"We don't plan to do any more" - UAE Team Emirates announce termination of use of carbon monoxide rebreathing to evaluate training effectiveness

Carbon monoxide rebreathing has been the topic of the cycling off-season with Escape Collective's investigation suggesting that the method which has, for decades, been used to measure effectiveness of altitude training, could be used for doping. Albeit their conclusion at the time didn't suggest any of the teams were abusing carbon monoxide in that way, the UCI became severely concerned about the situation and eventually proposed the WADA takes a closer look at the issue.

"To give you complete clarity on that, carbon monoxide rebreathing is a technique that has already been validated for 20 years and has been used by climbers, endurance sportsmen and athletes around the world to measure haemoglobin mass when they go to altitude," said UAE Team Emirates performance coordinator Jeroen Swart at press conference of the team.

"We've been very good with our altitude training camps in the last seven years. We feel that we've done a really good job in terms of the benefit, but there's no way that you can quantify that clearly, other than measuring haemoglobin mass."

"So, two years ago, we decided to assess whether or not our riders were improving to our expectations. And so, it was an exercise that we conducted over 18 months and assessed the haemoglobin mass using carbon monoxide rebreathing which is a very standardised technique with very specific equipment."

"Actually, we finished that process now and our results show that our training camps are actually very well suited to the maximal adaptation for our riders which we see in the performances as well."

"So, we actually don't need to do the tests any further. We don't plan to do any more," he said. To wrap up, he noted that Escape's findings were rather far-fetched and the scenario they suggested would've been very difficult to achieve. "But I think it's quite a sensationalist article that's been published and speculating about using a technique that would be quite complicated and probably not something that I can see anybody actually doing. It doesn't it doesn't come across as realistic. So, I think there's a lot of sensation."