What caused anti doping zeal?

[Darryl Webster]

Somthing thats puzzled me for a while is the change in attitudes to doping over the last 30 years +.
Back in the late 70`s when I began the attitude of many club riders to the pro scene was an acceptance of doping as in there " profesional".
Possitive tests were seen as profesional "fouls" and dealt with as such, short suspensions and fines.
After 17 years way from the sport the change in attitude is quite amazing, now dopers are seen as lower than pond life!.
What caused this change?
This has puzzled me for a while and today it finaly struck me that the change seems to coincide with the arrival of EPO and the inclusion of pro`s in the Olympics and ending of Amatuer as an elite catogory.
Epo changed the "believability". As understanding of the massive boost in performance Epo gave no longer could fans compare riders from differant eras. Everything that went before was being crushed. That "trashing" of the history has , I think created a fury amongst long standing fans.
The ending of the Elite Amatuer catogory and inclusion Olympics going pro meant pro the only Elite racing a fan could follow was pro..pre that change it was easy to ignore pro racing if ya felt it was all down to doping, and many clubmen did.
I never agreed with the ending of amatuer elites, the lines may have seamed blurry but there was a differance, money.
Its kinda ironic that the pro`s desision ( I dont recall the amatuers being consulted?) to make all elite racing pro and end Amatuer Elite seems to be proving there undoing.
Thoughts peeps?

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

It's kinda laughable indeed if you think guys like Eddy Merckx, Joop Zoetemelk etc where caught several (yes, more than once) time in their careers. Or the stories of the teammates back then who got red pill to take at 100km, a blue pill for 50km to go..etc
Wild.

Kinda makes you think who rode clean back then, probably no one

 

[fatandfast]

In the 50's and 60's knowing what substance your rival was using and when was common. The riders would ask hotel employees and look for drugs and the signs of there use. Coppi would eat pills and drink potions before doing track events and share the info w his friends so that they would not get too far off the back when he was at full gas. late 80's early 90's directors gave you a pill our two when you were sick just so you could finish..not so much for a result.I understand people against cheating but the zero tolerance of today has no basis in the sports history.

 

[tubularglue]

add drugs to endurance sports, and the odds keep on climbing

 

[Dr. Maserati]

Somthing thats puzzled me for a while is the change in attitudes to doping over the last 30 years +.
Back in the late 70`s when I began the attitude of many club riders to the pro scene was an acceptance of doping as in there " professional".
Possitive tests were seen as profesional "fouls" and dealt with as such, short suspensions and fines.
After 17 years way from the sport the change in attitude is quite amazing, now dopers are seen as lower than pond life!.
What caused this change?
This has puzzled me for a while and today it finaly struck me that the change seems to coincide with the arrival of EPO and the inclusion of pro`s in the Olympics and ending of Amatuer as an elite catogory.
Epo changed the "believability". As understanding of the massive boost in performance Epo gave no longer could fans compare riders from differant eras. Everything that went before was being crushed. That "trashing" of the history has , I think created a fury amongst long standing fans.
The ending of the Elite Amatuer catogory and inclusion Olympics going pro meant pro the only Elite racing a fan could follow was pro..pre that change it was easy to ignore pro racing if ya felt it was all down to doping, and many clubmen did.
I never agreed with the ending of amatuer elites, the lines may have seamed blurry but there was a difference, money.
Its kinda ironic that the pro`s desision ( I dont recall the amatuers being consulted?) to make all elite racing pro and end Amatuer Elite seems to be proving there undoing.
Thoughts peeps?

Doping appears to have been tolerated with up until the late 70's & 80's.
I think what changed was that sport was finally introduced to state run scientific programmes, that included PED's.
The arrival of athletes from behind the Iron Curtain did a lot to fan the flames that doping is cheating and doping was 'bad'.

Add to the mix the arrival of large corporations like Coca Cola etc who want to be associated with a clean, pure image and suddenly anyone caught doping is viewed with disdain.

Doping - its bad for business.

 

[Der_Gestreifte]

Somthing thats puzzled me for a while is the change in attitudes to doping over the last 30 years +.
Back in the late 70`s when I began the attitude of many club riders to the pro scene was an acceptance of doping as in there " profesional".
Possitive tests were seen as profesional "fouls" and dealt with as such, short suspensions and fines.
After 17 years way from the sport the change in attitude is quite amazing, now dopers are seen as lower than pond life!.
What caused this change?

