F**k the Tour de France

I disagree. I see doped sports such as cycling, WWE, MLB, Roller Derby, NFL, NHL, MMA, UFC, etc. as entertainment, as staged plays performed by stunt artists. They are not sports by any stetch of the imagination.

Fakes dont count wrote:

I disagree. I see doped sports such as cycling, WWE, MLB, Roller Derby, NFL, NHL, MMA, UFC, etc. as entertainment, as staged plays performed by stunt artists. They are not sports by any stetch of the imagination.

How can you say cycling isn't a sport??

Just because they take drugs it doesn't influence the results - they just get to the stage finish a little quicker, and recover better to do it all again the next day. Well that was the case when 905 of them doped.

AngryAlex wrote:

What a joke. Will not be wasting my time watching this parade of drug cheats anymore. Going outside to burn my road bike.

Watch me run 2:03 instead. As we all know, I am so very very clean! And my smile is BIG! A CLEAN smile!

There is one possibility that might make sense, other than drugs. If a rider 'bonks' they have a poor (at that level) performance, yet have not pushed themselves quite as hard because they did not have the fuel to do so. Solving the fuel problem, the next day they might be in better shape than those that left them behind the day before. I do not remember the Roche event, so I cannot comment on whether it might fit this (outside?) possibility of an exception to your conclusion.

Fakes dont count wrote:

I disagree. I see doped sports such as cycling, WWE, MLB, Roller Derby, NFL, NHL, MMA, UFC, etc. as entertainment, as staged plays performed by stunt artists. They are not sports by any stetch of the imagination.

I love when scrawny, wannabe-elite runners say that NFL and NHL players aren't athletes. Sure dude, tell that to Reggie Bush.

once a sprinter wrote:

to have a world record ratified in cycling it must involve a dope test. i hope the iaaf is the same attitude?

I believe the IAAF has of quite some time required a drug test for a world record to be officially recognized. I recall reading that 2 of Geb's 26 world records are not ratified/recognized, one because the was not given a drug test after the race, and the other I believe because the course was a point-to-point course (not record standard) and could have been wind aided.

Sorry for all the typos in the above post. I accidentially hit "send" before proofreading.

The short term, partial solution to PEDs in sports is to hope the tests get much better and the scheduling/targeting/frequency of tests are also done in a smarter manner. However, I don't buy the argument that the cheaters will always be one step ahead of the testers, even though that has largely been true up until now.

Tour de France competitors know they need to use the best doping doctors and the latest minimally detectible drugs if they are going to dope and not get caught. Yet quite a few are getting caught is spite of taking the best available precautions. This has to give pause to other competitors who are considering doping. The saving of blood samples for as long as 8 years is extremely important. The testers may still be behind the cheaters, but they are probably not 8 years behind.

If an international agreement can be reached where all pharmaceutical manufacturers worldwide are required to place markers into all their drugs which can be PEDs, then we might at last get control over use of PEDs. Such an agreement would have to carry very large $ penalties and criminal actions against senior executives if they didn’t comply. As testing gets better it is going to be much harder for scientists to manufacture PEDs in their basements. In the future I believe that PEDs will almost entirely come from research/manufacturing by large pharmaceutical companies – and if they are using markers this PED problem might finally get reduced to a negligible level.

I agree, let them dope till they grow two heads and their nuts shrink to the size of electrons! ITS ON!!

Everybody is wary of cycling now and it's in their best interests in eradicate the doping as much as possible.

Bolt, Geb, Dibaba, etc have masses and masses of fanboy/girls that would never even doubt their legitimacy. While the level of blind faith is so high, why would they bother going after them properly and getting that positive test.

That is, on the off chance, that they might be taking something.

'The International Olympic Committee will retest all doping samples from the Beijing Games to check for traces of a new blood-boosting drug.

The unprecedented move, announced today, is designed to search for a banned substance that was only recently detected during retesting of samples from the Tour de France.

The Beijing samples — across all sports — are being sent to the World Anti-Doping Agency accredited laboratory in Lausanne, IOC spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau said.

The IOC conducted more than 5,000 drug tests during the Beijing Games.

The samples will be reopened and tested for CERA, a new generation of the endurance-enhancing hormone EPO. The substance boosts an athlete's performance by increasing the number of oxygen-rich blood cells.

Details of the testing procedure are under discussion with WADA, Moreau said.

The decision comes after a new lab test used by the French Anti-Doping Agency detected CERA during retesting of samples from Tour de France riders. The original urine tests had raised suspicions but proved inconclusive.

"It's very good. It allows us to confound the cheaters," Tour de France chief Christian Prudhomme said Tuesday. "What's being done at the Tour de France has never existed in the world of sport."

Officials confirmed on Tuesday that German rider Stefan Schumacher, and Italians Riccardo Ricco and Leonardo Piepoli had tested positive for CERA at the Tour. The three riders combined to win five of the Tour's 21 stages.'

Re-testing is probably the only way to actually catch all the cheaters. It's very expensive to keep blood samples for extended periods of time and re-test them all but the current system is the doper scientists invent a new PED and there's a delay before it gains enough attention for a test to be developed. If only current samples are tested, any doper with half a brain won't get caught because they will only use substances for which a reliable test hasn't yet been developed or isn't yet in widespread use. By re-testing old samples justice may be delayed but at least we have a chance at catching them because we will actually have tests for what they are using.

I know the post about throwing open the doors in cycling was probably a joke but it's actually not a half-bad idea. Then there would be more funding from major pharmaceutical companies and the money would go towards creating better drugs, not harder-to-test-for drugs, which could then be used to improve quality of life for people with a variety of healthy problems. I doubt doping in cycling could generate enough research to make as significant a contribution to pharmaceuticals as Formula 1 makes to automotive research but it'd be a start.

TK1451 wrote:

I know the post about throwing open the doors in cycling was probably a joke but it's actually not a half-bad idea. Then there would be more funding from major pharmaceutical companies and the money would go towards creating better drugs, not harder-to-test-for drugs, which could then be used to improve quality of life for people with a variety of healthy problems. I doubt doping in cycling could generate enough research to make as significant a contribution to pharmaceuticals as Formula 1 makes to automotive research but it'd be a start.

I don't think people understand the economics of the pharmaceutical industry if they think that drug companies are going to be investing money to develop products for this market. No Way. EPO is a cancer drug. It is an enormous consumer of Medicare dollars. All of the doped cyclists in the world don't amount to a drop of water in the sea in terms of revenues.

Also, while putting markers in performance enhancing drugs might be enticing for us (as sports fans) there is no realistic reason for companies to do that--it would be expensive and undoubtedly require further and more extensive testing and possible interaction and side effect problems--this makes no sense if you view PEDs primarily as drugs meant to save or improve lives. Their use as performance enhancers in incidental.