"I didn't even know it could be misused" - Jonas Vingegaard on Carbon Monoxide rebreathing

Carbon Monoxide rebreathing is a topic that has seen daylight this past June when an investigation showed that a few top teams, including UAE Team Emirates and Team Visma | Lease a Bike, had experimented with what may be a method to improve performance. Whilst not banned it's highly controversial, but it's use is also a mystery. Jonas Vingegaard has weighed in on it.

The Dane had already answered questions regarding it at the Tour de France, and explained what had been said previously which is that the team uses it for testing during altitude camps.

"I didn't even know it could be misused," Vingegaard said in an interview with NOS. "I said before that we only used them to test whether altitude training works. If you misuse it, it can be a substitute for altitude training. If you use it that way, there may be health risks involved. But we use it differently."

Regarding performance enhancing, it is believed that precise doses of carbon monoxide inhalation could be beneficial for the body's ability to process oxygen but it is still not confirmed whether teams have actually used it in this way, how much the benefit could potentially be, and what the risk of it is. The UCI has this week demanded WADA (the sport's leading anti-doping agency) to take a stance regarding this method, taking into consideration current scientifical evidence.

Vingegaard finished: "That said, I've heard that if you do it once, it's like smoking one cigarette. And there are a lot of people who smoke several cigarettes a day".