Why is doping in cycling bad? (serious question - not trolling)

[wannab]

There really is no good argument against it other than that its against the rules. But why not change the rules? Here, we'd have to invoke a deeper reason
...
Should it be against the rules? Difficult to make a good case for it. It's one of those arbitrary rules.

I already expanded on this because it is one of those misconceptions imo.

If "rules" is the argument, you got to elaborate why you have that rule, so it isn't an argument at all. It's not like a game of chess, there's more to a rule than the rule itself just for sake of having a game with rules ...

So the question why is it a rule, there are various (good) reasons why, I've already elaborated upon the key reason for me.

 

[rhubroma]

We could ask all those dead guys, but I am not sure they are in a position to give us an objective answer.

Ahh, but the gods chmpion those who die young. So it was among the ancients. Immortality has its attractiveness.

 

[blackcat]

I don't think I will watch regardless of how clean or juiced the peloton is because I feel too betrayed by 25 years of cheating, lying, and rampant doping. The extent of the doping is so overwhelming as more and more cyclists come forward it gets to the point where I am so totally disillusioned, I don't think cycling can ever be clean. There is simply no integrity and it appears no will by most of the riders, DS's, sponsors, or management to dismantle the culture of doping.

And the UCI is a complete joke. McQuaid and Verbruggen incompetent and wilfully blind to the problem in spite of all the indicators. The idea of McQuaid continuing to be at the head of the UCI makes me want to puke.

I went to the 92 Tour. I naively believed every cyclist was clean. It was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life - and now? That Indurain was probably on dope. That Chiapucci won at Sestriere by cheating. I now wonder if Mr. Clean-Mr. Likeable Andy Hampsten was clean at Alpe d'Huez. What do I do with all my wonderful photographs of these cyclists I looked up to and believed were the world's best athletes?

Just thinking about the mess cycling is in makes me want to take up curling (almost).

respect for the eyes open worldview.


now lets extrapolate to N American pro sport. and your national sport the zomboni sport, are they not on the same drugs, are the olympic athletes in track, and swimming not on the same gear.

o'course they are.

elucidating on my theory, when sport becomes revenue and business focused, it has transcended an invisible gap, between the soccer mom games of youth, and ideals inculcated. no longer sport, or games, now business, an entertainment business. is this ncaa invisible line, when/where is the invisible line. I think it is where the end is to be/become an actor in professional sphere of sport. this is entertainment, i dont think it is sport.

ethics, rules, ideals, they are for the soccer mom sport domain. because all of those facets are transgressed in entertainment sport.

 

[blackcat]

Ahh, but the gods chmpion those who die young. So it was among the ancients. Immortality has its attractiveness.

yes,

martyrs

67 virgins in heaven.



how many have died in the last 10 years? Salanson. Kirchen nearly.

 

[observer]

Doping in any sport is bad. Not just one of another. Apart from the legalities of it in some places, as well as the gabling / match fixing part of it, this can also happen when you alter peoples hormones etc etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Benoit

 

[blackcat]

WWE and bodybuilding is to sport, what obama is to the nobel peace prize

 

[blackcat]

-We want to find the best, doping prevents that! Uhm no, it doesn't. The best performance still wins.

agree with all of your post SS.

but this, there is a caveat unsaid when this is invoked. which IMO, is the one element that holds a resonance with consumers of sport.

unsaid: prevents the best (who has not taken a product as assessed under WADA) from achieving their just desert.

it is circular logic, because it assumes WADA holds that statute of defining the best natural untarnished perforance.

it is just a new definition of best. the fact that WADA and antecedent regulations have never managed to achieve this fuzzy definition is lost on consumers/patrons/fans

 

[RobbieCanuck]

respect for the eyes open worldview.


now lets extrapolate to N American pro sport. and your national sport the zomboni sport, are they not on the same drugs, are the olympic athletes in track, and swimming not on the same gear.

o'course they are.

elucidating on my theory, when sport becomes revenue and business focused, it has transcended an invisible gap, between the soccer mom games of youth, and ideals inculcated. no longer sport, or games, now business, an entertainment business. is this ncaa invisible line, when/where is the invisible line. I think it is where the end is to be/become an actor in professional sphere of sport. this is entertainment, i dont think it is sport.

ethics, rules, ideals, they are for the soccer mom sport domain. because all of those facets are transgressed in entertainment sport.

