Are other sports as dirty as cycling?

[Snake8]

Wondering if you all think other sports are as dirty as cycling? Why or why not?

If as some allege on here that cyclists are so sophisticated with their doping and that it is still rampant, and that they have essentially found ways to elude the tests, why wouldn't other athletes be doing the same things?

Lastly, are there any other sports that test as much as cycling?

 

[Anonymous]

Wondering if you all think other sports are as dirty as cycling? Why or why not?

If as some allege on here that cyclists are so sophisticated with their doping and that it is still rampant, and that they have essentially found ways to elude the tests, why wouldn't other athletes be doing the same things?

Lastly, are there any other sports that test as much as cycling?

Watch "Steroid Nation"

Yes, MLB and NFL in the US definitely. the NFL is like cycling in that the physical repercussions almost necessitate it. You just cannot take getting hit by a 6'5" 275 lb DE who can run a 4.4 40 that many times without drugging up IMO. Its like the guy in Steroid Nation said, all you have to do is change the steroid slightly, and bam, (p o o f is a banned word?....oh yea, Aussies) it doesn't show on the test. They are a sophisticated as are cyclists, plus they make 10 times as much per year. It is part of every major professional and most amateur sports in my opinion. I mean, I went to a division 1AA school with a good football program (Appalachian St) in the 80's and they were using steroids. I lived in the same dorm, and there were needle sightings and lots of talk.

 

[BroDeal]

You would think that the prevalence of doping in a sport would depend on the effectiveness of doping for that sport. So sports that are more dependent on skill would likely have less doping, and sports that come down to pure strength, aerobics, power, etc. would have the most. How much money is in the sport would also have to be factored in for some drugs--well, maybe not so much now that most of this junk is pretty cheap.

 

[pmcg76]

I dont think any sports do as much as cycling in anti-doping. Remember most of cyclings biggest drug scandals have come about by police busts. Festina Affair, OP, Giro raids in 01,02. If other sports faced this level of scrutiny, they would be in the crap as well.

I feel athletics is just as bad but less keen to hang their dirty linen in public. I would love to hear BigBoat apply his theories to all the African guys who break records for fun or how Usain Bolt is able to smash world 100m record whilst jogging to finish.

People dont seem to make this link very often either, I am picking football/soccer here as it is the biggest sport on the planet and I am also a football fan. For doping in cycling, substitute money in football. It is completely ruled by money with the biggest, richest clubs dominating most of the time. How is this different to doping.

Take Chelsea FC as a prime example, an average club in England, Abramovich arrives with his billions and they become one of the best clubs in the world overnight. How is that any better than doping, its not about clubs producing the best players but the clubs with the deepest pockets. Why is English Premiership best league in the world? because it has the most money, period. If it was just English players, it would be rubbish and leagues like Brazil & Argentina would be best because they produce the most talent.

Football fans are happy to accept this and anything else like doping, match-fixing, players misbehaving gets swept under the carpet. I guess there is still the chance of the small guys winning like unheralded Wolfsburg done in Germany this season but to meet football is just as idelogically wrong as cycling.

US sports are slightly better because of salary caps etc but drug use is rampant in US pro sports and they just want to keep their heads in the ground. I could go on and on but will summarise.

The reason I have not given up on cycling is that I dont believe any other sports are any more honest or non-coorupt so I will stick with cycling.

 

[Anonymous]

I dont think any sports do as much as cycling in anti-doping. Remember most of cyclings biggest drug scandals have come about by police busts. Festina Affair, OP, Giro raids in 01,02. If other sports faced this level of scrutiny, they would be in the crap as well.

I feel athletics is just as bad but less keen to hang their dirty linen in public. I would love to hear BigBoat apply his theories to all the African guys who break records for fun or how Usain Bolt is able to smash world 100m record whilst jogging to finish.

People dont seem to make this link very often either, I am picking football/soccer here as it is the biggest sport on the planet and I am also a football fan. For doping in cycling, substitute money in football. It is completely ruled by money with the biggest, richest clubs dominating most of the time. How is this different to doping.

Take Chelsea FC as a prime example, an average club in England, Abramovich arrives with his billions and they become one of the best clubs in the world overnight. How is that any better than doping, its not about clubs producing the best players but the clubs with the deepest pockets. Why is English Premiership best league in the world? because it has the most money, period. If it was just English players, it would be rubbish and leagues like Brazil & Argentina would be best because they produce the most talent.

Football fans are happy to accept this and anything else like doping, match-fixing, players misbehaving gets swept under the carpet. I guess there is still the chance of the small guys winning like unheralded Wolfsburg done in Germany this season but to meet football is just as idelogically wrong as cycling.

US sports are slightly better because of salary caps etc but drug use is rampant in US pro sports and they just want to keep their heads in the ground. I could go on and on but will summarise.

