Trouduc

USAZorro, the voice of Justice; BF's watch out! A new (masked) Sheriff is in town!!

extremeracer

The question for me is "At this point, is it cheating to use EPO or steroids or whatever EVERYONE else is using" or is it cheating only if you have some secret new drug noone esle is using, or a lighter bike or more modern training facilities or you train at altitude? What IS cheating any way?

Keith99

It is cheating if you break the rules. Lighter bike within the rules is fine. Better training techniques have always been fine.

Hezz

Another observation. If so many people are cheating and you can't be competitive without cheating something is wrong with the rules. So you can't assume that the rules are necessarily fair or right.

Trouduc

Good point. The races should be shorter. Less miles, less stages on the TdF for starters. That's a sine qua non if we want to get rid of doping.

Keith99

Yea, no drug use by track and field sprinters or in American Football. Shorter stages will just change which drugs are useful.

Trouduc

You are not getting it. Try again.

USAZorro

I think Keith99 makes a valid point.

Realistically, the Tour organizers are not going to reduce the number of stages. That will cost them $. If they do reduce the overall length and/or difficulty of stages. the riders and teams will not stop looking to gain an edge. In an ideal world, this quest would be restricted to legal methods, but I don't think anyone here is naive enough to believe that's what will happen.

Trouduc

Forget "getting an edge." Riders need to dope just to finish the Tour de France. FYI: the length of the TdF has been shortened pretty drastically over the years precisely for that reason. Which is why it will continue to be shortened, if they are serious about fighting doping.

Hezz

This is true, the only thing that I can see that might work is to hold the stages only every other day so there is a rest day between every stage. But this would probably become too expensive and long. Making it harder to put on the race.

varian72

Disagree. People take drugs to win. Not survive.

Is Dean Karnazes taking drugs so he can run 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days? No, he survives it. Were it a race, people would be taking drugs to win.

They shorten the tour probably for commercial reasons and the riders are P*&%%ies compared to 20,30,40 years ago.

Hezz

All of the above points are valid. But I think that the reality is that it is time that the cycling doping agencies stop lying to the public and acting like they have the doping control in hand. They should just tell the truth that they cannot guarantee a dope free peloton. Therefore, the only way do make the racing more fair is to have an open non-tested division in addition to a tested division. Riders choose which way they want to go. With prize money divided up between the divisions. The no dope division would have higher testing standards then are used now. The open division has no testing.

BladeGeek

That is not the case........"really a form of delusion". The same can be said about you. Prove that Lance doped. Nobody has to date.

Keith99

What will satisfy you as proof? Will anythign short of a video of him shooting up satisfy you. I've criticized using Wiki as a source, but it is useful as a starting point. Go look at the Wiki article on Lance. It points to plenty of evidence.

tcs

I did just that. From the wik:
"However, the achievements of Armstrong have been thrown into doubt by allegations that Armstrong used performance enhancing drugs to achieve some of his wins. No conclusive evidence has been presented to verify these allegations..."

Best,
TCS

Keith99

Which are pretty much what you will see anywhere, especially considering the aggressive legal actions Lance has taken in the past. Read a little farther into the more than full page detailing evidence.

BTW while I am convinced beyond any doubt that Lance crossed the line I do not see that as tainting his wins. At least not any more than being better at aero considerations taints Greg Lemond. If I thought for one second that Lance was the only one doping or even not part of the vast majority I would feel differently. I guess one could consider his wins 'tainted' on the basis that he won simply because his support team did a better job with the doping. But if one takes that tack then his wins are tainted for sure because his support team (at least by 2001 or so) did a far better job in more traditional areas and in the less traditional aspect of pointing for one race.

vik 

+1 True.

SoreFeet

Anybody who rides a bike with president ******bag is a doper. Guilty by association.

sfene

Im not sure that rehashing Lance Armstrong, Phlandis Et al is the answer.
Seems to me that a program like Slipstream's (establishing a baseline reading for a particular cyclist and reacting to a change in that baseline before the start of competition) is the answer.
Granted if the competitor is dirty to begin with, you might not know, but eventually some parameter changes and you've got him.
As far as changing the races themselves, length or difficulty is part of the test. Average speeds might drop, but it will drop for everyone so the competition is still there.
Sfene

bsyptak

bikingshearer 

Late to the party (the story of my life), but I'd like to add a thing or two.

As for shorter stages = less doping: Wrong. What the shorter stages have meant in attacks going from the git-go and the hammer being down for a greater amount of more stages than before. There just aren't very many "piano" stages any more. So while the mileage has dropped, the intensity per mile has gone up. I doubt that that is a recipe for more doping, but it certainly isn't a recipe for less. As one poster has suggested, it is likely just a recipe for different cocktails.

Are the anti-doping forces, French or otherwise, out to "get" Landis because he's American? I don't think so, although I suspect more than one non-American in the anti-doping parade sees nailing an American as a nice side-benefit. I do think the pack is baying for Landis' blood (figuratively) and is willing to bend a rule or two to get it, but it's because Landis, as a TdF winner, is about as big a fish as there is in the current peloton, not because of his nationality. Nailing his hide to the wall serves two interrelated purposes for WADA et al.,: (1) showing the peloton that no one is immune from dope control, thereby (2) justifying their organizational existence (which is the first priority of pretty much every organization that depends on someone else for funding). I get the sense that the anti-doping forces have more zealotry for their stated mission than for screwing anyone because of their nationality. I'm sure that each person hopes it isn't someone from their country who gets caught, but my sense is that nationality does not really color the decisions much, if at all.

That most certainly does not mean that there isn't a great deal of potential for going overboard in the pursuit of a dope-free sport: there is, and there is at least a whiff of it in the Landis case. But whatever over-exhuberence there has been has, I think, been much more the result of "true believerhood" than anti-Americanism or other nationalistic paybacks.

Can I back up any of this? Nope. All I can base it on is the general tenor of the various accusations, the past history of going after the (almost exclusively French) Festina team not that many years ago, and the fact that Dick Pound, among others, have a demonstrated track record of foaming at the mouth over anyone's transgressions without reagrd to race, creed, color,gender or place of national origin. You have to remember, Canadian Dick Pound played an important role in Candian Ben Johnson being stripped of his Olympic gold medal when his bulk, ill humor and back acne turned out to be cause by more than just delayed adolescence.

Hezz

I think the doping agencies want a high profile "example" to deture doping. But this is just not going to work to stop doping in any way. It might encourage better quality doping. The science is too exact. The Landis camp know that the testing is faulty. They also know that Landis is doping and so they know how his testing profile would look. They also know that the test results could not come out the way they did if the testing were correct.

So this is a competition among doctors. And teams that need to win. Where is the athletes choice in this.

Hugo Drax

I think you're right about the patriotism/delusional thing with regards to Armstrong. Americans don't want to believe the truth.

ddmann

,,

gabdy

Hardly a performance enhancing use of the drug though. The drug was used for one of its intended purposes. Don't forget the Test he used after the nuts were gone.