Not to be Confused with Blood Doping?
Lasse Viren, the Finnish distance runner, surprised many when he won double gold medals on the track in 5,000m and 10,000m at the 1972 and 1976 Olympics; he even came 5th in the marathon, a discipline he’d never run. Allegations of blood doping arose when Viren, who always denied them, claimed that altitude training and ‘reindeer milk’ were the keys to his enhanced performance.
Blood doping wasn’t made illegal in sports until 1986, mainly because of the health risks. It’s a mucky process involving removing, storing, and transporting blood.
The process means the athlete has a quart or more of blood extracted before a major competition. This blood is frozen while the athlete trains to rebuild the blood to normal levels. Then just before racing, red cells from the extracted blood are transfused back, instantly increasing the body’s hemoglobin level and oxygen-carrying abilities. It instantly boosts endurance.
Blood doping was officially declared an illegal practice in 1986. But autologous blood doping, reinjecting your red blood cells back into your system, is not reliably traceable.
The similarities with Hemotherapies, which owe much to sporting research, cannot be denied. However, it is still a practice where many myths, scaremongering, and…
