Not to beat a dead horse again but I have to say. "Are you bleeping kidding me?". I'm not sure where this all stops once it's started, but can you feel the slipperiness of the slope?
I hope so, the world is full of natural and unnatural advantages, part of the beauty of sports is teaching kids to overcome them. The feeling I get from the "level the playing field" crowd is eventually we give everyone a medal, same color, or metal. Just like in T-Ball. Unbelievable.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/26/sports/othersports/26altitude.html
Live at Altitude? Sure. Sleep There? Hmm.
By GINA KOLATA
Published: July 26, 2006
Three of the top United States cyclists in this year's Tour de France
use a special method to enhance their performance, and it is legal.
They sleep in altitude tents or altitude rooms that simulate the low-
oxygen conditions of high altitude. This prompts the body to make
more oxygen-carrying red blood cells and can lead to improved
endurance.
Not everyone agrees about how effective altitude training really is,
but many athletes and trainers are firm believers. Athletes who can
afford it, and whose schedules permit it, often sleep at altitude in
the mountains and travel to lower altitudes during the day to train.
Others use the modern method; they sleep in altitude tents, which
start at about $5,000 at Colorado Altitude Training, a major
supplier. Or they convert a bedroom, spending about $25,000. Some
have even spent millions of dollars to convert an entire building.
"Ninety-five percent of the medals that have been won at Olympic
Games have been won by people who train at or live at altitude," said
Joe Vigil, who coaches Deena Kastor. She holds the United States
women's record in the marathon. Kastor lives in Mammoth Lakes,
Calif., at an altitude of 7,800 feet, and often trains at sea level.
The decision on whether to ban hypoxic devices has taken many
athletes and exercise physiologists by surprise, but the antidoping
agency has quietly spent the past few years considering the issue,
said Dr. Bengt Saltin, director of the Copenhagen Muscle Research
Center. Saltin was a member of the agency's health medicine and
research committee until two years ago.
"We have discussed the issue a lot," he said.
In Saltin's opinion, the altitude tents and rooms are no different
from going to "a suitable mountain area," only cheaper. Banning the
altitude tents or rooms, he said, "should not be on the WADA or
International Olympic Committee's priority list."
"This is a pretty slippery slope," he said. "WADA is going to lose
their credibility with the scientific community, upon whom they
depend to further their mission, by pursuing this. And how to enforce
it is a whole different question."
In addition to Levine's letter, the Center for Sports Law and Policy
at the Duke University School of Law recently issued a position paper
opposing the notion of banning the altitude tents and rooms.
The key question for Murray, of the Hastings Center, and the WADA
ethics advisory panel in preparing their report was how to define
what it meant to violate the spirit of sport. They decided that a
violation would be a purely passive activity that nonetheless
enhanced performance.
"When we think about great performances, we think about athletes who
train very hard and are disciplined on top of their natural talents,"
Murray said. And most of the legal performance-enhancing equipment,
like fiberglass poles for the pole vault, "requires the active
engagement of the athlete in learning to use it."
Others, like Levine, take issue with the notion that being passive is
a key distinction. The biological response to training, Levine says,
occurs during rest and recovery, and athletes plan those periods as
carefully as they do their active training. "It is a very serious
error to look at an athlete lying quietly and assume they
are `passive,' " he said.
Levine added that he thought it was problematic to point to altitude
tents or rooms when there are other legal and passive measures that
athletes use to enhance performance - sitting in a sauna to acclimate
to heat and humidity, or wearing a cooling vest or sitting in cold
water to cool their bodies before a race in hot weather. Why not ban
those practices, too, Levine said.
"The fact that we can think of cases that are difficult does not mean
we can't draw lines," Murray said.
Murray acknowledged that athletes who go to the mountains can get the
same effect as sleeping in an altitude tent. But, he said, in his
opinion that was not a compelling reason to say that altitude tents
were within the spirit of sport.
"There are some people who are in a sense geographically fortunate,"
Murray said.
Alberto Salazar, a former champion marathoner who coaches elite
distance runners for Nike, said that if the World Anti-Doping Agency
were to ban altitude tents and rooms, the effect on United States
distance runners would be devastating. Nike has outfitted the
bedrooms of its athletes to make them altitude chambers, Salazar
said, adding that about 40 percent of the athletes increase their red-
blood-cell count as a result.
"Altitude training is absolutely essential," Salazar said. "Any
athlete who wants to be competitive in the world scene would have to
move to altitude or cheat by using an altitude room or taking illegal
drugs."
Moving to a high altitude is not feasible for many who have jobs and
families elsewhere, Salazar said. Of course, he added, runners from
Kenya do not have that problem because many of them live at high
altitudes.
"How many Americans or Western Europeans do we have that are
competitive with the best athletes in the world? Very few," Salazar
said. "We've got such small numbers, do we need another handicap? Do
we need to tell them that the second they graduate from college they
have to move to altitude?"
Murray said he knew the issue was fraught, and he welcomed debate.
"Lines can be very difficult to draw, there is no question about it,"
he said. But if there are no lines, he added, "whatever you like
about the sport will disappear."
He added, "This is a healthy conversation to be having."
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