UAE Team Emirates has confirmed that it will not use the controversial carbon monoxide rebreathing technique to measure athletes' performance.

Speaking at the preseason training camp's media day on Tuesday, performance coordinator Jeroen Swart said UAE Team Emirates is “done with the process” for the technique. He said it was “an exercise that was coordinated over 18 months” to assess the improvement of riders at the high altitude training camp.

The technology was used by UAE Team Emirates, Visma-Lease a Bike, and Israel-Premier Tech during the 2024 Tour de France to test riders' blood values at the beginning and end of high-altitude training camps, Escape The topic came to light when Collective reported.

Last month, the UCI asked WADA to “take a position” on the use of carbon monoxide for performance enhancement, using a similar method known as repeated carbon monoxide inhalation.

The Escape Collective's investigation found “no hard evidence” that any of the above teams had used carbon monoxide in such a manner, but the UCI is concerned about its potential use.

During a question and answer session at the UAE training camp, Swart noted that the technique of measuring athlete performance gains has been used in various sports for 20 years and confirmed that his team has since discontinued its use.

“To be completely clear about it, carbon monoxide rebreathing is a technique that has already been validated for 20 years and has been used by climbers, endurance sportsmen, and athletes around the world to measure hemoglobin levels when going to high altitudes,” Swart said.

“We have done high altitude training camps very successfully for the past seven years. But there is no clear way to quantify it, other than measuring hemoglobin levels.

“So two years ago we decided to evaluate whether our athletes were improving as we hoped. And we evaluated hemoglobin levels using carbon monoxide rebreathing, which is a very standardized technique using very specific equipment in a practice that we conducted over 18 months,

“In fact, we are currently completing that process and the results show that our training camps are maximizing for the players. adaptation to the maximum extent possible.

Swart confirmed that the team has no plans to resume testing in the future and criticized the “sensationalism” of the Escape Collective's initial article.

“So we don't actually need to do any more testing. I don't intend to do any more. [But I think it's a pretty sensationalist article, and it's pretty complicated, and it's trying to use techniques that I don't think anybody would probably actually do. It's not realistic. So I think there is a lot of sensationalism going on.”