By frequently administering only small doses of epo, Lance Armstrong was initially never caught using banned substances despite hundreds of doping tests during his career as a professional cyclist. So says the out-of-favor Tour de France winner in an American podcast.
In that podcast, Armstrong, who won the Tour de France seven times between 1999 and 2005 but also lost all of his titles after being caught, discusses how he always managed to use doping without getting caught. According to Armstrong, his urine was tested at least five hundred times, yet never even the smallest amount of doping was found. It led, especially in the years after he was caught, to much speculation: how was that possible? Were the doping tests not working, or was Armstrong simply being hoodwinked?
Even though Armstrong does not explicitly discuss his method, he does explain that he simply calculated with the time. “With epo the half-life is only four hours, which means the substance leaves the body very quickly.”
Experts, who also listened to the podcast, then explain that the bottom line is that Armstrong must have injected small doses of epo, which he always took at times when he could not be controlled for the next few hours. Those could be times, for example, when Armstrong boarded the plane or began a long workout.
