Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tour de France riders are inhaling carbon monoxide in 'super altitude' recipe

escapecollective.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 77 posts

Re: Tour de France riders are inhaling carbon monoxide in 'super altitude' recipe

#61

Post by MBCook »

scott_w wrote: post #46
MBCook wrote: post #6

This sounds very stupidly dangerous. I’m amazed this is legal, and that people would do it in the first place. I get wanting to win at all costs but this is nuts.

I doubt it’s dangerous at all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40948229

Injecting spider venom isn’t dangerous as long as you get the dosage right.

If doing this makes it possible to perform better, people are going to push the edge of the amount that’s “safe“. Right up to the limit. Tip toeing over the limit.

People will get seriously hurt/die if they do it wrong.

It’s CO. there’s a reason the government is always telling people to make sure they have carbon monoxide detectors. It’s not because they might get too good at sports.

Re: Tour de France riders are inhaling carbon monoxide in 'super altitude' recipe

#62

Post by scott_w »

its_ethan wrote: post #55
scott_w wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try riding down the side of a mountain at 50-70mph and tell me there’s less skill in that

For what it's worth, I don't think people are trying to say it's a zero skill sport. It's not an indictment of you or the sport. I see the "argument" as: in sports like soccer or basketball, skills like dribbling or shooting accuracy don't have a skill "cap" and are generally uncorrelated to physiology. This is compared to the skill of descending a mountain at speed, which is dictated by how fast you can actually mak…

> I don't think people are trying to say it's a zero skill sport.

I didn’t say you were, you were saying that there’s less skill involved, which is outright untrue.

> in sports like soccer or basketball, skills like dribbling or shooting accuracy don't have a skill "cap" and are generally uncorrelated to physiology.

Skill is highly correlated to physiology at the higher levels. Plenty of people practice as much as Messi, yet haven’t a fraction of his footballing ability.

> It's not that strategy and skill don't exist in cycling, it's that raw power output (Watts per Kg) is ultimately the deciding factor once cyclists get to the skill cap of piloting their bike down a mountain.

You’ve not watched the famous Pidcock descent then.

> the competitive advantage becomes how fast you can make yourself go down that hill.

Very little pedalling is involved at 60mph, it’s 100% skill.

Re: Tour de France riders are inhaling carbon monoxide in 'super altitude' recipe

#63

Post by scott_w »

MBCook wrote: post #61
scott_w wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it’s dangerous at all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40948229

Injecting spider venom isn’t dangerous as long as you get the dosage right. If doing this makes it possible to perform better, people are going to push the edge of the amount that’s “safe“. Right up to the limit. Tip toeing over the limit. People will get seriously hurt/die if they do it wrong. It’s CO. there’s a reason the government is always telling people to make sure they have carbon monoxide detectors. It’s not…

> Injecting spider venom isn’t dangerous as long as you get the dosage right.

Venom actively damages your cells, CO just restricts oxygen access.

> If doing this makes it possible to perform better, people are going to push the edge of the amount that’s “safe“. Right up to the limit. Tip toeing over the limit.

Not necessarily. It’s not like EPO where more is better, the benefits likely cap out long before you reach a dangerous level of CO, so going to “the limit” isn’t something that’s likely to happen.

> It’s CO. there’s a reason the government is always telling people to make sure they have carbon monoxide detectors.

Yes because your boiler might leak an uncontrolled amount of CO and, because it’s odorless, you don’t know if you’re breathing too much before you pass out and, subsequently, die. That’s a different situation than being in a controlled environment where you can set the dosage quite easily.

Re: Tour de France riders are inhaling carbon monoxide in 'super altitude' recipe

#64

Post by klyrs »

davidw wrote: post #28
klyrs wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if I was gonna attempt this, it'd be N2 gas, or even CO2, but CO is stupid.

Nitrogen is apparently pretty dangerous too because, from what I understand, your body doesn't feel like it's not "getting enough air" like it does with high CO2 concentrations? Something like that, I don't recall the specifics...

Yeah, I think I'd use a mix -- not pure gas, but one with a fixed (nonlethal) ratio of oxygen.

Re: Tour de France riders are inhaling carbon monoxide in 'super altitude' recipe

#65

Post by plorkyeran »

MBCook wrote: post #60
drdaeman wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm amazed this is legal If someone is well-informed (the key point here - but I assume professional athletes are well aware of what they're doing) and still wants to do something weird and/or dangerous to their body, without harming others in the process - who is to deny them their bodily autonomy, and on what basis? > and that people would do it in the first place Two words: professional sports. Those folks willi…

I meant legal in the allowed by the sport’s governing body sense, not the will the cops show up at my door sense. If this is what athletes do to get to the top of the sport, then it soon becomes a pseudo requirement. If the sport regulators don’t clamp down on it then they’re basically forcing people to do something insanely risky if they want to compete. Plenty of professional sports have banned things for simply be…

It is almost certainly just something that hasn't been banned yet. There's a very long list of similar things which the UCI has banned, but they generally don't ban things which people might hypothetically do but haven't actually started doing yet, so each time someone comes up with a new idea there's a window of time to do it while it's still legal.

