainly if it's you know if you're talking about the money invested well yeah it's more popular than ever in that respect but i mean from a viewing side of things you know we've seen how itv didn't look to renew, or certainly not what they were paying before, the renewed contract for the Tour de France.

59:07So it was, you know, certainly in the UK, we were having to pay to view it. Well, actually, you did have the Channel 5 highlights, so I retract that. But it wasn't quite, you know, perhaps what ITV had invested into it in the past. So, yeah, if Pogaccio tested positive, yeah, it clearly wouldn't help. But, and I think this is, you know, I guess it's a bit of a tangent, is I guess part of the maybe a continued skepticism perhaps in our sport or a reason to be slightly skeptical is going back to what I said earlier about the MPCC so the movement for credible cycling that voluntary organization cycling was down in 10th at the last count of doping positives and I think it was 20 but I think nine of those were at the comity level so what the third division of cycling where you're not mandated to be on the biological passport i think it's probably too cost prohibitive so again there's i don't know you're sort of looking and saying well hang on if some of these drugs are so impactful how can half the people caught in the peloton be at the third division you know and then you've got the world stars who are clean not you know testing positive at all so again i know it's far more complex than that but there might be a skepticism there but I think it it would recover I mean it's let's hope these top riders aren't and I think there is certainly a case I mean I've written enough on in the past that you know the advancement in training nutrition you know and technology it does make a difference I mean it's you know him riding with Rocketman lost the stone and went faster you know it was all relative in my own very slow world but i think you know these things do have an impact but um yeah i i think this sport would survive but obviously it wouldn't be a great pr job and we know the broadsheets or the why the media although cycling seems to be this sport they love to crucify i don't know if they feel it is that it's such a ridiculous sport that people tend to know say the tour de france more than professional cycling that makes sense yeah people will know the tour and how absurd it is so maybe that just sells newspapers or gathers interest that if someone does test you know the drugs in this ridiculous sport then people's interest is peaked um hence i think they do focus on cycling more than other sports would necessarily yeah that often occurs to me that in his own way armstrong did more to publicize cycling let's say by cheating than anyone has ever done to any sport ever because he suddenly made cycling which is previously a bit of a pretty niche sport particularly in certain countries especially in the states pretty niche sport until a bit with them on but then Armstrong we put on the map made that part of the mainstream conversation so that's one thing that sort of occurs to me just that's a little brain fart going on over here but something just to speak to um what you guys were talking about there and Pogacar and to bring some balance mentioning Pogacar is not to say anything, casting any aspersions at all.

1:02:18It's just he's the guy that's at the top of the sport. So the question is, if the guy at the top of the sport or the podium at the top of the sport currently was found to be cheating, how damaging would that be? Just so happens you can put Pogacar's name in there because he's that guy. But yeah, thanks for kind of answering that. And also Pogacar, he's probably the most tested, if not cyclist, possibly the most tested athlete in the world. say, well, all the evidence is that he's riding clean. People will speculate. We know this is cycling. Yeah, there's absolutely no evidence that he's ever taken anything.

1:02:54And not that we should trust AI for anything ever, because it is currently taking our jobs. This isn't even us. This is just AI renderings of all three of us. I would definitely have had a haircut on AI, James. But came across a piece by Valora, which is a new cycling website run by my erstwhile colleague Peter Stewart and it's all very AI data driven and data created, AI created. But anyway, I've spoken to Peter about this and I believe this to be a pretty substantial model. He got loads of data, got AI, various large language models to look at the difference between Pantani's setup when he put his Alpe d 'Huez record down in the late 90s versus Pogaccia, who broke that record by, I don't know, 90 seconds, this Tour de France.

