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Ed Yeates reporting The World Anti-Doping Agency has voted not to ban so-called oxygen tents used by athletes. But the Agency says it will continue reviewing what it considers a controversial technique.
The debate is especially significant for a Park City researcher.
If athletes live at high altitude - then move to lower elevations for more intense training, they perform better.
In Park City, Drs. Jim Stray-Gundersen and Ben Levine proved the effectiveness of this HI-LO technique in a landmark study published almost ten years ago.
Dr. Jim Stray-Gundersen, Performance and Training Research: "Living up at these altitudes, seven to eight - eight thousand-five hundred feet - increases the number of circulating red blood cells."
More circulating red blood cells mean more oxygen delivered to tissues during exercise.
But, as an athlete, you want to compete in the games, but financially and logistically you can't come and live in a place like this at altitude.
So instead, a special tent over your bed that uses nitrogen to lower oxygen levels - simulating the same condition as if you were living at high altitude.
Imagine this tent - not in Park City - but in an athletes home town - say at sea level?
Dr. Jim Stray-Gundersen, Performance and Training Research: "They will have walked from sea level into eight to ten thousand feet of altitude similar to what we have here in Park City."
Though Olympic medal winner Derek Parra lived at high altitude during his training, he used the tent during return trips home to Florida.
Derek Parra, Former Olympic Skater: "Most of like myself who've used them in the past have used them to minimize the depletion of those red blood cells - going back to sea level for four or five days."
In fact, the air in entire rooms in homes and hotels have been converted during past competitions.
The World Anti-Doping Agency compared these altitude simulations to the illegal use of performance enhancing drugs. So, a ban was proposed.
Athletes, trainers, coaches and researchers responded in mass.
Stray-Gundersen didn't like what he believed WASA was inferring.
Dr. Jim Stray-Gundersen, Performance and Training Research: "The athletes and their performance being manipulated by a bunch of doctors and scientists who are running around in their white coats and thick glasses."
In feedback from Stray-Gundersen and most all those responding to WADA: "The argument that artificial or natural altitude training masks doping - is simply not rational."
But the debate's not over. WASA plans to launch new studies on health effects of altitude simulation.
Stray-Gunderson and colleagues say they welcome that research.
