New ban for Jonathan Tiernan-Locke - for drink-driving

A certain Belgium came back after a couple of incidents with cocaine, this has no impact on his career except he'll need a lift to some races once his racing ban is lifted.

Does the man need help or is he just another idiot who thinks drink driving is ok? My experience of drink drivers is the latter.

P3t3 wrote:

Poor lad sounds like he needs some help. I can imagine I'd be a right mess if I realised I was squandering some of my potential best years as a professional after having been publicly branded a cheat.

If this particular drunk driver was not a professional cyclist I doubt he would find much sympathy on here.

He may well have problems but that can never, ever justify driving a motor vehicle when over the alcohol limit.

Anyone drinking and driving over the limit deserves serious penalties - in my view rather more serious than the one in this case.

farrell wrote:

Can somebody figure out how much this is likely to equate to in terms of the amount of booze drank?

2 pints of lager could easily put you over the 80mg limit, so would it follow that to get to 204mg you would have had to have drank 4 or 5 pints? Or does it build up quicker than that, say, 2 pints puts you at the limit, but 3 would make you double the limit sort of thing?

I understand that with blood alcohol levels it is pretty complex and is effected by a lot of variables, I'm just curious about the basic, back of a fag packet arithmetic involved.

The rough rule of thumb is your liver can process one unit of alcohol per hour, obviously that's effected by your own personal physiology quite a bit. There's also no strict correlation between 1 unit and the millilitres/alcohol and milligrammes/breath.

He was caught at 3:45am so I'd imagine he'll have had anywhere between 6-10 pints depending on his metabolism and liver function, and what time he started. Given he seems to like a shandy I'd err on the side of his body not processing alcohol as effectively as someone who has a drink once in a blue moon.

nicholassmith wrote:

farrell wrote:

Can somebody figure out how much this is likely to equate to in terms of the amount of booze drank?

2 pints of lager could easily put you over the 80mg limit, so would it follow that to get to 204mg you would have had to have drank 4 or 5 pints? Or does it build up quicker than that, say, 2 pints puts you at the limit, but 3 would make you double the limit sort of thing?

I understand that with blood alcohol levels it is pretty complex and is effected by a lot of variables, I'm just curious about the basic, back of a fag packet arithmetic involved.

The rough rule of thumb is your liver can process one unit of alcohol per hour, obviously that's effected by your own personal physiology quite a bit. There's also no strict correlation between 1 unit and the millilitres/alcohol and milligrammes/breath.

He was caught at 3:45am so I'd imagine he'll have had anywhere between 6-10 pints depending on his metabolism and liver function, and what time he started. Given he seems to like a shandy I'd err on the side of his body not processing alcohol as effectively as someone who has a drink once in a blue moon.

It depends on size of liver (roughly related to overall body size) and gender. So a smaller than average woman may go to about twice as high a blood alcohol level as a bigger than average man who has had the same amount to drink.

farrell wrote:

Can somebody figure out how much this is likely to equate to in terms of the amount of booze drank?

2 pints of lager could easily put you over the 80mg limit, so would it follow that to get to 204mg you would have had to have drank 4 or 5 pints? Or does it build up quicker than that, say, 2 pints puts you at the limit, but 3 would make you double the limit sort of thing?

I understand that with blood alcohol levels it is pretty complex and is effected by a lot of variables, I'm just curious about the basic, back of a fag packet arithmetic involved.

Basically the age old saying was 2 1/2 pints was the limit however as beers and lagers have got stronger so that limit is no longer feasible. You should also take into account a persons physique and what they have had to eat. Looking at T-L he is quite slight in build and no doubt at 3.45am would not have had much to eat for a while so in reality he may have only had 3 or 4 pints of a decent beer.

As for the reasons for blood - well when your arrested your put on (in my force) a Camic Datamaster and have to supply 2 samples of breath with the higher one discarded. Now to go for blood you have to blow between 40 and 49 or the machine itself malfunctions and it shows an unreliable reading. In the case of T-L i assume that it was an unreliable reading.

Regardless of this though he should know better and not drink and drive so i have no sympathy with him.

stumps wrote:

Basically the age old saying was 2 1/2 pints was the limit however as beers and lagers have got stronger so that limit is no longer feasible. You should also take into account a persons physique and what they have had to eat. Looking at T-L he is quite slight in build and no doubt at 3.45am would not have had much to eat for a while so in reality he may have only had 3 or 4 pints of a decent beer.

sorry with my brewsters hat on, I have to correct that, overall the strength of beers/lagers has dropped by nearly 0.5% to around 4% over the last few years. Stella Artois, Budweiser and Becks have all reduced from 5% to 4.8%. Strong beers dont sell well in the UK.

in anycase youve all forgotten from JTLs drug test appeal report, his favourite tipple was double measures of vodka and gin, presumably not combined,but not pints of beer.

Edgeley wrote:

He seems to have problems. Nothing wrong with young sportspeople having the occasional binge - they are fit and can cope with it. But taking your car is just nuts. Maybe it isn't just the occasional binge.

He is either very stupid, very selfish, or very troubled. Possible a combination of the three.

Time to check into Sporting Chance, perhaps. Before his career and his health completely disappear.

Is it a step too far to wonder whether a non-doping athlete whose physiology is impacted by the abuse of alcohol could trigger a false positive in a dope test? I've no idea if the science would stack up, but I bet the AD research thus far didn't allow for this difference.

earth wrote:

Did they check his haematocrit levels along with the alcohol level in his blood, according to his theory it would have been through the roof.

To be fair though, I think he might be right that haematocrit concentration increases with dehydration.

If you have less body fluid then volume of blood plasma is reduced and the concentration of red blood cells in the same volume of blood is increased. I've read a bit of information that agrees:

http://www.surgeryencyclopedia.com/Fi-La/Hematocrit.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK259/

Increased heart rate is also associated with dehydration because along with reduced blood volume there is reduced blood pressure and the heart apparently beats faster to maintain the correct blood pressure.

But it seems too obvious for the doping tests not to take this into account.

Bez wrote:

If there was ever a reminder that sports cyclists have no inherent basis for commenting on the needs of those of us who use the roads for transport…

Pretty sure it's been noted in various pro cyclist biographies that sports cyclists often tend to be quite reckless drivers.

Indeed. Ulrich (wiping out a row of cycle parking stands was apt) and Pantani come to mind.

don simon wrote:

Quote:

a £20 victim surcharge

Who was the victim?
.

the "victim surcharge" is a standard addition to most court imposed fines; it goes into a fund for helping victims of crime.

As for him learning? Nah. Remember, he blamed his dodgy tests on binge drinking. I doubt he'll learn.