Times are changing and nowadays we are simply applying a wrong set of ethics to this sport.

Keep in mind, cycling was a professional sport quite from its beginning (big-money sponsored teams have been around for a hundred years, Le Tour was even meant to be circenses and a publicity stunt) and it is a very close circle that has been run by only a few generations. Now a 100 years may sound a lot, but take for example Godefroot and The Hog: that´s more than 40 years of cycling history. What would you expect when the bosses in that circle pass their (from our viewpoint) slightly outdated views about things should be done to the new bosses they themselves spawn?
I was having a beer with a guy the other day and he dug up Thurau beeing excluded from the TdF only after his third positive in one single season. In those days we percieved this as "oh well, he cheated, yeah, he should be taken out of the race" while today this whould be totally hilarous. Imagine van den Broek beeing the winner of the 2010 TdF because Contador, Schleck, Menchov and Sanchez were disqualifies for doing stages by train: nowadays this is not even thinkable (speaking of the magnitude of cheating not technical/logistic probability).
"You just don´t do that", and I think it´s the same for modern doping: you can connect to a guy throwing in a pill or two, but having elaborate plans and logistics, (more or less) sophisticated biomed technology, bodily fluids ex- and interchanged and whatelse, plus paying a considereable amount of money - peaople can´t connect to that, so it´s "you don´t do that".

But please, just give them some time to catch up with the development of society.

 

[SpeedWay]

The abundance of sour grapes available and promoted for ingestion today is much higher than back in the day. Whiners and those who have a hard time dealing with reality eat these grapes(and through osmosis the inherent alcohol present) and experience the same effects as your garden variety winehead. This leads to doing and saying the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results. When their fantasy world doesn't morph into reality they get very angry and vindictive and seek to destroy any and everything that they feel is responsible. Fortunately, most will grow up and get on with life but a few will populate internet forums and bring endless entertainment with their "tilting at windmills" gig.

Fact is, seeking competitive advantage by any means has always existed and will always exist. Though imperfect, there are systems in place to deal with this. Hopefully these systems, in spite of their special interests, can save professional racing before the w(h)ineheads destroy what little support and sponsorship is left.

 

[TdFLanterne]

How about EPO use being linked to 18+ deaths of young pro cyclists in their prime? That's enough for me.

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/19/u...linked-to-athletes-deaths.html?pagewanted=all

 

[flicker]

Festina, Muuesew,Pantani, Armstrong,Ulrich and Gregs' pal Capachino.
The final straw, something must be done!

 

[riobonito92]

Darryl: I don't think your thesis about the end of elite amateur racing being linked to a change of attitudes about doping is likely to be true.

First of all, most people believed that the Russians who came to ride the Milk Race were doped. I don't think there was ever a clean olympics - even at the time it was widely supposed that the communist nations doped in 1980 and the USA doped in 1984.

If you limit your thesis to English amateurs circa 1970-1990 - certainly talk of steroids, amphetamines and caffeine was frequent - I can't believe you did not encounter the same conversations I did. Some elite amateurs doped, some didn't.

A key difference though is that we always believed that a clean rider could beat a doped rider because steroids, amphetamines and caffeine didn't make sufficient difference. As long as clean riders could win, the existence of doping was an irritant but nothing more. You could still dream of winning and you could still encourage your kid to take up the sport.

With the advent of EPO, that changed, and so did attitudes to dopers and doping.

 

[forty four]

The abundance of sour grapes available and promoted for ingestion today is much higher than back in the day. Whiners and those who have a hard time dealing with reality eat these grapes(and through osmosis the inherent alcohol present) and experience the same effects as your garden variety winehead. This leads to doing and saying the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results. When their fantasy world doesn't morph into reality they get very angry and vindictive and seek to destroy any and everything that they feel is responsible. Fortunately, most will grow up and get on with life but a few will populate internet forums and bring endless entertainment with their "tilting at windmills" gig.

Fact is, seeking competitive advantage by any means has always existed and will always exist. Though imperfect, there are systems in place to deal with this. Hopefully these systems, in spite of their special interests, can save professional racing before the w(h)ineheads destroy what little support and sponsorship is left.

yeah really good to hear a voice of reason on here once in a while. of all my hobbies and interests cycling forums have the most childlike delusional unintelligent people some just do not live in reality the only thing worse is youtube and what people post on there. i can just picture some of the chronic posters on here real gems to behold im sure.

