[mike777]

I am having a hard time trying to keep up with who is winning and who is doping what in this race.

It seems in sports such as biking, baseball or others you can legally take a very long list of chemicals for sports enhancement and there is another very long list of chemicals you cannot.

Both sets of chemicals, legal and illegal are taken for sports enhancement of one sort or another. Are these lists totally arbitrary?

Such things as vitamins or Gatorade(sports drinks) are legal but they enhance performance just as many other chemicals do.

Tennis players get shots all the time for stiffness and other stuff, legal?
Football players take all kinds of chemical pain killers to enhance performance, legal?

[Aberlour10]

Cycling was always one of my favorite sports, but today I can't stand it and watch it anymore, particulary this Tour de Frauds. In the last few weeks I had only fun watching the old historical pictures about the Tour in early 20th century as the cyclists took a small break in the local roadhouses to drink a glass of red wine, this was the only dope they known.

Robert

[hotShot]

There are two kinds of sportsmen:

1) The Coubertin type
who follow the Olympic ideal that sport makes you a better human being, and that participation in competition is more important than winning.

2) The Lombardi type
who think that winning a competition is all that counts.

If you get pro in your favorite sport, you connect your existence with your success in sport. Obviously the Lombardi type is more successful as a pro as the media only celebrate winners.
It is unfair to think cycling alone has a doping problem, top Italian soccer player escaped a conviction for the use EPO to enhance their performance only because the trial was to late. During the Spanish blood doping affair several other athletes were mentioned. Athletic sports had a doping case a few days ago.

In every professional sport, improved medical care is standard. The line between legal and illegal is completely arbitrary. The legal haematocrit level is defined different for different sports. If it's to high for cycling you are still legal in cross-country skiing.

As long as we think that the second is the first looser, it is hypocrisy to ban doping.

[helene_t]

From a medical/sports point of view the lists may seem arbitrary but I think the "logic" is that whatever you can get at a supermarket is legal, and also whatever ther doctor has prescribed for other reasons than sport enhancement is legal. This may sound as cyclical logic, but some substances were in common use among the non-sporting population (painkillers, cafeine) before doping became an issue.

[Fluffy]

helene_t, on Jul 27 2007, 07:20 AM, said:

From a medical/sports point of view the lists may seem arbitrary but I think the "logic" is that whatever you can get at a supermarket is legal, and also whatever ther doctor has prescribed for other reasons than sport enhancement is legal. This may sound as cyclical logic, but some substances were in common use among the non-sporting population (painkillers, cafeine) before doping became an issue.

I was told the number of asthmathic (diagnosed at least) on proffesional cyclers is around 40%, that's because the stanadrd medicine for asthmathic 'opens' your lungs while enhancing your blood (I don't know how to say it in english).

Actually I doubt an asthmathic should be allowed to ride a bicible for 200 km. Just for medic precaution.

[FrancesHinden]

helene_t, on Jul 27 2007, 08:20 AM, said:

From a medical/sports point of view the lists may seem arbitrary but I think the "logic" is that whatever you can get at a supermarket is legal, and also whatever ther doctor has prescribed for other reasons than sport enhancement is legal. This may sound as cyclical logic, but some substances were in common use among the non-sporting population (painkillers, cafeine) before doping became an issue.

Alain Baxter (scottish skier) lost his Winter Olympic bronze medal because he had used a Vicks inhaler before the race. In the UK, this contains no banned substances, but in the US it has a slightly different formulation and had a banned drug in it.

It was bought in a local drugstore - not on prescription.

See this sad story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/winterolympics2002/h...000/1885843.stm

[nickf]

I dont get it. Are the substances banned because they can have negative health effects in the short or long term or because they offer the user an advantage that someone who isnt doped up doent have?

Is this so different from 1st world athletes having millions splashed upon them to train in world class facilities while some kid from africa trains barefoot while chasing goats around a field?

What's the ethical difference?

I can't really think of too many sports where I suspect the leading players arent using drugs to their advantage, in fact I bet there arent that many. Perhaps I'm a cynic. Why dont we just declare the war lost and have a free-for-all sports environment.

