See that is where he disagrees and suggests these drugs in fact will make athletes healthier than their current state. Assuming well trained doctors administer proper doses the physicians can correct any imbalances and help the athletes recover. All of these drugs are used daily in the medical field but there seems to be a stigma attached with PED's, i think in part due to the bodybuilding community which has had so many deaths recently, but they are also a great example of abusing drugs to the point of serious side effects. Remember when the Fed's had their clean up baseball thing years ago and brought all the players to congress and had them under oath? During those "trials" or "truth conferences" they brought in several physicians who all stated that steroids are seriously dangerous for athletes but interestingly none of those physicians had published a single paper demonstrating that to be true. Those proceedings caused a backlash in the medical community who argued the exact opposite that there is no conclusive evidence that steroids use in low to moderate doses causes health risks (bodybuilders who do 20 times a normal level do not count). Yes their are potential side effects to any drug but as with moderation the chance for side effects is quite low.

A little off point, but your right re:the lance thing. I never really bought bout it prior o your post, but racing LA at a Masters meet would be fascinating.

From a personal perspective I was faster than he was in HS, but he has had a lifetime of the highest level training, has unliimited time to train currently and is, regardless of his chemical enhancements, a world class athlete. I bet a lot of old swimmers would crawl back in th pool if they knew that challenge was out there.

Having played sports "seriously", I feel totally qualified to let you know that most people you played against viewed you as standing on the fault line between insufferable and dangerous, and that what you describe isn't how sports "work".

Just because someone isn't going to punish you, doesn't mean it's alright to lie, cheat, steal, or engage in any other behavior that you couldn't engage in if a camera was focused on exclusively on you.

I know Nina a little bit, I would not say very well though. I've trained with her a couple times, rode/ran from her house with a couple other folks, swam in her pool after the workout. This is a lady that just lives/eats/sleeps triathlon. She lives a modest life and from everything I could see, this is the ONLY thing she knows. She coaches some athletes, and she is constantly coaching whomever she is working out with, regardless of whether or not you are paying her. She has an unbelievable amount of respect for the sport AND the current crop of younger/faster female IM athletes. She has no delusions (or reason) to think that she is going to compete with the top tier IM athletes on the biggest stage, but she loves the Louisville race and just like any of us, has to look for new ways to motivate. I think it is dangerous to extrapolate behavior over the masses since we are all wired different, she has WAY more to lose that to gain by risking doping at this stage and I say there is no way she would take the risk. I was tracking her and rooting for her to pull this off and was very happy for her to get the win. Good on you Ninja!

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John

Qoute...."You cheat whenever you can to get an advantage"
So you cheat in business? When you sell a car you fuck your nieghbor? Cheat to get what you want from your wife (lie). Cheat in school to get ahead(great for your kids). When by principle if you live that way on the field you dont justify it in all other walks of life. ......Sp you admit you have no problem drafting to get a kona spot over your competitor? You do not have a problem if someone drafts to get your spot if they are not caight? Why have any rules?

I'm kind of scratching my head over this as well. Definitely some inconsistency to how this board views doping. Lance and Michi were basically nailed to a cross and told they should never race again, but Nina "served her time", so it's all good? Didn't Michi serve his time too? It didn't seem to matter before. What makes Nina different?

Triathlon is a young enough sport that cheating hasn't become ingrained like it has in the "serious" team sports that you mention. I think that was part of the appeal to a lot of us who had played team sports before we got into triathlon.

Hopefully you didn't bring that attitude into triathlon and have found that you can enjoy the sport without cheating whenever you can get away with it. If not, please go back to playing soccer. Thanks!

Lance and Michi were basically nailed to a cross and told they should never race again

I disagree with that too.... I don't know the Weiss scenario, but in Lance's case, he was demonstrated to have doped over an extended period of time, and there was a lot of ancilliary stuff too. He shouldn't be allowed to race as a pro again, but if he wants to serve his time and then come back as an AG'er at 50, why not?

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She was a doper. I would ban any doper for life. I give no room. She does not count, she is a fraud.

My posts consistently say that it is really easy to get away with being a doper. Can you point me to a list of false positives and proven "innocent" mistakes? Not catching dopers is many orders of magnitude a larger problem than catching innocent athletes.

As for your second argument, that is an odd approach - let's make the penalties light so that more people will cheat, but at least it will level the playing field.

http://www.insidethegames.biz/...false-positives-wada

http://velonews.competitor.com/...alse-positive_269632

There have been others over the years, including in triathlon (a european male IM athlete who's name escapes me now)

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Touche, I suppose. I am not trying to cavalier about banning people for life. I just am so cynical about the prevalence of doping in sport and I see it as a pretty easy line to avoid crossing and therefor I don't have any time for people who choose to dope.

I don't what the perfect answer is, but a 2 or 4 year or ban isn't doing much to stop people from continuing to dope. The bio passport may help in the long run and hopefully this debate will become moot. But I doubt it.

Shouldn't be racing. Lifetime ban and that would be that.

