Altitude training, erythropoietin, and blood doping

A variety of strategies, some "legal" and others "illegal," to raise oxygen-carrying capacity are likely to continue to be used in an effort to improve endurance performance in selected events. It is also likely that a variety of novel pharmacologic strategies will become increasingly available to manipulate these factors. Because living in a hypoxic environment can also stimulate many of these same adaptations, the current stance of many governing bodies to limit absolute levels of Hb and/or Hct seems to be the only reasonable way to regulate these practices. Interested readers are referred to the papers discussed above, which provide excellent discussions of the biology, physiology, and ethics of these practices.