I think you are painting too wide a swath, regarding all of "sport" You have to admit cycling has dragged itself into the muck about as low as a sport can get, havig created a culture of doping that no one seems to want to eradicate. Or if they claim they want to, they don't walk the talk.

I agree that track and swimming athletes are on EPO. But I would be reallly surprised hockey players are on blood transfusions or EPO as opposed to steroids, cortisone and testosterone. There is absolulely no evidence of EPO in hockey. Hockey has way more integrity that cycling. And I believe the physicians involved in hockey have more integrity than the Ferrari's and the other so called cycling health care "professionals" of the world such as Feuntes etal, who hopefully will soon be in jail.

Besides which hockey players want to bulk up. Muscle development is much more important in hockey than cycling except in the legs. A pro hockey player needs overall muscular development especially core and upper body strength. Pro hockey is 1 to 2 minute spurts of non-stop anaerobic output as opposed to long stretches of aerobic and shorter spurts of anaerobic attacks as in cycling. A typical NHL hockey player gets about 15 minutes of ice time in a 60 minute game. So we are comparing apples to oranges.

But I agree whole heartedly that when sport transcends from pure athletic skill to rampant doping as in cycling, sport's priorities have changed from sport to an artificial/phoney entertainment business model, and the activity is no longer sport. Pure doping-free athleticism is extremely entertaining. But doped artificial entertainment is not.

The logical extension of your argument therefore is that cycling is no longer a sport, and is now purely artificially induced phoney entertainment.Reluctantly I agree with you, and that being the case I no longer have any desire to follow or support pro cycling.

The peloton, the riders, DSs, management and sponsors in their ongoing ignorance as to the seriousness of the problem, simply have not shown they have the intestinal fortitude and will to prove to the fans their "sport" is clean or that they even want the "sport" to be clean.

And a huge part of this failure lies at the feet of Pat McQuaid and the UCI, a useless President and a rudderless organization, if ever there was one. Cycling has become a "sport" where the tub really needs to be thrown out with the bathwater.

 

[rhubroma]

Most people would rather believe in fiction than facts, which is just fine for the fairy tale that is professional sport and not just professional cycling. Most people have exchanged the fairy tale for the truth in sport, because its more congenial to their disingenuous and wholesome word view and to do otherwise would be too upsetting. Whereas anti-doping has always been a perverse sham that was set up merely to safeguard the investments of the unscrupulous sponsors, who only think of their business image, profit margins and clients, as well as to appease a hypocritical and moralistic public into making them believe the federations are actually doing something about the problem, are really concerned about the health and wellbeing of the athletes in a fake display of ethical cause they themselves trounce upon daily in promting and orchestrating the most malign of human environments. Children always delighted in the spectacle of sport, which at first seems like a fairy tale, undoubtedly the most beautiful one they knew. And for the grown-ups it was a lifelong spectacle, the only one they knew. But the fairy tale and the spectacle have between them perverted and destroyed all that’s natural in athletics through doping. Using the fairy tale for children and the spectacle for adults, the sponsors and federations pursue a single aim, the total seduction of all who fall into their clutches. It uses the fairy tale and the spectacle to bend them to their will, to extinguish them as human beings, to turn them into unthinking sport addicts who have no critical mindset of their own and whom they insolently call the fans.

