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#41
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Hecklers starting to joust with the Dope King
In article ,
"marco" wrote: Michael Press wrote: Do you regularly take drugs? Only when reading/posting to rbr ...is it that obvious? No. I have no way of knowing. Now, are you going to treat this seriously as you started out, or are you going to run and hide from the hard questions? -- Old Fritz |
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Hecklers starting to joust with the Dope King
Michael Press wrote:
Do you regularly take drugs? I wrote: Only when reading/posting to rbr ...is it that obvious? Frederick the Great wrote: No. I have no way of knowing. Now, are you going to treat this seriously as you started out, or are you going to run and hide from the hard questions? Uhh... ok... I didn't realize it was a serious question. The answer is Yes or No, depending on your definition. Do you consider a glass of red wine with dinner as drugs? I consider as part of dinner ...food basically. I do not regularly take anything typically classified as a drug or medicine, even sometimes when recommended by a physician. E.g., I've been trying to get in racing shape all year and was starting to make progress when I got slammed with the worst bronchial and sinus infection I've had in at least a decade. I refused to take antibiotics for it, and suffered for nearly a month. It's still not completely gone, but my racing season is... |
#43
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Hecklers starting to joust with the Dope King
On Jun 9, 11:46*am, "marco" wrote:
--D-y wrote: Junior high, if not middle school, parents are doing whatever they think will advance their children's careers in sports. Paying for hours of extra coaching time, buying expensive equipment, moving the family to get into the "right" school district according to which teams are proven winners. True, some do, but it's a very small minority of parents and kids. At least where I live. As far as you know. I don't "know" either. Sure are a lot of massive high school football players around, these days. --D-y |
#44
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Hecklers starting to joust with the Dope King
On 6/9/2010 3:36 PM, --D-y wrote:
On Jun 9, 11:46 am, wrote: --D-y wrote: Junior high, if not middle school, parents are doing whatever they think will advance their children's careers in sports. Paying for hours of extra coaching time, buying expensive equipment, moving the family to get into the "right" school district according to which teams are proven winners. True, some do, but it's a very small minority of parents and kids. At least where I live. As far as you know. I don't "know" either. Sure are a lot of massive high school football players around, these days. --D-y A number of years ago (2000 or so?) a reporter at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune went through archives looking up the weight figures for kids that had been named "All Metro Area" at line positions. He found something like a 50 lb weight gain over a ten year period. And it ain't like Minnesota is the capitol of high school football. Fred Flintstein |
#45
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Hecklers starting to joust with the Dope King
In article ,
"marco" wrote: Michael Press wrote: Do you regularly take drugs? I wrote: Only when reading/posting to rbr ...is it that obvious? Frederick the Great wrote: No. I have no way of knowing. Now, are you going to treat this seriously as you started out, or are you going to run and hide from the hard questions? Uhh... ok... I didn't realize it was a serious question. The answer is Yes or No, depending on your definition. Do you consider a glass of red wine with dinner as drugs? I consider as part of dinner ...food basically. I do not regularly take anything typically classified as a drug or medicine, even sometimes when recommended by a physician. E.g., I've been trying to get in racing shape all year and was starting to make progress when I got slammed with the worst bronchial and sinus infection I've had in at least a decade. I refused to take antibiotics for it, and suffered for nearly a month. It's still not completely gone, but my racing season is... What I am getting at is people are on drug regimens or not by choice; and it should all be protected under patient-physician confidentiality. Drug testing is a serious intrusion, and asking somebody what they take is a serious intrusion. We should not undertake it lightly, as many crusaders do and as many uninvolved do. Endurance athletes need good, close medical supervision. I will not deny them anything. I have one or two drinks or the equivalent most days, will drain half a bottle of wine occasionally, will drink off a whole bottle of good champagne on my birthday and New Year's eve. Otherwise not so much as an aspirin. With a case of bronchitis as you describe, I would take the antibiotics. After a dental procedure I took the antibiotics that he recommended because I trust the guy. -- Old Fritz |
#46
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Hecklers starting to joust with the Dope King
