Hey Muscles, Let’s See Your Blood Passport

In an era when performance-enhancing drugs are so prevalent in the bodies of our professional athletes that the drugs might as well be served alongside the garlic bread at their pregame spaghetti feeds, one sporting organization has stepped up to redeem its tarnished reputation by attempting to employ the next generation of antidoping technology: biological profiling.

Whether a result of stringent antidoping testing methods (according to NPR, cyclists and Olympians are subject to the strictest testing regimens of any sport and perhaps that is why more get caught) or simply because it draws a bunch of dirty, dirty cheaters, professional cycling has become synonymous with performance-enhancing drugs. It’s a shame that people like Floyd Landis (pictured above), whose 2006 Tour De France title was stripped after he tested positive for using synthetic testosterone, have created an atmosphere where congratulations for winning a race are necessarily accompanied by a conspiratorial wink. And that’s just the kind of image Pat McQuaid, president of the International Cycling Union, hopes to change by making professional cycling a leader in antidoping by compiling biological profiles (blood passports) of its athletes.

Here’s how it works. First scientists take three to six blood samples to form a baseline (passport) for each rider. Shifts in that baseline (and performance) probably mean the rider is up to something, perhaps using a substance like EPO, which accelerates the production of endurance-boosting, oxygen-carrying red blood cells.

Robin Parisotto, a researcher from Australia who is one of the nine scientists on an independent panel that reviews blood profiles for the International Cycling Union, told the New York Times:

“The beauty with the blood passport is that you don’t need to know each and every drug that is out there because you see the indication that something is being used,” said Mr. Parisotto, who was the principal researcher in the creation of the first test for EPO used at the Olympic Games.

“With some cases, you can win hands down,” he said. “The athlete will have a difficult time explaining the spikes and troughs of patterns in their blood. They won’t be able to say they used the wrong toothpaste, or that they got something from their dog.”

But the method isn’t exactly legal yet. According to the NYT, the International Cycling Union is in the final stages of preparing to bring a doping case against at least one rider whose blood profile had shown evidence of doping. But first they will have to prove that the science is good enough and reliable enough to show that nothing but doping could have caused a variation in the athlete’s blood profile.

And of course the more well-connected athletes will inevitably find a way around it.

[Via: New York Times], [Photo Via: WhileSeated]