‘This is effectively a warrant’: Sports scientist speaks on the Tour de France night time doping tests

The news on Sunday that Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard, then first and second overall in the Tour de France, were subjected to what is believed to be unprecedented anti-doping tests in the small hours of the morning has been dominating the news cycle in recent days.

Testers visited Vingegaard at 2 a.m., while Pogačar was subjected to a visit around 5 a.m. Those tests were carried out during a window of time between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. which is normally not used by testers, with both UCI regulations and French law making clear that such testing should be very limited and only when needed.

Ross Tucker is a well regarded sports scientist and spoke about this topic at length in his Science in Sport podcast. He spoke separately to Velo on Tuesday, giving his detailed take on why the testing was carried out, what benefits are found when taking samples within this normally restricted period, what substances athletes attempting to dope might use to dodge detection, how microdosing EPO could itself be considered a masking agent of sorts, and whether or not the tests are themselves a red flag.

Tucker also explained why the demand from some members of the public for full disclosure is unreasonable.

Eliminating a loophole for doping

Velo: First off, Ross, can we get your general thoughts on the nighttime testing that has been carried out at the Tour?

Ross Tucker: I think a couple of things. Number one, you can understand there is a period of time that they general say that they are not going to test. Otherwise if it is open-season 24 hours day it is a problem. So that is unacceptable. But at the same time, you can’t block off a whole seven hours in a day and say we will never test in that block, because we know that there are doping practices that can give small advantage and yet be undetectable.

So there is a window of opportunity if that seven-hour block is kept sacrosanct all the time, if that makes sense. I think it is reasonable to understand that there will be exceptional circumstances and there will be scenarios when they are going to go and test in that block. Accepting that it is going to be intrusive, it is going to be disruptive, it is definitely not going to be popular. You see that.

But it is actually necessary. It is not just a convenience, it is a necessary inconvenience. Because people have to understand that the tester’s job is to compress the window of opportunity for the athletes to the point where the athlete thinks there is no chance to dope.

That is what they have to do. And if they don’t do that, anti-doping cannot credibly say that it is doing everything it can, because it is leaving open a loophole for doping. It has to happen.

That is the first point to make people understand, this is not just something you grudgingly do; it is necessary.

What exactly are testers searching for?

Velo:I suppose the relevance of this is that some substances can leave the system within that six or seven hour window. So I suppose it gives a chance for opportunistic dopers to take something at 11 p.m. or shortly thereafter and be clear by the morning. So what substances can be microdosed and in theory could be detected once you test within this 7-hour window between 11 a.m. and 6 a.m.?

RT: So from principle the concept is … it is pharmacology. There are some substances that the body processes very quickly and some substances that stick around for ages. For example on the latter, [tennis player] Jannik Sinner got away with almost no ban because he showed that even a very small dose of that steroid was still detectable four or five days later. So that would be a very bad candidate for microdosing.

But there are others. Back when the biological passport was being developed Michael Ashenden said that very small doses of EPO could be used and be undetectable within six or seven hours and still stimulate some red blood cell production.

Now it is logical that the less you use, the smaller the dose, the smaller the effect. So you are probably talking about a very small benefit to red blood cell production. But in elite sport, it is maybe a meaningful one, even if it is small. So EPO is the first candidate that comes to mind.

The other one that can be used in very small doses is the growth hormone. That is a hormone that basically aids in recovery and repair of damage, which you can appreciate in a cycling race is an important thing.

So very small doses of that, because it is naturally occurring too.

EPO, I suppose it is relatively recent in the doping history. In 2000, there wasn’t even a test yet. So if you doped in small enough amounts, there is probably a window there that you can get away with.

I have heard people talking about testosterone. I’ve not seen that. I would be surprised if that is not detectable again within a few hours. I am not sure. But Jonathan Vaughters, you’ll have seen his post, he has written that they were microdosing testosterone then.

One thing that has changed is the ability to detect these substances at unbelievably low concentrations. So it is possible that Vaughters in the 1990s could microdose with a much larger dose than the guys in these days could get away with.

Anyway, that’s where it leaves us. There is EPO, growth hormone are the likeliest candidates. Then possibly cortisone but again you start to need such a small dose that I almost wonder if the effect is even noticeable then. But again I don’t know that.

Microdosing acting as a masking agent

Velo:One thing I understand can happen if athletes get blood transfusions is that reticulocyte levels can drop. So in theory microdosing stops the noticeable drop which can be a red flag for a transfusion. Is that the case, and could that be a reason for microdosing other than getting a direct performance benefit?

RT: Yeah, exactly. Because if you put blood in, the body says ‘I have got enough,’ and it stops making its own. Then a couple of days later you pick up a lower than normal reticulocyte percentage, immature blood cells.

