The ethics committee of the World Anti-Doping Agency says athletes who raise their red blood cell count by using tents that simulate high-altitude conditions or hyperbaric chambers are getting an artificial boost and WADA may make it a banned practice.
The use of the tents -- previously thought a more "natural" way to raise oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood than administering EPO (erythropoietin) -- is a method Canadian medal-winning athletes have used for several years, including Olympic cross-country skiing medalists Becky Scott and Sara Renner.
A ban will be considered at a meeting of the WADA executive committee this weekend.
Canada's national team coach Dave Wood lashed out at the initiative.
"They're putting too much energy into an aspect of sport that is not going to change anything. They should be putting more energy into detecting genetic doping or real blood doping," said Wood, who confirmed that Scott and Renner are among "older athletes" who benefited from hypoxic conditions at a point in their careers where they look for small improvements that can make a difference in their results.
"I think [WADA's]position is out to lunch. It's a tool you can use, but you don't just sit down in a room and all of a sudden your performance is enhanced. You have to use it properly, and there's a trade-off of fatigue and stress of being in a low-oxygen environment. It's not like taking EPO, not even close."
WADA chairman Dick Pound said in a teleconference yesterday that a ban on such practices would not besmirch the accomplishments of athletes such as Scott, an Olympic gold and silver medalist and now a member of the International Olympic Committee.
Reputations of those who have slept in such tents or chambers won't be impugned, he said.
"Not at all. Unless there's a prohibition, those athletes are not breaking a rule. . . . As long as something is not prohibited, it's allowed," he said. "But is it contrary to the spirit of sport? Our ethics committee decided it was."
WADA could put the high-altitude manipulations on the banned list or a watch list for further consideration. Practically, it would be a difficult restriction to enforce, especially determining whether athletes had been in tents or actually training at true high altitudes.
"It may well be a bigger headache than it's worth, like going after cold tablets when there are people out there blood doping," Pound said.
Wood said Canadian, Japanese and Finnish athletes are among the cross-country skiers who use hypoxic conditions.
"It's used by people who don't have the opportunity to go to altitude easily, reasonably close to home. In mid-Europe, you can sleep high and drive down the mountain to train. We can't do that easily in Canada," he said.
"The real high altitude that exists in Canada is in national parks and not available to us for training. Are we forced all the time to travel away? Other countries have environments in their backyards they can use."