Big Mig - honest, dishonest?

In article ,
Ryan Cousineau wrote:

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.

I completely agree with you that the actual racing isn't made better by the drugs,
particularly from the spectator's standpoint. It probably isn't made better for the
participants either; however, they may (okay, probably *do*) think that it does,
simply because of the suspicion that the other riders may be using. So if rider A
doesn't use, he may think he'll never win, therefore he won't get a good contract,
and so on. In the long run, that aspect is also of value to the DS, the manager, the
team owner and the sponsor (whichis why I get annoyed when those characters get all
indignant when a rider gets caught). Of course, if everyone (more or less) is using,
then the overall picture hasn't really changed, except that the whole bunch is going
faster.

--
tanx,
Howard

Never take a tenant with a monkey.

remove YOUR SHOES to reply, ok?

On May 28, 6:00 am, Ryan Cousineau wrote:

Yes. But we don't worry about enforcing things that are allowed.

Hmmm. Don't you see the circularity there? (In addition, it appears
many people didn't much worry about enforcing disallowed things as
long as they didn't know about them).

At the
risk of dragging those bloody children into this argument again [there
should be a special text colour to set off my rhetorical cheap
shots...], I don't think I'd be worried if generic talented junior
trained had a good hematocrit and was reading Coggan and doing his
intervals.

Why not? What if you were wealthy and could afford wind-tunnel time,
while other kids couldn't? Which performance-enhancing substances,
devices, training, and knowledge should be allowed, and which
shouldn't?

Right, doping: I think I've articulated how I think doping differs from
bread, water, intervals, and even altitude tents, but I'm willing to
express it explicitly and at great length if necessary.

Perhaps you have, but I missed it. Is it necessary?

Aha! But the 6.8 kilo limit is an _easily enforceable_ safety standard.
It makes the bikes so heavy that, given current technology, they're
within the margins of non-craziness. There's no incentive to mess around.

Dude, they're building bikes lighter than that and then adding weights
to bring them up to 6.8kg.

On May 28, 2:24 am, "
wrote:

Would you encourage a kid to study mathematics,
knowing that math is hard, that not many of the
people who study it make it to a PhD, not many
of those become practicing academic mathematicians,
and that the path to becoming successful may eventually
require personal, professional, and ethical compromises
that a naive youth would not anticipate on opening
her first calculus textbook?

Been there, done that:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.b...37ef4bd5676eba

On May 27, 8:31 pm, Michael Press wrote:
In article
.com
,
"

wrote:
Would you encourage a kid to study mathematics,
knowing that math is hard, that not many of the
people who study it make it to a PhD, not many
of those become practicing academic mathematicians,
and that the path to becoming successful may eventually
require personal, professional, and ethical compromises
that a naive youth would not anticipate on opening
her first calculus textbook?

The thing about a mathematics degree is the number of
high paying jobs the degree holder can step into. In
college I knew an unwashed guy in the dormitory whose
room was utterly rank take a bachelor's mathematics
degree directly into a programmer's job for a high
priced government contractor at a ten-year veteran's
salary.

A doctorate in mathematics is often parlayed into
extremely high salaries these days. Academics is not
the only option.

Yes. There was a deliberate parallel - namely that
relatively few people "succeed" if success is defined
strictly as becoming a math professor or a ProTour pro.
However, there's no dishonor in going to grad school
or training as an amateur bike racer, and then
chucking the academic rat race or the $12K rat race
and saying "I did it, I liked it while I was doing it,
and now I'm done."

I know people who went to grad school and got off the
Research-1 university track or bailed out of the
professoriate or out of academia, and they're all harried
in the middle-class way, especially the ones with kids,
but the ones that bailed aren't bitter like Lafferty.
If anything, they're happier than the ones that are
still in.

Of course, college and math grad school nominally better
prepare you for other careers than does being a U23 racer.
In that sense, it's rather irresponsible to encourage kids
to take up sports with the allure of turning pro, but
this has nothing to do with doping and is true of all
the major sports. At least in the US, collegiate bike
racing is sufficiently amateur that it hasn't been
effectively professionalized, and some kid can go to
college and race a bike while still actually getting an
education. It may not be optimal preparation for bike
racing, but it's probably better preparation for life.

Ben

On May 28, 8:37 am, "
wrote:
However, there's no dishonor in going to grad school
[...] and then chucking the academic rat race

Hmmm. I think I said something very similar to this when I didn't get
tenure. I said it several thousand times.

In article .com,
wrote:

On May 28, 6:00 am, Ryan Cousineau wrote:

Yes. But we don't worry about enforcing things that are allowed.

Hmmm. Don't you see the circularity there? (In addition, it appears
many people didn't much worry about enforcing disallowed things as
long as they didn't know about them).

Heh. I missed that the first time. Another way to say it is that the UCI
is mostly enforcing the right things.

