Re: Sky
deviant said:
The point stands, your average family GP/physician knows *** all about the mentality of a sports person or their extreme physiology.
I'll say it again, whenever I've had injuries through sport (usually rotator cuff) the medical advice is to stop doing whatever is making them hurt!....brilliant, cheers Doc.
You'll find the Docs on any sports team far more likely to suggest an immediate referral to physio, prescription strength analgesia, intra joint cortisone treatments etc than your average GP whose attitude tends to be 'wait and see'....pro sports people can't 'wait and see'....their career depends on having access to Docs prepared to get them functioning again even if there's long term damage down the road like early onset arthritis in your 40s or 50s.
Ethical?....it's not illegal, same grey area as lots of pro sports mud like TUEs.
Another poster mentioned specialists re. getting a knee fixed (i think?)....obviously, even Consultants and Professors know they can't be an expert in all fields, you have to specialise to get any good in medicine and once a sports person is diagnosed with a back complaint, shoulder injury, borked knee etc they'll go off to the appropriate specialist for definitive treatment as opposed to the stop gap effect of team Docs who just keep a rider going.
This isn't difficult to understand, maybe because it doesn't fit into the current narrative it's being dismissed.
Seriously have you ever even been anywhere near a professional sport? If you had you never would go to see a GP for a rotator cuff injury in the first place.
Sports doctors are known to sports people, most semi pro athletes would not go to their GP for a sport related injury they have specialist sport doctors to go and see. Let alone a professional athlete.
I have been around many top athletes in a number of fields and not one of them goes to a gp for any sport related injury. Hell even the unknown pro triathletes I know have sports doctors on the speed dial and they are not even paid for by an association let alone a team set up.
So to make the point you are above is silly. No one is discussing the family GP.
The point being made is that to have 4 doctors within the team is ridiculous, because as you so rightly point out they will not be specialists.
A single sport doctor with a knowledge of cycling would be enough to determine what the issue is and then send the athlete to the relevant specialist. Which is what happens in most cases.
So why the need for 4? and why the need for 4 with track records in helping other dubious teams and riders?
The fact is that if the team wanted to do what it said it was setting out to; do there are plenty of sports doctors in the UK they could have hired and utilised; to make sure their athletes get the attention they needed when they needed it.
But to have the set up that they have begs the question as to whether they are hiring doctors for the athletes benefit and the medical aspects or hiring doctors who know how to bypass certain rules and regulations, or who have contacts that can assist with the teams, maybe in a lab somewhere or within the testing teams who can tip off a team on a visit.
As for your last point - I would love to see a doctor's thoughts on that - have you ever heard of the hypocratic oath. No moral or upstanding doctor would prescribe something to an athlete knowingly if they knew it would cause arthiritis or other major conditions down the line.
Some doctors have defended the use of EPO by stating that without them the athlete would take it anyway and be putting themselves in more danger, or by stating that the three week grand tours are actually damaging to an athletes health without assistance.
But to give medications that are know to damage a human being in full knowledge that they are not needed would get most legitimate doctors struck off. Maybe that is why the team scour the earth to find doctors that are potentially less scrupulous.