- Sep 26, 2009
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Current riders limited options
Yes, it's tough for a current rider to name and shame for a number of reasons:
Even room-mates have sometimes evinced shock that a team-mate has been doping (don't be too cynical - why WOULD you want to let your "roomie" in on the secret - like the saying goes, when 3 people know a secret it isn't a secret any more..) While you might think someone who just ripped your legs off MUST be doping you don't know it for a fact and it would therefore be unethical to suggest it. If you have specific knowledge, the correct forum is to report it to the authorities for them to investigate, not blab to the Press possibly allowing a doper to realise they've been rumbled and cover their tracks, avoiding sanctions. (In a different environment - Money-Laundering - there is an offence called "tipping off" which is doing anything that informs a money-launderer that they are under suspicion - hopefully the analogy is clear.)
While the view in the peloton has apparently moved away from "omerta" and
tolerating doping as a pro norm towards disapproval, and an acceptance of criticism of, discovered dopers, I don't think airing suspicions publicly would be be so well accepted. I've seen what happens to an unpopular rider in road races - not overt "punishment", just a lack of "slack" (road narrowing - do I ease over a little and make space or hold my line? Self-talk: "Why do him a favour - he can brake and drop back a bit, he's not at major risk as long as he does." ) - with energy conservation being a major success factor, whether for domestiques or leaders this can add up - the magical effect of a World Champion or TdeF leader jersey in getting you to the head of the peloton easily is well-documented and this would be the inverse.
Fear of lawsuits - whether well-founded or not undoubtedly plays a part.
Fairness - I'd hate to think that anyone thought my one week to the next improvement of 2 minutes in a 10-mile TT with no equipment change etc was due to anything other than better pacing strategy, some warm-up effect due to arriving at the start later than usual (having ridden from the finish parking) and maybe better atmospheric conditions (true). If however, someone raised suspicions on a blog on the subject or just whispered it to anyone but me, I'd have a major sense of humour failure and I'm only a low-level amateur - my career doesn't depend on my cycling reputation.
Hopefully the Blood Profiling will go a long way to making these concerns an irrelevance. The key is for riders to believe that cheats will be detected, no false positives (that would be my constant nightmare as a pro because no-one would ever believe you) and for actions to be suitably tough. I also think the sanctions should be tightened up gradually. Two years allows for riders to potentially re-habilitate and still have a career and I think that's about right for now, but I'd like to see that moved up over time to 3, 4, 5 years and with extra sanctions for riders who supply doping products to others.
Another concern for the future is that, with betting on races possible, it might be attractive for unscrupulous gamblers to try to manipulate results by eliminating riders who've beaten their choice - controls in the anti-doping process have to be tight enough to prevent/detect this. General Classification in Grand Tours and track racing would seem to be the highest risk areas here. (Paranoid? There have been past scandals in boxing, football, cricket to name but three sports/games.)
Will cycling (or any other sport) ever be doping-free? I doubt it. There will always be someone ready to tell an impressionable athlete that "they can't detect this" and people who come up with genuine ways to bypass controls. The key thing is to reduce their window of opportunity - out of competition testing, research, blood profiling - and introduce uncertainty, if the fear of getting caught outweighs the potential rewards human nature will kick in. Sadly I think there will always be occasional positives, but hopefully they will reduce in volume over time due to a genuine fall in doping.
On a different note, I get cynical over certain riders/performances but I hold my peace because I don't KNOW. Remember that sometimes the human body CAN surpass "known" physical limits e.g. women lifting cars off their kids under stress, soldiers continuing to fight despite serious injury, free divers going below the depth (I think 60 metres, but could be wrong) when accepted physics suggests their lungs would collapse under pressure as air in their lungs at 1 Atm pressure compresses, The Dutch guy who ran a marathon distance in the arctic circle in sandals and shorts only (-25c...) when accepted science had his body shutting down in 15-20mins, airmen falling great heights (10,00 feet?) without working parachutes albeit into soft snow, and surviving. On a lower level, maybe some superlative "out of their skin" performances are simply examples of this phenomenon.
Galic Ho said:The lawsuit part. Lance can't risk going to court against a great number of people, the evidence brought against him would tarnish his public image. The courts would look at all of it. Plenty of people would line up if given the chance. Note how most of his cases are settled out of court with binding no talk agreements. For example, the SCA case was a contract law dispute, not a liabel defamation case.
I'll agree with the omerta part. I don't expect that the balancing act from a clean rider...I only wanted to highlight that it goes a long way to improving credibility. I agree with the unsportsmanlike behaviour, but only if you don't have substantial grounds to believe a rider is doping. If you do, well thats up to the individual at hand to differentiate. As for the LeMond bit...WTF?