Doping falsifies everything, everything is made unnatural and ultimately ridiculous. Doping reveals only a single grotesque or comic athletic moment, I thought, not the person as he or she really was more or less all his or her life. Doping is a perverse and treacherous falsification. Every doper—whoever used peds, whoever performed on them—is a gross violation of human dignity, a monstrous falsification of nature, a base insult to humanity. On the other hand, I have found dopers immensely characteristic of humanity. That’s how it really is, I thought—or has been till now: unscrupulous, corrupt, vainglorious, egocentric, treacherous, mendacious, dissimulating, base, rotten at the core. Contrary to popular perception dopers don’t represent an enhanced and possibly idealized image of humanity, however grotesque and repulsive, but a true and genuine likeness of how it really is—or at least has always been until now, I said, correcting myself again. I do not feel in the least ashamed of this thought. Indeed if I continue to follow professional cycling at all, its precisely because I’d never have put up with falsifications but tolerated only true and genuine likenesses, however unnatural and ultimately farcical. Though, in principle, I would never condone doping, because it has irrevocably falsified and corrupted sport to say nothing of the omertà it promotes. We no longer have natural athletes, only artificial ones. Even in the remotest villages of the Alpine valleys you won’t find natural athletes anymore, only artificial athletes. And it is self-evident that an artificial athlete invariably gives rise to another, which goes on to procreate another. As a result we now have only artificial athletes, not natural athletes. It’s a fallacy to call athletes natural, for none of them is. What we now have is the artificial athlete, and we’re alarmed when we come across a natural athlete again, because it’s something we’re not prepared for, because for so long we’ve been confronted only with artificial athletes, who’ve been ruling the sports world for ages, a world that no longer ceased to be a natural world long ago and is now thoroughly artificial, you see, an artificial world. Nothing is natural anymore, I thought. We start from the premise that everything is natural, but that’s a fallacy. Everything is artificial, everything is artifice. Nature in sport no longer exists. We always start from the contemplation of nature, when for ages we should have been starting from the contemplation of artifice. That’s why everything’s so chaotic. So false. So desperately confused. Where there's no nature there can be no contemplation of nature, you see—that must be obvious.

 

[MarkvW]

Most people would rather believe in fiction than facts, which is just fine for the fairy tale that is professional sport and not just professional cycling. Most people have exchanged the fairy tale for the truth in sport, because its more congenial to their disingenuous and wholesome word view and to do otherwise would be too upsetting. Whereas anti-doping has always been a perverse sham that was set up merely to safeguard the investments of the unscrupulous sponsors, who only think of their business image, profit margins and clients, as well as to appease a hypocritical and moralistic public into making them believe the federations are actually doing something about the problem, are really concerned about the health and wellbeing of the athletes in a fake display of ethical cause they themselves trounce upon daily in promting and orchestrating the most malign of human environments. Children always delighted in the spectacle of sport, which at first seems like a fairy tale,undoubtedly the most beautiful one they knew. And for the grown-ups it was a lifelong spectacle, the only one they knew. But the fairy tale and the spectacle have between them perverted and destroyed all that’s natural in athletics through doping. Using the fairy tale for children and the spectacle for adults, the sponsors and federations pursue a single aim, the total seduction of all who fall into their clutches. It uses the fairy tale and the spectacle to bend them to their will, to extinguish them as human beings, to turn them into unthinking sport addicts who have no critical mindset of their own and whom they insolently call the fans.

Doping falsifies everything, everything is made unnatural and ultimately ridiculous. Doping reveals only a single grotesque or comic athletic moment, I thought, not the person as he or she really was more or less all his or her life. Doping is a perverse and treacherous falsification. Every doper—whoever used peds, whoever performed on them—is a gross violation of human dignity, a monstrous falsification of nature, a base insult to humanity. On the other hand, I have found dopers immensely characteristic of humanity. That’s how it really is, I thought—or has been till now: unscrupulous, corrupt, vainglorious, egocentric, treacherous, mendacious, dissimulating, base, rotten at the core. Contrary to popular perception dopers don’t represent an enhanced and possibly idealized image of humanity, however grotesque and repulsive, but a true and genuine likeness of how it really is—or at least has always been until now, I said, correcting myself again. I do not feel in the least ashamed of this thought. Indeed if I continue to follow professional cycling at all, its precisely because I’d never have put up with falsifications but tolerated only true and genuine likenesses, however unnatural and ultimately farcical. Though, in principle, I would never condone doping, because it has irrevocably falsified and corrupted sport to say nothing of the omertà it promotes. We no longer have natural athletes, only artificial ones. Even in the remotest villages of the Alpine valleys you won’t find natural athletes anymore, only artificial athletes. And it is self-evident that an artificial athlete invariably gives rise to another, which goes on to procreate another. As a result we now have only artificial athletes, not natural athletes. It’s a fallacy to call athletes natural, for none of them is. What we now have is the artificial athlete, and we’re alarmed when we come across a natural athlete again, because it’s something we’re not prepared for, because for so long we’ve been confronted only with artificial athletes, who’ve been ruling the sports world for ages, a world that no longer ceased to be a natural world long ago and is now thoroughly artificial, you see, an artificial world. Nothing is natural anymore, I thought. We start from the premise that everything is natural, but that’s a fallacy. Everything is artificial, everything is artifice. Nature in sport no longer exists. We always start from the contemplation of nature, when for ages we should have been starting from the contemplation of artifice. That’s why everything’s so chaotic. So false. So desperately confused. Where there's no nature there can be no contemplation of nature, you see—that must be obvious.

