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WADA: Banning oxygen tents?

No Comments | July 27th, 2006 | Trackback

The World Anti-Doping Agency is due to rule on the use of oxygen tents, widely used by athletes to boost endurance. But athletes feel this takes the agency’s remit into an undefined realm.

Three US riders who took part in this year’s Tour de France use a legal performance-enhancing method which could soon be banned. Hypoxic blood boosting involves sleeping in altitude tents or rooms that simulate the low-oxygen conditions of high altitude. This, in turn, encourages the body to make more oxygen-carrying red blood cells and can lead to improved endurance.

While riders think this method of performance enhancement is so nebulous as to not be regulatable yet, WADA “worries that the tents and rooms violate ‘the spirit of sport.’” Heck, Phil Liggett thinks the riders shouldn’t even have radios in order to communicate with their team directors, who have televisions in their cars and can report on the status of main rivals…

It seems to me that as long as something isn’t illegal and is an option everyone can use, it’s fair game. The sport - like anything - has advanced and changed over time. I don’t think anyone would say that limiting the amount of water a rider can drink during a stage, or prohibiting them from receiving any kind of mechanical assistance makes sense now - and yet both of those were rules in bygone years of the Tour. So maybe those oxygen tents are the new thing, and maybe (certainly) they enhance a rider’s ability, but is that enhancement any more damaging than any other “enhancement” the sport has seen over the years?

I’m asking here, seriously - what do you think?