I agree with much of what you said... unfortunately. I often wonder what I would do if I had a serious Low T issue. Not the typical I'm getting older and my T is dropping normally but a serious issue, like my T is <250 ng/dL for whatever reason but I have both of my cajones.

I like to race and train but I don't want to do so at the total expense of my health and well being. I would never take T unless I had some serious issue (which I do not), and doing so for the pure reason for performance enhancement and edge on the competition is just downright scummy to me. But if faced with the situation that say I'm 50, my T is 200 ng/DL, I still like to do races and have a normal life... what would I do? I don't know what I'd do. Part of me says "Oh, I can't race anymore" but another part of me says "I'm still going to live my life and do what I enjoy, to include racing, I'm not a threat for a podium or whatever, so I'm going to roll the dice and still race."

I'll be honest and tell you I don't know which decision I'd make. To me that's very different than the 40-something asshole with T within normal ranges but wants some edge so he/she can qualify for Kona. That's very black and white for me. My example in the previous paragraph is not black and white to me.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

I know which certainty what I'd do - stop racing. Then again, I barely race as it is and racing has never been that special to me to begin with. I do this much more for the daily training.

Now if the question becomes you've got to stop training or else you risk serious health concerns that would become a much bigger deal for me and it'd be very tough to decide.

I know people in this exact situation and the ongoing joke with them is that they've got more time and energy for training because they're not wasting time having sex or chasing women!

The result of too many IM branded races, full distance and 70.3, is spreading thin the talent level at the top. Especially true in the older female age groups. Age group wins by an hour even at 70.3 distance aren't unusual at all, when dealing with elite level athletes vs. the field.

Test away, but to cast suspicion on results solely based on time gap from first to second is unfair.

Agreed.

You see this particularly women and also with some of the older male AG's (50+) - some pretty big time gaps, but this could be accounted for with a VERY good athlete and a thin, low number and not very deep race field.


Too just write a 30 minute win off, as, "well, they doped", is unfair.


I'm not saying there is an issue with PEDs (there is), but what I described above is more likely the case.


Some just don't have an idea of how good fast some/most of these really good AG athletes are. In another thread I was accused of a back-door brag, about needed AG KQ times for AG male triathletes of being in the low nine hour range - that's not bragging, that's a factual reality!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Given my experience of drug testing in the Military, I can tell you that performing a sterile and legally enforceable urine test is very time and resource consuming. Testing the whole field, or even a quarter of it is a big ballache; one that no event is going to take on I'm afraid. It's not just a case of 'wee in this cup'.

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29 years and counting

According to my Doc (in UK), the only time he's prescribing T is for real chronic conditions that don't include lower than average levels or inability to get morning erections. More like, failing to get out of bed in the morning with fatigue, depression etc. The chances of getting a TUE in UK for T he thought extremely unlikely & kinda funny that anyone needing to supplement in this way would be interested in training or racing at all.
Another insight was his patients on T usually ask to come off it due to the weight-gain & mood swings / irritability issues.

That's UK however & of course the legit route - I only asked my Doc 'cos I see him at the pool, I might add! ;-)

In my view the options are very binary if you have borderline low T that is not good enough to get a TUE but which a middle age person and his doc THINK pose long term health impact (I still call BS on the entire industry because we are all meant to die SLOWLY anyway).

1. Take T cause your anti aging doc said your quality of life will deteriorate without it AND DON'T RACE (so you lose the upside that racing adds to quality of life, but you get to have awesome sex....maybe)
2. You refuse the T, you keep racing and maybe you have less libido than a 19 year old for other aspects of life

I don't see any other options here. There are people trying to combine the 2 options which is illegal without a TUE as far as the sport is concerned.


Dev

You're missing Choice 4: take supplemental whatever, keep training with your friends, keep doing all the things you enjoy EXCEPT racing.

There are some other symptoms of low testosterone too (depression, poor concentration, excessive fatigue etc.) and some serious long term health issues such as low bone density. It can really affect your every day life outside of the bedroom.

She was popped for exogenous testosterone. As far as I am aware, there is absolutely NO WAY a female is EVER able to get a TUE for testosterone. Saying she never applied for a TUE (I realize that is in the article) is misleading since if she did, she wouldn't get one, and would obviously immediately have been tested and popped for it.

Even men pretty much are unable to get them except in truly extreme circumstances (like a complete lack of testicles).

A lot of what is being said is about finding reasons for good people making bad decisions. That's not the problem. Triathlon is not having a problem with doping by good people making bad decisions. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there with health issues that might require testosterone treatments, but they are not on the podium all that often and they are not gobbling up the Kona spots.