PEDs are not per se "bad." If a person is going to ride a grand tour route at the effort level of a professsional cyclist, then I think it can be fairly maintained that PED use may in some circumstances be good for the health of the rider. IV electrolytes are one "illegal" method that comes to mind.

Why in the world do we forbid something that could, in the hands of competent and well regulated medical professionals, be good for the health of professional cyclists? If you throw out the sporting ideal as a reason, then the antidoping rules are just another rule imposed on pro riders for the amusement of the public. There is zero moral value in that.

The sporting ideal is the only rational basis for imposing antidoping rules. The rules to a sporting event are entirely arbitrary. Put a ball in a net, ride to an arbitrary destination, don't take dope . . . these are 'La règle du jeu' and no more.

The shared ideal of a "fair game" that informs the group decision of a bunch of kids setting out to play a backyard game is the same ideal that informs the rules of professional sport. When it doesn't--and in pro cycling it doesn't--then the life and death world of pro bike racing is nothing more than a joke, served for our amusement.

 

[DirtyWorks]

ethics, rules, ideals, they are for the soccer mom sport domain. because all of those facets are transgressed in entertainment sport.

No. Even the soccer mom sport domain is rife with cheating. For some parents getting the win through their kids is absolutely critical. That's putting it nicely.

We know weekend warriors dope for Gran Fondo glory and such already, so I don't think there's a distinction between pro and non-pro.

 

[rhubroma]

PEDs are not per se "bad." If a person is going to ride a grand tour route at the effort level of a professsional cyclist, then I think it can be fairly maintained that PED use may in some circumstances be good for the health of the rider. IV electrolytes are one "illegal" method that comes to mind.

Why in the world do we forbid something that could, in the hands of competent and well regulated medical professionals, be good for the health of professional cyclists? If you throw out the sporting ideal as a reason, then the antidoping rules are just another rule imposed on pro riders for the amusement of the public. There is zero moral value in that.

The sporting ideal is the only rational basis for imposing antidoping rules. The rules to a sporting event are entirely arbitrary. Put a ball in a net, ride to an arbitrary destination, don't take dope . . . these are 'La règle du jeu' and no more.

The shared ideal of a "fair game" that informs the group decision of a bunch of kids setting out to play a backyard game is the same ideal that informs the rules of professional sport. When it doesn't--and in pro cycling it doesn't--then the life and death world of pro bike racing is nothing more than a joke, served for our amusement.

Personally it doesn't affect my life one bit if an athlete damages his or her health, because of doping. I find that adults should take responsibility for what they put into their own bodies and that's it. On the other hand I really can't applaud the fact that there have been some athletes who have shared an ideal of "fair play," or simply never contemplated cheating and so performed under their natural limits, though because of competing in a doped regime ended up having their careers terminated prematurely. Whereas quite possibly they would have been more successful than others who beat them if racing in a clean environment, according to everyone's natural ability. Rationally this is simply the case, so it has nothing to do with utopia.

This fact alone makes doping at the very least disagreeable. Then when the sport becomes, I don't say the spitting image of, but isn't even remotely connected with, a "fair game" and is rather a mafia of omertà, corruption and vile bullying; the situation merely becomes repugnant.

Sure we could just as well dispense with having any pretense of participating in a "fair game," because human nature dictates otherwise, etc. and, in bringing things out into the open, in theory at least eliminate the worst instances of omertà and corruption: but at what cost to the sport environment? How many future athletes would be eliminated from the picture, if the only means to compete successfully were to have to dope consistently as a known fact from the very start (then, at what age, 15? 12? 9?)? Besides because general society doesn’t approve of legalizing doping, nor would the sponsors and without them…

 

[Oldman]

Personally it doesn't affect my life one bit if an athlete damages his or her health, because of doping. I find that adults should take responsibility for what they put into their own bodies and that's it. On the other hand I really can't applaud the fact that there have been some athletes who have shared an ideal of "fair play," or simply never contemplated cheating and so performed under their natural limits, though because of competing in a doped regime ended up having their careers terminated prematurely. Whereas quite possibly they would have been more successful than others who beat them if racing in a clean environment, according to everyone's natural ability. Rationally this is simply the case, so it has nothing to do with utopia.

