cooker

What other kinds of cheating are you ok with?

G-Whacker

I find this statement ironic, considering it was you who started the thread memorializing Tom Simpson (among others). Now you don't care if they dope and die as long as they all get the same opportunity to keel over on mountains? Is the tour better for having a dead doper memorial along the route, or would cycling have been better with a longer lived Simpson?

RockyMtnMerlin

Excellent point.

Sunset_Va

Cycling and any sport, especially the ones where the athletes are paid outrageous salaries, should simply say....and do...........and enforce the guideline, that if you are caught using any enhancement drug, you can never compete again. Or be fired and your contract terminated.

I disagree. Its really hurt Cycling's image.

Laggard

It's only cheating if it's illegal.

turtletwins2002

You are not really that ignorant are you? Doping IS illegal in France, therefore the police haul off the dopers for questioning. It is also not allowed in the sport. If you want to compete in this particular sport, you must play by the rules set out by the officials. If one chooses not to play by those rules, they are penalized. What part do you not understand?

alanbikehouston

Over the past twenty years, dozens of pro cyclist have suffered sudden heart failure, as a direct result of doping.

Many of them wanted to race "clean", but were competing against dopers. So, their choices were "dope and die" or get a job in a factory or on a farm.

And, of course, teen cyclists around the world look up to the pro riders. If dope is good for the pros, it must be good for Johnny in Montana.

Nope. I'd like to see "dope free" cycling. If a guy gets caught doping, a lifetime ban. And, a one year ban for everyone associated with his team...that way, your team mates have an incentive to NOT look the other way.

A few years of that, and all of the dopers would be gone. The remaining two cyclists would battle it out to see which of them was the best "clean" cyclist.

smoke

...i guess all that matters is that they entertain you. people can die as long as it's for your enjoyment. so who did you used to root for - the christians or the lions?

smoke

it IS illegal, *** of course, if you had any morals, it wouldn't require the act of a legislative body

urodacus

hey laggard and friends, let's all get high. all day, everyday.


jealous of those better than you, aren't you? i bet you cheated your way through junior high too, all the way into a really great job in some office somewhere. well done!

SunFlower

everyone here probably still goes to hollywood movies and buys music. half those people are snorting, injecting, and blowing toxic drugs into every orfice of their bodies. how many musicans and actors have died in the last 30 years ? hundreds !!
i say have one doping leauge and one clean leauge. lets the fans,racers and sponsors decide which one they prefer to be involved with. personally, i would be very interested in both.

TarmacDude

I don't think fans would want to watch a bunch of doped up cyclists. What fans want to watch are heroes...and heroes don't need to dope to win, just their God given talent. Look at Lance, he didn't need to dope and I think more cyclists need to follow Lance's example.

roadwarrior

I like you in that you are one of the few people out here that generally knows what they are talking about when it comes to the racing aspect of cycling...

But, I don't agree with you here.

How about this...if everyone dopes, as you say, then it's a level playing field.

If no one dopes, it's also a level playing field.

Now we both know that if everyone doped, that someone would find better dope than everyone else. And as a result, there would still be testing to find out what "illegal" dope they were on. Unless you are suggesting that any and all dope, no matter what, is OK. No limits. And then I'd suggest that it's merely a matte of time before we watch one or more racers die in a race. And I really don't want to see that. That's already happened.

Reagardless, someone will cheat. So we are back where we started. And I'd suggest that this is a better way to go.

I'll take it one step further...if this continues, if riders (as in the case of Ricco, who it seems thought he was taking something that was new and ahead of the curve...NOT) continue inthis fashion, then the sport will go away. No company will want to be involved. No company involvement, no money, no jobs, no races.

Richard_Rides

I thought about this too, but human nature being what it is, in order to gain a competitive advantage, guys in the non-doping league would start doping on the sly. Soon you would have two doping leagues.

cooker

In all fairness, he said in the OP he wanted it to be legal.

