sniper said:
Fantastic post Kevin. Very informative.
However, all this time relatively easy motor tech is available and bike testing is wholly absent. Are you worried about that and have you thought about a solution?
How can you trust those guys who are putting minutes into you? If the cheating is so easy you can bet on it that some will be trying. And those who do try will have a huge advantage over those who dont. That's a simple fact.
I certainly don't see any reason to trust any top TT results. Do you? And to be sure it pisses me off.
The Feds are asleep behind the wheel. Credible cycling is not in sight. What do you think?
I'm 56 years old. The guys putting minutes into me are 20-30 years younger than me and at the top of their game. They BETTER be putting a minute or two into me.
I'm sure that there are people who I race against that are taking PEDs. I doubt that it is a huge factor in NorCal level results though. I just can't get worked up about the possibility that occasionally a guy who beats me did it because of drugs. I'm a 56 year old masters racer. I race because it's fun and I like competing and testing myself. Nobody is cheating me out of a paycheck and if somebody gets the $20 prize, or bottle of wine over me because they doped I just don't care that much. If they are, I'd love for them to get caught, or at least quit doping, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it.
That said, I'd love it if USADA showed up 2-3 times per year at local races so that the threat of getting tested felt more real to riders. I think that might scare some people off who might otherwise take PEDs. For the most part now, the only real threat to getting tested is winning at nationals. If you're not going, or going, but know you won't win, you will likely get away with it.
I just don't see any reason to mistrust amateur level results in the US on a large scale. Drug testing now is so much more common than it used to be. I raced as an elite back in the mid-80's to early 90's. I think I once was at a race when there was drug testing. I did a number of western US NRC level stage races, elite nationals, pan am trials and the '88 olympic trials and to my memory there wasn't drug testing. Fast foward to the 90's when I started doing master's races, I did the '96 olympic track trials and there was drug testing there. But I won a number of master's track championship in the 90's. No drug testing. There was drug testing at master's road nationals in 2007, but just a few. 2008 track nationals, none. Starting in about 2010 they got a bit more serious and started testing more of the winners, in 2011, they tested all of the winners in the RR and TT at master's nationals. The following year they tested 1st and 2nd in the RR and TT. Since that time they have been testing most if not all winners at nationals. I haven't been to track nationals since 2008, but they have been doing a significant amount of testing as long as they have on the road side. Also, in recent years they have started showing up at the occasional local race.
I never got tested until I turned 50. Since then I've been tested 9 times, include 4 tests this year. (40km TT record, hour record, 2km record and world track championships team pursuit). Can USADA/USAC do better? Sure. But I think they are making a reasonable stab at it given realistic funding levels.
Go to the USADA website athlete test history:
https://www.usada.org/testing/results/athlete-test-history/
Choose 2017, all quarter's, cycling and leave the athlete name fields blank and you'll get a list of all of the USADA tests this year. It is illuminating. And note that this is only tests performed by or at the behest of USADA. i.e., if USADA asks the French anti doping federation to test rider x while they are in France it will show up here. But if rider x wins a UCI race and is tested by the UCI, or WADA, or the French federation it won't show here. In my case, only 1 shows as two of my tests were performed by the Mexican anti doping federation in Aguascalientes and the worlds test was performed by the UCI.
This is a sampling of those results. Note the number of tests on some retired riders (Abbot, Horner, Gaimon, Zirbel), suspended riders (Tommy D)
Athlete Name Test Count
Mara Abbott 4
Norman Alvis 2
Brent Bookwalter 9
Robin Carpenter 5
Katherine E Compton 11
G Lawson Craddock 9
Tom S Danielson 9
Joseph Dombrowski 9
Tyler L Farrar 7
Phillip Gaimon 5
Megan Guarnier 9
Katharine Hall 5
Sarah K Hammer 11
Adrian Hegyvary 5
Daniel Holloway 7
Christopher B Horner 9
Alexander Howes 9
Evan Huffman 5
Colin Joyce 6
Travis McCabe 8
Kevin Metcalfe 1
Amber L Neben 7
Danny Pate 11
Taylor Phinney 6
Jeremy Powers 9
Kiel Reijnen 8
Coryn Rivera 4
Skylar Schneider 6
Lauren Stephens 8
Peter Stetina 9
Andrew Talansky 5
Jennifer Valente 8
Tejay VanGarderen 9
Tayler Wiles 6
Ruth Winder 10
Tom Zirbel 3
I think that USAC/USADA are doing a reasonable job considering the financial constraints. Drug tests are expensive. Each of my tests in Mexico cost me $450 for the lab in Canada to process the samples! I don't think Mexico has a certified lab... They could certainly do more testing, but somebody is going to have to pay for it.
Kevin Metcalfe