Doping in other sports?

[ingsve]

I've been wondering in the recent year what conclusions we can draw from what we know about doping in cycling and especially about avoiding testing positive.

We know that the current tests for EPO and other substances are not close to 100% reliable since we know that riders that confessed to cheating for years at the same time tested negative many many times.

So, what does this mean for other sports? The impression I have is that a lot of other sports are no where close to as invested in anti-doping as cycling still is (despite all faults that still exist) and that there are a lot fewer tests being done but with the same methods that have proven ineffective in cycling. Are other sports just as bad or even worse than cycling except that they have a cleaner image because their athletes have an even easier time getting away with it? If so, what sports do you think are the worst?

 

[maltiv]

If so, what sports do you think are the worst?

Football. They're basically not tested at all.

 

[D-Queued]

.... Are other sports just as bad or even worse than cycling except that they have a cleaner image because their athletes have an even easier time getting away with it? If so, what sports do you think are the worst?

The classic (Olympic) problem sports are:

Weightlifting, boxing, swimming, track & field

and...

Cycling.

We go faster!

“The widespread and often undetected use of potentially dangerous synthetic hormones such as anabolic steroids, human growth hormone, and erythropoietin has provided a crisis of confidence in the integrity of such Olympic sports as track and field, swimming, cycling and weightlifting…”
Dave.

 

[Barrus]

Football. They're basically not tested at all.

Wasn't there at the latest WC some Italian plaayer who refused to take a blood test and wasn't reprimanded for it at all?

 

[The Hitch]

Football. They're basically not tested at all.

Absolutely.

This is from a previous post of mine. Basically me rambling on about the subject:

_____________________________________

1 Drugs would be helpful in football. For speed, For power and for recovery. These things are more important than skill.

2 on the few occasions that people have looked for drugs in football, theyve found drugs in football

3 Many say that the greatest benefit of peds would be in injury recovery. Footballers get injured more than other sports. Teams have million dollar facilities just for rapid injury rehabilitation. Some even use some dodgy red blood cell extrapolation machines.

4 Most fans dont care about it because the media doesnt care about it. Theres absolutely no doping stories, and if there was the authors would get sued. Outside cn forums the perception is that doping is undertaken by a very small % of bad guys in cycling and running who want to cheat. Everyone is innocent untill proven guilty and in most cases, seen as innocent regardless.

5 There is more money in football. Take the salary of the average cyclist. Double it, then multiply it by 52. Now you have the average salary of a mediocre footballer. For a top earning footballer, take a cyclists salary, multiply it by 200 then add £20 million a year in sponsorship.

In this kind of enviroment, with this money on the line, I wouldnt be surprised if guys were spraying themselves with pixie dust because they heard it gives you a 1% advantage.

EPO and steroids are a given.

 

[Chuffy]

Football. They're basically not tested at all.

The monkey on football's back is financial corruption, not to mention match fixing and the diving that goes on in almost every game. Compared with that lot, doping is way less important than it is in cycling. Cricket has ball-tampering and match fixing. Again, doping is way down the list of problems.

Every sport has it's monkey and in cycling it's doping.

 

[Benotti69]

Absolutely.

This is from a previous post of mine on the subject. 5 reasons why i expect doping to be ingrained in football:



1 Drugs would be helpful in football. For speed, For power and for recovery. These things are more important than skill.

2 on the few occasions that people have looked for drugs in football, theyve found drugs in football

3 Many say that the greatest benefit of peds would be in injury recovery. Footballers get injured more than other sports. Teams have million dollar facilities just for rapid injury rehabilitation. Some even use some dodgy red blood cell extrapolation machines.

4 Most fans dont care about it because the media doesnt care about it. Theres absolutely no doping stories, and if there was the authors would get sued. Outside cn forums the perception is that doping is undertaken by a very small % of bad guys in cycling and running who want to cheat. Everyone is innocent untill proven guilty and in most cases, seen as innocent regardless.

5 There is more money in football. Take the salary of the average cyclist. Double it, then multiply it by 52. Now you have the average salary of a mediocre footballer. For a top earning footballer, take a cyclists salary, multiply it by 200 then add £20 million a year in sponsorship.

In this kind of enviroment, with this money on the line, I wouldnt be surprised if guys were spraying themselves with pixie dust because they heard it gives you a 1% advantage.

EPO and steroids are a given.

players are making recoveries for some injuries nowadays in very quick time that years ago would have ended players careers

 

[The Hitch]

The monkey on football's back is financial corruption, not to mention match fixing and the diving that goes on in almost every game. Compared with that lot, doping is way less important than it is in cycling. Cricket has ball-tampering and match fixing. Again, doping is way down the list of problems.

Every sport has it's monkey and in cycling it's doping.

lol.

Why are sports limited to one problem?

So since Fifa delegates are corrupt, the footballers think to themselves "well i dont want too many scandals in my sport, so i best not take drugs"?