On 6/9/2010 11:41 AM, marco wrote:
I wrote: Obviously, rbr'ers are not representative of cycling fans. The majority of people here will follow the sport no matter what happens with the doping fight. My impression of the more casual fan base is that they are drawn to the drama and suffer factor. Once it becomes widely accepted that most all pro riders are doped, I believe that the casual fans will lose interest. Fred Flintstein wrote: I composed all sorts of replies in my head, but I'll stick to one point that I think is central. Is the scenario that you present above what happened to American football when steroids came on the scene? Baseball players have been doped since the invention of dope. Has your scenario played out there? How about tennis? When the sport of tennis embraced the syringe, what happened to it's popularity and fan base? I respect your opinions but I think you are bringing too much emotion to your perception of reality. Even guys that are racing at the Pro Tour level are better off going to college. Very few rise above that. So while I sympathize with people that are trying to do it clean, if someone doesn't get to dump time and effort down a dead end of a career and instead has to pursue something that pays better for less crap, I guess that for me the violins are playing pretty softly. I also think that if you cost out the needed effort to clean up what is really a hobby for all but a very few, you really can't justify it unless you also make an huge emotional investment into elevating your hobby. I appreciate your civil, well-reasoned response. Clearly you are correct that those sports are just as popular as ever despite drugs coming to the surface. I suppose the question you are really posing to me is, why would cycling be any different? Fair enough. My answer is, in the US anyway, the popularity of pro cycling is a fairly new phenomena and most fans are nowhere near as knowledgeable and committed as baseball, football, and/or tennis fans. For most, it's just kind of trendy to be aware of and follow pro cycling. They are not hardcore fans, like rbr denizens for example, and they are not yet aware of the depth of the doping issues, as made clear by viewer/reader comments in mainstream media. I guess I'm afraid that it wouldn't take much to lose their attention. And yes, you are certainly correct that my views are colored by some emotion and some personal experiences too. Thus, we've established that I'm a defective bot ... so, this bot is going rogue and going to ask questions of its author... First, do you think doping is as deep and/or widespread in the three sports you mentioned above as it is in cycling? That's not a particularly well-defined question, so let me add: do you think it is possible to compete successfully in those sports without doping? Can a rider be competitive in a grand tour without doping? Why has cycling had more doping sanctions than any other sport? Is it simply because cycling has turned the spotlight on itself and the others haven't, or is it because the culture of pro cycling is more infused with drugs than those other sports? Out of the last ten years of Boston marathons, how many podium finishers were free of any against-the-rules blood manipulation? How about TdF podiums? The core of my questions is this: I think cycling at the Pro Tour level is dirtier than most other sports, and I think a big part of the reason is that the relevant doping techniques provide a substantial enough advantage that riders who don't partake simply can't be there to compete. Finally, I agree that in the grand scheme of things, 99.999% of people would be better off to keep cycling as a simple recreational hobby and not get hooked. Unfortunately, the romantic in me still respects and pulls for those riders who give it a try and commit themselves to do it cleanly. Don Quixote ps. To Henry I'd say, yes, society is highly medicated and sadly that's our culture but the difference I cannot get past is that in one case (society) it is largely legal and directly impacts only the user, whereas in pro cycling it's against the rules and impacts the user's brethren. pps. To ED I'd say, I'm glad somebody out there is thinking of the children! Let's start with baseball. I think we can agree that as professional sports go, baseball is pretty sedentary. Yet doping has had a huge impact on the game. Baseball players spend almost the entire game either on their cans or standing still. And doping has overrun the game. So maybe a more refined question to ask is whether playing clean hurts your income. I think the current set of MLB players is giving you your answer, they think it is 'yes'. MLB had a 7% rate of positives with their initial testing program that was purposely designed to be inadequate. Using tests that people that are dirty as hell can beat with their eyes closed. What that tells you is they had 7% that didn't even bother to take evasive maneuvers. Rather than hire a Greg Anderson they were doing it on the cheap. If you go to the beach you will be looking at dozens of people that are doping strictly for cosmetic reasons. With little risk too. I know