Quote:
Originally Posted by octothorp
Not sure if you read the article that Troutman posted just above your post, but I think it does an excellent job of answering those questions.
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I did read the article after i posted but disagree with a lot of the arguements.
The whole idea that stripping titles years after is a deterrant is false. As an elite cycling athlete you have two choices:
Dope and try to avoid getting caught, or not dope and lose. If you dope and get caught years later you have already made money off of winning, more money than if you ever one. If you dont dope and you are the best non doped athlete and say finished tenth even if they caught all of other dopers in front of you you would never reep the rewards of winning and because everyone else doped you would be guilty by association. So based on all of the above if you want to be an elite cyclist you dope to the limit of not getting caught in the present and if you get caught in the future it doesnt matter as you already made a name for your self. Would Armstrong dope if he had to do it all over again... Of course so its obviously not a deterrant.
The next arguement is that you still need to change past results. In fact the better thing to do is to leave the results and reinstate the results of ulrich etc. those tours stand on their own as events that document what happened in cycling. We all know they doped and history will always discuss it as a doped era so there is no need for adjusting the results years later. He also brings up olympians who wouldnt have got their medals if results changing wasnt done but is rewarding the 4th place athlete who likely doped really benficial. One of the reason olympic gold medalists get caught after events is after they win they are subject to increased scruitany that the other athletes arent. If Lance had disappeared after his first tour he would have never been caught. So since you cant put all of the dopers under the same scruitany there is little value years later. Even the olympics has an eight year limit on retesting drug samples with new technology so the highest body of the sport recognizes that their needs to be some limitations.
I also disagree that the sport comes down to who an dope the best vs who is the best athlete. All of the top teams have similar resources, and all of the top riders ride for top teams eventually, therefore top riders have equal access to doping tech and compete on an even playing field
One thing I do agree with in the article is the need to keep and expand in and out of compitition testing to limit the scale of doping that occurs. But to me if a test cant test it an athlete is foolish not to take it.