Lance Armstrong has finally admitted that he cheated his way to seven Tour de France titles. The confessional interview with Oprah Winfrey (part one last night and part two tonight) is big news, even if it's not exactly shocking.
Mostly, it's sad, of course. Sad that the sport of cycling has lost its biggest icon and its last "real" champion. Sad for the many people Armstrong lied to and lied about to protect his name. Sad for the overall message of inspiration he seemed to embody. And I'll add one more sad note: There are serious doubts now being raised about whether the effectiveness of all that Erythropoietin (EPO) that Armstrong and his fellow top-tier cyclists pumped into their blood.
To be clear, EPO (a hormone that enhances the body's production of red blood cells) is not the only thing Armstrong injected to boost his performance. Other banned substances he admitted using include human growth hormone and testosterone. But EPO has become the illicit drug of choice for endurance athletes looking for an edge. That's because it is believed to increase the blood's ability to carry oxygen and thereby increase the athlete's aerobic power. Indeed, one recent review found that EPO boosts the maximum oxygen uptake by 6 to 9 percent.
To be clear, EPO (a hormone that enhances the body's production of red blood cells) is not the only thing Armstrong injected to boost his performance. Other banned substances he admitted using include human growth hormone and testosterone. But EPO has become the illicit drug of choice for endurance athletes looking for an edge. That's because it is believed to increase the blood's ability to carry oxygen and thereby increase the athlete's aerobic power. Indeed, one recent review found that EPO boosts the maximum oxygen uptake by 6 to 9 percent.
But does EPO really boost athletic performance? Not according to a 2012 meta-analysis of EPO studies published by the British Medical Journal, which found "no scientific basis to conclude [EPO] has performance enhancing properties in elite cyclists." For one thing, the study's authors pointed out that there are other measures that may be even more important to elite athletic perform, such as "lactate threshold" (the point when lactate production increases faster than it can be cleared by the body), that EPO has not been shown to improve. Plus, the hormone is also known to thicken the blood, making the heart work harder (this increase of blood viscosity also increases the risk of blood clots, heart attacks and strokes), which might work against endurance.
Armstrong's reputation is in ruins. He's been stripped of his titles, banned from the sport to which he devoted his life, and shunned by the cancer charity Livestrong that he founded. All because he (and so many of his competitors) felt the need to cheat. Topping off this shame pile is the possibility that he and many others might have raced just as fast without EPO.
