What is your opinion of doping?

[Warhawk]

I don't think "immoral" is the right word in the first place. I think the more relevant question is whether it's unethical.

 

[vedrafjord]

Re: Re:

and if you think that those from disadvantage deserve the leg up, just remember, the pie is zero sum. The pie is not getting bigger no matter how many disadvantaged take the plunge of the needle.

Also doping means that crooked doctors get a big chunk of the pie that's supposed to go to riders. Ferrari, Fuentes etc were charging thousands for basic programmes, with substantial win bonuses etc. Fuentes had so many clients I'm sure there were races in Spain where every contender was a Fuentes client and he basically had a guaranteed chunk of the prize money. Armstrong paid over a million dollars to Ferrari. Basso was going to pay Fuentes €70,000 for 2006 alone, before win bonuses. In more recent years, AICAR is extremely expensive. Plus neo-pros/low-level domestiques are on pretty small salaries and depending on what they're getting and where it may put a big dent in their wallets.

It's like the California gold rush where the guys that got rich were the ones selling supplies and equipment to the prospectors, not the prospectors themselves. The most reliable way to make money from sport is go to med school and get a prescription pad.

 

[jmdirt]

Re:

This topic comes up every so often and it is such a good one to get everyone riled up
For my part cheating is inherent in human nature - from the first olympiad to the first tour de france to diving in football and even sex changes.
What is cheating
If cheating is doing anything that alters what god gave us - the by definition training at altitude is cheating, sleeping in an altitude tent is cheating
in which case give every gold medal from here to eternity to the men born at altitude in the heat of africa for every distance race ever to be run in the future
and give every gold medal at every sim event for the 100m to someone over 6'7 as no one under that size will be able to compete in their natural state.
If EPO is cheating then we should just contest all future tour de france titles among people with a natural 50% HCT and be done with it - no need for other riders to take part

One other thing - If taking drugs should be banned due to health issues what do you say to the teenager who lives in abject poverty and has an opportunity to rid himself and his entire extended family from the daily horror of life if he takes some steroids to get into the NFL, NHL, NBA, etc. Because I will tell you right now there are plenty of kids living in serious hell who take that decision knowing it may work out and they may die but their whole family will be better off and their children will never have to live in that poverty again. I for one would not judge them and would not expect anyone else to unless they had grown up in that situation. Or when taking drugs to get into a college team or a professional sport allows them to escape a life of gang violence, brutality and probable early death.

Cheating and sport are part of the same equation, the business of sport and the money make it more prevalent and more profitable and so the methods get more complex and the risks higher - but so are the rewards.

Judge to your hearts content and hold your views as to what is right and wrong in your eyes.
Just remember the world is a big place and many people live in places where right and wrong mean very little when compared to life and death.

For 30 years I have used the "clan is what you were born with" line. By your definition training is doping. Training however is not the same as doping. Training is naturally building what you were born with without adding anything .

EDIT: That is "clean is what you were born with". "Clan is what you were born with" only applies to small pockets of the world.

 

[Cookster15]

No doubt I will be called naive but in my view doping is bad because it is too difficult to regulate to ensure safe and fair competition. The endless discussion of the entire Clinic is testimony to this. There is never unanimous consensus on the cleanliness of any rider after any strong performance.

But if you legalise doping there is still the safety of riders to consider. Riders have died from doping methods gone wrong. How do you prevent riders and teams from stepping beyond the bounds of what is safe to get an edge? The doping controls take too long to get a result and are affected by timing - when the tests are done. Because of this authorities can prefer to avoid bad publicity rather than prevent cheating. Perhaps if a comprehensive doping test could be done quickly and easily and give an instant results like a roadside police breath test it would work but I don't believe that is currently possible.

Then there is the possibility of genetic doping - how do you stop that? Does the UCI now need to consider getting riders to submit a hair or skin sample for possible future DNA testing to ensure no subsequent manipulation has occurred?

Plus sophisticated doping methods are expensive. The teams with the biggest budgets will always win. Yes bikes aren't cheap but Cycling is still essentially a human sport not like Formula One which everyone knows the best car and team with the biggest budgets usually win.

In my view doping in sport is like regular illicit drugs in society. The war might never be won but you never give up the fight. There should always be disincentive to cheat for the sake of fair and safe competition.

 

[blackcat]

Re: Re:

Just remember the world is a big place and many people live in places where right and wrong mean very little when compared to life and death.

hyperbole

and if you think that those from disadvantage deserve the leg up, just remember, the pie is zero sum. The pie is not getting bigger no matter how many disadvantaged take the plunge of the needle.

