These incessant doping accusations are not good for the sport

I don't care. I think they should stop testing all together. Let the athletes determine what they put in their bodies.

You still need to train and genetics. The will to win is nothing without the will to prepare.

It's the incessant doping that isn't good for the sports. We now have top Boston finishers and WC steeple chaser caught doping. So who are these people beating dopers using cleaning training?

Kipchoge beat Bekele and El G at their peak, at the height of the full throttle EPO era, when there was NO testing for EPO, when he was '18 years old'.

Surely we can discuss whether he was doping then? And if he was doping then, how do we know he still doesn't benefit from that?

If you want to believe in a clean sport, that horse has long bolted.

I completely agree.

#1- Drugs don't help anyone to run any faster than they would without them;

#2- Drug testing promotes the bogus nonsensical idea that drugs are good for people;

#3- The promotion of drugs helps big pharma to sell more of them and to increase their profits;

#4- The bogus testing helps the ruling class to disqualify anyone they don't like including people of different ethnic backgrounds and even entire countries;

#5- The constant drug accusations help dishonest runners to tarnish their competitors;

#6- Runners connected to the ruling class can use their accusations to get their competitors banned with the bogus testing results;

#7- Encouraging dishonest abusive & harassing drug accusations can help certain websites to create more controversy, gain notoriety and make more money.

These are just a few of the reasons why the bogus drug testing should be done away with.

Explain the popularity of the NFL, the NBA, UFC, etc.

What is even worse for the sport is the doping.

Actually the results of the doping is what most of the fans want. They may not say they want the athletes to dope, but they want the world records etc. They want to have their cake and eat it too.

This is something I have thought of for a long while. The sports mentioned (and you could toss in MLB) are seen as professional sports since they have been around for a long while as such.

Sports that are primarily seen during the Olympics are not seen in the same way. The ideals of amateurism are still pervasive in how people see the sports. The ideals of fair play and that these are not really "professional" sports. Every now and then I come across someone who does not realize that there are professionals in the Olympics (aside from men's basketball).

Explain the popularity of the NFL, the NBA, UFC, etc.

Most people don't know or care whether Kipchoge or anyone else in Olympic sports are doping. The only people who do are the holier than thou home schoolers on LRC

Skill sports. Weight restrictions. Roids don’t help you read a defense or make a 3.

"NFL wide receivers have no incentive to improve their 40 yard time by 0.2" is one of the classic dumb track fanatic takes. This ties back to my post in another thread about track fans wanting the sport to remain marginal - the urge is so strong that track fans come up with truly ludicrous arguments of why only THEIR athletes have any reason to use anabolic/androgenic substances or GH-related substances.

"Weight restrictions" lmao, just lmao. Do you know what happens if you take tren while remaining on a maintenance diet?

This is a ridiculous response. Of course doping is bad for the sport. That's why we have anti-doping. But think about what threads like the one I mentioned are implicitly saying: that in a world of in-competition and out-of-competition tests, of testing windows and whereabouts failures, of urine tests and blood tests and the biological passport, of government raids and Fancy Bears leaks, of strict liability; that all these measures are so laughably ineffective that we should assume all top athletes are doping, even if none of these systems turn up a trace of evidence against them.

I'm not even arguing against this position; I truly don't know. But far from just being cooly cynical, it's a massive indictment of the anti-doping system and the sport. It's got to be one of three things: 1) anti-doping is doing ok, and so merely being the best in the world isn't automatically incriminating; 2) anti-doping could be doing well, but isn't, and so there are specific policies we should push for that would be more effective than what we've got currently; 3) anti-doping is hopeless and can never succeed, in which case there's no point even posting these accusations because it's tautological that every elite athlete dopes.

I'm honestly tired of people pretending to believe 1) or 2) but then dragging 3) into every single thread on this site.

Most people don't know about the doping.

Most fans are appalled at the thought their heroes dope, which is why the typical response is denial.

Other drugs do. They can make you faster and react quicker - and never tire. Pro sport depends on all of that. Chess players dope, as well as championship darts and curling. If you want an edge something will give it to you.

LR encourages slander of the very athletes they are supposedly promoting. It is not just on the message board, the home page had a "which of these athletes do you think is doping" survey very recently. No evidence given for any of the athletes.

The sport is dirty, but what goes on here is openly encouraged slander.

We were doing speed in HS football. kids dad was a truck driver.

Couldn't care less about doing whaever it take to win at sports. Need to simply forget about it, let it go. Yep, will do what I can get away with.

Funny how it's ok for men to compete vs women which is a huge advantage but we need to worry about PED's. That makes zero sense.

Accusiing anyone of being dirty is wrong, not cool at all.