F**K YOU! LANCE!

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Really? Every professional athlete? Are you really that jaded?
Yes, I am. We have kind of this shared delusion that the use of performance enhancers are not widespread so that can adhere to our belief of fair play and all that. Realistically, though, with the stakes as high as they are in professional sports, people literally wouldn't be able to compete in today's atmosphere without performance enhancers of some kind.[DOUBLEPOST=1358020668][/DOUBLEPOST]Quite frankly, anabolic steroids and blood doping aren't nearly as detrimental to your health as the propaganda to the contrary would have you believe. I honestly don't see what the big deal is about their widespread usage.
 
Yes, I am. We have kind of this shared delusion that the use of performance enhancers are not widespread so that can adhere to our belief of fair play and all that. Realistically, though, with the stakes as high as they are in professional sports, people literally wouldn't be able to compete in today's atmosphere without performance enhancers of some kind.[DOUBLEPOST=1358020668][/DOUBLEPOST]Quite frankly, anabolic steroids and blood doping aren't nearly as detrimental to your health as the propaganda to the contrary would have you believe. I honestly don't see what the big deal is about their widespread usage.

Woah, hold the phone. Time out.
 
Anabolic steroids = detrimental.
Blood doping = risky (potential for infection) but otherwise okay.

I realized the ridiculousness the first time I heard about doping in wheelchair racing. Seems some people will clamp off their catheter so that their body will sense the stress (of backed-up urine, most likely) and therefore start the dumping of more adrenaline into their systems. Totally undetectable, right? And then there's Smokey Yunick, who did the mechanical equivalent of doping race cars.

--Patrick
 
The effects of Anabolic steroids are detrimental when used in extremely high quantities steadily over long periods of time.
 
The effects of Anabolic steroids are detrimental when used in extremely high quantities steadily over long periods of time.
FTFY.

I won't argue the "excessive is probably bad" part. That's pretty much a no-brainer. But it turns out that even at low doses, if you use them continuously over long periods of time, it will upset your body's hormone regulatory system, which will have undesirable effects. The whole testosterone/estrogen balance relies on a feedback loop to keep effective levels of each in your body, and screwing up that push/pull system can unbalance that equilibrium for long periods of time.

--Patrick
 
I'm certainly not saying that it's good for you, but I just hate when people try to overstate health risks in an attempt to "scare straight".
 
Yeah! A little meth doesn't hurt, just make sure to moderate!
That's a false equivalency. The effects of Meth are actually immediately harmful and addictive. If we're constantly selling these extreme scare tactics, it actually detracts from the actual harm that can be done and also dulls people to the real dangers of more extreme drugs.
 
Pro Cycling has been a complete rolling Pharmacy for over 20 years. I remember reading reports from before Armstrong's run bemoaning that ALL the teams cheat. Then after Armstrong beat cancer, he used his team of doctors that help to rebuild him hide his doping. And man that group of docs were good at screening his pee. So it was amazing to see somebody rally from cancer and beat the hell out of all those dope-fiends.
 
That's a false equivalency. The effects of Meth are actually immediately harmful and addictive. If we're constantly selling these extreme scare tactics, it actually detracts from the actual harm that can be done and also dulls people to the real dangers of more extreme drugs.
Who cares about the damage it does, this is about how he cheated to affect his performance.
 
Who cares about the damage it does, this is about how he cheated to affect his performance.
You have to follow the entire flow of the conversation, not just select one post. The point originally is that if everyone is cheating, is one person being caught for cheating really cheating.
 
You have to follow the entire flow of the conversation, not just select one post. The point originally is that if everyone is cheating, is one person being caught for cheating really cheating.
When the narrative to this point was that he did it "clean", and it was all just sour grapes from a vengeful French press, then yeah. It's cheating.
 
You have to follow the entire flow of the conversation, not just select one post. The point originally is that if everyone is cheating, is one person being caught for cheating really cheating.

Doping is not regulated or sanctioned, period. Therefore it doesn't matter if an entire group of racers is doping, they're all still cheating.
 
Lance, Contador, Landis, Ullrich, Pantani (RIP). Who hasn't been caught doping? Not that I'm condoning it. Looking through the list of recent winners, they've nearly all been caught or at least implicated.
 

Zappit

Staff member
If they all break the rule, why not get rid of the rule? That's really cynical. How 'bout we take away the below the belt rule in boxing, the helmet to helmet rule in football, or the don't use your bat as a cudgel to beat an opponent rule in baseball? That last one didn't stop Jose Offerman, so why have the rule at all?
 
It is and it should be disappointing. I like to think that with enough work and dedication one can come close to their performance.

Clearly it requires more than work and dedication to get close.

The race is a joke if all the competitors are doping.
 
So, we should also ban training at high altitudes and using hyperbaric chambers as well? These too can be used to increase your blood cell count, which is what EPO, the hormone used in blood doping does. I guess my question is really, why is the line drawn specifically at blood doping? Why specifically are synthetic hormones the ultimate no-no in sports? I'm seriously asking.
 
It doesn't seem hard to me to differentiate between training to produce the desired results, and using other processes besides training to produce the desired results.
 
So, we should also ban training at high altitudes and using hyperbaric chambers as well? These too can be used to increase your blood cell count, which is what EPO, the hormone used in blood doping does. I guess my question is really, why is the line drawn specifically at blood doping? Why specifically are synthetic hormones the ultimate no-no in sports? I'm seriously asking.
I think because there's many good reasons why a professional athlete wouldn't want to do those (health concerns) and if it becomes an ok thing, it then becomes mandatory for anyone to keep up.
 
