PerthNorg

I don’t understand does the transfusion enhance performance or would he have had it to mask drug use by diluting his blood.

Sounds a bit extreme either way. What happened to good old-fashioned competition?

It is a process called blood doping, there are two possibilities, 1) during the month leading upto an event you have a unit (roughly 200 - 250mls) of blood taken from you, it is then stored and you get it back hours before the big event/day. 2) you receive blood from a compatible source a couple of hours before you need it.

The normal Hb (that bit of blood that carries oxygen) in a Male is 120 - 160 g/L. The theory behind blood doping is that if you can increase your Hb to 160 - 190 your body will better be able to utilise the oxygen we breath in, because on an average breath we only absorb about 4% of the available oxygen in the lungs (this is why mouth to mouth works).

I am yet to see any scientific evidence that it works, however there is s large amount of anecdotal evidence that it does allow athletes to perform at greater levels for longer.

Hope this helps clear it up

JJ

Why don’t they just make drugs legal in cycling? It looks like every bloody rider is using them anyway…

Blood doping increases red blood cells providing extra oxygen to the muscles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_doping