2010 Tour De France (Official) thread

[Peter S]

Fully agree with your comments about Indurain and Armstrong domination. Think the challenge for the organisations nowadays is to come with stages that are demanding enough (without being too dangerous) to allow the stronger athletes to make a difference.

I also very much enjoyed this year's Giro and look forward to the two Tourmalet stages (16&17).

 

[rxmd]

Do you think all other sports (soccer, tennis etc etc) are doping free ? I think cycling is one of the most closely monitored sports. You will never be able to eliminate doping, I guess it is human to consider cheating, but I do think we have seen the last couple of years in cycling that there is a lot more competition in the races. More candidates for victories than ever before, more "boring" stages than ever because the athletes are so close in performance.

Cycling isn't really that closely monitored; after all tour organizers have a vested interest in people watching it, and national cycling federations have a vested interest in having their national heroes taking the yellow jersey. After all these cases over the last years with prominent cyclists admitting to doping after having been tested clean (taking just enough time so that their wins won't be annulled, like Erik Zabel did), I don't think there is much to be said for doping controls.

There was an article by a German professor of medicine last year who tested EPO on himself and went cycling. He wrote it's a difference like night and day, and as a result he couldn't imagine non-dopers to be able to compete with dopers at all. As a result, we can be pretty sure that cycling is completely lost.

The difference between cycling and other sports is probably not so much in whether there is doping or not. You can enjoy a football match because the players show technical skill. In cycling, on the other hand, the outcome is pretty much determined by endurance and nothing else. Watching Rasmussen win a mountain stage because he's getting the right shots, on the other hand, feels like watching a pharmaceutics commercial.

 

[Dave Wilkinson]

I don't visit camera forums quite so much now - due to dopes!

 

[semilog]

There was an article by a German professor of medicine last year who tested EPO on himself and went cycling. He wrote it's a difference like night and day, and as a result he couldn't imagine non-dopers to be able to compete with dopers at all.

The relative benefit to someone who (1) has the genetics to be a pro and (2) has already trained to professional standards (in most cases at altitude) is going to be a lot smaller than for a typical med school professor, even one who's a cyclist (e.g., me). For example, many pro cyclists boost their hematocrit by sleeping in hypobaric chambers, which mimic altitude to elicit red blood cell production.

As a result, we can be pretty sure that cycling is completely lost.

Performance-enhancing drugs have been used throughout the history of pro cycling. At what point, then, was the sport "lost"? And was cross country skiing "lost" when one of its brightest stars happene to be born with a mutation that effectively put him on EPO for his entire life?

I think your analysis is shallow.

 

[Ezzie]

...... And was cross country skiing "lost" when one of its brightest stars happene to be born with a mutation that effectively put him on EPO for his entire life?

........

And who might that be?

 

[semilog]

For those interested, this is one of the most interesting and thoughtful articles on the use of drugs in ultra-endurance sports that I have seen. Only part of the article is exerpted, but the basic considerations are covered in the exerpt.

Note that I'm not advocating the use of performance-enhancing drugs in athletics. I'm merely saying that (1) they are nothing new (there was not ever a "clean" golden age), and (2) I think that many of our reasons for opposing their use are poorly thought through. These basic questions deserve closer examination.

 

[semilog]

And who might that be?

Eero Mäntyranta. See my post (#16) above, and the linked references therein. He won seven medals, three gold, over four winter olympics, and he won two world championships. Ironically, later in his career, in 1972, he was found to have been doping, with amphetamines. At that time, it was also commonplace for professional bicycle racers to take amphetamines, and almost certainly athletes in many other sports as well.

In the 1950s and 60s, attitudes were a bit different than they are today.

Amphetamines or no, Mäntyranta was probably the greatest endurance skiier ever to come out of Finland.

 

[rxmd]

The relative benefit to someone who (1) has the genetics to be a pro and (2) has already trained to professional standards (in most cases at altitude) is going to be a lot smaller than for a typical med school professor, even one who's a cyclist (e.g., me).

On the other hand, the competition is much fiercer, so even a small benefit will make it seem acceptable to someone whose income stream depends on being the first and not the second. There may be diminishing returns, but the stakes are high enough that people will do quite a lot for even small advantages; the considerable legal and medical risks professional cyclists are taking today seem to confirm this.