I think the problem with the bans is that there isn't a different ban for heavyweight doping like EPO, and say, taking the wrong cold medicine. Also the list is the same across sports, so for example the drug used to lower your heart rate for shooting or archery, would not be the same one that a 100m sprinter wants to take. But the list is universal. In any case, all drugs will get the 4 years.

Imagine if for speeding at 101 kph in a 100 zone you get the same ticket at 160 kph. 160kph is not really 'accidental' speeding, whereas 101 kph can be. it could just be a result of your tire inflation being off and your speedometer and the policeman's radar gun disagreeing with one another, but he could technically still ticket you if he wants to hit his monthly quota.

So while we look at it from a triathlon angle and it is clear what heavyweight doping is to us, as a WADA signatory, ITU as well as WTC have to apply the entire list, including if you or I take the wrong cold medicine before say Kona or 70.3 WC's or if we eat a poppy seed bagel and test positive for Heroine. I really don't want to be banned from triathlon for 2 years forget about 4 years if I eat that bagel, but technically I can be. The list makes zero differentiation between Kevin Moats taking steroids and someone eating the aforementioned bagel.

Curious why there isn't scientific evidence to prove this out after all these years. Has there not been studies done?

I really want what you are smoking (or drinking)

WRONG. I realize this is the Internet and all, but you need to be way better informed than this if you're going to have an opinion.

NostalgiaAde. Customized formulas coming soon.

I had just finished a glass before I wrote that comment. It made me totally forget about the problems with wheel sucking, course cutting, testosterone supplementation and tainted nutritional supplements in our sport. Sorry about that.

You need to teach them forgiveness too Mark.

Again, no need for you and Tim to continue to bring up her past. By continuing to grind this axe you just look silly in the end. She did something wrong and served the punishment. This is no different from any one else who makes a bad mistake. She is human and made a bad choice but you and Tim don't have to keep bringing it up.

I think Dev said it best: I've met Nina personally several times, and been in the same races shortly after her ban was lifted. She returned much slower than her former "Nina the Machina" self. I am inclined to believe that she is truly sorry for her time doping, is racing clean, racing much slower and frankly not competitive on the global scale. If Mirinda Carfrae showed up at Louisville, and Nina did this exact same performance we would have zero discussion because she would be way off the back. Just because no one fast showed up, now we're having "the doper won" discussion. Last year, Nina was 7 minutes slower, was 4th, and essentially had the same performance on much less current. No one said anything. The hate is on right now because no one faster than her showed up.

well, there are currently different levels of bans. eg. http://www.swimvortex.com/...-1-month-doping-ban/

This is exactly why the current system is pretty good, and supporting a lifetime "dope and your out" policy is kinda silly. It doesn't allow for any recognition of different degrees of infraction, and it doesn't allow for the fact that sometimes people do stupid things, and doing a stupid buit harmless thing shouldn't prevent you from doing a healthy activity that you love for the rest of your life. People change.

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That is the difference, sport is an unique arena that draws out our base desires, i think very type A men can relate to this and they key is to know where to draw the line. I have never and will never cheat on taxes, at work, school, family etc, that is a moral realm. Cheating in sports is an ethical issue in my opinion and i really just don't care what people think. I remember years ago in a history class on spartan culture learning about their military training. One of the assumptions is that the boys were not given enough food or water and it was assumed they would forage/steal for their food/water. If they were caught they would suffer sever penalty. That is something that was ingrained early on in the military for me as well, in fact first night of bootcamp they tell us to clean the compartment before 0430 but also not leave our bunks, so we set up a special watch that night to avoid the roving watches and clean the entire compartment. We were braking the rules but the system is set up that way. Same thing later on it some more difficult training where we would bring extra food that was not allowed, "steal" food from chow, at night not actually jumping all the way in the ocean just dipping our hats to make us look wet, these are all example of issues which one can maintain integrity while still breaking the rules. It's the same in soccer, slightly off sides, pushing off a defender to field a cross, holding, nice friendly accidental foot stomp during a free kick etc are all against the rules but many times the team who wins is the one who pushes the rules the most. There is a penalty system for a reason and no an outright ban in soccer for an illegal tackle.

A serious question: If an athlete uses PEDs for a couple of years and makes significant gains, then stops using the PEDs but continues to train at a high level. Do the gains made while using the PEDs carry over or do the gains vanish over time?

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So i guess every guy who holds in the NFL is just a scumbag and should be banned? Man we might as well just go ahead and ban Ronaldo since he has made hundreds of illegal tackles over his career. While were at it we might as well just send home every NHL player who has ever been to the penalty box for hooking/tripping. I loved pushing the edges in team sports and that is what drives successful people in sports, like it or not, nice guys do not win for very long.

or is the athlete worse off than they would have been had they never used them in the first place, due to suppressed natural hormone production?

I suspect that the answer is highly individual, depending on what was taken, in what dose, over what period, and the individuals own physiology.

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2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Do you draft in triathlon?