Cycling, Vingegaard on rebreathing: "Like smoking a cigarette"

Rome, 30 November 2024 - Cycling and carbon monoxide, a topic that has returned to the forefront iFollowing the red light turned on in recent days by the UCI after months of tolerance: the practice, called rebreathing, will still be legal at least until the Wada will not be definitively expressed one way or the other. We will talk about it again in the coming months: in the meantime, among the famous users of this technique there is jonas vingegaard, who expressed himself on the subject in a press conference without particular reluctance.  

Vingegaard's statements

  "It is a delicate and difficult issue to address, but obviously if one day it were banned I would not use it anymore. However, we have only used this practice in training camps to test the effectiveness of altitude training". The Dane therefore confirms the theory exposed by his Visma-Lease a Bike and from other teams who have never publicly hidden their use of rebreathing, as UAE Team Emirates e Israel Premier-Tech, according to which the use should be traced back only to the preparation phase. In reality, the benefits of these carbon monoxide inhalations, according to those who support the theory that the practice should be banned because it is doping, speak of the surge in the level of hemoglobin in the blood that could distort the competitions. But there is more: according to theUCI and his studies, the real problem could lie in long-term damage to health, with even the final spectre of death. "I didn't know that carbon monoxide could be used improperly. I've heard that when this happens, many problems can arise in your body. But when you do it only once - he concludes vingegaard - after all, it's like smoking a cigarette. I don't do it and I never will, but there are people who smoke a lot of them a day". In short, even from this comparison put together by the Dane almost as if to defend rebreathing, one can understand how, apparently, the damage to health can be more than the alleged benefits, legal or otherwise, in sports activity.

Vaughters vs. Prudhomme

  Meanwhile, a heated controversy is brewing between Jonathan Vaughters, general manager ofEF Education EasyPost, and Christian Prudhomme, Director of Tour de France. The reason? The latter's desire to lower the speed in the group to reduce accidents. Through his profile X, the former American runner did not hide his dissent. "It absolutely infuriates me how these big shots, who have never even raced on a children's tricycle, earn millions and millions on the backs of the runners and then pass the responsibility for the safety problems on to the latter." In short, diplomacy is not at home Vaughters, who then explains in more detail the true nature of cyclists, in his opinion. "They are highly competitive people, programmed to the core to take risks like the pilots of F1. What can be done is to create a safer environment around them."

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