Monday, July 31, 2006
With all the recent doping scandals I feel it necessary to shed a little light on the subject. First off, realize that I am not trying to offend and only expressing views that I have come to believe to save myself from mental anguish associated with the destruction of a sport that I love. That being said, I feel that no one in the sport is truly clean. It comes down to where one will draw the line. If you are truly looking for a cyclist that competes completely naturally and is supplemented only by what is found naturally in food, and with levels that are naturally occurring, then you will continue to be disappointed and let down. On occasion I have used Endurox for recovery from hard races. Endurox is a substance created specifically to enhance athletic performance. Once, I even used SportLegs, a substance that tries to eliminate lactic acid buildup in the legs. Does this make me a doper? Not to the UCI, but perhaps to the true advocates of the sport. This brings me to Landis. While I am not saying that he did, or did not supplement testosterone into his body, I do think that he is on a certain substance, possibly UCI approved, that aids his ability to perform. Is Landis the only one? Absolutely not, as we have seen in recent weeks, but when is the UCI going to stop pulling riders we all love out of the sport we all participate in? If every rider in the pro peloton is taking a substance to help in his or her performance (regardless of whether it is legal or illegal) doesn’t that make all these victories by so called “dopers” legit? If you want a solution to the problem it’s this: make all substances legal. If that were the case our sport would be the cleanest it has ever been. If that were the case there could be no cheating. If that were the case perhaps we could all be perceived as athletes and not falsely accused of being cheats. These doping scandals are bad for the sport. The American public, and standard citizens in any country, can not truly understand how difficult this sport is. Each time the cycling ignorant press releases one of these stories it only serves to further diminish our athletic abilities to the public. The UCI thinks it is making this sport better by pulling dopers, (in reality we will eventually be left without heroes and without a pro peloton) but in doing so we will all be relegated to the back of people’s minds as cheaters.
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3 comments:
You know, I sort of agree with you. If you'd said this a few months ago I would have said, "Amen". But then I saw Todd Wells take on it in the extra material in Off Road to Athens. The kicker is that me and you (well, at least me - you might) have an extra $20k or $30k laying around each year for that kind of thing. The only way to make sure that money - or access to it - isn't the deciding factor in who's the best rider is to make sure everyone's competing above board.
I get what you're saying though. Where do we draw the line? Is $3/ride in recovery/ergogenic aids like Endurox or Crank eGels too much.
See ya in Silver City in a couple of weeks.
Of course the differences between Endurox and say EPO is that one needs no prescrition from a M.D. while the other one does. One was made for endurance athletes, and the other for cancer patients.
One is not regulated by the FDA while the other is.
Think about what you just proposed - if cycling bodies allowed any type of drugs to be used, then now you've got ignorant, naiive and overly ambitious human beings being filled up with sythentics to achieve what? Going faster than people who don't? Wow, I'd be sooooo impressed.
P.S. Pink?
Matt
Heres my philosophy. The current purpose of enhancement drugs is to make the athletes who take them faster than the athletes who don't. Say for a second that everyone took the best enhancement drug in the world, that levels the playing field and you are left with nothing but equally matched extremely fast athletes. If everyone is equally matched, the advantage of enhancement drugs are lost, therefore everyone stops using them and they are all equally fast naurally supplemented athletes. While you may say, "that won't work" you have to ask yourself whether it would work better than the current system.
If there was a way to take enhancement drugs away the same people would still be winning. The fact that Floyd was supplemented by testosterone doesn't change the fact that he is a badass and that his stage 17 win was one of the best moves in cycling history.
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