Juan Foote

With the prevalence of doping within baseball being so widespread that the league decided to put asterisk beside the "doping years".
It is so common within football that nothing is even trying to BE done about it.

WHY is it such a big deal among cyclists that they use no manner of aid? For real?

I think that many of us can agree that doping of some type or another had been and likely still goes on within the sport. I think it would be a safe guesstimate to say that a larger part of the peloton in any given professional race is doing, or trying to do something to bypass rules, just like any other form of racing. Why is it that the powers that be within cycling have decided that all cyclists must be "doping" free and to have taken such destructive steps to make examples of several high profile participants in this practice?

Leinster

Right or not, cycling has developed a reputation. The best way to get rid of that reputation is to be seen to do something about it. Unfortunately, the best way to keep a bad reputation can sometimes also be to be seen to do something about it.

Some sports, like NFL, baseball, are outside of the Olympic sphere, so are free to do whatever they want testing wise. Some sports, like football and tennis, have the political influence to get a judge in the Puerto investigation to hold back the names of certain athletes from being released into the public domain while happily letting all the involved cyclists be named. Some sports have fans who are happy to carry on being blissfully ignorant of what their athletes get up to in order to perform at the highest level.

Leebo

Dopers suck, what else?

Giacomo 1 

I think Leinster is correct.

MLB and the NFL are more or less private pro leagues and the only way they will get serious about testing is if the fans demand it and then it hits the bottom line. If they don't, which at the present time, they are not, the league can pretty much turn a blind eye towards it and sit back and enjoy the enhanced performances. For years the NFL has never done anything about the thugism that is rampant in the sport, because they were able to sweep it under the rug, but when it gets out, like it has in the Ray Rice episode, they are forced to do something about it, no matter how phony it is. The same can be said about PED's. It won't become an issue until it becomes an issue.

Personally, I think cycling needs to find a way to put this on the back burner for awhile. They are always playing defense and reacting to the problem after the fact. They need to get on top of the PR, change the narrative and suppress to some degree, the bad publicity that positive tests give the sport. The constant focus on PED's in cycling is killing the sport. I'm not a PR expert and I don't exactly know how they could do this, but there are plenty of high priced PR firms out there that would surely know how to do it...

Leinster

I presume you mean suppress the publicity, rather than suppress positive test results?

Cycling's in a jam, because any positive tests get picked on and shown as evidence of doping, and any period without positives gets picked on as evidence that the testing isn't serious enough. Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell serve doping bans, but cycling will still be considered dirtier than athletics.

Meanwhile other sports seem to mysteriously only have drug problems at the lower levels, where the elite/international level competitors are clean as a whistle.

Giacomo 1 

Yes, the publicity for sure.

But, while they cannot suppress the positive test results, USADA(?) the drug testers, need not overreact and grandstand when a positive comes up. I think they publicize these positives because it's good for their business and future. Maybe they need to publicize the fact that so many thousands of drug tests are taken every year, more than any other sport, yet the vast, vast majority come up with nothing, almost making it not worth the costs.

Lets see football do as well...

Jed19

You can only suppress the publicity to a certain extent, then the s**t is eventually gonna hit the fan. Cycling is a niche sport, and the problem starts there. When the most financially successful cyclist of all time, with a compelling inspiring story turned out to be a big fraud, then there is only so much recovery from that damage. Football, baseball etc have always being attuned to the damage from all kinda negatives because they know that the fans are gonna holler about those stuff when they come to light. And when fans holler about those stuff, advertisers are not happy, and when advertisers are not happy, media houses take notice. It is all about money, and anything that threatens that is dealt with pronto.

The road forward for cycling, in my view is to broaden its biological passport program, and then get team managers like Vino, Bruyneel etc to serve suspension of five years or more when there are proof that they have doping regiment as part of their team programs.

The main thing though, is that a niche sport is already on shaky grounds with not a lot of tolerance for screw-ups from the public.

calamarichris

One likely reason is that cycling is an international sport, which makes it more difficult for a culture of cheating to develop, for competing cheaters to form unspoken coalitions. It's easier to cast aspersions on those who live on the other side of the border or ocean. Easier for NFL & MBA competitors to cheat because they all have a common language & culture.

79pmooney

There is a big difference between pro cycling and many of the other pro sports in this country. The Olympics. Congress tasked USADA to be the agent responsible for keeping the Olympic sports clean. The other piece that hasn't shown its face in other sports is an athlete on the wrong side of the drug issue wielding his might to silence others and trying to do so to someone who would not stay silent; Floyd Landis. He got the US Government involved (they were already as sponsor of a drugging team) and the game was on.