Performance-enhancing drugs have been used throughout the history of pro cycling. At what point, then, was the sport "lost"?

And was cross country skiing "lost" when one of its brightest stars happene to be born with a mutation that effectively put him on EPO for his entire life?

I think your analysis is shallow.

I realize that it must have been frustrating for all the other cross country skiers that they still weren't allowed to dope. Well, cry me a river. The problem with doping is not that people are taking EPO; the problem is that they are taking EPO while pretending not to.

The whole idea of competitive sports as understood now is that they are clean, which is why doping is banned. You can always go and start a cycling competition sponsored by Pfizer etc. where doping is allowed; then one can see whether people would like the image of this new competition, enjoy watching it, and subscribe to the new ideal that human beings can achieve anything as long as they are willing to serve as televised high-profile guineapigs, after signing a piece of paper exonerating their sponsor from liability in case anything unforeseen happens.

And as far as your question about cycling is concerned: I think, for example, it was already lost when Tom Simpson died in midrace in 1967.

 

[semilog]

The whole idea of competitive sports as understood now is that they are clean, which is why doping is banned.

So explain to me why it is acceptable for Tiger Woods to get surgery that brings his eyesight to the standard of his competitors, many of whom had the good fortune to be born with exceptional eyesight? Why should we not say to Tiger -- to use your words -- "well, cry me a river." What if there were no radial/laser keratotomy, but instead a drug that could give a person hyper-acute vision for, say, the length of a golf tournament. Should that be allowed, or not? What is the difference?

Where is the bright line that defines which artificial aids to performance should be acceptable, and which should not? How are erythrocytes (EPO) or muscles (anabolic steroids) different than eyes? You gonna tell me eyesight is not important for golf?

Again, what do we value in sports? Freakish genetic gifts, like Michael Phelps's short legs and flipper-like feet, or Mäntyranta's truncated EPO receptor? Hard work? Pain tolerance? Willingness to take physical risks?

Put differently, which genetic deficits should people be allowed to compensate? Eyesight? Flat feet (orthotics)? Weak or merely average tendons (Tommy John surgery)? Congenital anemia (EPO)? Weak muscles (steroids)? Merely average VO2 max (EPO)?

To my eyes, to simply label a sport "clean" or "dirty" is to say that you don't want to think too hard. It just sweeps these very real and often very thorny questions under the carpet. The case of Caster Semenya is particularly illustrative.

 

[rxmd]

So explain to me why it is acceptable for Tiger Woods to get surgery that brings his eyesight to the standard of his competitors, many of whom had the good fortune to be born with exceptional eyesight? Why do we not say to Tiger -- to use your words -- "well, cry me a river."

Well, I guess the main reason why it's acceptable is golf as a competitive sport has a set of rules, and having surgery on your eyes is OK by those rules. In that way golf as a sport is different from cycling as a sport, which makes it somewhat pointless to compare Tiger Woods to Floyd Landis.

You seem to imply that the cyclists are thus being treated unfairly by the golfers. If the golf tournaments were conducted under strict rules that eyes have to be surgically unmodified, with surgery checks performed regularly, and players trying to slip in their own cybernetically modified eyes with built-in telescopes and parabola projection as unobtrusively as possible, while pretending to have 100% all-natural eyes, the situation might be comparable, but this is not how the sport is being run, which makes it difficult to compare the two.

I see that you're trying to make this into a black-or-white moral argument, by stating across that A being allowed in golf should imply B being allowed in cycling, but this is -- to use your words -- rather shallow.

The idea of allowing doping because it egalizes out some of the different genetic predispositions of people is naive at best. It may be frustrating for swimmer X to compete against Phelps with his flipper feet, but it's not going to be much better for swimmer X + surgery Y + drug Z to compete against Phelps + surgery Y + drug Z.

As far as the rest is concerned, you ask a lot of rhetorical questions. To the question of "clean" or "dirty" there is a very simple answer: if people start to pretend and lie their way around the rules of their sport, something is wrong.

 

[semilog]

You can always go and start a cycling competition sponsored by Pfizer etc.