1:03:46How, you know, put Pantani on a Pogaccia bike or vice versa, what would it look like? And actually, Pantani is still faster. So Pogaccia's kit does make him, according to computer modeling, his kit, his training, things like altitude counts as much as you can kind of quantify those, all does point towards everything is making the modern rider much faster but even then the guy who pantani by the way was never officially popped for doping it was all conjecture but a guy who was had the finger pointed at him a lot at a point in time where doping was rife he still would be faster today so i think that's um a kind of interesting one but just kind of like to I don't know land on the last bit because you've got other places to go James which is I kind of feel I do feel sorry for cycling a lot of the time I think it is it is that whipping boy I think it is that scapegoat for other sports something that you point out in dope is the amount of money that's given to anti-doping agencies by the premier league nothing by UK football or the English sort of FA it's like a fraction of a percent yeah cycling's giving loads of money to these things it has a vested interest sure but in a way it's it's damned if it does it's damned if it doesn't because if it doesn't everyone goes well hey you're not supporting anti-doping because you guys are doping if it does then you go oh yeah but you're just funding the people who are supposed to police you so therefore it's corrupt because they're not you're just choosing to pay off the people to to not catch you and look like they're catching you and you can break as many records as you want as someone like Pogaccia who is irrespective of bikes and kit and training and everything else is an in you know generational talent and you're still going to have somebody on some tiny little podcast somewhere talking to an author who's written an amazing book called dope wondering aloud whether or not you know these things are you know there's these are honest records that have been or the records that have been broken honestly it's really shit i think for cycling football has none of this scrutiny i'm not saying it should do but there's never question marks rarely question marks nor really tennis nor golf you know these high formula one you know what might be going on the snooker big sport everyone needs a steady hand but it's always it's always cycling isn't i just feel really sorry for cycling yeah i mean we're actually just quickly touching upon snooker um good i'm glad we finally got to snooker absolutely for your damning sport um i don't if you remember a chap called Bill Werbenick.

1:06:23So he was, I mean, he was four years old. He was in the 80s when Snoop was enjoying a big boom with the 1985 final between Taylor and Davis. But Bill Werbenick was this big Canadian dude who basically he was on beta blockers to steady his, I think he said he had a genetic twitch, along those lines, some neural condition. And they wouldn't let him play, I think, with the beta blockers. So the only thing that could match the calming impact of the beta blockers was drinking eight or ten pints a sort of game so he could do that and he you know he said it was justified because of this you know trying to calm him down so much so i think that he tried to get sort of put it for his taxes but i don't think i don't think bill managed i don't i don't think they let him but no i think cycling is particularly damned i i wonder if there is an element of how much do people really care across all sports you know you look at football and i like diego maradona is my he was the player growing up when i first saw on tv and i was like oh my word like who on earth is this and you know maradona are many drug scandals whether it was uh for performance enhancing or just off the enhancing yeah exactly but i still see maradona as you know the player who you know i'd love to have had a pint with or you know try to play keepy ups with um and i wonder if that is there's a small element to it that if you're watching football i think there would still be a feeling that well how much can drugs teach you to do a croix turn for example but we know that in all sports they're more professional than ever and for example in football you know you've got to be fitter than ever so it's all very well being able to do a cross-turn but if you haven't got the fitness or the recovery between matches on different countries you know two or three times a week that cross-turn we move a redundant because you can't accelerate from a player but i yeah i just wonder if in some sports are people that interested and some reason in cycling we possibly are maybe there's an element of if it's say something like football most people who watch football don't really play football you might play a bit side that there's that real vicarious side maybe in cycling it's different that if you're into cycling you do tend to cycle to some degree and i don't know whether that impacts your perception of like well they shouldn't be cheating in the sport i devote x amount of hours to but um no you're right i think cycling it is one of those you're damned if you're doing damned if you don't but i do feel that i've researched it cycling more than any other sport because that is the the sport I sort of live in most, that to a degree they couldn't do much more in the current framework.

1:09:13I'm sure everyone could say they could do more, but there's not an infinite amount of money. And these tests aren't cheap, you know, blood tests, urine tests, you know, whatever tests they go in. There is, again, I will let you go, James, but just thinking like the comparison between football and cycling, it's almost like in football, cheating is front and centre. because you see players going down making challenges that are deliberate fouls and going down and making a big meal of it and then you've got those moments those pivotal moments of hand of God sort of situations which are both criticised but slightly revered they become folkloric in a way that isn't only bad whereas cycling has not just a veneer, a depth of sort of transparent suffering, i.e.

