7-13 September - Brisbane, Australia 2000 |
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Combining hypobaric oxygen techniques and hyperbaric oxygen to augment endurance performance R.L. Cedaro* 1998 saw the cycling world rocked to its very foundations by the well publicised exposure of the widespread use of performance enhancing drugs during the Tour de France of that same year. Since then athlete after athlete in a myriad of different sports around the world have "gone positive" as Sports Drug Agencies, and indeed law enforcement agencies, worldwide crack down on the use and traffic of performance enhancing drugs in sport. Cycling's governing body, the UCI, introduced "blood testing" as a means of determining the "potential" illicit use of erythropoitin as an ergogenic agent. By setting an arbitrary figure of 50% as a haematocrit "competition cut off", the UCI opened a veritable Pandora's box of potential "false positive" disqualifications from competition being called against "clean" athletes. While various researchers and academics have offered a myriad of "natural alternatives" to drug use the last few years have seen major advancements in sports science and bio-technical instrumentation that provide startling new possibilities in leveling the playing field between those athletes who chose to avail themselves to illicit, and currently largely undetectable, performance enhancing drugs, and those that wish to compete "clean". Without doubt, the areas of "hypobaric" or altitude training and "hyperbaric" therapy are two areas that warrant further investigation as methods of improving athletic performance. While both practices are thwart with much conjecture and supposition, particularly in Western Society, Eastern Bloc countries such as the then Soviet Union, have been using such techniques with resounding success for more than a decade. It is the purpose of this discussion to briefly review some of the research from around the world, along with recent pilot and case studies from Australia and New Zealand in these areas to ascertain their potential worth as legal performance enhancing practices into the new millenium. |
2000
Pre-Olympic Congress