Robin Parisotto is one of the nine members of the Bio Passport panel. I emailed him a few questions to discuss the state of cycling and the passport program in the wake of what many believe was a cleaner Tour de France. To read Mr. Parisotto’s views from a year ago, check out Shane Stokes’ interview here.

Andy Shen: I’m of two minds on the passport program. On the one hand, you have people like Kohl and Frei saying how easy it is to not get caught, and you also have tests that have shown that it’s possible to dope and not trigger a positive. On the other hand, you can’t deny that racing has come down to more human speeds. How do you assess the impact of the Bio Passport program so far?

Robin Parisotto: To quote from The Science of Sport Dr. Ross Tucker and Dr. Jonathan Dugas…

"But, to continue a debate we’ve been having recently, these numbers reflect, in my opinion, an overall lowering of the performance level in the Tour compared to the last 2 decades. And this is a positive sign that doping control measures are having an effect. Even yesterday on the Col du Tourmalet, the climbing time was 56:30 for the Yellow Jersey, compared to that huge day in 2003, when Armstrong and Ullrich did it in 44:30. And yes, the race situation was different, but 12 minutes? That’s too big to be accounted for by strategy alone, even weather conditions (yesterday may well have been more favourable anyway)". Need I say more!

In terms of positive blood doping cases over the past few years my best estimates for cycling are that in 2008 there were 15 cases, in 2009 there were 20 cases and in 2010 there have been 7 cases in which there was a positive urine test (for EPO, CERA, Dynepo).

So performance levels have dropped, the number of positive urine tests has dropped and anyone doping only to keep ‘under the radar’ (as claimed by Kohl and Frei) to avoid triggering a sanction based on the passport are probably getting very little if any benefit at all.

In my view if there is nothing suspicious about your blood profile then you are either not blood doping or you are not getting any benefit from blood doping.

Based on the above, all in all I would say the impact has been fairly impressive.

AS: The first few sanctions were relatively unknown riders. Was this a case of the UCI wanting to get five convictions in the book to get the program going? If one of the first flagged profiles belonged to a rider who had deep pockets and could mount an extensive defense, would the UCI have risked crippling the passport program right out of the gate?

RP: I have been aware of these sorts of criticisms however I expect sanctions can only be progressed if there is sufficient evidence to support them. I believe it is irrelevant whether sanctioned riders are high profile or ‘no names’, the important message is that the passport method is effective. In fact I would go as far as saying that sanctioning emerging/fringe riders has probably a greater impact because you are getting at the ‘grass roots’ of the problem. Key to the chronic doping problem is changing the ‘culture’ of doping and there is probably no better place to start with athletes at the ‘bottom of the food chain’ so to speak who have to make the conscious decision to dope or not (established riders who dope are long past this point). The passport is sufficiently robust (and sensitive) to detect blood doping and as long as the panel agrees unanimously on proceeding with sanctions then ‘deep pockets’ are of no concern to me personally. In some ways the Claudia Pechstein case bears testimony to the false criticism that high profile athletes are ‘no go’ when it comes to the passport approach.

AS: And now we hear news that there are five riders who have been flagged that haven’t been sanctioned. You’re working with an organization that’s presently under a lot of fire for corruption. When you send off your results, how confident are you that the UCI will process them fairly?

RP: I prefer not to comment on the current distractions of the UCI. The process for sending and reviewing results is well established and in my opinion is a fair and robust process.

AS: Anonymity is a very important part of the testing process. However, since the passport is a longitudinal program, any rider who publishes his values will no longer be unknown to the panel. In a perverse way, does the loss of this rider’s anonymity make him un-sanctionable?

RP: I expect that anyone with ‘suspicious’ values would not publish their results period. The only values that I have seen in a public forum are those that are relatively normal. Protocols aside the identity of a rider would have no impact on my assessment of a passport profile. For me a decision to sanction is based on the numbers not the identity of riders. I guess if a rider wants to advertise their results they do so at their own peril. It’s of no consequence to me.

AS: Ultimately, will the passport program be more of an intelligence gathering tool than a direct sanctioning tool?

RP: As far as blood doping is concerned the passport has developed over the past two years that it can be confidently used as a sanctioning tool in its own right and although the sanctions have been few there have been no legal challenges to it that I am aware of. Of course a strength of the passport is that it can be simultaneously used for intelligence purposes. A negative urine test on the other hand has no intelligence value at all. What escapes most critics is that the passport approach will be able to detect new age blood doping techniques including genetic blood doping. The passport approach therefore is in for the long haul and is not a knee jerk approach to the problem of doping as has often been the case in the past, and still is, in many other sports. Despite criticisms other sports could take a leaf out of the UCI book.

AS: It’s said that the cheaters are always a few years ahead of the testers. Does the passport turns that paradigm on its head by making dopers work really hard for minimal gains? And is that the best we can hope for?

RP: The beauty of the passport approach is two-fold. If it does not capture all of the cheats (no system can at the moment) then it certainly limits their ability to dope with impunity and therefore the ability to gain any real performance benefits. This must therefore beg the question in the mind of potential dopers’ ‘is it worth the risk?’. Once the seeds of doubt are laid cultural change is possible. The other benefit is that no matter the agent/substance/method being used to blood dope the passport approach is still relevant. In other words the passport approach has little redundancy.

While I don’t believe the passport is the cure for all the ills of doping in general it certainly provides sporting authorities with a strong and sustainable approach to the blood doping problem in particular. Ultimately the aim of blood doping is to increase your haemoglobin levels to get the extra oxygen for sustained performance. No matter which way one chooses to do that one day it will show up in the passport if you are seeking real performance gains. If it doesn’t then it’s probably been a waste of time (and money). Until someone can invent a way to blood dope without actually changing ‘things’ in the blood the passport will be an effective tool for deterring and detecting blood doping. It’s a pity that most other sports are just sitting on the sidelines when they could be making real in-roads into the problem by using the passport approach as well.