 

[jimmypop]

We know that the current tests for EPO and other substances are not close to 100% reliable since we know that riders that confessed to cheating for years at the same time tested negative many many times.

No one tests negative for anything. They just don't test positive. It's important to make that distinction.

I don't know of a test for a negative.

 

[ergmonkey]

If we're going to list "classic Olympic problem sports," then let's be sure not to leave out nordic skiing and biathlon. Basically, they offer you cycling on snow--with the possibility of firearms. Come to think of it, sounds like a pretty good time...

 

[maltiv]

Trying to argument with football/tennis fans about whether there's doping in their sport is practically impossible. They will come with the same ridiculous argument each time: "Doping doesn't help as much in football/tennis, skill is more important".

The fact is that when there's so much money in a sport as there is in football people will do anything to get 0,0001% better, not to mention 20%...

 

[hrotha]

It's true that those sports depend less on physical fitness and more on skill compared to cycling, so the boost their players get from PEDs is most likely smaller than the boost cyclists get, but...

Ronaldinho.

 

[Mr.38%]

Other sports??

 

[Fowsto Cope-E]

definately American Football is worse than cycling. It is obvious to see the advantages of steriods and yet the NFL does absolutely nothing to solve the problem. you rarely hear of doping positives and players only get 4 game suspensions. In a confidential poll of retired american football players, 10% admitted to using steriods in his career.

 

[L29205]

triathlon without a doubt. Particularly in the Ironman length events.

 

[jmax22]

definately American Football is worse than cycling. It is obvious to see the advantages of steriods and yet the NFL does absolutely nothing to solve the problem. you rarely hear of doping positives and players only get 4 game suspensions. In a confidential poll of retired american football players, 10% admitted to using steriods in his career.

Definitely American Football? And then back that up with a stat of 10%. If retired cyclists honestly answered that question, I would expect it to be closer to 75 or 80%, if not higher. And "only" a 4 game suspension as at minimum a $75,000 hit if you make only the league minimum, which most guys don't...they make much more.

Not saying football is clean by any measure, but to say its worse than cycling is a stretch in my opinion. I can't imagine any sport as dirty as cycling.

 

[Ferminal]

Other sports??

hehe, you win!

Tennis, Swimming, Athletics would all be just as bad as cycling imo.

 

[forumlurker]

bodybuilding

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Not saying football is clean by any measure, but to say its worse than cycling is a stretch in my opinion. I can't imagine any sport as dirty as cycling.

I think that this is probably the wrong way to look at it.

Any sport where speed, strength, endurance or recovery matters is a sport where doping exists.

Once you know that doping happens, the issue is about how prevalent it is. And with many, many sports there are two important factors to consider: The rewards for success are much greater than in a comparitively niche sport like cycling, and the chances of being caught and/or punished are much less than in cycling. Cycling, for all that we rightly criticise the dope testing regime, has by some distance the most effective and thorough regime in sports. Saying that is not in any way an endorsement of the regime in cycling. It's an indictment of the regime in other sports.

In most sports you have essentially no chance of being caught or punished unless you are ridiculously stupid or ridiculously unlucky. In cycling, you actually have to go to quite serious lengths to avoid being caught.

Sports centring on "pure" feats of endurance, speed or strength tend to be the early adopters of new doping techniques and of systematic doping programmes. Weightlifting, cycling, nordic skiing, track and field, swimming. But once those techniques exist and the medical infrastructure exists they spread rapidly, and those sports are not the ones where the serious money is involved.

There's another factor to take into account. The lesson sports federations took from the cycling debacles of the 1990s was that catching your stars is a commercial disaster for all involved.

We know that cycling doping doctors have worked extensively with athletes and teams from other sports. We know that team doping programmes have existed in sports like soccer. I'm sorry to say it, but anyone who thinks that professional sports as a whole is anything other than dope riddled is the kind of mark you should consider offering a bridge to.

 

[Fowsto Cope-E]

Definitely American Football? And then back that up with a stat of 10%. If retired cyclists honestly answered that question, I would expect it to be closer to 75 or 80%, if not higher. And "only" a 4 game suspension as at minimum a $75,000 hit if you make only the league minimum, which most guys don't...they make much more.

Not saying football is clean by any measure, but to say its worse than cycling is a stretch in my opinion. I can't imagine any sport as dirty as cycling.

But most likely, not all of them will tell the truth . . .

 

[The Hitch]

I think that this is probably the wrong way to look at it.

Any sport where speed, strength, endurance or recovery matters is a sport where doping exists.

Once you know that doping happens, the issue is about how prevalent it is. And with many, many sports there are two important factors to consider: The rewards for success are much greater than in a comparitively niche sport like cycling, and the chances of being caught and/or punished are much less than in cycling. Cycling, for all that we rightly criticise the dope testing regime, has by some distance the most effective and thorough regime in sports. Saying that is not in any way an endorsement of the regime in cycling. It's an indictment of the regime in other sports.