Then we really would see athletes performing faster-stronger-higher: wasn't that Coubertin's ethos anyway?

nickf
sydney

[Fluffy]

nickf, on Jul 27 2007, 11:12 AM, said:

Why dont we just declare the war lost and have a free-for-all sports environment.

Then we really would see athletes performing faster-stronger-higher: wasn't that Coubertin's ethos anyway?

Atheltes would then die at 35 years. Many cyclers are dying young already. Capitalists would hire young stars from thirld world to make them super humans whose heart explode after winning 1 or 2 medals.

Having expensive instalations to train doesn't get you killed normally.

[hotShot]

nickf, on Jul 27 2007, 01:12 PM, said:

I dont get it. Are the substances banned because they can have negative health effects in the short or long term or because they offer the user an advantage that someone who isnt doped up doent have?

Is this so different from 1st world athletes having millions splashed upon them to train in world class facilities while some kid from africa trains barefoot while chasing goats around a field?

What's the ethical difference?

I can't really think of too many sports where I suspect the leading players arent using drugs to their advantage, in fact I bet there arent that many. Perhaps I'm a cynic. Why dont we just declare the war lost and have a free-for-all sports environment.

Then we really would see athletes performing faster-stronger-higher: wasn't that Coubertin's ethos anyway?

nickf
sydney

Coubertin's ethos was that each athlete should use competition in sport to improve his own personal physical and ethical development.
The De Coubertin medal or the True Spirit of Sportsmanship medal is still awarded by the IOC to those athletes that demonstrate the spirit of sportsmanship in the Olympic Games.

So in a Coubertin way every athlete who can improve, repeat or at least tries to make his best performance in competition is a winner. While the overall best performance is not as important.

Doping can never be sportsmanship and it is definitely no way to improve your ethics.

[helene_t]

A friend of mine has a daughter with severely retarded growth. At four years she's shorter than her 2-YO sister.

Probably this could be resovled by giving her growth hormons. The problem is that it's virtually impossible to get growth hormones because physicians are afraid they end at the black market where sportspeople buy them to get bigger muscles.

Maybe it would be out of proportions to let M sportspeople suffer from hormone side effects in order to save N children from being teased with their shortness, but I do think it's people's own choice if they want to destroy their own bodies. And as for the unfair advantage thing, I agree with Nick.

[Fluffy]

helene_t, on Jul 27 2007, 11:44 AM, said:

but I do think it's people's own choice if they want to destroy their own bodies.

Maybe I've seen too many films about sports during the cold war where USSR trainers deceived their athletes in order to make them better while killing them.

But I still think there are many people who won't know if something is good for them or not, they will just do what they are told to do.

[hotShot]

Wish I could remember the source, but quick poll among athletes made a few years ago reported that a majority of them would accept to die young for a few years of fame and wealth.

[jkljkl]

Hello,

helene_t, on Jul 27 2007, 06:44 AM, said:

but I do think it's people's own choice if they want to destroy their own bodies.

in many countries sport is highly subsidised with taxpayer's money. Do we want a state support for drug abuse? If not we have to cancel all the money coming from the state to sports and I can't imagine that this would be good for a nation. (or just for me, our city would surely not longer have an open air bath)

ciao
stefan

[mike777]

"Doping can never be sportsmanship and it is definitely no way to improve your ethics. "

This quote and the one about drug abuse gets to the heart of the issue.

Please note I used the word chemicals. Just what is doping and what is drug abuse?

IF I am using chemicals to support my family that might starve otherwise is that abuse? Is that being a dope?

Again how many sports players could play with zero chemical pain killers to enhance performance? Vitamins? Which vitamins, which not?

There is all kinds of talk about various chemicals that may help you live longer or make you stronger with no more side effects than booze or other things?

Heck all chemicals are going to have side effects, killing side effects for someone. Are you going to just ban all chemicals?

Again if the issue is a chemical may cause some harm, even kill you, we would ban them all. People die from drinking water all the time. Water is a chemical. Water improves your performance, just try going without it.

btw growth hormones and steriods are becoming more and more common in the general population.

