UAE Workforce Emirates have confirmed that the crew not makes use of the controversial carbon monoxide rebreathing method to measure athlete efficiency.
Talking on the crew’s media day throughout their pre-season coaching camp on Tuesday, Jeroen Swart, efficiency coordinator, stated that UAE Workforce Emirates have “completed the method” with the method. He stated that it was “an train that we co-ordinated over 18 months” to evaluate rider’s enhancements throughout altitude coaching camps.
The method hit the headlines in the course of the 2024 Tour de France when Escape Collective reported that UAE Workforce Emirates, Visma-Lease a Bike, and Israel-Premier Tech had used it to check rider blood values firstly and finish of altitude coaching camps.
Final month, the UCI referred to as on WADA to “take a place” on the usage of carbon monoxide for efficiency features, utilizing an identical technique generally known as repeated carbon monoxide inhalation.
Escape Collective‘s investigation discovered that there was “no onerous proof” that any of the groups talked about above have been utilizing carbon monoxide in that method, although the UCI is worried about its potential use.
Throughout a question-and-answer session on the UAE coaching camp, Swart famous that the method for measuring athlete efficiency features has been utilized in varied sports activities for twenty years, then confirmed that his crew had stopped utilizing it.
“To provide you full readability on that, carbon monoxide rebreathing is a method that has already been validated for 20 years and has been utilized by climbers, endurance sportsmen and athletes around the globe to measure haemoglobin mass after they go to altitude,” Swart stated.
“We have been excellent with our altitude coaching camps within the final seven years. We really feel that we have completed a very good job by way of the profit, however there is not any method you can quantify that clearly, apart from measuring haemoglobin mass.
“So, two years in the past, we determined to evaluate whether or not or not our riders have been enhancing to our expectations. And so, it was an train that we carried out over 18 months and assessed the haemoglobin mass utilizing carbon monoxide rebreathing which is a really standardised method with very particular tools.
“Really, we completed that course of now and our outcomes present that our coaching camps are literally very effectively suited to the maximal adaptation for our riders which we see within the performances as effectively.”
Swart confirmed that the crew does not plan to renew the testing sooner or later, and went on to criticise the “sensationalist” nature of Escape Collective‘s preliminary article.
“So, we really need not do the exams any additional. We do not plan to do any extra,” he stated.
“However I feel it is fairly a sensationalist article that is been printed and speculating about utilizing a method that might be fairly difficult and possibly not one thing that I can see anyone really doing. It does not it does not come throughout as practical. So, I feel there’s plenty of sensation.”
