Women's 400 IM

Can doping actually make THAT much difference? I mean if it's completely unbelievable and out of the question that she swam the last 50 faster than Lochte, how believable is it on drugs? Enough of a difference that just about every major player in the cycling world doped in the 90's. ESAs have a history of use as blood doping agents in endurance sports ... The overall oxygen delivery system (blood oxygen levels, as well as heart stroke volume, vascularization, and lung function) is one of the major limiting factors to muscle's ability to perform endurance exercise. Therefore, the primary reason athletes may use ESAs is to improve oxygen delivery to muscles, which directly improves their endurance capacity. Though EPO was believed to be widely used in the 1990s in certain sports, there was no way at the time to directly test for it, until in 2000... In 2002, at the Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Don Catlin, MD, the founder and then-director of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Lab, reported finding darbepoetin alfa, a form of erythropoietin, in a test sample for the first time in sports. The testing is always going to play catch-up. I don't know how long they actually keep samples for, but if the swimmer retires shortly after the games, it's far less likely that s/he will ever get caught.

Can doping actually make THAT much difference? I mean if it's completely unbelievable and out of the question that she swam the last 50 faster than Lochte, how believable is it on drugs? Enough of a difference that just about every major player in the cycling world doped in the 90's. ESAs have a history of use as blood doping agents in endurance sports ... The overall oxygen delivery system (blood oxygen levels, as well as heart stroke volume, vascularization, and lung function) is one of the major limiting factors to muscle's ability to perform endurance exercise. Therefore, the primary reason athletes may use ESAs is to improve oxygen delivery to muscles, which directly improves their endurance capacity. Though EPO was believed to be widely used in the 1990s in certain sports, there was no way at the time to directly test for it, until in 2000... In 2002, at the Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Don Catlin, MD, the founder and then-director of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Lab, reported finding darbepoetin alfa, a form of erythropoietin, in a test sample for the first time in sports. The testing is always going to play catch-up. I don't know how long they actually keep samples for, but if the swimmer retires shortly after the games, it's far less likely that s/he will ever get caught.