I just wonder what chemists are cooking up today in their labs that will be the next big "chemical scandal" ten years from now.
So just what is the logic here of what chemicals are ok and which are not?

[hotShot]

Well the next step in doping is not using chemical, but introducing extra genes into the bodies/cells of athletes e.g. to produce EPO.

[mycroft]

I think that the amateur/professional line is unfixably flawed.

if it costs $50 000 simply for travel to be competitive, and it is almost impossible to hold a full-time job and do enough training to be competitive, and you can not make any money at the sport, then you're independently wealthy, or you go pro.

de Coubertin would be very happy with that situation - he was a great believer in the "Gentlemen vs. Players" argument (okay, so I'm stealing from cricket to talk other sports).

Now, Pro v. amateur is one issue, but all the cyclists are pros. However:

If sports gave people at the highest level a decent living wage, I don't think the doping and other issues would be such a problem. Unfortunately for both the teams and their sponsors, this is not true - the players at the highest level make incredible amounts of money, and the sponsorship deals are incredible, and make even more incredible amounts of money for the sponsors (or they wouldn't do it).

*And* the dropoff is incredible, as well. The "best of the best" in popular sports make 10+ times the average of the rest of the best, who make 10+ times the best of the rest, who scrape by. You simply are little further ahead than an amateur if you are a third-class pro; but if you can just make it to second-class for three or four years, you are set for life. Similarly, if you are second class, and you can just get one year or two of a first-class contract, you're not only set, you are comfortable for life (as long as you don't have a 30% of your salary gambling habit, or have a habit of blowing $300 000 on a drinking night at Crystal's, I guess).

The temptations to do anything and everything, including taking 20 years off your life, for that independently wealthy lock, is incredible. It would be incredible for me, were I close.

Michael.

[Al_U_Card]

Fame and wealth trump honor and life....a sad commentary.

[glen]

The drug trial is on right now, oh, i mean time trial, my bad

[the saint]

The plain and simple fact is that Cycling looks bad because it is now doing more to clear itself of this than any other sport. The drug taking was systematic 10-15 years ago and even sponsored and protected by national federations who saw it in their own interest to cover it all up. There has been a dramatic wind of change blowing through the sport, and while there will always be the odd rotten apple, this will be the cathartic experience the sport needs to grow again free from the dead wood.

I absolutely guarantee you that Football or American Football for example are much worse as they don't have anywhere near the same degree of drug testing or control and there is no incentive for them to do it. It has been conveniently forgotten that Barcelona and Real Madrid were mentioned in Operation Puerto and there have been other minor scandals that have been conveniently ignored because of all the money floating around.

[cherdano]

the saint, on Jul 31 2007, 11:03 AM, said:

The plain and simple fact is that Cycling looks bad because it is now doing more to clear itself of this than any other sport. The drug taking was systematic 10-15 years ago and even sponsored and protected by national federations who saw it in their own interest to cover it all up. There has been a dramatic wind of change blowing through the sport, and while there will always be the odd rotten apple, this will be the cathartic experience the sport needs to grow again free from the dead wood.

I absolutely guarantee you that Football or American Football for example are much worse as they don't have anywhere near the same degree of drug testing or control and there is no incentive for them to do it. It has been conveniently forgotten that Barcelona and Real Madrid were mentioned in Operation Puerto and there have been other minor scandals that have been conveniently ignored because of all the money floating around.

I do think cycling has been unique with its approach towards doping. Tell me any other sport where
- athletes would protest against doping controls instead of protesting against their doped rivals (as during the TDF Festina scandal),
- generally, athletes would complain that it is always their sport targeted in doping news, instead of getting upset that another of their rivals turned out to have doped,
- where it has become clear every doper feels not guilty because he is convinced everybody else is doing it, too,
- a winner would dedicate his victory to a teammate who hadn't been allowed to start because there was a preponderance of evidence he had been using blood doping (a teammate of Jan Ulrich 2006),
- athlete A would get mobbed just because he mentioned under pressure from law enforcement that athlete B had been in contact with therapist C (who had been convicted for helping athlete D with doping).

Anyway, the benefit from doping is obviously a lot higher in cycling than football or American football.