Doge

I was thinking they need to test more often, punish more often and make the penalties less, but without protest to get the lowest cost and greatest deterrent.

gsteinb

Well, forgive me if I'm wrong. I understood your position to be to allow doping because they couldn't do a better job.

Doge

It is a mix - I'll get to that. It is more a practical approach to getting the big stuff done first.

My priority is first how to deter the use of dangerous substances. Second to create a level playing field and third make it look good/morally defensible.

I think we better deter by frequency/increasing odds of getting caught than deeper penalties. I do not believe on a wider (meaning all cultures/regions) scale that moral compasses work to deter. Fear of getting caught seems to be the best. Harsh penalties are often not applied, or not applied evenly, and cost a lot to prosecute. It is hard to hand out severe punishment when someone can't defend themselves. Officials can also be reluctant to hand out a harsh penalty while a lessor one might be doled out more often (that was the case with youth soccer officials). A no-protests/no defense concept is much less costly and easier to deploy, but without a defense, the penalties need to be smaller, and more likely to occur.

So here is the other side. Frequent testing and penalty application is expensive. While USAC (cycling in general) thinks it is important to test junior gears 100% of the races, USAC (or any country I know of) does not think it was worth it to weight bikes - except in UCI races, and there is no such rule outside UCI about bike weight.

I would like that same logic applied to PEDs. Some things on that list are pretty bad. They should be treated like junior gears. A suggestion - always test the winners, top 10 for something - maybe the rider does not know what is being tested - but they are tested. 1/5 random events take a tube of blood.

The rest of the list is just too long, too easy to accidentally consume and too unlikely or costly to expect testing on. There are bad things like narcotics - not on the list. Treat those things like bike weight. If it is a certain class of event then make the use against the rules. If not, take it off the list.

tetonrider

related...because that got him in the mix and he made way more money than he lost. he built a career around this stuff and essentially got a slap on the wrist.

what was the actual penalty? i couldn't find any mention of details...and if he actually lost the case. that link you posted (below) only said that it went to trial.

tetonrider

agree on the trickle down...that really sucks. that's a big part of why i'm opposed to professional doping.

tetonrider

you didn't know? big deal.


well, i for one am pretty sure it is ONLY the T&F team that benefitted from TEH LARGEST STATE-RUN DOPING PROGRAM EVARRRR. seems logical.

gsteinb

yes, of course it is. But he was still penalized for doing something, and it exposes the logical conclusion of the trickle down. You want to make athletes? Start doping them young.


settled out of court, or sealed decision.

beatlebee 

Tangentially related:

https://www.commerce.senate.gov/publ...a----final.pdf

happybday29475

That is the coolest thing I've seen a politician - any politician - do in a good long while. Go Senator Thune!

And, shame on you, Sir Craig Reedie.

Ygduf

Andy Samberg reteams with HBO for doping comedy Tour de Pharmacy | EW.com

:|

carpediemracing 

I thought you were joking when you posted this.

Doge

IOC: 45 more positive cases in retests of samples from 2008 and 2012 Olympics
Is anyone confident any athletes at the very top never used banned PEDs?

And, if some can win without banned PEDs we now know they then had to beat those using PEDs.

Grumpy McTrumpy

He?ll always have Paris: Floyd Landis returns to the Tour de France | Cyclingnews.com

Doge

I think the view listed at the bottom has merit:

One approach that’s been suggested by a lot of academics: Instead of taking a blanket approach that says that any doping is evil and inherently wrong, let’s look at the forms of doping that are really harmful to athletes, and focus on getting those out.


from Do We Have to Accept Doping in Sports? - Men's Journal

topflightpro

Here's an interesting look at the Russian swimmer currently getting a lot of heat: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...mepage%2Fstory

echappist

i think it says more about the classless American swimmer than it does about the Russian swimmer.