However, to Mr. Laggard, what I suspect you might really want, if I can engage in speculation, is that you don't want so much disruption and disappointment when you're watching a big stage race like this where race leaders and teams keep getting kicked out and their fans' enthusiasm keep getting crushed when the people they are cheering for turn out to be tainted. You'd like all that to go away and you figure if the doping were legal it would be more fun to watch.

key

if every one dopes there will be a level playing field. there would be a level playing field now if there were no dopers. yet there are still people who cheat.

if they all dope for a level playing field. theres bound to be some one that dopes a bit more just to get ahead and then some one else dopes a bit more than that to beat him. and before you know it, you get riders dying in the middle of the night or when they ride.

2wheeled

Nice post!

40 Cent

Quote:

Originally Posted by roadwarrior

I like you in that you are one of the few people out here that generally knows what they are talking about when it comes to the racing aspect of cycling...

But, I don't agree with you here.

How about this...if everyone dopes, as you say, then it's a level playing field.

If no one dopes, it's also a level playing field.

Now we both know that if everyone doped, that someone would find better dope than everyone else. And as a result, there would still be testing to find out what "illegal" dope they were on. Unless you are suggesting that any and all dope, no matter what, is OK. No limits. And then I'd suggest that it's merely a matte of time before we watch one or more racers die in a race. And I really don't want to see that. That's already happened.

Reagardless, someone will cheat. So we are back where we started. And I'd suggest that this is a better way to go.

I'll take it one step further...if this continues, if riders (as in the case of Ricco, who it seems thought he was taking something that was new and ahead of the curve...NOT) continue inthis fashion, then the sport will go away. No company will want to be involved.

But the argument isn't so simple. The drugs follow the money. The sponser that may pull out is also the sponser that's paying lots of money for more exposure, a good showing, etc.; Sure they want clean wins, but they want wins.

There's been cheating since the first Tour, and not just drug related cheating. I don't like it but I agree with the OP that it's a huge distraction and sadly for some, the only reason to pay attention to the sport.

It would be great if cheating could be limited. One option that might work would be to go back to national teams, and give riders set contracts with a purse at the end for the winning rider and team, but no amount that a rider's going to kill himself over. It's seems to me that any cyclist that dopes, and that goes for athletes in other sports, too, has pretty much been lured away from the true spirit of competition that got him into the sport in the first place. Sad.

merlinextraligh

I'm afraid that may be what it takes. We may have to get to the point where the money and the sponsorship dries up before there's true reform.

AdrianFly

They should have tested that yellow lab that got nailed last year.

That guy nailed the dog and totally trashed his wheel and went over the bars.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=aGLDllHhBnE


Dog goes down, gets back up a little stunned.. then continues to walk away... continuing to wag his tail! Even the dogs at the tour are doping. This is getting out of hand.

harlond

You know how catchers block the plate to improve their ability to tag out a sliding runner? That's against the rules, but I'm OK with it. Or in cycling, you know how riders take bidon slings from their team car? That's cheating, but I'm OK with that. Aren't you?

Troop

I have. They were called the amphetamines tours.

LanceFanBoy

This sounds like a thread of Major League Baseball fans! haha

cooker

No, I don't like those practises. However, they don't threaten the lives of the participants, and there is a kind of informal consensus that a certain, fairly low, level of questionable tactics that have very little impact on the final outcome of the competition, is tolerated by referees; and the public and the players will immediately cry foul if they think the officials are favouring one team over another. It's all out in the open and everybody knows how far they can push it.

Doping threatens the lives of cyclists, it's done in secret and inconsistently, and it makes the contest meaningless.

harlond

There was such a consensus in cycling for quite some time, maybe since Anquetil or before. Changing obviously, and has been for some time, but my point is that what constitutes cheating is not so black and white as some people seem to think. That said, I actually like the bidon sling; looks like it would feel cool.

Doesn't seem as simple as that to me. As Swart said, if everybody's doping, Lance is the best, if nobody's doping, Lance is the best.