Frank Schleck fails drugs tests at Tour de France

Bad news guys. The tour is in the headlines for the wrong reasons again. Hope it turns out to be false as I've always quite liked the Schleck brothers. Either way it will no doubt overshadow from the actual action.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/18880417

What a silly silly boy

This is why the cycling has such a bad reputation. Just the minority that ruin the image of the sport

Glad you put this in a seperate thread - good not to have to run through this when discussing anything more enjoyable. Don't really know much about Xipamide but with diuretics in general I can't see any sense at all in taking it for performance enhancement - not for cycling anyway. If B test is postive and there is no medical justification I assume it is a masking agent rather than a PED in its' own right.

This kind of thing always makes me wonder a bit: it seems he's been done for a fairly common masking agent, so how could F Schleck possibly think he could get away with it? He knows he's likely to be tested...

Personally I think Cycling is now much cleaner than many other sports, including athletics and almost certainly football, but no doubt this kind of story will get jumped on by the "all cyclists are on drugs" brigade.

Big wrote:Glad you put this in a seperate thread - good not to have to run through this when discussing anything more enjoyable. Don't really know much about Xipamide but with diuretics in general I can't see any sense at all in taking it for performance enhancement - not for cycling anyway. If B test is postive and there is no medical justification I assume it is a masking agent rather than a PED in its' own right.

Masking agent rather than PED is correct - it's either a genuine error (and I always struggle to understand how you can make such an error in today's world) or something more sinister...

Off the top of my head a diuretic can be performance enhancing in the sense of either a) weight loss and b) masking agent for something else. With regard to "masking" I am not sure precisely what it means - is it masking as in the sense of creating peaks that hide other peaks upon analysis, or something that removes peaks by either (chelating - shifting the peak) or simply flushing the PED compound more quickly out of the system. With the latter however surely the PED needs to be in the system to work.

I don't think diuretics themselves are slimming products - cetainly they are often present in slimming products sold on the high street, but not sure they are actually the active ingredient; happy to be proved wrong on that by anyone who knows more.

In any case it's hard to see how weight loss would be useful during a GT. Beforehand during training certainly, but during the actual tour?

As far as I understand they act by diluting your bodily fluids, so the concentration of a potential PE product would become small enough so as not to register.

Diuretics are purely to speed up getting stuff out of your system. (They make you pee more!) So they are pretty much masking agents. For example, he could be taking EPO, so using the diuretic to get it out of his system quickly.

GCSE PE FTW

It's a lose lose situation in general for cycling. It's now probably a lot cleaner than most sports but the more stories come out the less likely people are going to join in watching. Shame really as it's just the ultimate indurance sport and I have the utmost respect for ANY of the clean riders being able to even finish the tour, let alone being competitive.

"Schleck's younger brother Andy was awarded victory in the 2010 Tour when Alberto Contador was later banned for two years after testing positive for clenbuterol."

With this incidence with Frank Schleck it certainly makes one wonder. Anyway let's see how clear cut the issue is and maybe we might learn something a little more about Xipamide / diuretics.

I still don't understand how it is supposed to work if the diuretic flushes the active PED out of the system - as they would lose the benefit of the PED. In a stage event how often do the cyclists pee while they are cycling? Maybe an hour before the end of the race they drink some diuretic in their water that causes them to pee out the drug before they arrive at the finishing line. How soon after they finish are the riders tested? Presumably the stage winner is tested plus a few others at random.

I think they actually take the drug well before. It takes a lot to completely flush a drug completely out of your system

Mike Selig wrote:Personally I think Cycling is now much cleaner than many other sports, including athletics and almost certainly football, but no doubt this kind of story will get jumped on by the "all cyclists are on drugs" brigade.

Ditto to that! Would perhaps go as far ast to say that the 'many' could be substituted with 'the vast majority of'. I'm a big rugby fan as well and in an odd way I'd like to see more positives there as at the moment I just don't think they take it seriously yet. Football may be big enough to buy its' way out of trouble, but I suspect most other sports are going to have a Festina moment sooner or later.

I did a PhD looking at contamination rather than PEDs, but many of the basic principles are the same. In my head I can envisage a few viable scenarios some good for Schleck others not so much, however, it is still just educated guesswork and I don't think that is of too much benefit at this stage. Be sure though that if any riders get poisoned on the way round I will be happy to bore you all to tears...

A few points, although I think most of you have the general info well covered:

1 - Xipamide is a diuretic that is not specifically on the WADA list of prohibited substances, but is covered under a 'catch-all' for diuretics of similar composition to those that are specifically banned.

2 - It cannot be taken through contaminated food, but there is a possibility of it being within some supplements and other medication.

3 - Frank Schleck is skeletally thin, so any attempt to lose further weight by intentional consumption of a diuretic would be at least unhelpful. There are also some potential side effects of Xipamide (loss of strength being one) that would make it a poor choice of PEDs for an endurancec athlete.

