EPO

Some of the things being said by so called experts about EPO are borderline ridiculous. This is where the experts lose creditability with athletes and coaches. In the early 1970’s the ACSM came out with a position statement stating that anabolic steroids did not enhance performance. This set back the efforts to control their use and abuse. Every coach and athlete knew the opposite to be true. Sure EPO is not a direct performance enhancer for a sprinter who is running ten to eleven sends in competition. They key is that it helps with recovery. If you can recover sooner and more completely you can then do more work of higher quality. It is still the work that determines the performance. The drug be it EPO, testosterone or any other anabolic substance does not make the athlete better. They boost performance by allowing the athlete to do more, higher quality work, more often. If you have ever been around athletes who are “juiced” it is quite apparent. They can handle some unbelievable workloads. What is even scarier is that it does not take much. If you look at the East German drug records their dosage were not unusually high. The cheats will try anything to get an edge.