In most sports you have essentially no chance of being caught or punished unless you are ridiculously stupid or ridiculously in lucky. In cycling, you actually have to go to quite serious lengths to avoid being caught.

Sports centring on "pure" feats of endurance, speed or strength tend to be the early adopters of new doping techniques and of systematic doping programmes. Weightlifting, cycling, nordic skiing, track and field, swimming. But once those techniques exist and the medical infrastructure exists they spread rapidly, and those sports are not the ones where the serious money is involved.

There's another factor to take into account. The lesson sports federations took from the cycling debacles of the 1990s was that catching your stars is a commercial disaster for all involved.

We know that cycling doping doctors have worked extensively with athletes and teams from other sports. We know that team doping programmes have existed in sports like soccer. I'm sorry to say it, but anyone who thinks that professional sports as a whole is anything other than dope riddled is the kind of mark you should consider offering a bridge to.

Just to let you know you are on my mental list of posters of whom i expect a high standard of post, when i see the name.

And as always, this latest post doesnt disapoint. Very well written, layed out and presented. And i totaly agree with what you say.

 

[neineinei]

The one thing possibly worse than bodybuilding is strongman. If anyone wants their steaks to be doped it is the strongmen. I wouldn't be suprised to hear they put steorids in their tooth paste.

Has there ever been any doping cases in speed skating? Speed skating has a lot in common with cycling, maybe mostly with track cycling? At least Norwegian speed skaters has been training road cycling.

 

[D-Queued]

From 2003 (pre Floyd & 1999 Positives):

We've compiled a list of 10 of the most influential – and bizarre – drug cases in the past few decades. It's a long, strange trip indeed, including:

1. E. German athletes & government sponsored cheating
2. 1983 Pan Am Games: Dawn of drug testing
3. The U.S. Track & Field coverups
4. Canada's shame: Ben Johnson
5. Last to first: Irish swimmer Michelle Smith
6. Fake dynasty: Chinese swim team
7. Tour de France: Whatever it takes
8. Baseball: Home runs in bulk
9. Cross country skiing and doping: a Nordic tradition
10. Nandrolone goes for the Grand Slam

#3 could be extended to include the USOC coverups, which definitely included you-know-who.

Dave

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Just to let you know you are on my mental list of posters of whom i expect a high standard of post, when i see the name.

And as always, this latest post doesnt disapoint. Very well written, layed out and presented. And i totaly agree with what you say.

Thanks mate. I can safely say the same about your posts.

I'm well used to fans of other sports preferring to belive in the tooth fairy, but I have to admit that my jaw dangles in surprise when I see cycling fans argue that doping is an issue peculiar to cycling (or to cycling and other early adopter sports like weightlifting or swimming).

It's entirely correct to see that some sports are the breeding grounds for doping technology and infrastructure but if it was really true that the problem was isolated to those sports, apart from the infamous "bad apples", then any cycling fan could earn a fortune by bringing their casual knowledge to the money rich but allegedly doping poor major sports of this world. We could all be wealthy if we approached those poor naive major sporting corporations and offered to show them how the world works. Because obviously this idea has never occurred to anyone before!

Except for aforementioned very rare bad apples who did something very stupid and managed to get caught in sports with almost no testing regime of course. None of whom are in any way representative of a doping culture, it's important to add. In fact, they proved that the testing works, even in sports that barely test.

Doping doctors have made it very clear that they have entanglements in many sports, and by comparison with a sport like boxing, let along soccer, American football, baseball, ice hockey or basketball the amount of money floating about in cycling is miniscule. If I was a competent doping doctor, cycling is the last place I'd want to be plying my trade - the money is relatively small and the chances of someone being caught and telling tales is immensely higher.

Cycling played a key role, along with sports like weightlifting, in establishing the doping infrastructure, but cycling is ultimately small potatoes. If you are an athlete (or a team manager) in a sport where the benefits of success are enormous and the chances of being caught almost nothing, you'd have to be someone of iron morality not to be tempted. And years of following cycling have taught me that people of iron morality are less common than I might have hoped.

 

[TubularBills]

From 2003 (pre Floyd & 1999 Positives):

We've compiled a list of 10 of the most influential – and bizarre – drug cases in the past few decades. It's a long, strange trip indeed, including:

1. E. German athletes & government sponsored cheating
2. 1983 Pan Am Games: Dawn of drug testing
3. The U.S. Track & Field coverups
4. Canada's shame: Ben Johnson
5. Last to first: Irish swimmer Michelle Smith
6. Fake dynasty: Chinese swim team
7. Tour de France: Whatever it takes
8. Baseball: Home runs in bulk
9. Cross country skiing and doping: a Nordic tradition
10. Nandrolone goes for the Grand Slam

#3 could be extended to include the USOC coverups, which definitely included you-know-who.

Dave

Ouch. Kinda makes the Wide World of Sports look like WWF.

Fictional drama for dollars.

Glad I gave up cable and rocked up the ROKU and Netflix for legitimate fiction as intended.