SunFlower

if the clean guys dont like it they can start their own "clean" tour.

cibai

because then it isnt sport, it is a pharmacology contest. How about let the dopers start a "dirty tour" and leave the tradition to those who understand it.

gmason

And they do care about keeping people alive.

VT Biker

DUMBEST POST IN THE HISTORY OF BIKEFORUMS.NET EVER

gmason

Tied for dumbest with about 34,782 others.

Keith99

Isn't the burden on whoever does not like what the Tour organizers are doing?

Think they are not testing enough, start your own. Think they are doing too much start your own.

Of course either will fail.

gfrance

Poster is not the only one thinking along these lines:

https://www.slate.com/id/2171729/

gmason

MLB apparently is also. I think I recently saw a piece which pointed out that a player was caught for the third time abusing drugs. He will be given a whole 80 game suspension. Wow, they sure are going after the abusers big time.

SunSwingsLow

Its really not that far out of a thought. Professional Body Building has pretty much done this. having "natural" body building and then the pro's who take more drugs than we can possibly imagine.

erader

what's to prevent a dirty rider from racing with clean riders (like it is now) or do we expect the cheating aspect of doping to just go away?

in body building it's a lot easier to tell whose juiced....

ed rader

gmason

Testing?

SunSwingsLow

Because the big money will be with the riders who use drugs and the clean riders will be riding for peanuts in comparison.

dutret

You must have missed the next one then

erader

if testing worked we wouldn't be having this discussion.

ed rader

gmason

Unfortunately, much of the tradition included taking whatever was required to get to the end of the race. The intended tradition is another story.

gmason

Testing is working, just not quite well enough yet. And the administrators leave a lot to be desired regarding their handling of what they do have.

But as we all know, the miscreants will always try to get an edge, and some will before the good guys catch up again.

erader

well i don't think it's the same thing at all. i mean we can fantasize all we want but it's just not going to happen.

what i propose is that the witch hunt be stopped and riders be tested regularly while competing.

first dirty ... one-year suspension. second violation: life-time ban.

ed rader

gmason

Great idea.

erader

doping is an integral part of pro cycling. i wouldn't call the cheaters "miscreants". it's a part of the culture that they all accept.

that's why you don't hear the top guys complain about dopers.

the guys who do the most whining and complaining wouldn't be winning even if the sport were clean .

ed rader

gmason

If doping were not such an integral part of pro cycling, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

But that doesn't mean we have to accept it.

Helmet Head

Testing does not work and will never work. Here are some of the reasons why.

1. The riders will always have an advantage over the testers. There are always two time lags following the discovery of a new doping technique before the testers are up to par. First, the testers have to learn that the riders might be using it, and they have to learn about it. Second, the testers have to learn how to test for it. They knew for over 10 years about EPO before they found a test for it. In the mean time, all they could do is test for hematocrit levels. Some of these time lags are not only measured in years, but are even indefinite. There is still no known test for autologous blood doping, for example. How do you detect a problem with the rider having his own blood in his blood? There are always no known tests for substances that the riders are using and the testers have no idea they are taking.
2. Testing is expensive. The list of banned substances keeps getting longer and longer. The ability to test for everything on the list in every rider before and after every race is simply impossible. There are screening tests which check for "suspicious" numbers and call for more specific follow-ups, but the screening tests cannot be comprehensive. Further, the riders' doctors know what the screening tests test for, and how to get around it.
3. Currently, they are tested hours before the race. What's to prevent them from doping between the test and the start?
4. Even a little doping, even doses too low to be considered "positive" in a test, can make a significant difference in a race where the difference between 1st and last in a 3 week race is a mere couple of hours. Sure EPO, testosterone and growth hormones are not legal, but if the rider only uses a little of each, not enough to exceed any threshholds on the tests, but enough to keep him high on GC, he can test "clean" every time.
5. Riders use masking agents to hide the fact that they are doping. Eventually, the testers also learn about the masking agents and introduce tests for them, but this is all susceptible to the time lags of (1) as well.
6. When virtually everyone else is doing it, it's almost impossible, perhaps actually impossible, to be successful without doing it too.
7. The majority of pro athletes are willing to take a fatal drug if they know that doing so will first make them a champion in their sport. Tyler Hamilton and Alexandre Vinokourov apparently were willing to use homologous blood doping. Unfortunately for them, they used too much - enough to exceed the allowable threshholds on the tests. Makes you wonder how many are doing it, but are staying under the allowable threshholds...
8. The alternative to doping is riding clean, and most riders would rather not race if they had to do it clean, given how relatively poor their performance would be if they stayed clean.
9. The sport is replete with superstition. If one of these guys brushes his teeth with a pink toothbrush one day and happens to win that day, don't be surprised if he brushes his teeth with a pink toothbrush every race day for the rest of his career. If they believe in the power of rabbit's feet and pink toothbrushes, surely they believe in the power of their doctor's recommendations. Just believing that they have an edge, actually gives them an edge, mentally.
10. Doctors like Michele "If it doesn't show up in the drug controls, then it's not doping" Ferrari.

Sure the testing can do something. It will catch a rider here or there, and it helps keep the amount of doping each is doing down. Whenever the testers finally devise and perfect a new test, they'll catch a few unlucky *******s (like Tyler Hamilton got busted for homologous blood doping because they just started testing for it). But whenever that happens, the doctors simply adjust their recommendations.

But thinking that testing will work "well enough" to make cycling actually clean some day is very naive.

Helmet Head

The fact that you don't want to accept it doesn't mean you can do something significant about it.

And as long as you can't, there is no alternative to accepting it. What are you going to do? Yell and scream and stomp your feet and bang your head against the wall? What good will that do?

G-Whacker

Why not just allow any drug?

Tom Simpson.

gmason

I disagree with most of your earlier monologue, and your conclusion, for two main reasons.

1) Because the doping only really pays off if you win or finish high. And those are the ones being tested (in-competition) the most, and

2) Because while cheaters may find new ways to beat the protocols, the protocols have a way of catching up. It would help if more stringent penalties were levied.

Regardless of the end-arounds you stipulated, I believe that more and more will get caught, creating a strong deterrent among the riders. Will it ever disappear? Probably not - people are people.

As for accepting it, I would rather they continue trying to make it better than just give up and ignore it. Maybe that defines the difference in attitude between a possible loser and a guaranteed one.

What am I going to do? Continue to watch, enjoy the spectacle and performances, and keep hoping for the best. Head banging never seemed to work very well.

Dolomiti

Testing does work. It is just far from perfect. The riders winning races would probably be doped up far more if it wasn't for testing.
Cycling isn't like bodybuilding or baseball. In baseball maybe you get a minor injury for taking too many steroids. In cycling, if doping was legal, the sport would turn into a competition of whoever took the biggest risk on their own life. The faster you go, the closer you come to dying of a heart attack, or ruining your liver...

I would understand allowing doping if testing had no real value. But it does, and it has been particularly in the last few years.