there are those that think that cancer follows steroid use as surely as summer follows spring, the scene at the beach tells you that the risks are small and don't require a lot of brainpower to manage. What do you think it would look like if you paid people at the beach large sums of money to take steroids. I think it would look like MLB. You might have to require them to cut in an advisor to provide training on getting past the tests. But I doubt that would change things much. The Mitchel Report had enough names of confirmed users to stock two teams. Clean players are certainly a minority. I don't think it is possible for a clean player to win a tennis grand slam event. Ice hockey is well known for it's issues with steroid use. High school (and college) football is populated with people that very rarely see any testing at all and almost never see meaningful testing. People that get a lot of positive feedback for good performance and have a youthful sense of invulnerability. I think that is you pulled a surprise test on just about any high school team in this country you would get positives, and if it was a top team there would be a lot of them. Player weights rose too much and too quickly. We know what is behind that. If you want to know why cycling has so many more problems with this, the answer is simple. The sports that have a fewest problems with doping are the ones that keep it all internal. Think about that for a second. We never hear about doping issues in the NBA except for recreational dope and usually the cops are involved. Maybe dope doesn't help that much in a sport with massive physical demands. Maybe NBA players just say 'no' in spite of the massive financial rewards in the game. Or maybe the NBA keeps it all in house. Like tennis does. The sports that are having the most problems are the ones that don't have a highly defined ownership or management structure including some form of players representation. The sports that are having problems are the ones that allow outside agencies manage their testing. The Tour organizers will tell you how important it is to have control over the testing process. When Vino and Saunier Duval burned to a crisp there was no one looking out for the Tour's interests. Dope test management changed the very next year. The Tour has a much tighter grip on it's testing now. Imagine that. I wouldn't say that cycling is the dirtiest sport. I think that soccer is. There is an order of magnitude more money and almost no outside intervention there. Cycling is certainly one of the most poorly managed. Fred Flintstein |
#47
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Hecklers starting to joust with the Dope King
On Jun 9, 9:41*am, "marco" wrote:
First, do you think doping is as deep and/or widespread in the three sports you mentioned above as it is in cycling? That's not a particularly well-defined question, so let me add: do you think it is possible to compete successfully in those sports without doping? Can a rider be competitive in a grand tour without doping? Why has cycling had more doping sanctions than any other sport? Is it simply because cycling has turned the spotlight on itself and the others haven't, or is it because the culture of pro cycling is more infused with drugs than those other sports? Out of the last ten years of Boston marathons, how many podium finishers were free of any against-the-rules blood manipulation? How about TdF podiums? The core of my questions is this: I think cycling at the Pro Tour level is dirtier than most other sports, and I think a big part of the reason is that the relevant doping techniques provide a substantial enough advantage that riders who don't partake simply can't be there to compete. Finally, I agree that in the grand scheme of things, 99.999% of people would be better off to keep cycling as a simple recreational hobby and not get hooked. Unfortunately, the romantic in me still respects and pulls for those riders who give it a try and commit themselves to do it cleanly. Don Quixote Well, I don't actually think pro sports in say the US are any cleaner than pro cycling. In fact, the dollar amounts at stake are greater, and it's hard to imagine that the culture and moral virtue of the people involved in US pro ball leagues are restraining them from dipping further into the pharma. Road cycling is an endurance sport, not a skill sport (except for the occasional Savoldelli mad descent) and doping, particularly doping that changes one's hematocrit, makes a real difference. You can't change a donkey into a racehorse, but you can sure make a racehorse faster. In many pro sports, this isn't as obvious - drugs will make a receiver faster or a basketball player stronger, but they won't cure hands of stone or a poor shooting touch. (On the other hand, a stronger player is less tired by game's end and doesn't make skill mistakes, so ...) But there is still a huge advantage to be gained by being faster and stronger. The idea of cycling (or say track) as a test of who is fastest, plus the fact that it's both an individual and a team sport, I think means that Joe Fan (and maybe Joe Cat 1) regards doping as a more serious