Lukas Bauer did a fantastic race at the two last stages of this years Tour de Ski, and inevitably the doping accusations start surfacing. Especially in Norwegian discussion forums – the Norwegians are not the best losers, and didn’t like seeing their big hero Petter Northug being beaten up the Alpe Cermis. Even the biggest Norwegian newspaper VG are very close to suggesting that there is something wrong with Bauer. The opinion of WorldofXC.com is clearly that there is no evidence at all pointing towards Lukas Bauer being involved with doping – more on that below.

Search for “Lukas Bauer doping”

Here at WorldofXC.com, we noticed the doping suspicions through the term “Lukas Bauer doping” being the search term getting most hits to World of XC from Saturday until today for a news item where Bauer and ANTI-doping are the keywords (http://worldofxc.com/index.php?id=3255).

Lukas Bauer career

Lukas Bauer early on showed himself as a talent, getting a silver medal at JWOC. The first four World Cup seasons, he had no top-10 placements in the World Cup. In his fifth season, he had 6 Top-10 placements, of which 4 were Top-4. In his 6th World Cup season he was top-10 in nearly all races he competed, including his first victory where he won with more than 30 seconds over 15 km.

The next years he was in the top of the field all of the way, but no big number one. Ahead of his fantastic victory in Tour de Ski 2008, he had a total of 4 World Cup victories. The 2007/2008 season was fantastic. In addition to his Tour de Ski victory, he dominated the World Cup. Actually his overall World Cup victory in the 2007/2008 season was the second most dominating ever (see interesting discussion at Nordic Commentary Project).

The 2008/2009 season Bauer had asthma-problems, and did not manage to keep up his high level. Also, he focused on the World Championships in Liberec instead of on Tour de Ski. Bauer did not have a great season, but managed to get a silver medal at the World Championships.

At the run-up to Tour de Ski 2010, Bauer was sick in all of October, and lost one month of training. Thus he did only compete in one World Cup race, but the results were not great. Then Bauer slowly got better through Tour de Ski.

Lukas Bauer at Tour de Ski 2010

Here are his Tour de Ski results of this year:

• 1st stage, Prologue, 3.7 km skating. 7th place, +7 seconds (Northug 1st place)
• 2nd stage, 15 km Classic chasing start. 4th place overall, +2.5 seconds (actually beat Northug in the race)
• 3rd stage, Sprint Prologue, classic. 43rd spot, +15 seconds, and no bonus seconds (Northug won and got 60 bonus seconds)
• 4th stage, Sprint Prologue, skating. 60th spot, +11 seconds. (Northug in 45th spot a few seconds ahead of Bauer)
• 5th stage, Skating chasing start. 15th spot overall after starting as number 18, +40 seconds. (Northug won)
• 6th stage, Classic 10km normal start. 2nd spot, 2 seconds behind Daniel Rickardsson. (Northug in 4rd spot, 4 seconds behind Bauer)
• 7th stage, Classic 20 km mass start with bonus seconds. 1st spot, 31.5 seconds ahead of Northug. Fantastic race – we have not seem many like it.
• 8th stage, Chasing start up Alpe Cermis. 1st spot overall – and best climber of the day 2 seconds ahead of Marcus Hellner and 1.25 ahead of Northug.

For the following discussion, it is also good to have the times up the Alpe Cermis handy:

1 2 1217350 BAUER Lukas CZE 33:43.4
2 6 3500139 HELLNER Marcus SWE 33:45.8
3 7 1345875 GAILLARD Jean Marc FRA 33:45.9
4 13 3100190 BABIKOV Ivan CAN 33:48.7
5 4 3510023 COLOGNA Dario SUI 33:52.4
6 21 1100077 VITTOZ Vincent FRA 34:10.7
7 8 1101047 SOMMERFELDT Rene GER 34:15.4
8 10 1067291 DI CENTA Giorgio ITA 34:22.6
9 35 1175155 MAGAL Jiri CZE 34:26.8
10 26 3290016 CLARA Roland ITA 34:28.9
11 37 1297957 MORIGGL Thomas ITA 34:35.0
12 12 3180053 HEIKKINEN Matti FIN 34:39.9
13 16 1362947 PERL Curdin SUI 35:00.8
14 32 1175058 KOUKAL Martin CZE 35:01.6
15 18 3190111 MANIFICAT Maurice FRA 35:02.5
16 1 3420239 NORTHUG Petter jr. NOR 35:08.1
17 14 1223849 CHECCHI Valerio ITA 35:15.7
18 39 3190029 DUVILLARD Robin FRA 35:18.6
19 9 1221036 FILBRICH Jens GER 35:22.8
20 11 3420023 GJERDALEN Tord Asle NOR 35:24.2
21 5 3500015 RICKARDSSON Daniel SWE 35:25.1

What are people saying

Going through the discussion forum at VG.no, a lot of people come with accusations (see for example here and the VG article here). There are also a lot of comments about Lukas Bauer and doping on this NRK article. Some of them are listed below:

• He suddenly improved a lot ahead of the 2007/2008 sesons. He has to be doped.
• If Bauer had been smart, he had done as if he was tired when coming to the finish. Sad that not all the dopers can be taken
• 50 seconds faster than Cologna, and not even tired!!! Now people must wake up!!!!

When looking a Bauer’s career, there is nothing there that indicated doping in our opinion. He has improved step by step over many seasons. Regarding the final climb, Hellner was only two seconds behind. Bauer stopped to pick up a flag on the last bit, taking him 15-20 seconds extra – and that’s why he was not tired. He could probably have had 20-30 seconds more in if going maximum all the way, and then he would have been tired. 30 seconds ahead of Hellner would have been good, but still no reason to cry for doping. The mass start the day before was more impressive. Being 50 seconds faster than Cologna up the hill does not indicate doping – Hellner was 48 seconds ahead of Cologna…

Here is an article (Norwegian text) from sportsanalyse.no where the doping accusations against Bauer from two years ago are discussed.

Conclusion

The conclusion: There is nothing more indicating that Lukas Bauer is doped than that e.g. Petter Northug is doped.

Update: According to this article on skidsport.com pointing towards an article in the Swedish newspaper Expressen in 2003, Lukas Bauer was an the “Black list” in 2003, consisting of athletes for which the hemoglobin level either increased or decreased more than naturally. This doesn’t prove anything in the direction of doping, and my investigations have not been able to find Bauer on the Black list at any other point in time. However, I’ll have to withdraw my conclusion saying that there is nothing more indicating that Lukas Bauer is doped than that e.g. Petter Northug. Now there is a little indication about it from 2003 if the Expressen-article is correct, but still there is absolutely no proof.

Photo: WorldofXC.com