While i'd be okay with giving the Russian swimmer a pass for her first offense with the supplements, she did, after all, get busted for melodonium, that panacea of a wonderdrug that a lot of Russian athletes use. Personally, i view it as a loophole that was recently closed.

topflightpro

I am more apt to give her a pass on the melodonium than the DHEA. Melodonium wasn't banned until the beginning of this year. (Yes, the FDA did not allow it in the US, but it was available throughout Eastern Europe.) As the article mentions, they don't know how long it stays in the system.

Still, Maria Sharapova took a beating over melodonium.

Hermes

The Russian had a US coach and was living in SoCal. I suspect that her US coach spoke Russian such that he explained the problems with supplements. But, yes, it is possible that she took the GNC DHEA by mistake but why would someone who had world stage swimming capability buy supplements knowing that they could be contaminated. Maybe her coach was lousy???

Why did she take the meldonium? Does she have a heart condition? If not, she knew the drug was performance enhancing and easily available via her Russian contacts and she would have a competitive advantage.

I agree that meldonium was off the list and only recently added and that the positive was probably a false one due to the timing of the test and the drug clearing her system.

Does she deserve to get some crap. Maybe.

One thing I am learning about is taunting your opponent to advantage or disadvantage. If I ever line up next to @shovelhd or @Doge, I am going to squirt water on them from my water bottle.

Doge

I guess the question is... Should substances be banned because they help performance, or because they are a unhealthy?

I understand saying both. It is just not practical to enforce that.

Banning the fewer dangerous drugs stands a better chance of being enforced and also sends the message that they are on the list for health reasons, rather than nobody want's you to gain an advantage.

tetonrider

thanks for sharing this; i really didn't know her side of the story.

i admit that lilly king came across to me as, simply, hating dopers, and seeing her win rocked. learning more of the story makes me more sympathetic toward the russian swimmer.

tetonrider

there's a cool article floating around that talks about the early days of EPO. dr. ferrari's assertion was, essentially, that EPO is safe and doping controls should be designed to protect athletes' health.

at the time, anti-doping authorities were painting all drugs as harmful to athletes, so ferrari's assertion flew in their face. the story is that pride came into the situation, and the anti-doping guys couldn't cede an inch on this. ferrari, as a result, was villainized.

is ferrari evil? i dunno. did he help athletes cheat? for sure. was he right about EPO being safe? if you believe the article , yes. (the article documented in a medical sense how even medical patients under doctor's care overdoing it by 100s of times the appropriate dose due to a clinical error suffered no adverse effects.)

no matter your stance, it was a pretty interesting discussion.

gsteinb

At some point smoking was considered to be safe too.

Whether EPO ultimately proves to be harmless (assuming one doesn't congeal their own blood) or not, seems utterly irrelevant to me. Why should rider A be forced to put substances into their body simply to keep up with rider B, because rider B chooses to supplement? And in sports where all levels of people have the ability to compete against one another given the scope of races where are lines drawn, this becomes even murkier. This isn't a steel cage death match league. I race against domestic pros all the time. I've raced, this year, against guys who are at the Olympics.

tetonrider

EPO was made out to be evil and a killer, and that's actually not the case, that's all. sure one can kill themself, but one can kill themself with hyper-hydration, too. the interesting point (to me) is simply that even in medical terms and purely medical use, there have been massive errors/overdoses and no issues in patient health.

i'm anti-doping, but i can still find the discussion interesting. ferrari was demonized because he dared to suggest that EPO was not as harmful as others made it out be (and then further -- and rightfully -- ostracized because he played outside the established rules when the establishment didn't listen to him).

i find it an intellectually interesting subject.

which olympians did you race this year?

i still come back to the fact that crowds, as evidenced by viewership of the NFL, generally want to see super-human performance at the pro level. watching stuff that we can do as amateurs -- even domestic pros -- is kind of boring for viewers.

echappist

actually, EPO is oncogenic, and the FDA put out a blackbox warning against its use. so it's not just the acute issue of blood thickening into pudding, but also the issue of cancer growth

gsteinb

bobby lea, some german dudes, and some other trackies slumming crits who spend a good portion of the non UCI season living in PA and racing T Town.