Just as Lance Armstrong and his two teammates were winning the 12 Hours of Snowmass mountain bike race in Colorado, a human performance expert admitted he made mistakes in calculating the bicycle racer's muscle efficiency.
It may serve to reignite the whole “did-he or didn't-he” dope controversy, even though the researcher says the mistake doesn't changed the study's results.
Armstrong announced last week that he'll attempt his 8th Tour de France championship in 2009 in a campaign that will include a comprehensive anti-doping program that he says will leave no doubt that he's been cycling clean.
Snowmass
His first win on the road back to the Tour de France was the Colorado endurance race that was essentially an off-road relay of three-man teams riding as many 7-mile laps as they could in 12 hours.
The winning Team Aspen/Live Strong comprised Armstrong, Max Taam and Len Zanni. The second place Team Beaver Creek was made up of Mike Kloser, Jay Henry and Dave Wiens. Wiens is the mountain biker who beat Armstrong at the Leadville 100 last month.
That race is credited with piquing Armstrong's interest in getting back into pro cycling and taking his anti-cancer fight around the world.
Efficiency
He'll also have to prove that he isn't just another doping cyclist who never got caught. One study published in 2005 that explained his improved performance is being disputed by a team of Australian scientists.
The original paper, published in the Journal of Physiology by Edward Coyle, reported that an 8% improvement in muscle efficiency and a 7% reduction in body weight transformed Armstrong from a high-caliber cyclist before cancer to the Tour-de-France winning machine he became from 1999 to 2005.
Coyle was in a unique position to study Armstrong's improvement. As a University of Texas professor, Coyle tested Armstrong at his lab from 1993 to 1999, which includes the periods before and after Armstrong's cancer.
Questions
But Australian physiologist Michael Ashenden and others in his team have been questioning some of Coyle's calculations, citing that he used an incorrect formula to figure Armstrong's net efficiency. They filed a complaint with the University of Texas, where the vice president of research concluded:
“… there do appear to be 'deficiencies' in Professor Coyle's research, and there does appear to be a need to clarify the research record. However, there is no hard or firm evidence that the deficiencies rise to the level of scientific misconduct.”
Coyle admitted in a letter to the scientific journal that originally published his paper that he did make an error, but that it does not change his findings regarding Armstrong's increased muscle efficiency.
You can read more about the controversy in the New York Times article “Error found in study reignites debate about Armstrong.”
Also, see the original article — “Improved muscular efficiency displayed as Tour de France champion matures” — at the Journal of Applied Physiology; and Biking Bis article “Armstrong boosted muscle efficiency” and press release from American Physiological Society.
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