(When you step on toes, it is good to see just whose toes you are stepping on. Pissing off certain people just isn't smart.)

Ben

fietsbob

Human Nature Meets economics .. Winners Make more Money , so 'winning at any cost' does have its temptations.

Dave Cutter

Baseball, football, basketball are American sports and for our Justice Dept to go after them... would politically bite them in the behind. Attacking an American dominated international sport made good political sense... with tiny repercussions. The international agreements were met... dopers booted from their sport.... a few [American] life's ruined.

jyl

Football and baseball are also seen, by many, as more skill sports while many see cycling as more of an endurance+power sport. When a quarterback on the run fires a 50 yard pass right into the hands of a receiver, fans see that as skill and don't think about all the doping in the 300 lb defensive and offensive linemen who made the play possible. But when a rider attacks on a mountain stage and rides everyone off his wheel, his cardiovascular capacity is pretty much front and center.

Dave Cutter

I agree completely! But "fans" didn't vote on who to target for doping enforcement. That was an action decided by the Justice Dept. If they had "input" as to whom should be at the center of a drug investigation.... they got that advice in a Cabinet Meeting.

D1andonlyDman

One difference is, in baseball and many other sports, the doping is for an edge in fast-twitch muscle reaction or strength, but it is not generally life-threatening. In cycling and other endurance sports, there are multiple instances of individuals doping to the point that they died as a result of over-taxing the human cardio-vascular system.

ooga-booga

still waiting for the operation puerto other shoe to drop for athletes in other sports-especially soccer/football. thought it was steer manure that only cyclists got
disciplined when there were likely many, many participants in other sports. tired of cycling always taking the hit when so few of the "major" sports seem to do much
other than give anti-doping efforts lip service.

CliffordK

A few years ago, a bunch of baseball players were marched in front of Congress.

Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire were in a competition for the most home runs, and I believe both of them had their titles stripped due to doping. St. Louis named a major freeway after Mark McGuire, then after he was busted for doping, quietly removed the name from the freeway.

I haven't watched enough football or baseball to know or really care if they are doping, but I have to believe that the congressional inquiry into baseball hasn't been forgotten.

Keep in mind that corticosteroids are NOT the same as anabolic steroids. So, if you hear a story about a corticosteroid injection for bursitis, it is perfectly legal (even for cyclists in most cases).

As far as cycling. The fallout from Armstrong has been HUGE. His post cancer comeback pushed him into celebrity status, then deliberately cheating to take home 7 consecutive TDF wins was enough to get people to notice.

Like the congressional inquiry into baseball, it will eventually blow over, perhaps replaced by the next big scandal.

Many body-builders use performance enhancing drugs. Does it spill over into boxing and weightlifting?

There has been discussion about the long lasting effects of steroid use. Not surprising, but no doubt there will be more emphasis on what athletes were doing beyond the normal testing routines.

jyl

I have to believe Lance bears a lot of the blame. When America has one huge superstar in cycling, and he turns out to be the leader of a doping conspiracy that involved almost all the other top American cyclists on the top American team, that's a pretty hard target to pass up.

Baseball dopers are somewhat protected by their sport's weak testing program, which limits the evidence available to authorities, but some pretty big name players were busted anyway. Not sure what had been done in football or basketball. Clearly those sports have protections (if you call it that) because they don't answer to WADA and, as you say, have lots of lobbying clout.

Jed19

Yes, Lance bears quite a bit of the blame. Modern day cycling was never as popular here as it was during the Lance era. Lance's personal narrative re coming back from testicular cancer and just dominating the most prestigious of the grand tours just fired up people's imagination here. Even good old Trek could not sell enough bicycles to people who never rode their bikes more than twice before selling them or parking them in their garages. Then all hell broke loose re the doping, and even huge sponsors like Trek, Oakley and Nike could not run away from him fast enough.

The most financially successful cyclist of all time kinda took a little bit of the sport down with him, and in the richest market of all to boot. I mean, I don't think the net worth of the two top riders in all the pro teams combined came close to Lance's net worth. And don't get me started on the power he wielded in the industry too!

Keith99

People seem to forget, or in the U.S. never knew that Lance got his chance because of the Festina doping scandal. He then became the poster boy for clean racing.

That put cycling in a very bad place when it became apparent that Lance was dirty.

Leinster

In answer to the thread title, because a team can have 5 positive tests in the space of a couple of months, and the UCI will still award them a licence for the following year;

UCI awards Astana WorldTour licence | Cyclingnews.com