Doping

Someone can't read forms.

Zeez, you're an 8 year old doper, disgusting.

Mate, I'm sure everyone is generally sympathetic to how asthma has affected your life. It sounds like really impacted on your childhood, which sucks.

I think what you're missing when you say:

I don't believe the cyclists who got the "asthma/allergic injections" was because of severe risk of dying from asthma attacks. But mostly if your asthma flare up is that severe, how the hell did you think you could ride a grand tour?

is that the aim of the treatment for you and Wiggins is completely different. Your doctors were dealing with a potentially frail young boy and frankly their main focus was probably to achieve the minimum intervention that would keep you alive to adulthood. There are pretty obvious reasons why doctors might avoid injecting hardcore steroids into pre-pubescent kids. Wiggins isn't a vulnerable child, he's one of the fittest humans on the planet. His symptoms were most likely never close to life-threatening but could have been bad enough to impact his performance significantly. That's the point of a TUE.

I can see why it would sting for you to see athletes (allegedly) abusing drugs designed to help sick people, but then we're back into the moral grey area again.

Just to add to that, severe asthma, which you had as a child is very different to sports induced asthma (which I've suffered from since about the age of 13). One can be life threatening whilst the other restricts your sporting ability, although it can get a bit nasty when you have a proper chest infection to go with it.

The thing is what I described would be mild/moderate asthma that wasn't being controlled very well. Virtually all asthma sufferers will have gone through very similar experiences until they worked out how to manage it. 
Some people have much more severe symptoms than this and they can't get those symptoms under control with the dozens of different inhaler/drug combinations available. The most severe sufferers needing steroid injections to try to avoid life threatening asthma attacks.
I just can't believe someone with asthma so severe and so out of control, where steroid injections were considered the only option, could still be able to compete at elite level sport.
I guess I'm just f*cking angry that some athletes have used their mild/moderate asthma as an excuse to get an edge, mainly because they're taking the piss out of all asthma sufferers by doing so. But also sad because all athletes with asthma will now be doubted, most of whom deserve a medal for just making it to elite level sport and should be an inspiration for kids with asthma.

Rowers are at it now (or were in the 90s). Quelle surprise.

http://www.runnersworld.com/sweat-science/a-pacing-question-from-the-oxford-cambridge-boat-race

Is the felt still for sale ?

Eh? Can you dope by taking felt?

Apologies new to this wrong thread !

Long form interview now on the guardian with Wiggo.

I think he would have been well served giving an interview like this far sooner. I found it quite persuasive.

That speed increase in the Boatrace in the 90's is due to both boats being stuffed full of Olympians; that was the time Pinsent/the Winklevos twins et al were in the squads; there has been a swing back to Undergrads since those days.

Are you saying Pinsent was a doper?

No definitely not, but he already had an Olympic Gold medal when he was in the Boat race. There are very few of his caliber in the race anymore.

It was a joke about the wilful misinterpretation sometime seen on the internet.

It's here if anyone is looking for it;

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/sep/30/bradley-wiggins-interview-tues?CMP=share_btn_tw

Cheers

Ah the Russian hackers did their job well, but perhaps also shed light on something that needed it.

I have remained ambivalent towards this, rather than splutter with holy, righteous indignation that serves the internet shouty men/women well, conveniently ignoring all of their human flaws. He clearly had a history of asthma/allergy and used medication to control it. That said the vast majority of his sporting career and the successes within it were achieved without a TUE. So everything on the track, all those Olympic golds and his hour record. No pollen on the track. Also for his Worlds ITT win no TUE: late season, no pollen. Also in even in the years he did have a TUE for his GTs he was winning stage races for fun, Paris-Nice, Dauphine, Romandie etc. before he got the TUE. earlier in the season, less pollen and also less time spent out in the fields in the middle of it.

His description of his allergies is what I repeatedly experienced growing up and well into my twenties and it is absolutely burtal. Over the counter medications do not help, I was prescribed a steroid nasal spray and that only barely helped. If you haven't experienced a violent allergy attack then it's difficult to empathise but I couldn't breathe, eyes swollen and itchy, nose literally pissing mucus, if you could call it that. After several hours it was just a steady stream of water-like stuff pissing out of my red-raw nose. I regularly had asthma attacks on the back of it, and had both a normal and steroid inhaler for it. I imagine this is the sort of stuff you'd need a TUE for. However even these stronger meds didn't eliminate the condition completely, depending on the size of the allergen dose I got that day. Skin irritation and rashes, fatigue, permanently blocked nose when it wasn't pissing mucus it was a fucking nightmare which is why when I read the reasons for his TUEs I immediately identified with them.

Bottom line they were within the legal framework of the sport. Its down to us as individuals the motives behind them. Either the condition is a lie and he went down the age-old route of obtaining a TUE under false pretences and he's probably dropping other PEDs too, or it was something that had to be strong enough to eliminate a chronic condition. Having suffered a similar chronic condition, and anyone who has had bad allergies will tell you, there is no easy fix, and at best you are mostly managing it and avoiding the worst of the attacks, rather than stopping the suffering altogether.

The fact the TUEs are limited to the GTs is a positive signal to be, rather than a negative one. Those were the races he was going to be most susceptible to his allergies, and his other significant wins were achieved without TUEs.

tue;dr

Oh reading more of the thread this wasn't taken just to treat asthma. I think asthma is a red herring, this was severe allergies and asthma is simply one of the symptoms. In my experience while the asthma could be bad, the disaster area that was my nose was much, much worse.

this was severe allergies and asthma is simply one of the symptoms.

Severe allergies.

From all the druuuuugs.

As I said, the rest of it is just opinion. Bottom line is he followed the rules. The emphasis needs to be on changing the rules so they aren't open to abuse, rather than a gleefull internet witch hunt.

The Wiggins interview is very credible. As T-V said, he should have done this at once rather than chatting to Marr, the thinking person's Oprah Winfrey.

So can this story now be spiked at last?

the thinking person's Oprah Winfrey

That's a terribly low bar to reach.

He already had the slot lined up with Marr.

Will Fotheringham is somewhat well prepared too, given he's been writing on the sport for 30 years and was the ghost writer for Wiggins' autobiography.