The reason I have not given up on cycling is that I dont believe any other sports are any more honest or non-coorupt so I will stick with cycling.

I agree with your post except that I don't think salary caps are all that effective. I mean, when a guy can make 14 million + per year, doping cost is a very minor part of his finances. When the cheapest salary on the team is $300K, I don't think buying some steroids is very hard. I am not sure what a domistique makes, but I'll bet it isn't quite that. I also am pretty sure that on Continental squads, the top guys don't make 20-30% of that.

 

[LugHugger]

I agree with your post except that I don't think salary caps are all that effective. I mean, when a guy can make 14 million + per year, doping cost is a very minor part of his finances. When the cheapest salary on the team is $300K, I don't think buying some steroids is very hard. I am not sure what a domistique makes, but I'll bet it isn't quite that. I also am pretty sure that on Continental squads, the top guys don't make 20-30% of that.

Purely for reference I believe that the minimum Pro Tour team wage is about €23,000 pa

 

[Bala Verde]

...

Recently I read the OBITUARY of football/soccer. As a life long football fan I mourned a split second, and decided I would not ever go back to see it.

It has become banal.

 

[BroDeal]

Purely for reference I believe that the minimum Pro Tour team wage is about €23,000 pa

The minimums got bumped by 10% in 2009. They are now 33K euros with an exception for neo-pros, whose minimum is 26.xK.

Minimum salary in the NBA is a little under $500K to put things in perspective. Veterans have a minimum over a million. Cycling gets the very short end of the stick.

 

[BroDeal]

Recently I read the OBITUARY of football/soccer. As a life long football fan I mourned a split second, and decided I would not ever go back to see it.

It has become banal.

This joke of a year destroyed my interest in Formula 1.

 

[BikeCentric]

Read the book "Romo" by Bill Romanowski if you want to learn about drugs in the NFL. Romo said he took every drug that was known to man that could possibly give him any advantage. The book is like reading Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" because it's like one long drug binge with Romo just wallowing in drugs drugs drugs.

He didn't name any other players and it seemed like it was very much an individual effort - the NFL teams do not appear to do any team-sponsored doping like in cycling likely so they will have plausable deniability. Also the players get paid a lot more so it seems like it's a kind of a case of "this is what you're expected to do if you want a big contract."

 

[Snake8]

You would think that the prevalence of doping in a sport would depend on the effectiveness of doping for that sport. So sports that are more dependent on skill would likely have less doping, and sports that come down to pure strength, aerobics, power, etc. would have the most. How much money is in the sport would also have to be factored in for some drugs--well, maybe not so much now that most of this junk is pretty cheap.

I would agree that anyone here who has spent even an hour on these forums should watch "Steroid Nation". I think it very effectively makes the case that doping is not related to financial gain, nor correlated with the purse/salary of the athlete. Its also a pretty interesting documentary.

Furthermore, I cannot think of a sport in which you cannot perform better on some kind of dope, faster, stronger, better recovery and with the stuff they have now they can tailor a diet of dope to improve the athlete.

I agree that most other sports are probably as rife with doping and cycling does as much as if not more than any other sport, and no I am not saying we should just give up and let everyone cheat because you always have to draw a line and say this is "the rule". But are there any other sports that have a better testing regime? Part of me is curious why so much attention in cycling is on doping? I mean NFL/MLB etc give a slap on the wrist if caught compared to cycling.

 

[BroDeal]

The NFL is an interesting situation because that is a sport where I think you would have to a fool not to use steroids to get bigger just as a way to try to minimize injuries from being hit by other players.

 

[BikeCentric]

But are there any other sports that have a better testing regime? Part of me is curious why so much attention in cycling is on doping? I mean NFL/MLB etc give a slap on the wrist if caught compared to cycling.

I think the reason is because cycling is simply about you and your body smashing the pedals harder than the guy next to you and who can withstand more pain. Doping F's with this equation by essentially allowing one rider to inflict more pain on another and also up their power output at any given effort level. Furthermore it is well know that competitive cyclists have to hone their bodies to extremely high levels of physical fitness through the proverbial "living like a monk" - very high quality diet, avoiding alcohol, sleeping lots, etc. The idea of adding drugs to this image of purity is a harsh juxtaposition.

 

[BikeCentric]

The NFL is an interesting situation because that is a sport where I think you would have to a fool not to use steroids to get bigger just as a way to try to minimize injuries from being hit by other players.

Yeah but you have to be careful with the roids and cortisone injections both of which football players abuse a lot. You see if you jack your muscles to grow too fast you put a lot of strain on your joints and tendons and are more prone to tendon and muscle rips and strains. So when you couple the kind of impacts that go on in that sport with joint fragility you have a recipe for disaster. Romo talked about jetting around the country visiting many different Docs like Ferarri who would proscribe him various cocktails of the juice so as to properly strengthen his body. This I think was basically Victor Conte's role at BALCO.