1:10:02you're on the bike and you're going really hard and it's really it's really hard and you try and hide it but you can't and the etiquette built in i you know the race leader stops for a wee everyone slows down someone's chain falls off most of the time you stop and you help you know so it sort of seems incongruous with cycling because it's quite this i think it's quite i think it is just this quite honest sport really at its core whereas other sports boxing another one bite the guy's ear off you know do you know what i mean like it's almost just of course they're cheating why would they not be doping doesn't matter it's not doesn't not even on our radar and we're more interested in handballs or penalties that shouldn't have been anyway that's again another little yeah it's a very good point brain fart coming off a odd angle um you got very elegant brain farts but no james thank you so much um for chatting giving out your time i know you've got loads of other deadlines going on we will be putting some show notes together which will have links to james's book dope which is um is it blink blinking publishing blinking publishing yeah there's sort of an imprint of bonnie air books it was sort of the bigger umbrella company over them but yeah but yeah pick up a copy of dope it's really good i have read it not in its entirety i'm not gonna lie but i have read a good chunk of it and it's brilliantly researched um really compelling reading um so yeah get that get that for your mates who are into cycling get that for your mates who are into football because it's applicable to every sport um or just get it to you know it's an interesting read but yeah james thanks so much and hopefully talk to you again at some point in time where you've got dope 2 or rocket man 2 where you take on 21 stages of the tour de france not just the attack but using a performance enhancing program a bit like the icarus chat you can do it that way that's not a bad idea i'll get onto the enhanced games crew immediately Yes.

1:11:56James Witts, ladies and gentlemen, thank you again, James. That was a long time on your offering, putting that together. You don't need to know that, listeners, but yeah, just again, thanks, James. That was a bit of pulling teeth to get to this point. Will, A, what did you make of it? But also B, we touched on it. We didn't really explain it. Let's do it now. Enhanced Games, give me a little bio of what that is. If we could steer people towards the episode where we interviewed the Enhanced Games proponent, founder CEO Aaron D'Souza overlord overlord good good word um it's the drug olympics basically isn't it yeah i mean the first one this year the whole thing was they're trying to obviously getting something off the ground they've been trying to they've got a lot of investment from very rich people trying to get big athletes in because i guess you know if you just get joe off the street and throwing the drugs he's probably not going to break a world record but you need to get a good enough athlete to then put the drugs in to then break the world records they were giving out you know massive cash bonuses for world records and i think i think only one got broken in the first one um is that in swimming yeah albeit you know they don't exactly have they don't have every sport on the radar yet that some people might argue that the conditions like the pool for example might not have been the ideal fast comparable to the olympics kind of thing yeah and I'm sure it'll keep growing.

1:13:17But the first edition was kind of not very impressive, but you'd think they keep doing that, enhancing the enhanced games. Enhancing enhanced games. And it would, yeah, I'm not advocating for it. I was going to say I'm impartial. I'm not going to give you my opinion. No, I'm not advocating for it at all. I'm against the enhanced games. However, there is one sort of interesting aspect to it, which is a bit like legalizing drugs, where, as in like recreational drugs, if you just legalize it, in theory you could sort of take the the danger and the criminality and also you could just wholly remove the questions of are they from sport the sorts of things we talked about at the end about how sad it is to be a champion cyclist because people always there always be some people who always point a finger at you yeah but if everyone's hey everyone's doping then that question that finger pointing is is completely irrelevant yeah you wouldn't have people chasing chris room dressed as a doctor with a giant aspirin inhaler up a mountain.

1:14:15Although that is one of the better than a mankini. But yeah, I mean, what's your general sorts of, do you feel predisposed to feeling sorry for cycling or do you feel like cycling is still going through a, what's the word, a redemptive period and it owes it to itself to be particularly clean and to still take those questions of are you on the chin? yeah i think you know given the history of the sport i think and the riders themselves i think you saw in the reaction to the overnight tests of the tour de france the riders themselves know that they've got to be tested to prove they're clean because of the history of the sport and i think particularly vinger guard i thought he spoke really well on like you know i'm fine to do 2am testing if that's what proves that we're clean yeah and you know fair enough if you if you got nothing to hide then you know great go ahead obviously you then get different questions of fairness and like if one person's tested at 2am they should all be tested at 2am yeah but um yeah i think the big question for me is i you get so many sports i've been touched on that quite a lot there that just they don't care about it really like i watched a lot of american sports and you know baseball for example had a steroid phase and that's looked back on and like those particular players i haven't been allowed into the hall of fame for example but then you also get fans being and I'm like, well, that was way more entertaining.

