Bye Lance

[citoyen]

How many of the twitterati are doing the paying?  I guess exactly none.

Well, I'm a Sky subscriber so...

I think they should make me a DS.

d.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

100m track and field sprinters dope. It isn't the distance causing it.

[Toady]

Lets face it, most of the twitterati couldn't even ride a single stage of a grand tour, let alone do so inside the time limit.

I'm not a twitteratus (or whatever the singular is) but a single stage of a tour would present me with serious problems.  So I've qualified your statement for you.

[Cudzoziemiec]

They are racing. It is about who crosses the line first, not how hard you ride before that. The last 20k were definitely a race - 70km/h strung out. Ouch!

Lets face it, most of the twitterati couldn't even ride a grand tour, let alone do so inside the time limit.

Juan Manuel Fangio said the aim of racing should be to win at the slowest speed possible. Apparently he's the only F1 driver to have won 5 world championships and he won nearly every other race he entered, so he should have known.

[rafletcher]

They are racing. It is about who crosses the line first, not how hard you ride before that. The last 20k were definitely a race - 70km/h strung out. Ouch!

Lets face it, most of the twitterati couldn't even ride a grand tour, let alone do so inside the time limit.

Juan Manuel Fangio said the aim of racing should be to win at the slowest speed possible. Apparently he's the only F1 driver to have won 5 world championships and he won nearly every other race he entered, so he should have known.

He may be the only one to win 5 (I haven't checked) but Schumacher won 7 I believe. 

[mattc]

'Racing' deliberately below your capacity is also quite normal in middle-distance running. And open-water swimming ... and <sports I'm so far ignorant of> ...

[David Martin]

And cycling. It is a road race, not a time trial.

[Exit Stage Left]

'Racing' deliberately below your capacity is also quite normal in middle-distance running. And open-water swimming ... and <sports I'm so far ignorant of> ...

'I wish I was 21 now' has a section on this aspect, 'Self organisation or cheating?', page 124. I downloaded the pdf, as it covers so much ground, so effectively. That chapter is 6 pages long. Discussions are more fruitful if we are singing from the same hymn-sheet, and that document gets closer to reality than others I've seen. The pdf format is quite useful, in that it doen't permit cherry-picking.

[citoyen]

100m track and field sprinters dope. It isn't the distance causing it.

Different types of event have different motivations for cheating - endurance vs speed, innit? They use different drugs as well - can't imagine a 100m sprinter having much use for EPO.

d.

[Exit Stage Left]

100m track and field sprinters dope. It isn't the distance causing it.

Different types of event have different motivations for cheating - endurance vs speed, innit? They use different drugs as well - can't imagine a 100m sprinter having much use for EPO.

d.

They all have use for the rewards that sporting success brings, be that the Pound, The Dollar or the  Euro.
What most people seem object to is the betrayal of 'authenticity' for cash. Lance is an interesting case, because his tainted success expanded the opportunities for professional cyclists, by bringing more money into the sport.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

You'd be wrong citoyen. EPO (along with the normal HGH and testosterone) is used by sprinters to aid recovery from increased training loads. The proportions are different but there are many overlaps in doping between short- and long-distance athletes.

[simonp]

Indeed, I've been told a poor vo2max is associated with poor recovery.

[citoyen]

You'd be wrong citoyen. EPO (along with the normal HGH and testosterone) is used by sprinters to aid recovery from increased training loads. The proportions are different but there are many overlaps in doping between short- and long-distance athletes.

OK, I'd be partly wrong. Whatever. I still think there's a lot of wisdom in what David Harmon said. It's the sporting performance arms race - whether it's pushing cyclists to climb ever more brutal mountains, or pushing 100m sprinters to shave another couple of hundredths of a second off their time. They're just different sides of the same coin.

The point is not that making the route of the Grand Tours less brutal will necessarily discourage riders from doping, but that making them harder will definitely increase the temptation to dope.

d.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

No. They will dope regardless of event difficulty provided the chances (and penalties) of being caught are low enough and the rewards of winning are high enough.

[mattc]

I'm pretty sure Le Tour is far easier now than in the early days of 350km+ stages, fixed wheels, jumpers for goalposts etc ...

The thing that is always hard to do clean, is to beat the guy you think is NOT clean!

I'm beginning to lose my sympathy for the "this is very hard, leave us alone" excuse.

[mzjo]

I'm pretty sure Le Tour is far easier now than in the early days of 350km+ stages, fixed wheels, jumpers for goalposts etc ...

The thing that is always hard to do clean, is to beat the guy you think is NOT clean!

I'm beginning to lose my sympathy for the "this is very hard, leave us alone" excuse.