This fact alone makes doping at the very least disagreeable. Then when the sport becomes, I don't say the spitting image of, but isn't even remotely connected with, a "fair game" and is rather a mafia of omertà, corruption and vile bullying; the situation merely becomes repugnant.

Sure we could just as well dispense with having any pretense of participating in a "fair game," because human nature dictates otherwise, etc. and, in bringing things out into the open, in theory at least eliminate the worst instances of omertà and corruption: but at what cost to the sport environment? How many future athletes would be eliminated from the picture, if the only means to compete successfully were to have to dope consistently as a known fact from the very start (then, at what age, 15? 12? 9?)? Besides because general society doesn’t approve of legalizing doping, nor would the sponsors and without them…

This news from MLB would suggest the Public view is changing and they know it:

Determined to find a route via which it can uncover enough evidence to discipline the players linked to the Miami anti-aging clinic Biogenesis, Major League Baseball is taking its fight to the courts. On Tursday night, the New York Times‘ Michael S. Schmidt reported that the league was planning to file a lawsuit against several individuals connected to the clinic, including Dr. Anthony Bosch, on the grounds that they damaged the sport by providing those players with performance-enhancing drugs.

As noted earlier this week, MLB lacks the subpoena power to compel testimony from the players who are said to be named in the clinic’s records, they have been stymied in their efforts to obtain the evidence uncovered by the Miami New Times, and the governmental interest in the case which they hoped would aid them has been limited to the Florida Department of Health’s investigation into Bosch. Thus far, MLB has only been able to hand down one suspension, a 100-game ban of minor league pitcher Cesar Carrillo, who isn’t on any team’s 40-man roster and thus is not protected by the drug policy that’s part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the owners and the Major League Baseball Players Association.

This suit, which was filed in Florida state court on Friday morning, represents a new strategy via which the league would be able to subpoena the now-shuttered clinic’s records to compel testimony and produce enough evidence to suspend players for so-called non-analytic positives. But it appears to be a desperation move with little chance of success.



According to Schmidt, legal experts are split as to whether the strategy could work. He quotes lawyer Steven Eckhaus as one who thinks the suit could have merit: “If I sold drugs to a baseball player, the league might say it damaged the good will of the league and its ability to make money and prosper… That’s probably a good claim.”

Without further elaboration, however, even that statement seems shaky when one considers the extent to which baseball’s revenues have grown steadily over the past two decades even amid the BALCO scandal, the Mitchell Report and the implication of numerous stars — including Alex Rodriguez, who’s also one of the Biogenesis bunch — as having used steroids via other means, not to mention the global financial crisis. Almost exactly a year ago, Forbes magazine’s Mike Ozanian wrote, “The National Pastime is flourishing thanks to cable companies’ desire for live baseball programming. The average Major League Baseball team rose 16% in value during the past year, to an all-time high of $605 million.”

 

[rhubroma]

This news from MLB would suggest the Public view is changing and they know it:

Determined to find a route via which it can uncover enough evidence to discipline the players linked to the Miami anti-aging clinic Biogenesis, Major League Baseball is taking its fight to the courts. On Tursday night, the New York Times‘ Michael S. Schmidt reported that the league was planning to file a lawsuit against several individuals connected to the clinic, including Dr. Anthony Bosch, on the grounds that they damaged the sport by providing those players with performance-enhancing drugs.

As noted earlier this week, MLB lacks the subpoena power to compel testimony from the players who are said to be named in the clinic’s records, they have been stymied in their efforts to obtain the evidence uncovered by the Miami New Times, and the governmental interest in the case which they hoped would aid them has been limited to the Florida Department of Health’s investigation into Bosch. Thus far, MLB has only been able to hand down one suspension, a 100-game ban of minor league pitcher Cesar Carrillo, who isn’t on any team’s 40-man roster and thus is not protected by the drug policy that’s part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the owners and the Major League Baseball Players Association.

