A third of the 228-page CIRC report looks at the problem of doping in professional cycling. It includes an historical overview of the various form of doping used over the years, especially the more recent EPO generation and suggests that some riders are now micro-doping to stay within the limits of the Biological Passport. It also recalls the numerous doping scandals; media investigations and police investigation that helped reveal the doping that was secretly being done in professional cycling.
The report also discusses the reasons for cheating, omerta in the peloton and exactly what the term “being clean" means. It suggests that cheating can also consist of "technological advances where small gains can be squeezed from cumulative non-legal technical enhancements."
The report reads: "The Commission was told that today doping performance gains are perhaps around only 3-5%, compared to 10-15% ten years ago. Other cumulative gains derived from technical cheating can make up the 3% doping gains. By doping and by broader cheating, maximum gains can be made."
The report is broadly critical of the UCI's stance on doping until recent years and how it failed to effectively fight the use of EPO in the early nineties, which it describes as a "Game Changer" due to a reported 10-15% increase in performance. The 50% haematocrit limit introduced in 1997 reduced this percentage, as did the introduction of a urine-based detection test for EPO in 2000, with riders switching to blood transfusion and intravenous and micro-doses of EPO. As Operacion Puerto revealed, riders took huge risks with blood transfusion but the benefits, especially during long stage races, was significant.
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One rider told the report that he acted as his own transport system. He was injected with two to three units of blood in Madrid and then travel to France where the units would be removed immediately, to be used later throughout the Tour.
Doping has gone underground
The CIRC report suggests that the various scandals and investigations, and the introduction of the Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) in 2008 changed the way some riders and teams doped, with doping largely now an "underground" activity and not via organised team doping programmes as was often the case in the nineties. However the report said that knowledgeable and reliable people "were of the view that there is an elite who are still doping in a sophisticated way today."
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