That is not my point - My point is that it is easy for people living in civilised first world countries to sit behind keyboards in their houses, with heating and running water and electricity and preach morality and the ideals of right and wrong.

But when you are starving or near death, or have little chance of ever escaping extreme poverty then the idea of right and wrong get a little blurry.

The disadvantaged do deserve a leg up as they are their a lot of the time because they are kept there by the first worlds debt mountains that they hold over them; the wars we create; and the division we preach but that is a totally different conversation.

The issue is not the pie; the issue is the morality that this world holds as its barometer of right and wrong; and all i was trying to say is that the barometer is very different depending on where you look at it from.

Someone facing a life or death situation will think very little of the health consequences of a few steroids if it allows them to escape. A different perspective of morality is what I am suggesting. As opposed to the very black and white exultation's being bandied around in this discussion.

doping or not doping is mutually exclusive. i make no value judgements wrt disadvantaged, however, the spoils of doping will not flow to anyone class. This is not relevant.

you are speaking motive and incentive, and if you have little in prospects, your motive to dope for financial reward, is higher. This makes assumptions on the motives for doping. I don't think we can prescribe motives in individuals, and if i say, most have surrendered agency before any decision, I am also prescribing motive, albeit on a meta level, before any caffeine pill was given to the athlete by the coach.

 

[blackcat]

Re:

No doubt I will be called naive but in my view doping is bad because it is too difficult to regulate to ensure safe and fair competition. The endless discussion of the entire Clinic is testimony to this. There is never unanimous consensus on the cleanliness of any rider after any strong performance.

But if you legalise doping there is still the safety of riders to consider. Riders have died from doping methods gone wrong. How do you prevent riders and teams from stepping beyond the bounds of what is safe to get an edge? The doping controls take too long to get a result and are affected by timing - when the tests are done. Because of this authorities can prefer to avoid bad publicity rather than prevent cheating. Perhaps if a comprehensive doping test could be done quickly and easily and give an instant results like a roadside police breath test it would work but I don't believe that is currently possible.

Then there is the possibility of genetic doping - how do you stop that? Does the UCI now need to consider getting riders to submit a hair or skin sample for possible future DNA testing to ensure no subsequent manipulation has occurred?

Plus sophisticated doping methods are expensive. The teams with the biggest budgets will always win. Yes bikes aren't cheap but Cycling is still essentially a human sport not like Formula One which everyone knows the best car and team with the biggest budgets usually win.

In my view doping in sport is like regular illicit drugs in society. The war might never be won but you never give up the fight. There should always be disincentive to cheat for the sake of fair and safe competition.

i) professional sport is not safe as a profession. This is an ignorance popularly purveyed alliterationz and held; conceded there are professions and vocations, far more unsafe.
ii) insider outsider rule. I think that the peloton's self governance finds a neat equilibrium. Now, that qualifier equilibrium, may be a logical fallacy, salient term is neat equilibrium.
iii) do you have any right as an outsider, or WADA in Montreal, what endorsement delegated right does this extrajudicial body have?
iv) like someone has already mentioned, there is no ordained right to a place in the professional peloton, if you do not have the legs, you don't get a gig. You have an autonomy, well, a potential autonomy, to choose not to dope, and not to ride with a professional contract had you the legs to command interest from a team. No one is forcing you to dope, no matter the bull$h!t we have heard from Tygart regarding Zabriskie's testimony. He was Floyd's bestmate in cycling for chrissakes, and this tells you something, the friendships are not worth the blood you share in cycling. And Tygart and DZnutz! and their propaganda PR agitprop release about nasty Armstrong, well, they aint Betsy Andreu who may have credibility with her and her family's treatment by Prance, but this PR line from Tygart has shown the sham of the USADA prosecution, if someone like DZ had put his hands on a bible for sworn testimony, 1.I would crack up laughing at the implausibility of this line, essentially risible, and 2. swearing in on the bible would be felicitous with such a bawsh!t answer.

I think the peloton's doping position has found a sweet equilibrium, they know what they are getting into, they signed up to the compact, which does not mean they signed up to dope, but they signed up to this competitive environment. I don't think we have some amorphous stakeholder right to govern their behaviour. So don't consume the entertainment of the sport, or the shwag, or the other products. There is your vote.

Its Chinatown Jake.
Its cycling Joe.

 

[blackcat]

i spelled zabriskie right, but do you think dave zabriskie should only be spelled with one e in dave?