The problems are coming from the people who were assholes long before they knew about triathlons and Kona spots. These people could often be tagged with a personality disorder, such as narcissism or psychopathology or whatever, and they find a way to stand out and achieve status through sports that provide them with social status. These people comprise about 5% to 15% of the population. My sense is that they are attracted to triathlon because of its image as a sport for high achievers.

Holly Balogh is a classic case.

Very true. And that doesn't even take into account the whole TUE elephant. If you're going to do widespread testing, you have to have an apparatus to manage TUEs. Given the number of people in their 40's and up who participate in this sport, the percent of competitors who are legitimately prescribed medications that are on the banned list has to be pretty high. Most don't go through the TUE process because they either don't know they should or they choose not to because it's a hassle to do properly, they don't think it matters since they really aren't competitive, and currently have almost zero chance of being tested since they're not in the Registered Testing Pool.

If, in your quest to discourage the AG cheaters, you also want to cut the field fillers out, and live with the results of the reduce revenue, start wide spread testing. The really committed will go through the TUE process, while many others are likely to say "F-it, I don't need to go through that hassle just to be able to race recreationally" and move along to some other competitive outlet.

Now if you're talking Kona, I could see testing the top X finishers in each category, and some random number of others. Enough people want to go to Kona bad enough to follow the TUE process that they'll still be able to fill the field. But for other races, I think the negatives outweigh the positives.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

It is thinning out the fields for sure. Not talking just IM brand races. There are factors as well that in certain age groups people focus more on careers, family--but those really excellent athletes who have the luxury of training & racing at pro levels for years, while their competition fades to other distractions, can also be part of the reason.

To Terra-what isn't fair is that little has been done about it & you have to start somewhere. Suggesting a way to nail the biggest offenders. That person sitting at home off the podium at World's or watching Kona on TV instead of being there--when it could be different for them, is unfair. Being "PC" because you want to bury your head in the sand about some results and how unfair large gaps casting suspicion is, goes against the grain of fairness itself, when you know full well profiling and better testing windows WILL result in making it more fair when the race is over & the clean ones are getting their dues. If the time gaps really are legit, then great, they have nothing to hide.

Dan,

Any chance you could reach out to her and get an interview on why she doped? Seems pretty incongruous given her stance on drafting in ironman races. Was it "accidental" doping? Was it a last ditch attempt at KQ spot? I'm very curious as I'm sure others are.

Me PC, that's funny

The time gap mentioned in this thread has an obvious problem/bias...it's a brainchild of front of pack type athletes (like h2o fun) who think there must be some reason why athlete X is that much better than themselves.

Haha, and if you test based on time gaps, the clean athletes will "show out" and the dirty ones will sandbag

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Coach at KonaCoach Multisport

Holly Balogh?

Double Letter Cheater Identification Protocol is holding true

Kip Litton, Mike Rossi, Julie Miller, Anthony Gaskell, Terry Varicelli, Dane Patterson, Amy Stretton, Samantha Sweet

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Double Letter Cheater Identification Protocol is holding true


Dang. I always thought Jimmy Riccitello was clean ;)

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Coach at KonaCoach Multisport

All this is great, but the problem is that WTC is a for-profit company, so you have to look at it through their eyes. They are asking themselves: how much would testing cost? And, how much more revenue would we bring in if we increase testing? I think the problem is that the cost of testing is unfortunately high, and at the same time it's not obvious (yet) that the drug cheats are causing a significant drop in revenues. In some ways WTC actually has an incentive not to catch anyone, so we can all keep naively going on thinking that triathlon is clean. The negative of that approach would be that somewhere down the road there would almost certainly be a major scandal. If they test a little bit here and there, they can hopefully keep the doping down enough to avoid that situation. However, it's hard to see that they have an incentive to test a lot, even if we think it's the right thing to do.

Testing will never become part of culture because of that specific reason. wtc and officials will do their best to test when they can, and they'll take advantage of the hotline to target when they see necessary.

I don't think people realize the time/effort it would take to even do 10 piss samples per race. That would easily be an 6-8 hour process simply w paperwork, getting the person to actually pee etc. If your answer is to have more testers, cool....just more $$ to be spent on the process.


So I'm saying temper your expectations and reality of what you can expect with AG testing.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

[brag warning]
I guess I could be considered one of the really good ones. 50yo, did my first IM when I was 49, did 2 more last year. Three IM total, qualified for Kona in all of them. Sub 9 once...

