Tour de France riders are inhaling carbon monoxide in 'super altitude' recipe

https://escapecollective.com/exclusive-tour-riders-are-inhaling-carbon-monoxide-in-super-altitude-recipe/

by huphtur • 2 years ago

35 74 2 years ago

weinzierl• 2 years ago

This article is shadow paywalled. It looks as if you could read it but suddenly throws a "Want to keep reading? Pay!" in your face.

Lalabadie• 2 years ago

Complete article: https://archive.is/70wTN

MBCook5• 2 years ago

Reader mode got me past it no sweat in Safari.

Terr_2• 2 years ago

Disabling Javascript by default wins again! :p

pwg• 2 years ago

With uBlock Origin by default blocking all the javascript on the site the entire article is readable.

davidw3• 2 years ago

Cycling journalism doesn't pay well and has suffered in recent years. Escape Collective is a group trying to 'go their own way' to provide high quality reporting on their own terms.

So it makes sense for them to paywall it; it's not meant for a broader audience, but people who want a lot of high quality bike news.

https://escapecollective.com/about-us/

IncreasePosts• 2 years ago

I browse default with javascript off, and if it seems like a website is messed up, I enable it on a per-site basis. Browsing like this is 1) really nice for my laptop battery, but 2) also completely eliminates many of these soft paywalls.

MBCook5• 2 years ago

This sounds very stupidly dangerous. I’m amazed this is legal, and that people would do it in the first place.

I get wanting to win at all costs but this is nuts.

its_ethan6• 2 years ago

I don't know what it is about cycling that seems to concentrate some of the most insane physiological manipulation (not sure if that's the right phrase tbh).

Other sports like baseball/tennis/etc seem to have some issues with like general steroids. But the level that cyclists go to always seems to exceed them by orders of magnitude.

I don't know how true it is, but I've heard that some cyclists had/have to set alarms throughout the night so they wake up to do jumping jacks to get their heart rates back up above the "artificial" 15bpm that their training + cocktail of drugs has caused.

Swizec• 2 years ago

I don't know how true it is, but I've heard that some cyclists had/have to set alarms throughout the night so they wake up to do jumping jacks to get their heart rates back up above the "artificial" 15bpm that their training + cocktail of drugs has caused.

Even as a casual runner (top 20% in a marathon, def not competitive), I have had to silence low heart rate alarms on my apple watch because my heart rate regularly drops below 40bpm at night. When I’m in peak condition for a race, I’ve seen it drop as low as 30.

Professional cyclists have the highest VO2max of any athlete. Even without drugs I would be completely unsurprised if their heart rate gets to 20bpm in deep sleep.

LargeWu3• 2 years ago

I think because there's less "skill" required, in the sense of hand-eye coordination, than ball sports. The predominant factor seems to be how hard and how long you can push yourself. Once you reach the human body's natural physical limits, chemical advantage seems like the only way to break through those.

matsemann4• 2 years ago

The wake up and walk around the hotel was mainly an EPO thing, where your blood got so thick you otherwise could die.

anotherboffin• 2 years ago

I had heard that in the context of absurdly high hematocrit, where they would get their heart rate up to move the (very viscous) blood around their body. No source, but doesn’t sound impossible when everyone was on EPO.

brandall10• 2 years ago

The other sports you listed provide much more strain on the muscoskeletal system and the cardio impact is bursty. But with cycling you have this amazingly efficient machine relieving that type of stress so it becomes more of an exercise of how efficiently the body can process oxygen and pump blood under constant duress.

ben7799• 2 years ago

That was the early EPO era.. there were some riders that died in their sleep their blood was so thick from massive amounts of EPO. Their red blood cell counts were excessively high.

RIMR• 2 years ago

I just watched Tour de Pharmacy, which I thought was parody, but now I'm not so sure.

scott_w10• 2 years ago

I doubt it’s dangerous at all:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40948229

MBCook5• 2 years ago

Injecting spider venom isn’t dangerous as long as you get the dosage right.

If doing this makes it possible to perform better, people are going to push the edge of the amount that’s “safe“. Right up to the limit. Tip toeing over the limit.

People will get seriously hurt/die if they do it wrong.

It’s CO. there’s a reason the government is always telling people to make sure they have carbon monoxide detectors. It’s not because they might get too good at sports.

drdaeman• 2 years ago

I'm amazed this is legal

If someone is well-informed (the key point here - but I assume professional athletes are well aware of what they're doing) and still wants to do something weird and/or dangerous to their body, without harming others in the process - who is to deny them their bodily autonomy, and on what basis?

and that people would do it in the first place

Two words: professional sports. Those folks willingly (I hope, or that'd be insane) risk their health for money, fame, and advances of medical science. Although the entertainment industry really tries the weirdest thing that I really don't understand - trying their best to shift the focus away from the science advancement as much as possible, even though this is the only actually valuable thing in professional sports.

MBCook5• 2 years ago

I meant legal in the allowed by the sport’s governing body sense, not the will the cops show up at my door sense.

If this is what athletes do to get to the top of the sport, then it soon becomes a pseudo requirement. If the sport regulators don’t clamp down on it then they’re basically forcing people to do something insanely risky if they want to compete.

Plenty of professional sports have banned things for simply being too dangerous even if they do give an edge.

