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Surely if there is plenty of debate and testing that leads to ambiguities about whether something is performance enhancing or not, probably means it isn't
Or it means the studies conducted so far have used the wrong metrics or the wrong subjects. I don't think there's much doubt that some β2 agonists in large systemic doses have performance enhancing effects on some metrics. The doubt is whether any of that translates to therapeutic inhaled doses, and I haven't gone into that much detail in the various study reports which do show some effect to see how well they eliminated effects which were the usual therapeutic performance enhancement due to some subjects having undiagnosed asthma.
All of which is moot in the case of salbutamol, since everybody is allowed to take it if they want to, up to 1600μg a day, whether they have asthma or not. Anybody who believes that therapeutic inhaled doses are performance enhancing for people without asthma can buy the stuff online for under £2 a pack by simply giving the right answers to an online consultation, without having to go through the tiresome rigmarole of meeting a pulmonologist face to face and drawing pretty pen traces with his spirometer (although I expect they're all digital now, so it would be drawing pretty graphs on a computer screen)
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gbj_tester
GoatandTricycle
Surely if there is plenty of debate and testing that leads to ambiguities about whether something is performance enhancing or not, probably means it isn't. Sounds like caffeine or beetroot juice are more performance enhancing than salbutamol.
This is all very strange, and all rather depressing. I think the leak has done Froome a great disservice: let the investigation run its course and give us an outcome, positive or negative, and issue a sanction on the rider if guilty. Instead we get an immediate guilty assumption from all corners that will always stain the rider's reputation. I tried to ask a question about the ethics of reporting on the leak and prejudicing the investigation but it wasn't answered. I was snarled at by one person saying 'I bet you defended Lance'. But it's not a defense: I'm struggling to understand what exactly this all means, I mean even if the authorities decide against him it's not a doping positive, as the substance isn't banned. There's no performance advantage to be gained from it, it just seems now Froome is a considered a doper even though he didn't dope.