We know when you are sleeping...

There was an interesting story in today’s New York Times regarding the World Anti-Doping Association (WADA), and its head, Dick Pound, and the extreme and Draconian pressure it continues to put on honest and clean athletes.

The story, written by Gina Kolata, explains how WADA and Pound have determined that endurance athletes, namely cyclists, runners, skiers, and triathletes, should not be allowed to use altitude tents or altitude rooms that simulate the low-oxygen conditions of high altitude. According to WADA, sleeping, resting, sitting, reading, doing a crossword puzzle, or surfing the Internet in a room that simulates the atmosphere found in places like Boulder, Colorado Springs, Albuquerque, or any of the other mountain meccas where endurance athletes live and train, violates WADA’s idea of “the spirit of sport.”

Meanwhile, if an athlete lives in a shed on some ramshackle mountain road with the big horn sheep, yellow-bellied marmots, and elk routinely found in high altitude, or in Flagstaff, Ariz., well then that’s just fine and dandy.

Really?

For runners and cyclists, high altitude training is a good way to build endurance and lung capacity before returning to competition at sea level. Regular training at high altitude, usually classified as 5,000-feet or higher, prompts the body to make more oxygen-carrying red blood cells and can lead to improved endurance. According to recent studies, sleeping at altitude provides the benefits at a better rate than actually working out in the thinner air, but as someone who has spent a few weeks a year over the past 10 years running at nearly 8,000-feet in Estes Park, Colo., sleeping in the mountains never made me feel winded. That 13-mile run is another story.

Nevertheless, altitude tents and rooms have become so popular with endurance athletes, including those in Nike’s distance running program, that the use of them has trickled down to more mainstream athletes. According to the story in The Times, even the hometown Flyers have jumped into the tents.

So with the story out there and the small, yet cliquish world of endurance sports clamoring with outrage, what does the always outspoken Pound or any other representative from WADA have to say?

Insert crickets chirping here.

Yeah, can you believe that? Pound was quiet for a change.

Pound, of course, has been a crusader for keeping sports clean. That in itself is admirable, because when the athletes are dope and steroid free, the sports are better. Just look at this year’s Tour de France in which three of the top riders were ousted from the race just days before the start because of questionable drug tests. Had the Tour or cycling not been so bold as to take a hard-line stand about doping in its sport, chances are no one would have ever heard about Floyd Landis. Certainly Landis’ story is a lot more interesting than hearing commentary about Bobby Julich or Jan Ulrich.

So with that, Pound and WADA’s goals are very admirable, and it would be interesting to see real baseball, football or basketball played by athletes that are held to the high standards that endurance and Olympic athletes have to meet. But where Pound and WADE fail is when they continue to wipe away the line of personal privacy in regard to the crusade.

Pound and WADA also have been one of the many groups stalking Lance Armstrong because of his rumored use of EPO and doping during his seven-year dynasty at the Tour de France. This is despite Armstrong never having failed a drug test and, unlike some baseball players, the cyclist has threatened to sue any group accusing him of illicit and performance-enhancing drug use.

Last month Armstrong sent a letter to Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, in which he requested that Pound step down as head of WADA. In his letter, Armstrong claimed that Pound was guilty of "reprehensible and indefensible" behavior in the manner in which Pound made repeated drug-use accusations aimed at the cyclist.

As for the issue with the tents, here’s an excerpt from the story in The Times:

“Ninety-five percent of the medals that have been won at Olympic Games have been won by people who train at or live at altitude,” said Joe Vigil, who coaches Deena Kastor. She holds the United States women’s record in the marathon. Kastor lives in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., at an altitude of 7,800 feet, and often trains at sea level.

The decision on whether to ban hypoxic devices has taken many athletes and exercise physiologists by surprise, but the antidoping agency has quietly spent the past few years considering the issue, said Dr. Bengt Saltin, director of the Copenhagen Muscle Research Center. Saltin was a member of the agency’s health medicine and research committee until two years ago.

“We have discussed the issue a lot,” he said.

In Saltin’s opinion, the altitude tents and rooms are no different from going to “a suitable mountain area,” only cheaper. Banning the altitude tents or rooms, he said, “should not be on the WADA or International Olympic Committee’s priority list.”

That is also the view of the 76 scientists and bioethicists who recently signed a letter to the World Anti-Doping Agency expressing “grave concern” over the proposal to ban the tents and rooms.

The letter’s lead author was Dr. Benjamin D. Levine, director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine at Presbyterian Hospital and a professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, both in Dallas. He said the antidoping agency was starting down a perilous path.

“This is a pretty slippery slope,” he said. “WADA is going to lose their credibility with the scientific community, upon whom they depend to further their mission, by pursuing this. And how to enforce it is a whole different question.”

In addition to Levine’s letter, the Center for Sports Law and Policy at the Duke University School of Law recently issued a position paper opposing the notion of banning the altitude tents and rooms.

So just for fun, if WADA wants to determine how and where athletes can sleep maybe it would be a good idea to help them out with a few other issues with running and cycling that seem “unfair.” Why not ban the following:

Shoes

Caffeine

Aspirin

Band-Aids

Stitches

Helmets

Ice (frozen water is just so... unseemly)

Americans

Cities with Wi-Fi access

Cities with an extended trail system

Personal trainers

Stretching bands

Weights

Brakes on a bike

Gatorade

Powerbars (Clif Bars are OK… they’re organic)

Locker rooms

Water for showers or whirlpools

The letter E

Hopefully, as soon as WADA gets rid of that pesky altitude maybe they can do something about humidity.