Doping

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21563035
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18469572

Those both indicate high variability between individuals for urine concentration at same dose.

However, it also appears, that to reach 2000ng/ml, you'd need to by doing around 2000mg. That's a lot. Like go to hospital a lot.

It's weird to say the least.

Marginal gains. I’ve heard of people titrating doses to lean on the legal limit to exploit every last “legal high”, if you will.

go to hospital

vs

ride a grand tour (& win it)

must be so awful for (Wiggins and) Froome to be denied proper cure for their allergies/asthma every time and be sent off to three weeks of racing instead

Petacchi was banned for the same thing also, and he had a TUE for salbutamol.
I think the sky press release is slimy and a bit desperate, but it's probably a reflection on how they've handled other controversies in the past also.
Great news for cycling journos though.

For a team backed by a media company, they have an incredibly tin ear when it comes to PR. They’ve been consistently shit at it too.

well this is disappointing

So Nibali, who has never had an adverse analytical finding, wins the Vuelta? Excellent.

Would it be feasible to just nullify any time gained on that stage?

Sky don't do well at hiring doctors do they ?

Leinders - doped riders at Rabobank
Freeman - didn't back up medical records, lost laptop, too ill for nine months to testify. Ordered/received Testosterone by mistake
Froome's doctor - gave Froome twice the legal limit of Salbutamol

Isn’t their argument that Froome’s doctor prescribed within the normal dose and Froome has somehow not excreted it at the normal rate.

I understand they are investigating the metabolism of salbutamol, how it might be excreted and what the normal variances within individuals might be to argue the above.

This. Seems like an important distinction.

I don't really know anything about the subject, but this suggests it is permormance enhancing.

But indeed that doesn't yet mean he would've taken more of it than allowed.

New depths of tedium about to be plumbed in the cycling media and forums all over the web. Fan-fucking-tastic.

Exactly. The more you read and understand the less sense it makes...

Yep. Those studies @skinny linked say the numbers were close to the 1000ng/ml limit with a single 800mg dose. And the allowed daily dose is 1600mg. Confusing.

I don't really know anything about the subject

But you thought you'd chip in anyway :)

The study you point to used 8mg orally, and the article states in two places that no similar effects have been found from inhaling 1.6mg

50/50?

800μg dose. And the allowed daily dose is 1600μg

ftfy. The distinction between m and μ is critical.

The Court of Arbitration in Sport (CAS) has criticised the UCI previously on the margins of error in the metabolism of Salbutamol previously and the figure they’ve set.

It looks like the test came on the stage to Los Machucos, the day when he struggled and was reported to be ill. He knew he’d be tested, Salbutamol is easy to detect so it looks like negligence to me, rather than intent to cheat.

If you're going to make any sense of that, you need to take into consideration both what the actual analytical finding was, and what the anti-doping code said at the time, since it has changed many times over those 20 years.

Could the flip be just as viable? He knew that if he tested positive it was a sufficiently grey area?!

Possibly. It would tarnish his reputation though.

Ah, ok.
Kind of funny that I also mixed milligrams with micrograms as that should be among things I'm somewhat familiar with.

I'll shut up now.

It looks worse if he took it in the day he needs all the help he can get as he's struggling; rather than his knowing he'd be tested because of that struggle being an excuse.