1:15:33Can't we just let them hit the ball? You get NFL, you get frequent performance-intensive drugs, and then they get like three games or something, and it's like, great. And also, you just look at sort of, I don't know, particularly the build of like an NFL player, or maybe a rugby player is a better example. And again, I'm not trying to cast aspersions on sports. I'm just saying the scrutiny is not there, but if you wanted to, you could scrutinize other sports and similar ways to cycling based on certain obvious aspects. You've got an 18-stone bloke who can run 10 second 100 meters, which is kind of improbable.

1:16:11It shouldn't really work, but yet that is fairly... I mean, I don't know enough about Roppy. Is that about right? Yeah, but basically you've got massive guys who are really fast. And you're like, is that possible just on its own? Or maybe it is. I don't know. But I'm just saying those things, the extraordinary performances are across all sports but it's only when cycling has an extraordinary performance does the press turn around and go question mark's over it's like the whole thing Pogaccia did this incredible ride his whole tour was pretty difficult in the first place because Buell into the race thinking he was going to win knowing he was going to win Vingegaard then crashed out and it's like well he's basically won then he's sort of doing that incredibles thing where the little fast kid is like trying to do a race but he knows he's just could just beat everyone so he's holding back yeah and it's like we all know that pogacic could be up the road so he's already in that sort of mindset of being like how much do i push on do i just hold back and let these other little race and i win or meanwhile every time he then does go and win he gets called greedy for winning a stage and he gets everyone the whole conversation around his outdoors thing was oh yeah he must be on drugs yeah and it's like can we just you know he's getting as james said he's getting tested a heck of a lot that the process do that you know testing will innovate if they catch someone they catch someone if they don't they don't but as a viewer he's just it's just bloody good cycle isn't Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:17:44And as a sort of situation, there's two sides to a coin and you can choose one. And often I think the wider media chooses the negative one. So for example, Vinigard and Bogatja getting woken up during the night to be tested at the Tour de France is not standard protocol. the rationale for that happening is which is within the rules is something along the lines of if we think there's reason to then we will so then someone invokes that aspect of the rules and goes look okay sure they weren't caught it wasn't positive but the testing authorities only do that if they think there's reason and if they think there's reason no smoke without fire that's one way of looking at it or the other way of looking at it is okay that is in the rules and unfortunately they've they've kind of made their own stumbling block but what a good advert for the sport which is like you know what we'll go the extra mile and we will show you at a point in time where people are going how is this guy so good how are these guys so good we'll just show you we'll remove doubt we'll we'll even test them actually really you know at odd times and just put it beyond the shadow of a doubt and that would be the positive spin but people don't tend to pick up the positive spoon because there's less of a story in that there's more of a story in kind of going oh i wonder if yeah and it's the whole thing of the cycling being sort of almost seen as a cheating thing or a bit of a laughingstock it's like you only get you know the most coverage you get is a big crash or when someone's taking drugs or like in the tour de france fam you had international like national newspapers massive things reporting on one tiny story about there might be some error gains from women wearing padded bras yeah and it was a non-story it didn't happen there was a maybe checked a couple of riders no one was doing it didn't make a difference no but it was everywhere and it was being reported on after the race had finished like it was a new thing that's like you're just like the whole story of this race was that it was an amazing race it was probably the best race of the year and no one's talking about that yeah and outside of the cycling sphere really the focus should be on look at how amazing this race is look at how far women's cycling women's sport has come is coming and still growing look at these amazing athletes but you're talking about this non-story that's just taken off because people like look at cycling isn't it crazy yeah yeah yeah so yeah i mean it all does just come back to what we're saying or what i was saying i just feel desperately sorry yeah it must be a bloody hard job sometimes so anyway all cyclists out there amateurs particularly professionals alike i salute you i think we salute you we salute you don't mean yeah we salute you psychics magazine podcast salutes you uh and i think listeners do as well it's been a fantastic summer of cycling to watch so far still got the velta to come plus lombardia which pogaccia will presumably win again for the 9000th time and the Tour of Lankawi or something maybe to round it off I can't remember whatever the last race was the world should be good though the world should be good so there we go and then we've got it coming to the UK next year how lovely anyway I'm prattling on we need to go so do you dear listeners go and make a cup of tea or go back to working from home or whatever it is you're doing right now when you should be listening to the Psychos Magazine podcast Aaron D'Souza Enhanced Games find that one that's a good one that can be your next list in between now and two weeks time.

1:21:23So until then, goodbye.

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