Mark Cavendish, Jonathan Vaughters support late-night testing
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has recommended to the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) that they should be performing late-night surprise tests at the Tour de France. Almost immediately, several Italian cyclists publicly expressed their opposition
to out-of-hours testing, but Mark Cavendish and Garmin team manager Jonathan Vaughters have come out in defence of the controls.
“We have to do anything we can to eliminate doping in cycling, so I'm okay with it,” said Cavendish on Danish television. “Of course it can disturb sleep and so affect your race performance. But as long as it is done equally for all, then it's okay.”
WADA recommends controls at “less acceptable hours” due to the alleged use of micro-doping in the peloton and substances with short detection windows that can be taken before bed and rendered invisible overnight. Testing has never before been performed between
10pm and 6am at the Tour de France.
"Such a strategy would obviously not be universally welcomed,” read the WADA recommendation. “The UCI would need to accept that if it truly wishes to take the fight against doping to a new level, it will not necessarily receive compliments from all riders
and teams."
Vaughters, team Garmin manager and well-known anti-doping activist has explained that regular late-night testing is not necessary, rather it’s the removal of the 10pm cut-off that is necessary. The riders need to know that there is a threat of a late-night
test, even if they are quite rare.
“As long as there is not a guaranteed window of time that you cannot be tested, then the drug can be detected. That could be useful,” said Vaughters to VeloNation. “The point is that the threat is there and that could happen at any point in time.”
Scientists, as well as outspoken sanctioned riders Bernhard Kohl and Floyd Landis, have supported the likelihood of micro-dosing, which is virtually undetectable as long as the eight-hour overnight window exists. Vaughters’ team Garmin and Cavendish’s team
HTC-Columbia are both subject to more strict anti-doping controls by their own choice. The teams are supervised by Don Catlin and the Anti-Doping Sciences Institute (ADSI), which allows for tighter controls than those enforced by WADA.
“I have given ADSI, Catlin’s group, permission to come 24 hours a day,” said Vaughters. “Our athletes were upset by it. They didn’t understand it. Quite frankly, we have got a lot of young athletes who have grown up in our environment. They did not have
any idea [about doping]. To them, it was a case of ‘why they h**l are these guys showing up at 11 o’clock at night, and testing the whole team?’”
Vaughters admits there will still be a lot of resistance. Italian cyclists Giovanni Visconti and Filippo Pozzato have described late-night testings as “obsessive” and “exaggerated.” Vincenzo Nibali, who won the Vuelta a Espana, described the thorough and
extensive testing done on him during the race and said that “waking the riders also in the night-time seems mad.” His doctor at team Liquigas, which won the Vuelta with Nibali and the Giro d’Italia with Ivan Basso this year, also rejected the recommendation,
albeit ignorantly.
"In the report there is no scientific explanation why a control at two or five in the morning would produce a different result than one at ten or six in the morning," said team doctor Roberto Corsetti. "A rider on the way to winning a Grand Tour is tested
almost every day: as the race leader, a stage winner, for his biological passport and surprise tests. Around 20 tests."
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