Terr_2• 2 years ago

I wonder what'll happen if/when it leads to a fatality:

Other details like optimal dosage are still very much in question as well. [...] Aside from the risk of death, acute carbon monoxide poisoning can cause lasting health problems, including delayed neurological damage. [..."]But if you inhale carbon monoxide, the half-life is 300 minutes. If you get toxic levels, you’re really screwed” because the gas can’t leave your body for hours. [...] And in especially acute cases, victims would need access to a hospital equipped with a special hyperbaric chamber for treatment.

lupusreal• 2 years ago

I understand inhaling carbon monoxide to be common practice for road cyclists.

droopyEyelids• 2 years ago

and diesel particulates!

scott_w10• 2 years ago

You inhale less CO and other pollutants on a bicycle than you do in a car. I don’t have the study to hand but this has definitely been measured.

adolph• 2 years ago

Seems like they are breathing plenty of carbon monoxide during the race too: https://www.welovecycling.com/wide/2022/07/01/cars-supportin...

davidw3• 2 years ago

I got a light case of CO poisoning from using a grill outdoors in a space that I guess wasn't really well ventilated. Threw up in the middle of the night (wasn't the food, everyone else was fine and so was I the very next day). I didn't feel any faster after that and it was kind of a miserable experience.

I don't think I would mess around with that stuff.

Aperocky3• 2 years ago

Apparently if you had slightly less CO but more often you might become a faster cyclist!

klyrs2• 2 years ago

Yeah, if I was gonna attempt this, it'd be N2 gas, or even CO2, but CO is stupid.

davidw3• 2 years ago

Nitrogen is apparently pretty dangerous too because, from what I understand, your body doesn't feel like it's not "getting enough air" like it does with high CO2 concentrations? Something like that, I don't recall the specifics...

bobmcnamara• 2 years ago

Joking with some coworkers I once took a big breath of what should've been helium but had accidentally been misfilled with trimix welding shield gas (He/CO2/Ar).

I knew immediately what had happened as I coughed in duck noises.

Aperocky3• 2 years ago

That’s what happened in January 2023 when two riders on Uno-X Mobility had to be taken to hospital after a go-karting session for team bonding left them with carbon monoxide poisoning.

Surely it was the go-karting and the team-bonding...

rdtsc• 2 years ago

Heh, “For some reason all these teams always do go-karting and indoor grilling bonding sessions before major tournaments…”

Aperocky3• 2 years ago

Couldn't afford to fly to Sierra Nevada or camp at Swiss mountains, so go-kart and indoor grilling it is.

beloch• 2 years ago

If it confers an advantage, even a small one, and it's allowed, everyone will be compelled to do it in order to remain competitive.

That's the crazy thing about high level sports. Either it's banned or everyone does it. There is no in between.

matsemann4• 2 years ago

In cycling it's also common to do lots of stuff that might not even have an advantage. But when you see other teams do it, you don't dare not to.

SamBam• 2 years ago

Reminds me of swimmer Mark Spitz who had a mustache at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, and won 7 gold medals in a world record. The Russian swimming coach asked him about the mustache, and he replied that American scientists had determined that it made him faster. A year later, in the 1973 World Championships, most of the Russian team had mustaches, while Spitz had shaved his off.

readthenotes1• 2 years ago

I like your use of the non-exclusive or there

freetanga• 2 years ago

Latin American rowers from many countries train (or used to) at Tiquicaca Lake, in Bolivia. The highest lake in the world. Apparently intense training in a thin atmosphere made them more powerful when racing in richer atmospheres.

Source: Olympic rower who is a friend.

jablala• 2 years ago

You'll also see a lot of MMA fighters train up in the mountains to the same extent.

ojbyrne• 2 years ago

High altitude has been well known as a training aid for decades, e.g. Kenyan marathoners: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/06/africa/kenya-runners-win-mara...

latchkey• 2 years ago

The US Olympic Training Center is in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Elevation: 6k ft and next to Peaks Pike at 14k feet.

I used to go there in the late 80's as a cyclist to train.

They'd follow you in a car as you rode up PP, honking at you to go faster.

matsemann4• 2 years ago

It's quite common, and how it's done is often depending on where you compete (if you need high altitude experience during the race itself). So some practice sleep high train low, while others are high and do the workouts as well at altitude.

Many athletes also sleep in altitute tents. Basically something you wrap around your bed or a mask, that simulates being at altitute.

unglaublich• 2 years ago

The reduced oxygen concentration prompts the generation of new red blood cells. That translates to a higher VO2-max back at regular altitudes.

SketchySeaBeast2• 2 years ago

But if that's what they wanted to replicate they could use nitrogen, or carbon dioxide, or something else that isn't actively poisonous.

marcosdumay• 2 years ago

Carbon dioxide is actively poisonous.

But anyway, that requires doing the exercise inside the controlled atmosphere. I'd guess the lure of carbon monoxide is that you can breath it, go out and exercise on a normal atmosphere. (That is, if you don't die on the first step.)

But then, if I had to guess I'd say the fact that the effects are long-term would reduce the athlete's performance. So yeah, I'd guess wrong.

unparagoned• 2 years ago

They probably need something that has longer negative effects. They need something that is slightly poisonous.

runner03• 2 years ago

Distance runner (and known abusive coach who dabbled in PEDs) Alberto Salazar is said to have trained on a treadmill in his garage with the car on.

scott_w10• 2 years ago

Couple of things:

I’m not sure this is dangerous, per se, as long as the dosage is measured. As you learn in school, CO is only poisonous because it replaces oxygen in your blood. There’s no negative long term effects as long as the dose never reduces the oxygen mix of air beyond what a human can survive on.

This is being used to simulate altitude training, so I don’t see how you can ban it. It’ll just mean all teams go back to altitude training instead. We don’t consider altitude training doping because that would be an insane position to take. Would you ban riders from mountainous regions from cycling?

That second point also means it’s not being dangerously configured because we know the oxygen % levels at different altitudes.

An interesting article, nonetheless.

Tour de France riders are inhaling carbon monoxide in 'super altitude' recipe

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