Gorbachev wrote:
"What about the children" is a legitimate question.
It may be a legitimate question. I never said it was not. I've been in the industry of writing and fighting new laws for 20 years. The justifications I cited, good and bad come down to those two nearly every time.
The substances taken at pro, amateur and underage level are not administered by ethical doctors in all cases. In fact:
- a lot of what's taken is hearsay and bullshit. Cyclists have been using creams pills and potions for a long time based on rumour. They take stuff at multiples of the correct therapeutic dose, usually seeking only a desired side effect.
- there are many unexplained deaths in cycling where riders died in their sleep. A cluster are believed to be from EPO, where heart rates dropped at night and the blood was so thick, the heart could not pump it around the body. Hence the practice grew of wearing a monitor to wake the athlete to exercise during the night if necessary.
- the drugs might not kill you but they will cause problems. Liver damage, addiction, depression, psychosis, heart damage etc etc. This is big doses of shit cyclists don't fully understand done clandestinely.
- blood doping is well documented with stories of bags of warm blood being ferried around on scooters with zero regard for safety.
No argument there except that you have absolutely no working knowledge of any of those substances or the level of sophistication that exists even at the amateur level. Nonetheless, the current situation reinforces the problems you cited by limiting what riders are allowed to do to protect their own health. Nothing in my argument would make these worse. Your nanny state solution protects no one.
If your argument is that throwing open the gates to allow a free-for-all makes the sport safer, that holds water to an extent because it would eliminate some of the risks incurred to hide what's going on.
It is the only legitimate alternative. My argument is a moral one. It is immoral for you top tell me what I put in my body.
But overall, accepting that anything goes throws in the towel on any sort of meaningful cyclist welfare. You're basically creating an explicit underclass of people for whom basic welfare is deemed unnecessary in their workplace. The Tour group may (but prob not) get decent medical care but there'll be a lot at lower levels killing themselves and doing huge damage.
The change that needs to happen is an express change in culture. I caught doping, you get kicked out of the sport forever. Your team is fined millions. Samples are kept and tested for 50 years or more as science evolves. Fines will still apply. (This is partly the point of the LA hearing).
No. This is total shite. The idea of an underclass in cycling or any other dilettante activity is utterly without merit. Professional Sports are the ultimate in self selection. Further, in the sports I think you may be wringing your hands over, (ball sports etc...) Drugs are a minimal issue..Why? because the all the EPO and Test in the world will not change your status as a an also ran in football. All the drugs can really do in these contexts is to prolong a career.
Endurance and Strength sports are right at the fringe of human capability, that's why you see more use in these sports like swimming, skiing cycling, weightlifting....because these are actual game changers. But Baseball? pffffft. Bullshit. You need to be a world class hitter to hit, extra mass prolonged Bonds's career. it didn't make him a better hitter.
At the end of the day, It's not free market anything, it's just the benefit of constructing a system that has at least a sense of reality to it. You are not going to change a sporting culture that predates the first Olympic Games.
Is that going to ever be perfect? Probably not. But it's the lesser of two evils. The science is catching up at last. The average speeds in the peleton are falling. Stick free market justifications for creation of an undermensch athletic class of humans up your arse.
Undermensch..HAhahahahahahah...
No one but you, in your dark underachieving corner of the UK is worried about such nonsense. Your lesser of Evils is based on a a war on drugs solution to an immovable cultural reality.
