Blood doping and its detection

I don't claim to understand this paper very well either, but based on a skim it seems the general idea is to do longitudinal blood testing on an individual level to establish a baseline for blood parameters, to then be able to detect changes that can't easily be explained by normal physiological processes(e.g a sudden rise in hemoglobin).

This is similar to what has been suggested before, but due to many confounding factors the individualised baseline may be necessary to avoid false positives.

They can actually detect it sometimes, but I don't know how prevalent those methods are and they keep it pretty secret anyways.

The blood is usually stored in regular transfusion bags, which are made of plastic, which contains plasticisers. Those slowly leech into the blood and can be detected when taking probes, how much of it and which type specifically they detect is another question, as you already got a bunch of plasticisers in your blood.

From what you describe I don’t even understand how this is considered doping, unless the athlete is doing this to cover up for other substances in their blood during their training. Could anyone elaborate?

There‘s a thing called „biological passport“ [0] where athletes are tested regularly for different biological parameters, including hemoglobin count. Any significant changes are suspicious.

[0] https://www.wada-ama.org/en/athlete-biological-passport

The paper covers multiple blood doping method from transfusion, epo drugs, and gene transfer.

The interesting one is blood transfusion. The paper suggests that measuring certain antibody levels (change from baseline) can detect allogenic blood transfusion (blood from other individuals).

But for autologous blood transfer (removing blood, allowing the body to replace the blood cells, then injecting blood back to boost levels above normal) is impossible to detect. CO rebreathing measurements could be used but aren’t validated.

However, sports regulations have a max Hb cutoff so raising levels beyond a “high-normal” would disqualify you anyways. The only option is to raise levels if your normal Hb level is middle to low in the normal range.

Altitude camps, ie spending a week or two at altitude, a few weeks before targeted events is very common in cycling. The Canary Island of Tenerife, with roads up to 2300 meters is quite popular in the pre-season thanks to its great climate.

Badly timed such blocks of training, like doing it too close to the event the athlete is peaking for, is detrimental. The body needs time to recuperate.

"Live high, train low"

You do need good oxygen supply during training in order to fully utilize (and grow) the muscles.

Low oxygen (such as found at high altitude) is good for the non-training periods (e.g. during sleep), where it induces a hypoxia-adaptation reaction that consists among others in increased erythropoietin (EPO), resulting in increased hemoglobin, etc.

Apparently it's even more effective to just train at sea level, as you can do so more effectively, you're not out of air all the time, and just sleep and recover at high altitude.

The GDR actually built big training halls/chambers that could be depressurised, in order to achieve some part of that effect.

Article im german [https://taz.de/Museum-im-alten-Trainingsbunker/!5539575/]

This literal proposal is impractical for virtually anyone as it requires living in a particular place all the time, but as others have pointed out, some simulation of this technique is extremely common. Sleeping in an artificial low pressure room or hyperbaric chamber is most common, but even the high-altitude camps are not just limited to truly elite athletes. We did this even in high school. My cross-country team was pretty good (we won two California state championships in four years) but still just high schoolers. The school was in Los Angeles but we spent two weeks at the end of every summer before fall semester started camping in the San Bernardino mountains doing two-a-days, usually doing a complete lap around Big Bear lake in the morning and then a shorter, faster run in the afternoon. But it's funny you mention it because I remember the guy who won the individual state championship my freshman year and took second overall in an open 5k I vaguely remember running right before the season started was a student at Rim of the World high school, which is located in Lake Arrowhead and he actually did live at high altitude.

AFAIK they do train at high elevation when possible; it's just that some also cheat too. The U.S. Olympic training center is located at over 6,000ft of elevation, in Colorado Springs, presumably for exactly this reason.

Some sports probably aren't very amenable to this sort of consistently-high-elevation training though — if you play for a specific city's sports team, for example, you're probably going to do most of your training and playtime near that city.

Many of them do. Distance runners often go to Kenya or St. Moritz. But yes, it‘s less effective than the illegal methods.

That doco was an amazing spiral, from "let's try doping as an amateur athlete" to "here's how Russia organised doping for the Winter Olympics."