I am kinda new to pro cycling and I am wondering what type and specific rider would win on a long but flat time trial. Would it be a sprinter or is the long distance more suited to other types?

Apologies if it is a stupid question.

• Born trans, knew she was a girl since she was 4/5 years old.

• Grew up in poverty in Glasgow with a poor relationship with her parents. Absolutely hates it there, and is terrified of spending her life in a glasgow shoe factory.

• Finally discovers a way out of her hated hometown, and it's professional sport--something entirely dependent on your body's physical prowess and strength.

• Learns what transition is in her 20s (70s/early 80s) but she's up and coming in her profession, wants to make as much money as she can during her career, and obviously taking estrogen would make that impossible.

• Is compelled (in her opinion) to dope with androgenic hormones during her career. I can't imagine what it must have been like to feel like you had to inject testosterone, deliberately making your body more unbearable to live in, for your career.

• Finally retires, tries to live a quiet life away from cycling so she can finally transition and get on with her life. But it's the 90s -- the era of Ace Ventura and Silence of the Lambs -- so she has to cut ties with everything she knew or be pilloried and ridiculed. Spends 20 years severed from her former life.

• Tabloids pillory and ridicule her anyways.

• In her 60s, when asked, says if she could do it again she'd throw away her entire career to transition at a younger age.

Just...damn. Your heart breaks for her, right?

So much makes sense in retrospect. RM was known for being very standoffish, very private. Now, knowing the secret she was hiding, it makes a lot of sense -- if word got out, her career was over. I wonder: who did she talk to? How did the 'Phillipa' part of her get through those years? Could she confide in anybody? This is before the internet made finding a trans community easier -- you had to be "in the know" to be meet other queers back in those days. I can only imagine the alienation and loneliness she must have lived with daily.

IDK, it's crazy to me that somebody can reach an absolute pinnacle of success and acclaim, but it won't fill the hole when you're forced to be somebody you're not. I hope she's got some peace these days.

Medical/medical science background and also avid cyclist. Been a bit curious about this whole CO rebreathing situation and decided to give it a bit of a deep dive, as it might be interesting for some readers on this forum.

Huge caveat before we start. Sport science is not a well funded field, and as a result the studies tend to be under powered. Physiologists are often more concerned with proof of concepts and may publish studies that may appear inconclusive, however pose as a base for WT teams and those with an incentive to further study the areas, and generally that information isn’t going to be published in medical journals. So in shot, whatever we’re reading here, is likely 10-20% of the information that the sports a scientists at Visma Lab / UAE have.

Without getting into extreme detail, CO binds to Hb with a higher affinity that an O2 forming carboxyhaemoglobin. It does so in a very predictable was, e.g X quantity of CO giving you Y Quantity of carboxyhaemoglobin will accurately provide a surrogate for oxygen diffusion capacity, and is actually used in medical “pulmonary function tests” with the number known as DLCO and can also be used to determine total haemoglobin mass. In theory, sure, it can be used by world tour teams as an accurate method to predict oxygen exchange. Where I think the 50 shades of grey comes into the equation is the fact that there is no policing on how it is used and certainly scientific research that would seem to indicate reasonable benefits from same.

I will link all medical journals used below but it appears as though.

A) CO administration by rebreathing was reported to directly increase EPO concentration.

• Montero D., Lundby C. (2019). Arterial oxygen content regulates plasma erythropoietin independent of arterial oxygen tension: a blinded crossover study. Kidney Int. 95 (1), 173–177. doi:10.1016/j.kint.2018.09.015

B) Inhaling CO2 five times a week prior to treadmill training increase Hb Mass in soccer players

• Wang J., Ji Y., Zhou L., Xiang Y., Heinonen I., Zhang P. (2019). A new method to improve running economy and maximal aerobic power in athletes: endurance training with periodic carbon monoxide inhalation.

C) Chronic intermittent low dose CO inhalation over 3 weeks resulting in a 4.8 tHB increase, comparable to altitude training, with an increase in EPO and reticuloclytes.

• Schmidt W. F. J., Hoffmeister T., Haupt S., Schwenke D., Wachsmuth N. B., Byrnes W. C. (2020). Chronic exposure to low-dose carbon monoxide alters hemoglobin mass and V O2max. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc 52 (9), 1879–1887. doi:10.1249/MSS.0000000000002330

D) Addition of CO rebreathing to altitude increased t-HB mass compared to altitude alone.

• Urianstad T., Villanova S., Odden I., Hansen J., Molmen K. S., Porcelli S., et al. (2024). Carbon monoxide supplementation: evaluating its potential to enhance altitude training effects and cycling performance in elite athletes. J. Appl. Physiol. doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.00469.2024

E) “limited research suggests that suggest chronic CO exposure may have potential performance enhancing effects by increase EPO and oxygen carrying capacity)

• Schmidt W. F. J., Hoffmeister T., Haupt S., Schwenke D., Wachsmuth N. B., Byrnes W. C. (2020). Chronic exposure to low-dose carbon monoxide alters hemoglobin mass and V O2max. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc 52 (9), 1879–1887. doi:10.1249/MSS.0000000000002330

Conclusion: From a medical science perspective, research into sports physiology is relatively low yield, (hard to get funding, hard to get published in a journals in comparison to fields with therapeutic potential) so these studies tend to be few and far between, with some methodological limitations that means that you have to read between the lines. You aren’t going to a see a 1,000 participant randomised control trial on the effects of CO rebreathing on 20 minute power- meaning an element of reading between the lines is needed. But for certain world tour teams with budgets in the $$$$$ and dedicated sports science teams, I’m 100% sure they’ve cracked though code.

I’m not jumping to any conclusions on the ethics of all this. Just commenting from a purely scientific perspective and the evidence does point to some benefit from CO-Rebreathing, coupled with the fact that this is as of now a completely unregulated method. Theoretically there’s nothing stopping teams from conducting “diagnostic testing” daily to monitor how their athletes are responding to pre-season or altitude camp.

Make of this what you will, interested in any comments.

For all your pro cycling-related questions and enquiries!

You may find some easy answers in the FAQ page on the wiki. Whilst simultaneously discovering the wiki.

Non sequitur