At the
risk of dragging those bloody children into this argument again [there
should be a special text colour to set off my rhetorical cheap
shots...], I don't think I'd be worried if generic talented junior
trained had a good hematocrit and was reading Coggan and doing his
intervals.

Why not? What if you were wealthy and could afford wind-tunnel time,
while other kids couldn't? Which performance-enhancing substances,
devices, training, and knowledge should be allowed, and which
shouldn't?

I think rider health and safety has to be the first principle. At some
point in my hypothetical example, the problem is we're just talking
about a kid: the main goal of youth-dev programs is not to make the kids
fast right away, it's to find the ones who will be fast. The chance that
a wind tunnel will take Junior from also-ran to next David Millar
(er...) is not great.

Back to drugs, I'll answer in a moment...

Right, doping: I think I've articulated how I think doping differs from
bread, water, intervals, and even altitude tents, but I'm willing to
express it explicitly and at great length if necessary.

Perhaps you have, but I missed it. Is it necessary?

I don't know.

But briefly and bluntly, I don't much want to watch racing where the
riders are driven into quasi-experimental (quasi- because it's not very
scientific in many cases...) drug practices that might get them dead or
badly hurt.

If I come up with some dumbass new training technique like super-low
cadence, the most likely problem I'll give myself is a use injury and
bad results. Life goes on. If I mess with roids or EPO and do it badly,
I box my liver, or die, or experience exciting long-term effects.

The libre-drugs proposal skirts the issue that right now, even our
"useless" drug-enforcement system actually forces a lot of drugs out of
the sport. You can't use most steroids at all, because they show up too
easily. You can't use speed for the same reason. You can only use EPO in
small, circumspect doses, lest you get caught over either the 50% HCT or
by a drug test.

HgH? Not so good yet. Testosterone? I thought it was well-screened, but
now that I've been talking to Floyd...

All this makes doping both less effective and less dangerous, for the
most part. There are some perverse effects with steroids, where it's
likely that the ones least likely to mess with your body are avoided
because they can be seen on tests, but on the whole I'd say there are
substantially fewer drugs in the system because of testing, and they're
used in smaller quantities, than there would be in any plausible "drugs
are acceptable" system.

Aha! But the 6.8 kilo limit is an _easily enforceable_ safety standard.
It makes the bikes so heavy that, given current technology, they're
within the margins of non-craziness. There's no incentive to mess around.

Dude, they're building bikes lighter than that and then adding weights
to bring them up to 6.8kg.

Some of them, but a surprising number of pro bikes that actually get
weighed are 7+ kg. The "high" weight limit (note to weight-weenies: I
will buy your useless and outmoded 7.5 kg bike!) has driven innovation
into aerodynamics, where it belongs. Deep wheels, aero frames...I see
Cervélo as the obvious vision of the future.

That said, I would not object to a weight limit that gradually dropped.
If, by mutual agreement, the bike companies told the UCI they could
safely build, say, 6.3 kg bikes, then go for it.

Same goes for drugs, by the way. After messing with the caffeine limits
for years, these days WADA basically says, "ah, forget it," and allows
quantities that are clearly performance-enhancing but not obviously
unsafe, and not outside the realm of consumption experienced by a great
many office workers who hardly even think of their morning cup as a
drug-delivery mechanism.

I think we should expect to see this trend continue, and the questions
will get harder, not easier. I still think the right answers in terms of
proscription (if not enforcement) are closer to WADA's answers than the
libre answers.

Still thinking about that bodybuilder whose body seized up while posing,

--
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
. com,
wrote:

On May 28, 8:37 am, "
wrote:
However, there's no dishonor in going to grad school
[...] and then chucking the academic rat race

Hmmm. I think I said something very similar to this when I didn't get
tenure. I said it several thousand times.

Sounds like you did not chuck it, rather you were up-chucked.

--
Michael Press

On Sun, 27 May 2007 20:20:47 -0700, Michael Press
wrote:

Let's test most
riders all the time. Dozens every day. Three month
suspensions and no record rewriting.

This makes a lot of sense except for the problem of the tests costing
money.

--
JT
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On May 28, 11:33 am, Michael Press wrote:

However, there's no dishonor in going to grad school
[...] and then chucking the academic rat race

Hmmm. I think I said something very similar to this when I didn't get
tenure. I said it several thousand times.

Sounds like you did not chuck it, rather you were up-chucked.

It's worse than that. I jumped on the first chance I had to get back.

In article
,
John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:

On Sun, 27 May 2007 20:20:47 -0700, Michael Press
wrote:

Let's test most
riders all the time. Dozens every day. Three month
suspensions and no record rewriting.

This makes a lot of sense except for the problem of the tests costing
money.

Not my problem. Until the testing program changes in
the way outlined we will not have an equable test
process that can reduce doping. Only when many, many
instances of doping are detected will the incidence of
doping decline. The current scheme does not work
because riders' utility computation is mostly
determined by probability of being caught. Do not win a
stage when you know you will test positive.

--
Michael Press