 

[galaxy1]

a mixture of the cold war and increasing professionalism has killed the innocence of most purely physical sports, to be honest, not just cycling.

 

[Maxiton]

Somthing thats puzzled me for a while is the change in attitudes to doping over the last 30 years +.
Back in the late 70`s when I began the attitude of many club riders to the pro scene was an acceptance of doping as in there " profesional".
Possitive tests were seen as profesional "fouls" and dealt with as such, short suspensions and fines.
After 17 years way from the sport the change in attitude is quite amazing, now dopers are seen as lower than pond life!.
What caused this change?
This has puzzled me for a while and today it finaly struck me that the change seems to coincide with the arrival of EPO and the inclusion of pro`s in the Olympics and ending of Amatuer as an elite catogory.
Epo changed the "believability". As understanding of the massive boost in performance Epo gave no longer could fans compare riders from differant eras. Everything that went before was being crushed. That "trashing" of the history has , I think created a fury amongst long standing fans.
The ending of the Elite Amatuer catogory and inclusion Olympics going pro meant pro the only Elite racing a fan could follow was pro..pre that change it was easy to ignore pro racing if ya felt it was all down to doping, and many clubmen did.
I never agreed with the ending of amatuer elites, the lines may have seamed blurry but there was a differance, money.
Its kinda ironic that the pro`s desision ( I dont recall the amatuers being consulted?) to make all elite racing pro and end Amatuer Elite seems to be proving there undoing.
Thoughts peeps?

Finally, an honest post from someone who knows what's going on. I'm not sure how the change happened, exactly, but doping was definitely de riguer in cycling through the sixties, more or less accepted in the seventies and eighties, and pretty much tolerated in the nineties. Now, like you say, suddenly it's considered indecent and a great evil, and everyone acts like it's always been that way.

I'm not sure what happened, but more than one person will earn an advanced degree trying to explain it.

 

[flicker]

Finally, an honest post from someone who knows what's going on. I'm not sure how the change happened, exactly, but doping was definitely de riguer in cycling through the sixties, more or less accepted in the seventies and eighties, and pretty much tolerated in the nineties. Now, like you say, suddenly it's considered indecent and a great evil, and everyone acts like it's always been that way.

I'm not sure what happened, but more than one person will earn an advanced degree trying to explain it.

I think doping may be a great evil to some in the US and Britain. I think so many bikes are sold here in the US and when the haters of doping squack here it threatens the sponsors business. Thus the SHOW against doping by the agencies. No body wants a scandal against "their guy"

 

[Benotti69]

Science killed sport. Simple.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

Finally, an honest post from someone who knows what's going on. I'm not sure how the change happened, exactly, but doping was definitely de riguer in cycling through the sixties, more or less accepted in the seventies and eighties, and pretty much tolerated in the nineties. Now, like you say, suddenly it's considered indecent and a great evil, and everyone acts like it's always been that way.

I'm not sure what happened, but more than one person will earn an advanced degree trying to explain it.

I think the 'change' in mentality was before that.

I think in sports in general it was the Seoul Olympics and particularly as a 'western' athlete Ben Johnson gets busted in the flagship event.

Pro cycling was still doing what it always did, but the Festina affair was a shock because it showed how organized, professional and systematic doping really had become.

 

[ultimobici]

How about EPO use being linked to 18+ deaths of young pro cyclists in their prime? That's enough for me.

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/19/u...linked-to-athletes-deaths.html?pagewanted=all

I think this is one of the key factors.

It's all well and good if people are seeking an edge, fair or unfair, but when people start dying something has to give.

In the mid to late 60's there was resistance to dope tests, then Simpson collapsed on live TV climbing Ventoux.

The methods & substances in use prior to EPO were hazardous but endowed a limited benefit on the riders. EPO was much more potent and took performances to "Extraterrestrial" levels.

 

[Anonymous]

I touched on this on another thread, but I think a lot of it has to do with fans knowledge, and the improved modern media.

Twenty years ago, or further back a lot of fans were very naive to what went on in cycling. Fans relied on late night television, or three week old news articles, or a few select magazines to keep abreast of what was going on. Bans were quietly listed in footnotes in magazines or newspapers, were not discussed in the press or media etc. For many of us Im sure the Festina affair came as a nasty shock.. Cyclists dope? Good god, those evil frenchmen ripping off all the other teams.