Re: Tour de France riders are inhaling carbon monoxide in 'super altitude' recipe

#66

Post by unparagoned »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #51
freetanga wrote: post #26

Latin American rowers from many countries train (or used to) at Tiquicaca Lake, in Bolivia. The highest lake in the world. Apparently intense training in a thin atmosphere made them more powerful when racing in richer atmospheres. Source: Olympic rower who is a friend.

But if that's what they wanted to replicate they could use nitrogen, or carbon dioxide, or something else that isn't actively poisonous.

They probably need something that has longer negative effects. They need something that is slightly poisonous.

Re: Tour de France riders are inhaling carbon monoxide in 'super altitude' recipe

#67

Post by unparagoned »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #51
freetanga wrote: post #26

Latin American rowers from many countries train (or used to) at Tiquicaca Lake, in Bolivia. The highest lake in the world. Apparently intense training in a thin atmosphere made them more powerful when racing in richer atmospheres. Source: Olympic rower who is a friend.

But if that's what they wanted to replicate they could use nitrogen, or carbon dioxide, or something else that isn't actively poisonous.

[flagged]

Re: Tour de France riders are inhaling carbon monoxide in 'super altitude' recipe

#68

Post by MBCook »

plorkyeran wrote: post #65
MBCook wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant legal in the allowed by the sport’s governing body sense, not the will the cops show up at my door sense. If this is what athletes do to get to the top of the sport, then it soon becomes a pseudo requirement. If the sport regulators don’t clamp down on it then they’re basically forcing people to do something insanely risky if they want to compete. Plenty of professional sports have banned things for simply be…

It is almost certainly just something that hasn't been banned yet . There's a very long list of similar things which the UCI has banned, but they generally don't ban things which people might hypothetically do but haven't actually started doing yet, so each time someone comes up with a new idea there's a window of time to do it while it's still legal.

I expect you’re right. It has to get on the radar to be banned.

To make matters worse unlike PEDs this may be very hard to catch.

It just floors me that someone who knew about the similarity between high altitude and partial CO poisoning not only decided to try it but got others to go along.

Re: Tour de France riders are inhaling carbon monoxide in 'super altitude' recipe

#69

Post by latchkey »

ojbyrne wrote: post #30
freetanga wrote: post #26

Latin American rowers from many countries train (or used to) at Tiquicaca Lake, in Bolivia. The highest lake in the world. Apparently intense training in a thin atmosphere made them more powerful when racing in richer atmospheres. Source: Olympic rower who is a friend.

High altitude has been well known as a training aid for decades, e.g. Kenyan marathoners: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/06/africa/kenya-runners-win-mara...

The US Olympic Training Center is in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Elevation: 6k ft and next to Peaks Pike at 14k feet.

I used to go there in the late 80's as a cyclist to train.

They'd follow you in a car as you rode up PP, honking at you to go faster.

Re: Tour de France riders are inhaling carbon monoxide in 'super altitude' recipe

#70

Post by LargeWu »

scott_w wrote: post #62
its_ethan wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, I don't think people are trying to say it's a zero skill sport. It's not an indictment of you or the sport. I see the "argument" as: in sports like soccer or basketball, skills like dribbling or shooting accuracy don't have a skill "cap" and are generally uncorrelated to physiology. This is compared to the skill of descending a mountain at speed, which is dictated by how fast you can actually mak…

> I don't think people are trying to say it's a zero skill sport. I didn’t say you were, you were saying that there’s less skill involved, which is outright untrue. > in sports like soccer or basketball, skills like dribbling or shooting accuracy don't have a skill "cap" and are generally uncorrelated to physiology. Skill is highly correlated to physiology at the higher levels. Plenty of people practice as much as Me…

> Skill is highly correlated to physiology at the higher levels. Plenty of people practice as much as Messi, yet haven’t a fraction of his footballing ability.

This is counter to your thesis. Messi's dominance doesn't come because he has elite physical characteristics. He's dominant because his level of skill with the ball at his foot is an outlier even among elites. It's not because he's pushing the physical limits of the human body.

There might be some variance in skill for elite riders, but I would guess the density curve of skill in that cohort is a very narrow bell curve, ie. low variance with relatively few outliers. This is what I mean when I say pure skill is not the major factor in success in cycling. Most riders are going to be pretty closely matched skill-wise, and the winners are going to be those that can generate the most power for a sustained amount of time.

Post reply on HN