4 - There is a suggestion of Xipamide being used as a masking agent, particularly for anabolic steroids, although the flusihng effect would probably be useful in clearing other substances from the body.

5 - The ban for this positive test is not an automatic 2 years (as would be the case for EPO or steroids), but is more discretionary, being something between a formal warning and 1 year ban.

6 - Frank Schleck does not have the most squeaky clean reputation - there was a record of a payment to Dr Fuentes (Operation Puerto), but a lack of physical evidence (i.e. no Schleck blood bags), so no further action was taken.

It seems likely that this is either:
1 - A botched attempt at flushing something else through his system or
2 - A genuine mistake, that FS has somehow taken something containing a small amount of this diuretic.

on a sidenote the bbc have once again got their facts wrong!

frank schleck factfile:
Joined by younger brother Andy, who goes on to win the Tour de France in 2010, on Team CSC...... right

Luvsports

Andy Schleck is now the official winner of the 2010 TdF because of Contador's positive drug test and subsequent ban.

what an idiot.
sorry it's still hard to take for me luved alberto.

btw you're from herts?? whereabouts
im from st.albans

LS
Lived in St Albans (Jersey Farm) for 7 years until a couple of years ago, now moved out into the country between Hertford and Bishops Stortford.

It's kind of an odd thing to get popped for (although so was contador's case). There are basically 3 possibilities imo:

1) Masking agent for blood transfusion on first rest day - This is the obvious reason but it's not like Frank's improvements improved markedly after the first rest day, nor did he seem to be going all out for a stage victory on one of those days (he most likely targetted tomorrow if anything)

2) In a supplement and he genuinely didn't realise, in which case it's careless but you're responsible.

3) Contamination - it's possible that someone "poisoned" something he ingested. It's not too far-fetched a conspiracy theory given that he recently complained about not getting paid by team management - they might have instructed a doctor etc. Some people even suggested he was being setup in relation to the whole Bruyneel situation, though that seems unlikely.


It seems unlikely to me he was really on much this year, but in any case it's very likely he was in the past, nobody really belives he was paying Fuentes for training advice :P

B sample comes back positive for Frank, who is still protesting his innocence.

Shame. Will be interesting to hear the details of the defence...

Interesting take on the Frank Schleck case:

Dr. Jean-Pierre de Mondenard (former doctor of the Tour and author of several doping-related books): "Did he dope knowingly? No!"

"The presence of Xipamide in Fränk Schleck's urine is difficult to explain. Because while it is a masking agent, the substance itself is easily detectable in urine. Therefore, if Fränk Schleck knowingly took this substance, he is either suicidal or stupid."

"To take such a substance on a Tour stage is not very intelligent either because it favours dehydration, when you have to stay as hydrated as possible during the race. But to take it as a masking agent, I repeat, doesn't make any sense because you are certain to be caught."

"The probability that he took it knowingly is very low. There are two possible scenarios. The first is a food supplement. Maybe one would have to search in this direction, maybe there was something on a countertop. The second is "doping to lose": basically, you want to make your opponent lose by trapping him. It's the oldest form of doping, even before the doping to enhance your performance. This is a product you can't find in France since 2005, so we have to see where you could buy it"

"The general director of WADA, David Howman, said in a press conference in November to the Unesco that the fight against doping was pathetic. For 258.000 tests, only 36 athletes had taken EPO. And those who were caught were boneheads. Before we caught guys on EPO and anabolics. Now we catch them for implausible stuff as it was the case for Contador, Kolobnev and Schleck."

"No, Fränk Schleck did not dope! Based on the information available to me, I have a very difficult time to believe it."

http://www.lequotidien.lu/les-sports/36520.html (French)

LD
Thanks for the interesting article. My suspicion is that this (similar to what was eventually judged in the Contador case) is from inadvertant consumption of a contaminated product, perhaps a supplement of some sort.

However, WADA rules are quite clear, that the athlete is responsible for what is in their system, and it takes an awful lot for the rider to demonstrate 'no fault' - can only be proven if the drug can be proven to be in a spiked bottle or prevalent in the food chain (Contador's Clenbuterol in beef defence would have been much more reasonable if he had been in either Mexico or China, where the drug is widely used in the treatment of livestock - in Spain there is no official use and so it is hugely unlikely to be in meat produced there).

Managed to find an article I read a while back

http://www.sportsscientists.com/2011/02/two-doping-cases-exonerated-vs-punished.html

which does explain the rare circumstance in which someone can be cleared, however, it does take a lot. Bit of a biased article as the writer does or at the very least has worked for South Africa rugby, but it covers the essential parts reasonably well.

It makes you think that there really ought to be some kind of creditation system for the supplement industry. Wouldn't be that hard for WADA to test the products of suppliers seeking approval on a regular basis to ensure that they aren't contaminated. Then you can basically tell athletes that if they buy from elsewhere then they do so at their own risk. Could even argue that if they buy from elsewhere it is already starting to look suspicious. It would simplify things a lot.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/frank-schleck-given-one-year-doping-ban