Its only really over the last ten years, with the internet, more news coverage, that most fans have become a lot less niave to what really goes on in cycling. And its the fans, and the "genuine" cycling press/bloggers that are the ones creating the idea that doping needs to be stopped. Not the UCI, or those with something to gain.

20 years ago we wouldnt have heard about police raids in italy. Now we do.

 

[Hugh Januss]

Ah good old Speedway, 247 posts too many.
The fact is it is the huge increase in the effectiveness of doping protocols within about the past 30 years that have made a backlash against doping both inevitable and nescessary.

 

[FoxxyBrown1111]

Delgado and probencid changed everything. That was the 1st scandal really overshadowing the TdF.
After Festina everybody found out the truth and of course were disillusioned.

And if this one poster who tells us we are all idiots and should leave because we are so naive, then it wont take long that he and his drug addicted mates are alone. No TV, no money, no nothing.

The small brains of pipo from the inner circle (like forty four) don´t see that they bite the hand that feeds them. And worse, they think they are so much clever than the average person. A bad combination, a self-destructional thinking...

P.S.: And of the words he uses it seems it makes him real annoyed that pipo wake up, so no more secret doping and to take fans for a fool. Must be real hurting.

 

[Polish]

Some important dates in the history of anti-doping zeal:

1999 July, Lance wins first TdF

1999 November, World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), created through a initiative led by the International Olympic Committee (IOC)

2000 The "S" in "SSDD" begins

2001 After Lance wins his 3rd TdF, Greg Lemond announces his "disappointment".

2000-2005 "SSDD"

2006 AFLD voted into existence by French Legislators.

2007 "SSDD"

2008 Bike Pure founded.

2009 Comeback 2.0

 

[BroDeal]

This thread would be a lot more interesting without the trolls...and this post.

 

[redtreviso]

This should have started the outrage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwHlCl2s0UM

Then 99 was certified ridiculous

 

[Je ne sais quoi]

My thoughts (while also agreeing with interesting points made above):

Your original point about the death of amateurism can be made about most sports. In the 60's-70's there were pros and amateurs (some sports of course having no pro outlet). By the late 60's-early 70's the Olympic movement was turning a blind eye to so-called under-the-table payments by federations and manufacturers. In the 70's they made those payments official. In the 80's the Olympics "went pro" by inviting major pro sports such as basketball, hockey, tennis. This was an effort on the part of the IOC to monopolize sport and become the world's premier elite sporting brand. It was also a complete sell-out of the Olympic ideal and principles.

The dominos tumbled quickly after that. Pro level national programs, $million medal incentives, state doping programs, the death of amateurism. The modern Olympic movement lasted about 80 years and devoured its young.

Cycling was swept up in the same trend. But cycling had a unique history as perhaps the world's only professional extreme endurance sport. Apocryphal tales of doping were always a part of its lore. When doping swept the world of sport in the 70's, cycling's unique sporting requirements of both power and endurance = fertile ground for PED's of all kinds. Etc etc.

The corruption of the IOC (and the UCI) leads to the corruption of sport as it becomes a manipulated gladiatorial spectacle. Having gorged on this spectacle and manipulation, the public becomes ill, and opinion about PED's is also a reflection of that.

Lovers of cycling hate all this bullshyte, but they set it all aside and love it anyway as they know the feeling of the sporting ideal that inspired them in their youth, and know that it continues to inspire their favorite riders as they follow their dreams in an imperfect world that is not of their own making.

 

[BikeCentric]

Delgado and probencid changed everything. That was the 1st scandal really overshadowing the TdF.
After Festina everybody found out the truth and of course were disillusioned.

And if this one poster who tells us we are all idiots and should leave because we are so naive, then it wont take long that he and his drug addicted mates are alone. No TV, no money, no nothing.

The small brains of pipo from the inner circle (like forty four) don´t see that they bite the hand that feeds them. And worse, they think they are so much clever than the average person. A bad combination, a self-destructional thinking...

P.S.: And of the words he uses it seems it makes him real annoyed that pipo wake up, so no more secret doping and to take fans for a fool. Must be real hurting.

FYI, FourtyFour is a chunky Cat 3 crit monkey in SoCal who injects himself with 'roids just to keep from getting dropped in flat Cat 3 crits.