Originally Posted by
PeteHski
All this because you simply don’t believe it would be possible to better doped performance levels from 20 years ago without doping.
What I observed over my 3 decades in motorsport was less and less cheating as the sport became more corporate and professional. The stakes become too high and involved too many people. I’m talking about technical cheating. You get the odd rogue spy, tactical and financial games. But illegal cars are a non-starter in the modern era. Obviously the legal boundaries are legitimately tested. Go back 40 years and there was a lot more dodgy stuff going on with the actual cars. It was easy to hide and few people needed to know.
It's not just based off one metric, or one sport.
I'm skeptical about all sports, and many aspects of the sports - not just doping.
"Win at all costs" exists across the board, even for things like US Olympic teams.
-Watch the documentary called Athlete A. It's not about doping. It's about the physical, sexual and mental abuse the US female gymnasts had to endure in order to have a shot at the Olympic team. This was a high profile organization that produced athletes for the US Olympic team, it was the only way to get on the team - and the team doctor was sexually assaulting essentially every young girl on the team - every single one of them. And it was all covered up - the president of the organization covered it up, a university the doctor worked for covered it up.
All in the name of winning at all cost.
NFL - look at the build and speed of the players. Bigger, better, faster than ever before. Leaner, stronger, more muscular...
-Terrell Owens was a wide receiver, hall of famer... supposed to be one of the fast skinny guys. He was 6'2, 230# solid muscle. Completely ripped. More muscular and leaner than Arnold Schwarzenegger during his MR Olympia days... no way in hell was T.O. clean. T.O. is just an example - there are 100's of NFL players with insane bodies.
College football - local lower division college had a bunch of its athletes popped for using steroids - even the kicker was popped. The kicker. They didn't fail tests, they got caught with the drugs.
Then I listen to cues from older riders, even cues from Lance himself. Lance will say the same things they said in the past when someone doped up - "Looks like so and so was having his day". That was code back in the day for when they took a little extra something something. You still here that often from the old timers when they talk about stages or extra ordinary performances.
Name the sport - any sport, I don't think the athletes are clean. Not just cycling.
But I think historically that cycling was the biggest offender - and I don't think they've ever stopped. I think they had a period of trying to figure out the next best thing, and the lull of the 2012-2018/19 era shows that. But now all of the sudden they are back to matching the best times and records...
For 15 some years the top 100 times up Huez list barely changed. After the Lance era, one guy would pop up on there every so often - then all of the sudden 5 riders, at the end of a crazy hard stage, popped into the top 20 - fastest time up the Alp since 2006. 5 riders.
There is a notable gap between 2006-2018 in times up the Alp. Then all of the sudden multiple riders started to crack pre 06 times. I have a hard time believing that is all due to better carb intake...