This suit, which was filed in Florida state court on Friday morning, represents a new strategy via which the league would be able to subpoena the now-shuttered clinic’s records to compel testimony and produce enough evidence to suspend players for so-called non-analytic positives. But it appears to be a desperation move with little chance of success.



According to Schmidt, legal experts are split as to whether the strategy could work. He quotes lawyer Steven Eckhaus as one who thinks the suit could have merit: “If I sold drugs to a baseball player, the league might say it damaged the good will of the league and its ability to make money and prosper… That’s probably a good claim.”

Without further elaboration, however, even that statement seems shaky when one considers the extent to which baseball’s revenues have grown steadily over the past two decades even amid the BALCO scandal, the Mitchell Report and the implication of numerous stars — including Alex Rodriguez, who’s also one of the Biogenesis bunch — as having used steroids via other means, not to mention the global financial crisis. Almost exactly a year ago, Forbes magazine’s Mike Ozanian wrote, “The National Pastime is flourishing thanks to cable companies’ desire for live baseball programming. The average Major League Baseball team rose 16% in value during the past year, to an all-time high of $605 million.”

Such is progress.

 

[blackcat]

But I would be reallly surprised hockey players are on blood transfusions or EPO as opposed to steroids, cortisone and testosterone. There is absolulely no evidence of EPO in hockey.

never mentioned EPO in hockey.

the strength dope you said, is the equivalent.

performance demands in N American pro team sport, dont demand the O2 boost.

but yay for the growth factors and explosivity boosters, that the stuff like hgh, testo, other roids give. they are the equivalent to the O2 drugs in terms of their sport's needs. like you duly recognised.

but was never an inference to say a hockey player is on epo or transfusions.

lots of cortisone tho to get thru the season. then the hypertrophy androgens. #big_Dave_Semenko

 

[blackcat]

No. Even the soccer mom sport domain is rife with cheating. For some parents getting the win through their kids is absolutely critical. That's putting it nicely.

We know weekend warriors dope for Gran Fondo glory and such already, so I don't think there's a distinction between pro and non-pro.

conceded.

was playing football (aus rules as a 12 yo) and an ipposition dad gave a goal to something that was clearly not.

and our adult umpire, another dad but from our team (not mine) said when we were bowling and hit the pads of the opposition batsman, always appeal for a leg before wicket and he would give them out. now I remember, it was two, were two incidents that have taken hold in my conscience.

 

[SeriousSam]

Doping falsifies everything, everything is made unnatural and ultimately ridiculous. Doping reveals only a single grotesque or comic athletic moment, I thought, not the person as he or she really was more or less all his or her life. Doping is a perverse and treacherous falsification. Every doper—whoever used peds, whoever performed on them—is a gross violation of human dignity, a monstrous falsification of nature, a base insult to humanity. On the other hand, I have found dopers immensely characteristic of humanity. That’s how it really is, I thought—or has been till now: unscrupulous, corrupt, vainglorious, egocentric, treacherous, mendacious, dissimulating, base, rotten at the core

.

Unfortunately for you, the naturalistic fallacy really involves fallacious reasoning. It just doesn't follow at all!
It's not enough to call something "unnatural" or something synonymous like monstrous, gross, rotten to the core, etc and expect to have made a case for why it ought not be tolerated. All you're doing is expressing a preference, you're not actually putting forth an argument.

Genuine arguments for why athletes ought not dope exist, I suggest you check them out.

 

[rhubroma]

.

Unfortunately for you, the naturalistic fallacy really involves fallacious reasoning. It just doesn't follow at all!
It's not enough to call something "unnatural" or something synonymous like monstrous, gross, rotten to the core, etc and expect to have made a case for why it ought not be tolerated. All you're doing is expressing a preference, you're not actually putting forth an argument.

Genuine arguments for why athletes ought not dope exist, I suggest you check them out.

Well Nature = natural, that is not synthetic and produced in the lab. Fallacious reasoning? Then you explain what makes sense. Other than that I can only express my personal preferences, true. Genuine arguments? I'll leave that to the philosophers. I'm not qualified.