EPO is manufactured by Amgen. The biggest UIAA- (edit: UCI) sanctioned bike race in the US is the Amgen Tour of California.

 

[splitimageview]

So. how about Cavendish?

 

[semilog]

Well, I guess the main reason why it's acceptable is golf as a competitive sport has a set of rules, and having surgery on your eyes is OK by those rules. In that way golf as a sport is different from cycling as a sport, which makes it somewhat pointless to compare Tiger Woods to Floyd Landis.

I suspect that vision-corrective surgery is not specifically allowed in golf, it's merely not banned.

I see that you're trying to make this into a black-or-white moral argument, by stating across that A being allowed in golf should imply B being allowed in cycling, but this is -- to use your words -- rather shallow.

Actually, I'm not making that argument. I am saying that the situation, both in rule and in practice as it exists presently, is based on a set of questionable (and generally unstated) values and assumptions.

As a consequence, in pro cycling and in many (most?) other professional sports there is a nearly total disconnect between rule and practice. I have one friend who raced in the Euoropean peloton as a domestique about two decades ago. He says that the entire sport was suffused with the use of performance enhancing drugs then, as it presumably is now. The history of professional cycling is inextricably linked to the use of performance enhancing drugs.

In my view, we cannot fix cycling, or track, or nordic skiing, etc., until we have a more serious discussion about the purpose of sport. What are we really trying to measure? What attributes should lead to success?

Now we can test for (recent) EPO use, but what of drugs for which there is no test?

How do you ban something that you cannot test for? In pro cycling, for several years a hematocrit above a threshold value was taken as prima facie evidence of EPO use. Someone with a mutant EPO receptor like Mäntyranta's would have been banned, simply because his genetics were too good!

If people start to pretend and lie their way around the rules of their sport, something is wrong.

There, we agree.

The question is: what is wrong? I would argue that it's not just that some athletes are dishonest. At least to some extent, I think that's cheap moralizing. If most riders are doping, does that mean that most riders are moral degenerates, or that something is wrong with the sport's rule, enforcement, and incentive structure? I think that there is a disconnect between what people (organizers, fans, media, participants) think they value, and what they actually value, and until we understand that disconnect, none of these issues can even begin to be resolved.

 

[rxmd]

EPO is manufactured by Amgen. The biggest UIAA-sanctioned bike race in the US is the Amgen Tour of California.

Well, as you may have realized, the key issue in my proposal was not the sponsorship (which was more of a rhetorical figure anyway), but the idea of an alternative tournament where doping was allowed, maybe even encouraged, to egalize out those unfair genetic differences between participants, encourage cyclists towards willingness to take risks with their lives etc. So, does the Amgen Tour of California allow doping? (Incidentally, EPO has been a generic drug for years; Amgen simply has exclusive distribution rights in the US.) I don't know the cycle race rules of the UIAA, which is, after all, the International Mountaineering Union and not the International Cycling Union (UCI). I have my doubts.

I don't know what it's like in the US, but in Europe major sponsors have started to pull out of professional cycling over the last years because its image is increasingly perceived as negative. Somehow people don't like what's going on.

I'm not surprised that you mention Caster Semenya, but then again her case has nothing to do with doping at all, but with gender segregation. You might, however, have mentioned Oscar Pistorius, who is much closer to the topic (and who, incidentally and interestingly, was allowed to participate but failed to qualify). Again, he's not that comparable to the doping situation in cycling either, the major difference being that he is not pretending that his legs are actually unamputated, after all.

And since you keep coming back to your genetically disadvantaged Finnish cross-country skiers - if any of your cross country skiers feel unfairly treated by nature and want to have the right to use EPO in races because of this, they are free to lobby the International Ski Federation to change their tournament rules, or eventually to call in the Court of Arbitration for Sport, like Pistorius did, to legalize blood doping for them. If they get through, fine (I'd have my doubts, though). As long as they don't, however, if they dope, they cheat, break the rules of their sport and detract from its image.

 

[semilog]

encourage cyclists towards willingness to take risks with their lives etc.

Those riders are already selected by gravel-strewn mountain descents at 50+ mph, stages that go over cobbles, 40 mph bunch sprints, etc.

