(Untitled)

[skean]

Before anyone gets terribly excited about this article on BBC news about male triathletes being infertile, I'll point out that

"The Spanish study of top triathletes found those who cover more than 186 miles (300km) a week on their bikes have less than 4% normal looking sperm"

I would struggle to cover that distance in a month.

Comments

[andygates]

Another "people who live on racing bikes have grolly damage" study. In addition to your point about mileage, note that most riders don't have such an aggressive position, either, and riding on the drops definitely puts more pressure on the plumbing than sat upright.

Do any of these studies look at how quickly (if at all) the spunk du peloton recovers to normal?

[mr_chairman]

Bit of a different excuse if you don't feel like training.....

[simoneck]

Apparently they didn't do the 'how quickly do they return to normal' part of the study, that you thought would be essential. Maybe they couldn't get such cycling freaks to stop cycling.
The comment in the article I read was along the lines of 'we didn't study that but don't think it will'.

[andygates]

Needs studying, it really does. Permanent damage is a wholly different thing from just temporary impairment.

The pitch of the story is interesting. It opens with "elite cyclists have less than 4% normal sperm" and that sounds like a massive, awful thing. But later on, it says that they: "had less than 10% of normal looking sperm, compared with the 15-20% seen in the most fertile men."

So if we take 15% as normal for a regularly fertile man, 4% is much less dramatic. Every man's sperm includes a majority of duds.

And it still only takes one. :)