To have some clueless MOP 50+ AG guy automatically label me a doper is depressing.
Being an ex swimmer, I swam a low-53 in Kona. Doper! Well, I wasn't even top-5 in M50-54. Were they all dopers too?
My IM AP has never been >200W or >2.7W/kg. Who would ever link that with 'dope' ?
On the other hand, no amount of EPO, HGH or T can bring my CdA below 0.21m2. Only obsessive, compulsive testing can do that.
I run the IM marathon in the 3:10-3:20 range. Faster than most, true, but I spend >60% of my training time running. Who would claim 7:25/mile must be attributed to doping? [/brag warning]

I know a 9hr-flat IM is possible for a 50+ life long athlete without doping, others seem to know it can't be done. One of us is right.

I know a 9hr-flat IM is possible for a 50+ life long athlete without doping, others seem to know it can't be done. One of us is right.


The difference is that if you have trained with elite level athletes and were at or close to that level yourself at one point on your life it's a whole different game - physically and mentally. With all due respect, the average Age-Grouper has no idea of what is possible. So these days, the easy thing to do is to figure they are doping ( those going faster). Of course, what makes it worse is that we know, that some are - which makes it bad for the rest!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Hey I get it....I just used that as an example. But SERIOUSLY IF YOU NEED TESTOSTERONE SUPPLEMENTATION JUST TO GET TO THE START LINE.... then maybe you (the collective you as in everyone) should not be racing!

Everyone wants their cake and eat it too. Sorry, life does not work that way....if you're over 40, body parts and organs may gradually decline in performance....that's part of the entire concept of age group racing. He/She who can still race while managing declining body performance is the hero.

Now I need to catch up on the rest of this thread!!!

"if you're over 40, body parts and organs may gradually decline in performance....that's part of the entire concept of age group racing. He/She who can still race while managing declining body performance is the hero."

when i was 11, or 14, and a grandparent died at the age of 58 or 59, my thought was, "sad. too bad. but at least they lived a full life."

now that i am 60 i don't consider that a full life. i consider my life about half over, and why i die at 80 or 85 i'm going to feel just a tiny bit robbed.

when you're 40, or 45 you think, "well, maybe when i'm 60 and my body is breaking down it'll be okay, i'll just stop racing." then you get to 60 and you find out you're not done. you're still 25 in that pea brain of yours.

this is not my apology for doping. this is not a plea for the powers that be that people over 60 should be allowed to normalize for their age. you're right, the ability to prevail at an older age is the talent that certain old people have, whereas the ability to prevail at a younger age is a talent reserved for that age class.

i'm saying it's pretty easy for younger people to consider me old enough that i shouldn't want to race anymore. or for me to be happy that somebody else got to race to 70 and now it's their turn to hang it up. life is just a little more complicated than that, and nobody who's 45 knows how somebody who's 65 feels.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Hey Dan at 51, I am OK to not be able to race if I need illegal pharma assistance. I've had my fair share of racinng. If I need that assistance for quality of life, and it allows me to train and be active, then that's awesome. But I'm going to have to stick to the full doped out Stava segments....no real racing. DEAL? I'm not done being active. I am still addicted to my 2 hours per day of training. I'll basically keep that up forever if I can and I will be world champion of my competition with myself with my own house rules doing my own events against myself and whomever wants to join in....but no real racing if I need pharma assist. I'm on the trajectory that I HOPE there may be more real racing on bread, water and a good helping of my energizer bunny genetics, but if there is no racing, that's fine too.

I was just out snowshoeing on my golf course loop near home last week. It was awesome. I was hammering like a maniac racing in my own tracks cutting my own loop. World Championship of 1 person. Later that day, I was shelled like a raced a half Ironman. My wife asked me why I was so tired. I said, "I think I got carried away hammering on the snowshoes and then lifting weights". She asks, "why did you bother going so hard". I replied, "someone had to win the Wednesday morning World Championships and its not fair winninng without going ALL OUT"...and so it goes.

Yes! This is very well stated. Your feelings, thoughts, desires don't really age. I find this concept interesting. And young people don't understand this. Can't grasp it.
I too no longer believe 60 is a full life.
But one would hope that we at least mature and quell the temptation to cheat. I feel like cheaters are the outlier. We all, at times, might be tempted to cheat in some small way. But our reputation and the constraints of society keep most of us in check.
And these race cheaters to me, and obviously many others are intriguing in some way.
To me they are either the ultimate risk takers or they don't feel they have anything to lose by doing it. Or don't care about their reputations.