violation of the state of play. This doesn't really make sense. It's pretty obvious when you look at recent baseball or football that, other things being roughly equal, players with steroids will beat players without steroids. The same is no doubt true of soccer and either steroids or EPO. It's likely that there are some players out there good enough to play in the big leagues without modification. But even they are still at a disadvantage and will find it hard to be at the very top - if you ask how many TdF podiums have doping suspicions, it's kind of like asking what fraction of home run kings are full of andro. It's probably larger than the fraction of journeyman infielders. I have sympathy for somebody like Myerson who chose to do it his way, suffered rbr making jokes about him getting lapped in Euro races, and may see those who did charge up and have success as hypocrites. But really, it's not like Myerson would be happy if he'd gone the charging route. He'd be hating himself for it, because that's his personality. I "wish" I was cutthroat and self-centered enough to have a more successful academic career, but honestly, I couldn't do it, I don't have the personality for it. That's life as a journeyman infielder. It's okay with me if Myerson vents about how the whole structure of pro cycling should be torn down, but I don't see how you'd replace it with something cleaner, just something better organized (like FIFA). Sure, if they banned all the old tainted coaches and DSes, that sounds great, but for every Saiz or Pevenage you ban, someone new will pop up. People dope even when there isn't money at stake, so with the money, what can you do? I think the only solutions are ones like Chung's, where you have more frequent testing and smaller penalties that are handed out instantly. The two-week sitdown for breaking the 50% HCT limit is a good example of this. It doesn't rid the sport of doping. It does lessen the advantage. Fredamateur Ben |
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Hecklers starting to joust with the Dope King
Fredmaster of Brainerd wrote:
It's okay with me if Myerson vents about how the whole structure of pro cycling should be torn down, but I don't see how you'd replace it with something cleaner, just something better organized (like FIFA). Sure, if they banned all the old tainted coaches and DSes, that sounds great, but for every Saiz or Pevenage you ban, someone new will pop up. People dope even when there isn't money at stake, so with the money, what can you do? I think the only solutions are ones like Chung's, where you have more frequent testing and smaller penalties that are handed out instantly. The two-week sitdown for breaking the 50% HCT limit is a good example of this. It doesn't rid the sport of doping. It does lessen the advantage. You're right, but unfortunately self righteousness and hysteria rules just like it did in Salem (although with the expertise in microdosing these days I'm not sure if a 50% rule would catch many potential Pantani's). |
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Hecklers starting to joust with the Dope King
On 6/12/2010 1:13 AM, Fredmaster of Brainerd wrote:
I "wish" I was cutthroat and self-centered enough to have a more successful academic career, but honestly, I couldn't do it, I don't have the personality for it. That's life as a journeyman infielder. You're the better for it. Though it would have been nice to declaim at the award presentation, "If I've seen further than others it is by standing on the necks of graduate students." I think the only solutions are ones like Chung's, where you have more frequent testing and smaller penalties that are handed out instantly. and to team members. The two-week sitdown for breaking the 50% HCT limit is a good example of this. It doesn't rid the sport of doping. It does lessen the advantage. Rather than punish the doping behavior as a moral offense, neutralize the advantage as a sporting violation. |
#50
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Hecklers starting to joust with the Dope King
In article ,
Fred on a stick wrote: On 6/12/2010 1:13 AM, Fredmaster of Brainerd wrote: I "wish" I was cutthroat and self-centered enough to have a more successful academic career, but honestly, I couldn't do it, I don't have the personality for it. That's life as a journeyman infielder. You're the better for it. Though it would have been nice to declaim at the award presentation, "If I've seen further than others it is by standing on the necks of graduate students." I think the only solutions are ones like Chung's, where you have more frequent testing and smaller penalties that are handed out instantly. and to team members. The two-week sitdown for breaking the 50% HCT limit is a good example of this. It doesn't rid the sport of doping. It does lessen the advantage. Rather than punish the doping behavior as a moral offense, neutralize the advantage as a sporting violation. I want to draw the line further. Futbol is an endurance sport. When FIFA begins to publicly hand out doping sanctions, then cycling can start. -- Old Fritz |
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