 

[titan_90]

Wondering if you all think other sports are as dirty as cycling? Why or why not?

If as some allege on here that cyclists are so sophisticated with their doping and that it is still rampant, and that they have essentially found ways to elude the tests, why wouldn't other athletes be doing the same things?

Lastly, are there any other sports that test as much as cycling?

Cycling is no dirty than another sport, if you believe otherwise your just naive. Cycling get more bad press simply because they are tested more.

 

[Snake8]

I think the reason is because cycling is simply about you and your body smashing the pedals harder than the guy next to you and who can withstand more pain. Doping F's with this equation by essentially allowing one rider to inflict more pain on another and also up their power output at any given effort level. Furthermore it is well know that competitive cyclists have to hone their bodies to extremely high levels of physical fitness through the proverbial "living like a monk" - very high quality diet, avoiding alcohol, sleeping lots, etc. The idea of adding drugs to this image of purity is a harsh juxtaposition.

Centric, I know we like to bang heads here, but I would argue that's a pretty naive view of cycling in the context of other sports and is part of why you get so upset at some of my posts. You put these guys on a pedestal that frankly doesn't exist and never has. The image of purity is a mirage my friend.

Titan, I was not saying cycling is more or less dirty. I was asking what others think, because it seems to me that at least part of cycling's problem is just as much with the culture of doping and the culture of being obsessed with doping. This forum is essentially a doping forum with an occasional cycling discussion. If other sports are just as dirty, why if cycling tests the most, catches the most, why is it perceived to be dirtier?

 

[jaylew]

Part of me is curious why so much attention in cycling is on doping? I mean NFL/MLB etc give a slap on the wrist if caught compared to cycling.

Doping is always going to be a bigger issue in sports like cycling, track and field, weightlifting, etc...because you're talking about 1)individual sports(sure cycling is team oriented to a degree, but one person wins each race), and 2) sports in which by and large the winner is the person who is the fastest, strongest, has the most endurance, can jump the highest, whatever.

The connection between doping and result is much less clear in a true team sport like football or soccer.

In the NFL, say some receiver took a PED that made him faster. Ok, maybe he gets open deep easier and can outrun the db's easier, but the coach still has to call the right play, the line has to give the quarterback adequate time to throw the ball, the quarterback has to see the receiver, has to make a good throw, and the receiver has to be able to catch it. To top it off, hopefully the defensive coordinator hasn't called a play that has the free safety shading to the PED-taking receiver's side.

People didn't start to get upset about steroids in baseball until home run records began to be affected. When a player hits a home run in a one-on-one match up between pitcher and hitter, the effect of steroids is more transparent.

Right or wrong, I don't care anywhere near as much when some linebacker gets busted for roids as when a cyclist or runner is busted.

 

[Mellow Velo]

Not if their governing body doesn't want it to be.

 

[Anonymous]

Read the book "Romo" by Bill Romanowski if you want to learn about drugs in the NFL. Romo said he took every drug that was known to man that could possibly give him any advantage. The book is like reading Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" because it's like one long drug binge with Romo just wallowing in drugs drugs drugs.

He didn't name any other players and it seemed like it was very much an individual effort - the NFL teams do not appear to do any team-sponsored doping like in cycling likely so they will have plausable deniability. Also the players get paid a lot more so it seems like it's a kind of a case of "this is what you're expected to do if you want a big contract."

probably not just and individual effort at the time even if over the top.

but nobody get's away with anything near that now in the nfl

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

I'm probably jaded, but I'm of the belief that if cycling has a doping problem bigger than other sports, it's only because of better testing. Doping also really helps cycling, more than some sports like basketball for example. But not a lot more than NFL, or XC skiing.

I'm absolutely convinced that there is still a major steroid problem in baseball. I'm also convinced that the majority of NFL players are on steroids, and many NCAA college players. Especially linemen and guys in the trenches. Most Track & Field athletes are doped. That sport has had worse scandals than cycling maybe. XC skiing has a bad doping problem, though like cycling, trying to clean up. Soccer/Football, Tennis, Swimming, Boxing, all of them have people that dope to one degree or another. The NBA too. Even in Golf. Gary Player said he knew for a fact some golfers were using steroids. The sport leaders lambasted him and denied it, but I'm sure he's correct. Even in sports like sailing or archery drugs like beta blockers are used (legally I might add).

I mean, if you can earn a ton of money and fame, aren't likely to get caught, and suspect or know others are doing it...

Steroids and other drugs are cheap and easy to get. Don't forget that Kayle Leogrande bought plenty of EPO for $500.

