Romain Bardet: "Carbon monoxide can explain the trajectory of some people we didn't know about a year ago... it's now up to the authorities to decide whether or not to ban"

Having spent more than a decade riding at the very highest level, Romain Bardet has seen a lot of developments within the professional peloton over the course of his career. One of the more recent is the controversial use of carbon monoxide.

An aggressive approach called carbon monoxide inhalation, steps into the scientifically new and much riskier realm of inhaling the lightly poisonous gas (carbon monoxide) for the express purpose of performance enhancement. A growing body of recent scientific research suggests inhalation can have a powerful impact on measures of aerobic capacity like VO2max, or maximal oxygen uptake with reported links to teams such as UAE Team Emirates, Team Visma | Lease a Bike and Israel - Premier Tech. 

In an extensive interview with Eurosport upon the end of his career, Bardet was asked for a rider's view on the controversial topic that currently escapes a WADA ban. "Honestly, I learned about it from the press. You see the studies. Anything is possible. I've never heard of anything, but then again, I wouldn't be surprised. There's so much research being done into the idea of optimising performance..." the Frenchman assesses. "It's not surprising that there are some researchers, some teams, some people involved in cycling who are looking elsewhere. There will always be a desire to find competitive advantages."

Is it a fair advantage though or should the use of carbon monoxide for performance gain be banned? "It's up to each individual to set the threshold of what seems ethical and fair in the absolute and desperate search for the end result in relation to his or her values. It's like ketones, like so many things, it's open to interpretation. And unfortunately, since the rules are not clearly laid down, since this interpretation is left to the discretion of each individual and since we're in an ultra-competitive sport where only victory counts, we shouldn't be surprised by possible deviations," Bardet ponders. "Carbon monoxide can explain the trajectory of some people we didn't know about a year or a year and a half ago, but it's also a bit easy to blame them without looking at their trajectory. These procedures have been documented and it's now up to the authorities to decide whether or not to ban them and to carry out checks. In such a competitive world with so much at stake economically, it is totally pointless to believe that it is the goodwill and irreproachable ethics of the riders and teams that will allow a healthy regulation of the environment. It is totally illusory."