So, we should also ban training at high altitudes and using hyperbaric chambers as well? These too can be used to increase your blood cell count, which is what EPO, the hormone used in blood doping does. I guess my question is really, why is the line drawn specifically at blood doping? Why specifically are synthetic hormones the ultimate no-no in sports? I'm seriously asking.

You're purposefully being obtuse now...

High altitude training is a form of conditioning. What you're saying amounts to banning the use of any sort of resistance during athletic training. This is not the same as using steroids or doping. The athletes' have to work for desired results; it's not a matter of sticking a needle in one's arm and doing the same routine as everyone else.
 
I'm honestly thinking that people don't really know what blood doping is. All it does is increase the amount of blood cells in your body, allowing faster distribution of oxygen through the body. The results would be negligible for the average shmoe, it still requires extreme amounts of training and talent to achieve what Lance Armstrong did. The only reason it has any appreciable difference for high functioning athletes is because their margin of difference is so small. Prior to the discovery of EPO, the same effects were achieved through blood transfusions of the athlete's own blood with no drugs involved whatsoever.
 
I'm honestly thinking that people don't really know what blood doping is. [...] Prior to the discovery of EPO, the same effects were achieved through blood transfusions of the athlete's own blood with no drugs involved whatsoever.
And that's what I assumed you meant by blood doping. Donate a pint or two of blood, put them in the fridge, wait a month, then put them back in before your competition. No foreign substances, no drugs, just increased red blood cell count and nothing to show for it except for an injection site.

I'm pretty sure that the main objection everyone has is that we want/expect every sporting event to be an honorable contest of training and skill, but instead there are others treating it as a contest of how much they can get away with without getting caught, which should really be two separate contests.

--Patrick
 
Athletes should just do what MMA fighters do, use steroids excessively in the dark ages of your sport before testing was widely available until your testosterone production is that of someone with hypogonadism. THEN, you get a physician to prescribe testosterone injections so that your T levels are those of a teenager. THEN, you get a medical exemption from your athletic commission (inexplicably). Suddenly, you go from a guy who's nickname for years was Decision Dan Henderson (I'm done pussyfooting around who I was talking about) to a guy who's right hand, in his mid 40's, is suddenly knocking people cold left right and center.
 
I'm honestly thinking that people don't really know what blood doping is. All it does is increase the amount of blood cells in your body, allowing faster distribution of oxygen through the body. The results would be negligible for the average shmoe, it still requires extreme amounts of training and talent to achieve what Lance Armstrong did. The only reason it has any appreciable difference for high functioning athletes is because their margin of difference is so small. Prior to the discovery of EPO, the same effects were achieved through blood transfusions of the athlete's own blood with no drugs involved whatsoever.
Prior to the discovery of EPO similar effects were achieved without training by increasing the blood cell density using transfusion techniques. This is still cheating. Using EPO is still cheating.

Training at high altitiudes 9/10ths of the year doesn't do the same thing although it gets close. Yes, the hemoglobin levels increase, but not to the degree achieved by blood transfusion and EPO methods.

I think the term "blood doping" is misleading. There are many, many other ways to improve performance through artificial means rather than training. Doping is one of them. Blood doping is a subset of doping.

In this case the issue isn't what is happening inside their body, but how they are achieving that performance increase. The means are what levels the playing field.

There are several reasons to avoid this, including preventing teams from having an unfair advantage, and avoiding creating a sport that is destructive to the human body just to win a competition.
 
All the oxygen in the world is not going to replace training, that's just an assinine assumption. It's so much easier to demonize Lance Armstrong than to recognize that the atmosphere of competetive professional sports is fundimentally broken and permissive of these things. Atheletes do all sorts of crazy things to boost performance, from specialized diets, to using legal drugs as well is illegal ones. More than anything, I feel like this specific witch hunt against one particular athelete is mainly to push aside concerns of these widespread practices.

I also get tired of the mis-characterization of steroids and blood doping as some sort of superfuel. People picture it like freakin' Popeye eating spinach. These atheletes aren't sitting on couches popping pills and shooting up and then excelling in their chosen sport. They're still putting just as much work as others are, if not more.

I understand the moralistic standpoint of having a level playing field. That's what brings me back to the original point of "If everybody is cheating, is cheating really cheating"
 
Are you trying to say that doping doesn't work? Are you saying that two athletes who follow the same training schedule, and one who dopes, will have the same chance at winning?

Of course they work hard. No one here is suggesting that doping means they don't have to train.

You may have a different opinion about whether doping is good for the sport or not. But whipping out words like asinine and witch hunt doesn't strengthen your argument that all athletes should be allowed to dope however they like.

Start your own cycling association that allows doping if you believe in it so strongly.

Leave doping out of our sports.
 
"If everybody is cheating, is cheating really cheating"
I can only imagine that it is disheartening to folks who are just entering a sport, all fired up and rarin' to go, only to get soundly beaten by the veterans. Stung, they train hard, eat right, sweat the details, and really become something, only to continue getting the sand kicked in their faces by people who "juice." Their spirits crushed, their wills broken, they then realize the only way to make it to the highest echelons of their sport is to stoop to the dopers' level, to cheat, to compromise their integrity, and, in their minds, to "sell out" to the lure of questionable methods bringing better results.

The same sort of thing could be said about the poor v. the rich, or the entrepreneur v. big business. There are people who succeed on their own merits, either due an accident of genetics, or because they're just so devoted to what they do. And they make for great stories, too...but usually they don't attract the attention of the media, so we don't hear as much about them.

--Patrick
 
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