That’s what Floyd Landis explained to people, that you offset one effect with another. So you do A, you just change it with B. And microdosing could do that just enough. So a small dose of EPO could hide a small increase in red blood cells, which caused a small decrease in reticulocytes and around and around we go.

So I think it does get really complicated. And that is one of the things actually that I perhaps could have emphasized when I tried to explain this previously. Trying to spot this stuff is tricky, it is difficult. It is really difficult to find these changes in a meaningful way for anti-doping.

The best analogy I ever heard was trying to find a doper with a test is like trying to shine a flashlight into a dark tunnel and hoping you can pick up a car as it drives past that light. That’s what anti-doping is trying to do.

If you basically say you are not allowed to shine the light in this section of the tunnel from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. you are not allowed to shine the light, that is a problem. But even if you can shine the light, you still have to get lucky.

That’s the principle of why you need it.

A specific threshold for late night testing

Velo:Can you do a run-through of the UCI rules versus the French law in terms of allowing this testing in the small hours of the morning?

RT: Sure. On the understanding that we just explained about why you need to have the opportunity to make exceptions, it should be clear to people that you can’t just do it willy-nilly. Because then they will just abuse it and that block out session becomes basically open season.

So what they UCI has said is that in exceptional circumstances where there is specific reason for suspicion, they will test in that block.

It is clause 5.2.2. I don’t have the wording exactly in front of me right now but there is very specific wording.

Now what subsequently emerged is that in French law that bar is even higher. They talk about serious and concordant, that was the translation. They said general justification is not enough.

So what is general justification? General justification is what anti-doping uses all the time to identify who should be tested. For instance, who is leading? Who won the stage? Who is the best in the world? Test them. It makes sense, you test the people who are performing the best. That’s the general justification for testing.

What the French law specifically says is that is not enough [of a reason for night time tests]. So what they would need would be something serious and concordant. And then they go on to say [in French law] that furthermore there must be a risk that the evidence would disappear if they didn’t act in that window.

Now the case of evidence disappearing is just biology, because the whole point of microdosing is that it is going to work and then disappear. So they are literally talking about the drug in urine or blood. That is my read of it.

So the French standard seems to be a little higher and a little more spelled out than the UCI policy is. But I guess they both boil down to the same thing, which is to say to the authorities that you can’t just show up and insist on a test because someone is in the yellow jersey, that someone is winning or winning by a lot. You have to have quite specific reasons to justify it.

People will be familiar with watching crime shows and you have to get a warrant. This is effectively a warrant to test an athlete between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. And so we don’t know what the details of that application were. All we have learned is that a French judiciary approved it and that’s why they went ahead and tested in those hours.

Does the testing itself indicate real concerns?

Velo:A judge giving a green light to late night testing seems pretty significant. Can we presume that there must be some sort of red flags? Or is that going too far to make that conclusion?

RT: I think you can say in the perception of the anti-doping authorities there was enough of a red flag to justify the application and subsequent approval to do the test. Beyond that, whether that same red flag would be enough for you or I or for a different observer in a court of law, I don’t know. But it is not nothing either. If it was general justification, I can’t see how it could be approved. Unless you want to argue the whole system is corrupt, in which case the whole conversation is a non-starter!

But if the system is working, then the fact that they got permission from a judge tells you that there were some grounds that at least a few people agreed were sufficient to justify that test. And subsequently we have learned about other tests in other teams also.

Now does that make it better or worse? I don’t know, it depends on your perspective.

Are politics at play?

Velo: EF Education-EasyPost chief Jonathan Vaughters said that his riders were tested at 10 p.m. last night. So they weren’t tested within that window, and he said his riders haven’t on other days been tested within that window. His take, and he said he is just taking a guess, but he said he thinks given the history of the sport, he doesn’t think it would be terribly hard to get a French judge to sign off on these tests. That would kind of go against the wording of the French law. So do you think it is oversimplifying things of Vaughters to say that?

RT: I really don’t know. Sometimes in this debate, the presence of Seixas in the race complicates matters because now you get parochial fans, it is a bit more loaded than it might be. But sometimes I get the impression it is an easy fallback, ‘oh, the French, it’s a wild west out there.’ And I don’t know if that is necessarily fair.

The one thing I would say is the ITA is another testing authority. It is not the AFLD, and it is not the UCI, although it is kind of the UCI via the ITA. So if you think about it from that perspective of how many stakeholders there are and what the ITA’s mandate is, it would be a tough one to say that they have to go make this application risking their credibility in the medium and long term by playing a game of politics and being frivolous violating a French law, losing face, drawing all this criticism.

It feels like a more complicated thing to me than saying that there is a solid case here, or at least a solid enough case to warrant the testing.

Now I don’t know that for sure, but it just feels like the easy fallback to say, ‘ah, the French are at it again.’

