Big Mig - honest, dishonest?

On May 27, 7:40 pm, "
wrote:
On May 27, 1:29 pm, wrote:

If there was a magic elixir that made
airline pilots more alert and better able to perform their job (and
made mathematicians able to produce more and better theorems), would
you suspend them if they used it?

dumbass,

there is. uppers. military pilots are given uppers to stay alert and
offset the effects of airsickness medication (i was part of a study
that looked at this). and everyone on rbr knows about erdos and
uppers.

Dumbass,

Yeah, I know -- that's why I used those two examples.

schreef:
How far is too far with alcohol?

I always forget, and remember again the next morning.


--
E. Dronkert

In article . com,
wrote:

On May 27, 6:59 pm, Ryan Cousineau wrote:
But "how far is too far?"

How far is too far with alcohol?

Well, this is the problem. Even at the amateur level, I don't want
cycling to be a sport where one has to say "good, you have shown ability
enough to get this far. Now retire, because to go further is to
compromise your ethics and reputation."

Why would going further compromise ethics?

Well, the key case I envision is where the kid shows enough talent to
enter the pro or Div-III ranks, but finds that there is tremendous
pressure from teammates and DSes to "maximize his potential" so to speak.

I mean, the reason drugs are widespread, despite huge penalties for use,
is because they work.

Because sure, there's going to be kids who through sheer will drive
themselves to high levels of achievement. But there's also going to be
kids who just come out, shoot through every level of competition
available, and through no fault of their own, are naturals to go to
Europe at age 20 and join up with a neo-pro team.

At that point do you say "now stop: go get a degree or a trade, and if
you like you can still race the Tuesday Nighters and the Tour de
Gastown."

Seems kinda sad.

It only seems sad because you think sports are important.

Sports are important. I took up cycling very late (commuter at age 28,
racer at age 30) and I think it has added immensely to my life. What is
important if not being healthy, generating endorphins, and creating
excuses to have the aprés-race beers?

Pro sports are entertainment, for sure, and not important in and of
themselves. The problem is that any sport or game, whether pro or
amateur, is primarily interesting because of the shared rules. This
allows us to work within the context of the game, and the rules (at
least for well-structured games) are there primarily to keep the game
fun and from being too serious.

Dumbass, doping among airline pilots, bus drivers, nuclear power plant
operators, and the guy who does my taxes is important. Hitting
baseballs over fences, kicking a ball into a net, and riding a bike
fast isn't important -- what's more, the dope they take enhances
performance, not degrades it. If there was a magic elixir that made
airline pilots more alert and better able to perform their job (and
made mathematicians able to produce more and better theorems), would
you suspend them if they used it?

I'd force 'em to use it.

But as I've pointed out before, maybe we got better work from Erdös
because he was on uppers. Maybe. But we don't get better sport because
the top riders are on EPO, especially if part of the reason they're the
top twenty is because ten of them are replacing the five riders who
won't dope and the five riders who died in their sleep from getting
their EPO dosages wrong.

But more importantly, it doesn't "enhance" competition, which is what we
really want. This is how people get to arguing in favour of the "libre"
peloton, but the trouble is that they probably don't realize how many
crazy performance-enhancing drugs are off the "program" only because
they can be detected so easily there's no point in even trying.

Amusingly, cycling has, arguably, only one prestigious "performance"
record (as opposed to "competition" records, like how many Giros you
have won): the Athlete's Hour. A handful of other performance records
are kept (200m sprint, Kilo, the hotly debated Ventoux timings...) and
contested. I don't think these are the core of the sport, even the Hour.

Well, maybe the hour. But there the UCI has tried harder to level the
field than anywhere else, what with banning...everything after the year
1972.

The actual racing isn't really helped by drugs, or at least not helped
enough. What are we talking about, a 1-2 km/h improvement in typical
racing speeds? You can't see that, it doesn't make the racing better,
and for that matter, the faster the race speed the harder it is for a
breakaway to succeed, for aerodynamic reasons.

If we really wanted the speeds higher, screw drugs: we need to get those
boys into faired recumbents. How about 100+ km/h sprint finishes?

Shall we look to the shining example of pro bodybuilding for our
sporting example?

There's a lot of schizophrenia in cycling (and more generally, in
sports) right now. Doping is widespread, part of the culture, and
absolutely forbidden by extremely strict penalties. I understand the
temptation to suggest that it's the last part that we should get rid of,
but I would caution that just because the lid of Pandora's Box is easy
to open, doesn't mean that's a good idea.

--
Ryan Cousineau http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos

In article
,
RonSonic wrote:

On 26 May 2007 14:09:11 -0700, "
wrote:

On May 26, 11:45 am, RonSonic wrote:
"Risible." From the Latin "ris" for laugh - the root word of ridicule and
derision.

Thank you. I knew, as soon as I popped "send", I would be called into
account for leaving the hyphen out, between ision and able.

Oh, it certainly was clear without a hyphen.