It's the riders that make a race hard, not the route or the distance (given a reasonable level of preparation).
Doping isn't just about "performance" sports. Sports like shooting can also benefit from applied pharmaceuticals.

[twiddler]

I'm pretty sure Le Tour is far easier now than in the early days of 350km+ stages, fixed wheels, jumpers for goalposts etc ...

It's the riders that make a race hard, not the route or the distance (given a reasonable level of preparation).

This is true, except that one of the earlier aims of Le Tour was to make it so hard that only one man could finish it, not so today, so perhaps it's riders and organisers?

The thing that is always hard to do clean, is to beat the guy you think is NOT clean!

Especially if the guy in front hasn't got 'guards on! 


Has Lance left yet?

[hubner]

I'm pretty sure Le Tour is far easier now than in the early days of 350km+ stages, fixed wheels, jumpers for goalposts etc ...

The thing that is always hard to do clean, is to beat the guy you think is NOT clean!

I'm beginning to lose my sympathy for the "this is very hard, leave us alone" excuse.

It's the riders that make a race hard, not the route or the distance (given a reasonable level of preparation).
Doping isn't just about "performance" sports. Sports like shooting can also benefit from applied pharmaceuticals.

I've always thought the "you can't ride/win xxx on mineral water" excuse was nonsense. Yes it's the riders that makes a race hard and if nobody doped then you can actually ride it on mineral water.

And before the Tour lifted the ban on derailleurs in 1937 (not banned in other races), riders used single speed freewheels.

[henshaw11]

Sports like shooting can also benefit from applied pharmaceuticals.

I think the modern heptathlon used to have a different order of events - rearranged (in part) because some competitors were taking some sort of sedative to help them during the shooting. Can't use a sedative if you've got to follow up with a run, tho'...

[citoyen]

In the Olympics, the running and shooting were combined into a single event, in a biathlon-stylee. Didn't know that was the reason for it.

d.

PS typo ignored - obviously you meant the modern pentathlon.

[rafletcher]

And by sedative I assume you were referring to beta blockers (was it Bill Werbinuik in snooker who was using them?). They help stop hand tremors (my wife needed then whilst hyper-thyrodic).

[spesh]

I've always thought the "you can't ride/win xxx on mineral water" excuse was nonsense. Yes it's the riders that makes a race hard and if nobody doped then you can actually ride it on mineral water.

To put the "you can't ride/win on mineral water" comment into some form of context, when Jacques Anquetil said that only a fool would imagine it was possible to ride Bordeaux–Paris on just water*, the kind of knowledge about training, nutrition and post-race recovery available now just wasn't there, and with a racing schedule heavier than what most grand tour GC contenders put themselves through today, riders ended up reliant on the amphetamines that fooled their body and mind into carrying on. That's not to say it was right, but the riders themselves didn't really know any differently.

Prior to the advent of steroids, growth hormones and oxygen vector doping, brandy and Benzedrine weren't enhancing the riders' performances in the same way, it was more that they numbed the pain and fooled the body and mind into pushing on beyond fatigue limits. It's pure speculation, but imagine if a rider of Anquetil's generation had access to current knowledge on training and nutrition - he probably could do just as well without needing to pop the speed tablets.


* That probably goes double if you've just finished riding the Critérium du Dauphiné beforehand. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Anquetil#Dauphin.C3.A9_and_Bordeaux.E2.80.93Paris_double

[citoyen]

it was more that they numbed the pain and fooled the body and mind into pushing on beyond fatigue limits.

...which is what did for Tom Simpson, of course.

Whereas if you're Jens Voigt, you just say "Shut up, legs!"

d.

[spesh]

Cracking post in Bicycling on sports journalism and cycling: http://bicycling.com/blogs/boulderreport/2012/08/29/friday-night-lights-out/

There’s been a death in the family.

By Joe Lindsey

—Found in the obituary section of your local paper—

The Sports Column (October 24, 1924–August 28, 2012)

The modern print sports column passed away on Tuesday, August 28, after suffering a long illness. The cause of death was a Rick Reilly column on ESPN.com on Lance Armstrong’s decision to stop fighting formal charges that he doped to win the Tour de France.

And whilst on the subject of (allegedly) paid shills, check out Phil Liggett's recent comments.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/VJz4kwm9mXc&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/VJz4kwm9mXc&rel=1</a>

Oh dear, oh deary, deary me... 

[henshaw11]

>heptathlon

Well, mental typo  - I wondered whether I meant heptathon as I posted..

>Beta-blockers

Think I heard it during some commentary - more likely tranquilisers, and this seems to confirm it:
http://pentathloncircuit.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/doping-cheating-and-modern-pentathlon.html
 - and also mentions a Swede who 'doped' himself with a couple of beers
I gather beta blockers are distinct from sedatives and transquilisers..

As for Liggett..