So, does the Amgen Tour of California allow doping?

The question is not whether they allow it (of course they do not), but whether they can actually do anything to prevent it.

(Incidentally, EPO has been a generic drug for years; Amgen simply has exclusive distribution rights in the US.)

Amgen held the original patents. It's been a $1B+ drug for them. I think their sponsorship of that race is ironic.

I don't know the cycle race rules of the UIAA, which is, after all, the International Mountaineering Union and not the International Cycling Union (UCI). I have my doubts.

Typo fixed. I was thinking of climbing when I wrote that.

I don't know what it's like in the US, but in Europe major sponsors have started to pull out of professional cycling over the last years because its image is increasingly perceived as negative. Somehow people don't like what's going on.

I'd say that they don't like being reminded of what's been going on all along.

I agree that rules should not be broken. The question is whether it is the right thing to do to have a sport governed by rules that are (1) in practice, unenforceable, and which (2) if obeyed, dramatically decrease the likelihood of success for most participants.

That combination is, in my view, a recipe for failure, and leads to one of three options: (1) systematic coverup, denial, lying, obfuscation, and professions of ignorance, punctuated by occasional show-arrests to make it look as though proactive measures are being taken [i.e., the status quo]; (2) revisions of the rules to allow some use of performance-enhancing substances; or (3) giving up -- ending high-level amateur and professional competition in the sport.

These issues will only get more difficult over time.

Doping methods will only get more sophisticated. Gene therapy for muscular performance has been demonstrated in laboratory animals. And endurance can be modified, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGrdsedQB9o

In some countries, in the coming decades, wealthy parents will probably be able to have children with genetically-enhanced traits.

Are we going to allow kids like these to play in the youth soccer leagues?

 

[rxmd]

That combination is, in my view, a recipe for failure, and leads to one of three options: (1) systematic coverup, denial, lying, obfuscation, and professions of ignorance, punctuated by occasional show-arrests to make it look as though proactive measures are being taken [i.e., the status quo]; (2) revisions of the rules to allow some use of performance-enhancing substances; or (3) ending high-level amateur and professional competition in the sport.

The problem is that in practice (2) would simply mean reinstating a new set of rules, which will still be systematically broken. Even if you publish a yearly-updated list with certain classes of substances and procedures, people will still use other, disallowed substances and procedures if they think it will give them an advantage. On this year's Tour they started testing bikes whether they had little concealed engines in them; apparently people expect this sort of thing to appear sooner or later, too. Do we want to modify the rules of the Tour de France to be a motorbike competition?

So, if you allow certain substances, others will still be disallowed and used, in continuation of the present culture of systematic rule-breaking, denial and obfuscation. So option (2) is really nothing more than option (1) with a different ruleset.

Personally I think the present state of the public getting gradually more disgusted at the pretense in the sport is an excellent good thing. If this leads to option (3) that professional isn't commercially viable anymore, it wasn't probably worth it, like most other things that depend on pretense and deceit to be commercially viable.

 

[rxmd]

Incidentally I find it a bit frustrating to answer a post, only to find out that the poster has made heavy changes and added lots of stuff so that I've really only answered his first paragraph. It's one thing to correct typos, another to add entire new strands of discussion. I guess I'll pull out of the discussion for the time being and answer a bit more rarely so that people's statements have a little more time to settle down.

 

[splitimageview]

So, how about Petacchi?

 

[semilog]

Personally I think the present state of the public getting gradually more disgusted at the pretense in the sport is an excellent good thing. If this leads to option (3) that professional isn't commercially viable anymore, it wasn't probably worth it, like most other things that depend on pretense and deceit to be commercially viable.

I think you might very well be right about that.

But it's not just professional sports that are the problem. There was plenty of doping in the Olympic sports in the 1960s, well before big money entered the scene. People want to prevail in competition, whether amateur or or professional, whether for personal glory or regional or national pride, and some of them will push, or break the rules to to it.

The problems arise when cheating is not easily detectable, so the rules are unenforceable.

 

[semilog]

So, how about Petacchi?

He's an absolute animal. See, that's why I watch bike racing in the first place: there are some things that cannot be faked -- I could never handle a bike like that, and it's a joy to watch someone who can.