I don't think making the races shorter or easier would have much effect on doping. People dope to gain an advantage. If you can gain an advantage you can win or at least better your results. Doping will increase your performance whether it's in a one hour rce or an eight hour race. If you better your results you make more money. Pretty simple IMO.
That said, the way I look at it is like this. Take your average recreational cyclist. They will train for weeks or months just to do a century ride on relatively easy terrain. For them this is pretty tough. A person like this would be considered pretty fit my normal sedentary standards.
A more serious recreational cyclist might occasionally do a century ride on more difficult terrain, push a 17-20mph pace and put in 150-300 miles a week during riding season. This person would be considered very fit
A typical USA domestic pro/semi pro might do longer harder road races but at paces considered very slow by Euro pro peloton standards. (For this argument I'm not talking about crits) This person would be fitter and faster by a magnitude of several than the serious recreational rider
That domestic pro maybe goes to Europe to race and gets rudely awakened the pace, depth of competition, length and overall difficulty of the road races in Europe, even the second tier races.
Then you enter into the realm of the elite level one day races, shorter stages races, and hardest of all the GTs with 200km+- stages every day at very high paces, some of which have 2-3000+ meters of climbing and the typical US domestic pro - someone who by any normal persons standards is incredibly fit and tough - is hanging on for dear life just to make the time cuts. If you want to make any kind of a real living, well, the fans (thus sponsors) want not just people who can hang on, but those who win. Who animate the race. Who are heroes. Not a bunch of also rans.
To expect and hope that someone will do this kind of stuff, compete day in and day out at the highest level on good wholesome clean food and water is a little bit of wishful thinking IMO.
None of that is to say there shouldn't be limits on what kind of performance enhancing substance that can be utilized, but as long as there is big money in sports that are incredibly difficult, there will be the pressure to use whatever is available to gain an edge.
That said, the way I look at it is like this. Take your average recreational cyclist. They will train for weeks or months just to do a century ride on relatively easy terrain. For them this is pretty tough. A person like this would be considered pretty fit my normal sedentary standards.
A more serious recreational cyclist might occasionally do a century ride on more difficult terrain, push a 17-20mph pace and put in 150-300 miles a week during riding season. This person would be considered very fit
A typical USA domestic pro/semi pro might do longer harder road races but at paces considered very slow by Euro pro peloton standards. (For this argument I'm not talking about crits) This person would be fitter and faster by a magnitude of several than the serious recreational rider
That domestic pro maybe goes to Europe to race and gets rudely awakened the pace, depth of competition, length and overall difficulty of the road races in Europe, even the second tier races.
Then you enter into the realm of the elite level one day races, shorter stages races, and hardest of all the GTs with 200km+- stages every day at very high paces, some of which have 2-3000+ meters of climbing and the typical US domestic pro - someone who by any normal persons standards is incredibly fit and tough - is hanging on for dear life just to make the time cuts. If you want to make any kind of a real living, well, the fans (thus sponsors) want not just people who can hang on, but those who win. Who animate the race. Who are heroes. Not a bunch of also rans.
To expect and hope that someone will do this kind of stuff, compete day in and day out at the highest level on good wholesome clean food and water is a little bit of wishful thinking IMO.
None of that is to say there shouldn't be limits on what kind of performance enhancing substance that can be utilized, but as long as there is big money in sports that are incredibly difficult, there will be the pressure to use whatever is available to gain an edge.
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