LeMond won the Tour three times and the world championship twice. Lance never beat LeMond, as far as I know they never raced. There was a tiny overlap in their careers. Greg has to mention his own specimen and history because it was soo good. Very few people can achieve what he did, albeit cleanly. How else can he make comparisons with power outputs, VO2ma etc, unless he has a relative idea on how to compare (which his achievements and limits are guide guidelines)? It makes sense to remind people what cyclists could achieve naturally in the 1980's before epo. Given this misinterpretation of LeMond, what do you think of Hinault who unashamedly sprouts his own glory? Bitter he got old? Or knew what he wanted and lived it?
Yes, it's tough for a current rider to name and shame for a number of reasons:
Even room-mates have sometimes evinced shock that a team-mate has been doping (don't be too cynical - why WOULD you want to let your "roomie" in on the secret - like the saying goes, when 3 people know a secret it isn't a secret any more..) While you might think someone who just ripped your legs off MUST be doping you don't know it for a fact and it would therefore be unethical to suggest it. If you have specific knowledge, the correct forum is to report it to the authorities for them to investigate, not blab to the Press possibly allowing a doper to realise they've been rumbled and cover their tracks, avoiding sanctions. (In a different environment - Money-Laundering - there is an offence called "tipping off" which is doing anything that informs a money-launderer that they are under suspicion - hopefully the analogy is clear.)
While the view in the peloton has apparently moved away from "omerta" and
tolerating doping as a pro norm towards disapproval, and an acceptance of criticism of, discovered dopers, I don't think airing suspicions publicly would be be so well accepted. I've seen what happens to an unpopular rider in road races - not overt "punishment", just a lack of "slack" (road narrowing - do I ease over a little and make space or hold my line? Self-talk: "Why do him a favour - he can brake and drop back a bit, he's not at major risk as long as he does." ) - with energy conservation being a major success factor, whether for domestiques or leaders this can add up - the magical effect of a World Champion or TdeF leader jersey in getting you to the head of the peloton easily is well-documented and this would be the inverse.
Fear of lawsuits - whether well-founded or not undoubtedly plays a part.
Fairness - I'd hate to think that anyone thought my one week to the next improvement of 2 minutes in a 10-mile TT with no equipment change etc was due to anything other than better pacing strategy, some warm-up effect due to arriving at the start later than usual (having ridden from the finish parking) and maybe better atmospheric conditions (true). If however, someone raised suspicions on a blog on the subject or just whispered it to anyone but me, I'd have a major sense of humour failure and I'm only a low-level amateur - my career doesn't depend on my cycling reputation.
Hopefully the Blood Profiling will go a long way to making these concerns an irrelevance. The key is for riders to believe that cheats will be detected, no false positives (that would be my constant nightmare as a pro because no-one would ever believe you) and for actions to be suitably tough. I also think the sanctions should be tightened up gradually. Two years allows for riders to potentially re-habilitate and still have a career and I think that's about right for now, but I'd like to see that moved up over time to 3, 4, 5 years and with extra sanctions for riders who supply doping products to others.
Another concern for the future is that, with betting on races possible, it might be attractive for unscrupulous gamblers to try to manipulate results by eliminating riders who've beaten their choice - controls in the anti-doping process have to be tight enough to prevent/detect this. General Classification in Grand Tours and track racing would seem to be the highest risk areas here. (Paranoid? There have been past scandals in boxing, football, cricket to name but three sports/games.)
Will cycling (or any other sport) ever be doping-free? I doubt it. There will always be someone ready to tell an impressionable athlete that "they can't detect this" and people who come up with genuine ways to bypass controls. The key thing is to reduce their window of opportunity - out of competition testing, research, blood profiling - and introduce uncertainty, if the fear of getting caught outweighs the potential rewards human nature will kick in. Sadly I think there will always be occasional positives, but hopefully they will reduce in volume over time due to a genuine fall in doping.
On a different note, I get cynical over certain riders/performances but I hold my peace because I don't KNOW. Remember that sometimes the human body CAN surpass "known" physical limits e.g. women lifting cars off their kids under stress, soldiers continuing to fight despite serious injury, free divers going below the depth (I think 60 metres, but could be wrong) when accepted physics suggests their lungs would collapse under pressure as air in their lungs at 1 Atm pressure compresses, The Dutch guy who ran a marathon distance in the arctic circle in sandals and shorts only (-25c...) when accepted science had his body shutting down in 15-20mins, airmen falling great heights (10,00 feet?) without working parachutes albeit into soft snow, and surviving. On a lower level, maybe some superlative "out of their skin" performances are simply examples of this phenomenon.