So I don’t know. Okay, it could be, just in the same way that it could be that anti-doping is under pressure because I think there is a lot of suspicion around cycling that they never have a positive test. So maybe the anti-doping are saying, ‘we just have to flex,’ for want of a better scientific word. ‘We’ve just got to show more. And one of the ways we can show more is look how far we are going. This is the extent of our desire to catch these dopers, we will raid the hotels.’

It is back to 1998 vibes. So that’s possible, but again the ITA, the UCI will look at this and say ‘if you do this and you get nothing, we set ourselves back.’ So I don’t know.

‘If there is no positive test we will never hear’

Velo: You did say in your podcast that you would be surprised if there was a positive test. Does that mean a belief that something iffy isn’t happening, or that the substances are hard to detect and therefore they wouldn’t necessarily be picked up?

RT: Probably the latter. I just know the test sensitivity is so poor. As I said, it is shining a flashlight into a dark tunnel and you are just trying to get lucky.

I’ll give you one example from track and field. They had targeted this athlete, a very high profile athlete. And they had strong suspicions that he was doping as he had produced a series of very dodgy biological passport results. And so they identified him as a candidate for target testing. They went about this in a targeted testing campaign. It took them years to catch him.

They were throwing everything at him [laughs]. They were testing him not at all for a few weeks, then three times in four or five days. Then not at all, then a few times. As they were collecting his samples, the picture grew more and more suspicious, but they couldn’t land the positive test.

What I took from that is it is really hard to find the substance. The smoking gun is elusive. The eternal challenge for anti-doping is that the test sensitivity is just so poor.

The best time to do surprise tests

Velo: Did they ultimately catch that athlete?

RT: Yeah, that’s how it came out, subsequently in the legal case they showed the dates and you could see it. It was so clear.

That’s the thing. It’s Armstrong’s 500 tests, although that was an exaggeration, It’s just the test sensitivity is not great. So even if someone is doping, I am not sure that you would catch them.

But again, you are building a case. You mentioned the microdosing to try to mask certain other manipulations. Maybe that is what you get out of this. You are getting 20 sample across three weeks. Some of them are in the middle of night, and you start building a picture that is more and more suspicious.

So maybe it’s that. Maybe they are playing a long game here, I don’t know. I’d be very surprised if they land a knockout blow, as it were, or a smoking gun.

Velo: Testing at 2 a.m. versus 5 a.m., it seems to me that 5 a.m. is in theory less deleterious than 2 a.m., that at 2 a.m. you are drifting off into your first cycle of deep sleep. Is that unavoidable, that some riders will get tested at different times within that window than others? Can that be fine-tuned, or is that the whole thing, it has to be a surprise and it can’t be predictable?

RT: It has to be a surprise, because if you think about it, when would they be doping?

Velo: Straight away after the normal window ends, after 11 p.m.?

Ross Tucker: Yeah, when everyone goes to bed you think this is the opportunity. So realistically, if a six, seven hour window allows microdosing and you test five hours into it, you probably minimize your chances! So literally what you want to do is test them between 11 o’clock and 1 in the morning. That seems to me the most logical time to maximize your probability of finding something.

But if a rider is going to bed at 10 p.m., 2 a.m. interrupts them right in the middle. Whereas five o’clock, unless you went to bed at 1 o’clock, five in the morning is just an early day. We all have those.

Is the public justified in demanding answers?

Velo: Thanks you for your insight. Any last thoughts on this matter?

RT: The other thing that strikes me is this bizarre entitlement that people seem to have that they should be told why they were tested.

I’m not talking about the cyclists. They have a claim. Like, if I was the cyclist, I would want to say, ‘listen, what is going on here?’ They wouldn’t be told because for the authorities to tell a rider what the intel and suspicion is would be analogous to the police telling a criminal why they are bugging them.

But from the perspective of the public, the number of people who said the ITA should publish why they thought that they should do this test at that time and they should make available the judicial procedures and what was approved by a judge. I mean, think about what you are asking them to do. You are basically asking them how they operate on the intelligence side.

It’s like, run a hypothetical and write their statement. What do people want the ITA to come out and say? Do they want them to say, ‘these two guys had wildly implausible biological sample failures.’ Or do you want them to say, ‘yeah, you know, we have been tracking deliveries to the hotel and we have identified an unusual sequence of medical products that are delivered to the hotel every afternoon [laughs].

So what could possibly make them think that the ITA should share their intelligence procedures? It is ridiculous. Because there is nothing they could say that wouldn’t harm their own procedures into the future, not just for this case, but forever because now you would know that they have got sources and hotlines and whatnot. And secondly, it would be so prejudicial to the cyclists’ case to have it out in public why they were targeted.

It is just unbelievable that people insist that they have got to be more transparent about that.

Hear from Ross Tucker on this and other topics at his Science of Sport podcast.