Farcanal said:
jmdirt said:
I'm glad that the UCI et. al. are referring to hidden power sources as technical fraud instead of mechanical doping now. I'm not sure why it was called "doping" in the first place.
If using motors, or other powered mechanical aids, is officially NOT doping can this subject now be discussed in or moved to other cyclingnews forums with a more comprehensive range of contributors? Or is cheating of any form the sole preserve of the Clinic?
That UCI is referring to use of hidden motors as
technical fraud rather than "mechanical doping" is actually a very good sign. Implicit in this decision is acknowledgement that within the culture of pro cycling
dope has a place. We can talk about whether that place is legitimate, and how it came to be - whether through historical precedent, exploitation of riders, or plain and simple necessity - but, like it or not, among fans, many of them, and riders (all of them, probably)
dope and
doping is a normative state of affairs. To call motor use "doping", then, is to normalize it, to incorporate it into the panoply of substances and methods used in the world of pro cycling to achieve an advantage.
Fraud, on the other hand, confers no such legitimacy and thus exiles hidden motors into an area alien to the sport's culture.
The etymology of the word dope is interesting, and those on the board who speak Dutch will probably have already worked this out. According to the
Oxford English Dictionary, it came into English circa 1807 from the Dutch word
doop, meaning "thick dipping sauce", which in turn comes from
doopen, meaning "to dip". It's meaning in English has changed and
been extended over time, so that eventually it included adding a substance (and, by extension, using a method) to increase efficiency and thereby achieve an advantage. (Thus, when you apply shellac to a model airplane wing, or putty to an air frame, you are "doping" it.)
I'm not sure the O.E.D. has quite worked this out yet, but here you can see how the inversion happened in hip hop slang, whereby "dope" went from having a negative connotation ("stupid", "cheating") to a positive one ("enhanced efficiency", "conferring an advantage").
In any event, whether we think of hidden motor use as doping or as fraud, according to the rules of the forum all talk of hidden motors in the peloton belongs here in the Clinic.