However, my intent in posting was not based on "laughter" but on
"laffer". Hidden protocols ("get me a positive reader"), personal
vendettas, bad rules, worse enforcement-- none of that is very funny.
Like having an apparent deep and real hatred for someone you've never
met; who, at worst, might only have been doing the same as everyone
else, if being more successful at it... because he saluted too
vigorously when he won some stupid bicycle race? (just guessing,
there) --D-y

Risible is good for that. While it just means laughable it doesn't mean funny as
much as that it should be laughed at as ridiculous and bordering on
contemptable. A sort of one snort laugh. You know like the guys who say you can
tell the dopers by either their super human consistency or by their super human
recovery from having a bad day.

They laughed at Hitler too.

--
Michael Press

In article
. com,
Bill C wrote:

On May 26, 11:43 am, "
wrote:
On May 25, 11:36 pm, "Carl Sundquist" wrote:

The situation that made Brian such a focal point of derision was not that he
was necessarily wrong, but that his zealousness was focused on one
individual to the degree of appearing of indifferent about doping throughout
the remainder of peloton.

I believe Brian stated (and then quoted himself at least once) he was
actually in favor of letting riders use whatever they wanted. Which
made his personal hatred of someone he's never met personally even
more derisionable IMHO.

Well, some people just can't stand others' feeling good about
themselves, you know? Such is life! --D-y

Actually that was one of the options Brian threw out there. I believe
his point was that, at least that way, we'd have an honest system
where everyone knew what was going on, what they were getting into,
and it would allow close medical supervision for practices that are
now underground.
Proabably better for and afer for riders than the current mess where
the majority feel the need to dope to compete, but are having to do it
themselves or with quacks.
Lot's of reasonable thoughts got lost in Brian's crusade against
Lance and everyone who has every even met him.

Where the reasonable thoughts got lost is in Brian's refusal to acknowledge
that people actually agreed with him regularly. It had to be a
one man crusade.

--
Michael Press

On May 27, 9:51 pm, Ryan Cousineau wrote:
But as I've pointed out before, maybe we got better work from Erdös
because he was on uppers. Maybe. But we don't get better sport because
the top riders are on EPO

If you think that, then you're saying performance doesn't enhance
sports. How odd.

especially if part of the reason they're the
top twenty is because ten of them are replacing the five riders who
won't dope and the five riders who died in their sleep from getting
their EPO dosages wrong.

That's an argument for safety, not against performance enhancement.

schreef:
How far is too far with alcohol?

Ewoud Dronkert wrote:
I always forget, and remember again the next morning.

According to the LIVEDRUNK philosophy you're not supposed to remember
anything the next morning, not even the name of the entity you wake up
next to.

In article
.com
,
Bill C wrote:

Can't say he did, or didn't, but it's very reasonable to question his
performances. When you've got a guy who weighs 40 lbs more dropping
people on steep climbs all day long, or lightweights smoking TTs then
you've really got to wonder.

No, I do not have to wonder. I watch and enjoy the
race. There is no PED for good strategy, tactics, or
bike handling. The riders do not suffer less when
using a PED, they just go faster; and faster is way
down on my list of things to watch for. In fact
lanterne rouge is more important to me than speed. I
cannot tell the difference unless I look at the
statistics.

--
Michael Press

Ryan Cousineau wrote:
Well, the key case I envision is where the kid shows enough talent to
enter the pro or Div-III ranks, but finds that there is tremendous
pressure from teammates and DSes to "maximize his potential" so to speak.

This is only a problem if the kid thinks sport is important. It's
not. Div-III pros live like ****. Kids that walk away from it take
jobs that pay more for less work. If the kid views sport in the
proper perspective they'll make the right decision, regardless
of which way they go.

Bob Schwartz

In article . com,
wrote:

On May 27, 9:51 pm, Ryan Cousineau wrote:
But as I've pointed out before, maybe we got better work from Erdös
because he was on uppers. Maybe. But we don't get better sport because
the top riders are on EPO

If you think that, then you're saying performance doesn't enhance
sports. How odd.

It doesn't change the relative performance. I want to see the best
riders against the best riders in the best events. If some dope and some
don't, there's an obfuscating asymmetry. If nobody dopes, it's just a
competition. If everybody dopes, it's a competition where maybe one or
two riders didn't make it to the start because the doping killed them.

especially if part of the reason they're the
top twenty is because ten of them are replacing the five riders who
won't dope and the five riders who died in their sleep from getting
their EPO dosages wrong.

That's an argument for safety, not against performance enhancement.

Well, I'll take that. The question you seem to be asking is "what does
doping take away from the sport?" The question I ask is "what does it
add?"

The interesting question is also what qualifies as normal training.
Honestly, if I thought the riders would stay at orange juice doses of
EPO, I would be more sanguine (except for the long-term RBC production
problems it will probably cause...), but I think they'd end up on wacky
loads of amphetamines instead. And I think they'd create a norm that
would be a model for fattie masters and amateurs: we're already
vulnerable to buying overpriced carbon goodies because the pros have
them; now we can buy the same drugs they use, too!

Sure, they may have done that already, but I don't want it to be worse.

Back to the "performance doesn't enhance sports" argument, we're always
operating within the constraints of the rules. If we let the pros use
libre bicycles, there would be 4 kg bikes going up the hillclimbs, and
Varna Diablos would be the standard TT machine. We don't, for some
pretty good reasons.

I think of drugs as in the same category as 4 kg road bikes: not a good
plan.

--
Ryan Cousineau http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos