The UCI has been waging a war against Tramadol for years. The drug, an opioid analgesic, had been considered prohibited in the context of competitive activities organized by the International Cycling Union (UCI) since 2019.
Since then, the substance has been in the sights of scientists and from January 1, 2024, it will become part of the list of prohibited substances by the World Anti-Doping Agency.
The war in question seems to have borne fruit: Aigle reports that the use of Tramadol in the various groups has already disappeared. “The percentage of Tramadol use in cycling has fallen from between 4 and 6 percent in the period before 2019, to a figure of between 0.2 and 0.5 percent after that date,” he presumes. the ICU of its success.
“It must be remembered that the use of the substance in question has been prohibited in cycling competitions since March 2019 not because it improves performance, but for medical reasons, since Tramadol causes drowsiness and dependence.”
Furthermore, the UCI announces that “from 2019 to today we have carried out approximately 2,200 controls at the end of the different races and in total three use cases, which led to disqualification from the corresponding competition and a financial penalty.” These are Alex Baudin (Giro d’Italia 2023), Nairo Quintana (Tour de France 2022) and Mykhaylo Kononenko (World Cup 2022).
Tramadol is a medication that belongs to the family of opiate analgesics, better known as narcotics. It works by changing the way the brain and nervous system respond to pain. It is prescribed to relieve severe or moderate pain, such as prolonged or postoperative back pain.
This substance inhibits all pain. It is not a pain reliever like ibuprofen, tramadol eliminates all the pain you may feel in your legs. It’s like going out to compete every day as if it were the first, without the accumulation of pain in the lower back, legs tired from pedaling, the back, the shoulders.
Source: www.ciclismoaldia.es