Here's the link to Steroid Nation: Bigger, Stronger, Faster. Well worth watching, and you can stream it free on Netflix.

Here's link to Wiki on doping cases in sport.

And a link to a real telling one on cycling.

Yeah, it sucks there is so much talk on doping here, and I'm as much a "culprit" as anyone, though I try to be informative and objective. But the fact is, doping exists in sports across the planet.

 

[Anonymous]

Wondering if you all think other sports are as dirty as cycling? Why or why not?

If as some allege on here that cyclists are so sophisticated with their doping and that it is still rampant, and that they have essentially found ways to elude the tests, why wouldn't other athletes be doing the same things?

Lastly, are there any other sports that test as much as cycling?

yes it was and there's one reason.

Climbing.

The importance of climbing in winning grand tours is at the heart of it.

The climbs are the hardest part of what is the hardest endurance sport in the world.

I still fear that some dark character might secretly have no regard for the sport, their friends, teams ect, an want that one moment of glory so bad they'd take the sport with them could still be out there. (Evans gives me a bad feeling, someone tell me why it can't be him. and i can't wait to see who the first person is that will claim it's the forum's favorite whipping boy)

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

Nobody get's away with anything near that now in the nfl

This I would generally agree with, and generally in cycling and baseball as well. In many of these sports that "crack down", what really happens is not that they eliminate doping, but they stop the most egregious dopers, and get guys like Romo (Shawne Merriman, etc.) or get them to doping less.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

The climbs are the hardest part of what is the hardest endurance sport in the world.

You haven't tried racing as an XC skier, have you? Just watch the first 1:40 of this link and you'll understand why I say this.

(Evans gives me a bad feeling, someone tell me why it can't be him. and i can't wait to see who the first person is that will claim it's the forum's favorite whipping boy)

He has spoken out against doping, and not been involved in any scandals. But you know how I feel about things, so...

 

[pmcg76]

There are a number of reasons why cycling has a worse image than other sports.

The Festina affair was the percusor to widespread talk and knowledge of doping in cycling. Lets face it, the biggest riders on the biggest teams at the biggest annual sporting event got busted. This is when cyclings bad image started. Until something else similar happens at the Olympics, World Cup(football), Wimbledon etc cycling will be the only sport with that image.

These other events will never have police interference because of political backing, imagine if the police raided the Olympics, I bet they would find just as much illegal medication but can anybody ever see it happening. No.

Unlike most sports which would have just buried their problems, cycling actually tried to do something about the problem and to fix it you have to admit it exists which other sports refuse to do.

Cycling is not big in any of the English speaking countries, lets be honest, most people see it as a quirky sport, a bit gay etc so its easier to dismiss than any of the mainstream sports, soccer, rugby, Cricket, US Sports or Aussie Rules and most people on here are native English speakers.

Not blaming Lance but since he is such a divisive figure, it seems that talk of doping has definitely increased since he returned.

The doping stuff is like an extra dimension to cycling, its like a soap opera and most of us are intrigued by who is doing what, etc. I will admit to having a curiosity about doping. Maybe its because I dont watch soaps.

There are too many on here who constantly talk about doping, again I am not innocent but try to avoid starting another thread on doping.

The cyclists themselves dont seem to want to stop doping keeping us so well fed with news.

Maybe people have other opinions on these points.

 

[Anonymous]

probably not just and individual effort at the time even if over the top.

but nobody get's away with anything near that now in the nfl

I just don't think that is true. They get away with it just as much now. The NFL doping policy is a sham made so by the player's union.

I know many people's opinion of doping in cycling is "let the do whatever they want, I just want to watch a good race." (not saying that is your opinion jack). In the NFL, I honestly believe that if you polled hardcore fans of the NFL, you would find that most couldn't care less what they are on. They just want to see a good game with big hits and speed.

In both cases I understand the reasons for this, and really don't judge them too harshly. Sometimes I think that camp may be right. In fact, while I deplore drug usage in cycling; I won't give up my seats for the Panthers regardless of whether they dope or not. I am not sure why I differ in my view. I guess it is hypocrisy, and I am ok with that. I think the difference may be that I believe the drugs make NFL competition better where as in cycling I think it makes the racing less interesting.

My mother in law was asking me why I don't like Armstrong, and the reality is that it is not because of his doping. It is because of his actions towards others when challenged. He is also prime example of how racing is made less interesting when you can afford to get the best juice given by a practitioner who has taken the time to figure out the most effective regimen. He can materially afford to beat his fellow competitors. Looking at what domistiques are paid, it isn't even a fair comparison to other professional team sports. If NFL players only made 30K per year, maybe my opinion would change about the sport.

As it stands, I will just have to live with the fact that I don't have a consistent opinion about doping in athletics.