I disagree. I doubt you do nothing morally incorrect.

For whatever reason, though, you decided that you wouldn't do it with regards to this certain subject in this specific area of sport.

It's not a moral compass issue, it's your feelings in regard to a specific issue in a specific sport. Not that such a notion of "fairness" or "justice" or whatever wouldn't roll over to other areas, but I don't for a second believe you don't knowingly and willingly deviate from the heading of your "moral compass".

Dude, I think its this part

what an AG triathlete can today take legally under a doctor's care to
boost their performance

It appears as a coach you MAY be saying its ok to take "T" and compete

this is looking like a semantic argument on the meaning of "legally"

meh

For sure. It is just that you average spectator still didn't really notice (and still doesn't). It maybe becoming more common knowledge with the average fan now though.

i think i agree with go tri coach. unless i missed a post somewhere, i didn't see him saying that doping today is now ethical because it might be safer. i just hearing him say that it's probably safer, because we know more now, and because it's more typical to find an athlete cheating under the care of a doctor than cheating not under the care of a doctor.

just as we know how it's easier to not die using EPO than was the case in the mid or late 90s, cheating is probably safer now than it was when you could kill somebody hitting them over the head with the jawbone of a female bodybuilder.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Of course it's not ok.

My point was that not all athletes who dope are "ruining their bodies", destined to suffer horrible side effects in the short/long term.

Taking T under a doctor's care and then competing without a TUE is still against the rules. It's cheating and it's wrong, especially the way many docs are handing out scripts like candy to athletes that don't really need it for basic health.

I like to think karma exists, but for every athlete that "ruins" their body, there are plenty out there living healthy lives despite their doping past.

And with doping (T scripts) today being available legally under US law (not sure how it is in other countries), the cheaters will be able to cheat longer and with less risk of life threatening side effects. At least until we test more and educate triathletes on what doping is. As I have said previously, some "cheaters" don't even know (or believe) they're cheating.

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"Whether you believe you can or you can't, you are right."

Sorry for the dumb question, but I am trying to understand how potentially bogus the "contaminated supplement" argument is.

Would synthetic testosterone in a sample be the same as having taken any of the quasi legal supplements like Androsteen or DHEA? I would find hard to believe that a reputable vitamin maker (if there is such a thing) would also be producing controlled substances, but I could understand some moron not carefully cleaning the machinery.

Also, would or could some of the steroids they use in cattle (not necessarily legally) produce the same result. I work in the food business and I have heard stories from reputae sources about Chlenbutonol (sorry about the spelling) still being used on beef cattle.

I think it varies by manufacturer, but my understanding is that the supplement manufacturers generally outsource production. So they're contracting with some other company to mix the stuff and put in pills, etc. And who knows what else that other company is making the rest of the week, etc.. That other company might forget to properly clean the equipment, etc.

Of course that creates a great chain of plausible deniability for both the athlete and the supplement manufacturer.

I generally don't buy it.

I'd say you have a better chance at winning the lottery than his B sample not turning up positive and all the implications that brings along with it.

I'd really like to hear Phil Gaimon's thoughts on this. I enjoyed reading his book (Pro Cycling on $10 a Day), but one of the things I didn't get was why he spent 1/4 of the book talking negatively about ex-dopers like Francisco Mancebo who are still competing, but yet he's buddy buddy with ex-dopers like Tom Danielson who are still competing and drawing a good paycheck. Other than the fact that Gaimon and Danielson were both teammates at the time he wrote the book, there really wasn't much of a difference.

Yup. The way this goes is he brings some innocent 3rd party supplement manufacturer into it. After lengthy and expensive investigation and testing no fault is found on their part so TD gets his lifetime ban, but because TD has no remaining samples of said tainted supplements to be tested, he goes forever into the great unknown continuing to claim his innocence. A few diehards and friends/family will believe him, but not many.

The good news for those who desire dopers to get what's coming to them, is that sweet karma will come his way. Unlike LA who will always be a very wealthy man courtesy of ill-gotten cycling fame and Hincapie, Leipheimer, Zabriskie, etc... who more or less escaped with reputations intact, Danielson's life is going to suck, at least until he finds his next career. Cycling won't touch him with a 10' pole and cycling is all he knows in life. He isn't going to be a commentator and he isn't going to be a DS and he isn't going to have a Gran Fondo. He won't have any of the "yeah, but everyone was doing it and he just did it best" supporters like LA. No one's going to have sympathy for the idiot who skated by with a slap on the wrist because "Lance made them all do it", who then goes and gets busted again. The guy's going to be a pariah.

That's a huge difference, socially.

It's far easier to demonize those we don't know then those we do. (This forum is a good example).

In terms of my pissant masters world I've seen some a guy who's almost violently anti-doping turn to mushy apologist rationalizing when someone they knew got popped.

There's really two options here.

One is that, for obvious reasons, you have a lot of shady manufacturers that sell bogus supplements that are laced with testosterone/etc because that actually works. Sell a bunch of pretend herbs that are really testosterone, and yes, amazingly, you get the benefits of testosterone. This happens a LOT. There are numerous articles out there about this happening. This is illegal, but it happens. BUT, these are highly shady supplements. This is the stuff that's like "Testo911EXTREME" or "GETROCKHARDANDRIPPED" and other crazy stuff that no one with half a brain would take.

Another is when you have supplement manufacturers that manufacture supplements that are NOT WADA approved, but which are perfectly legal. DHEA would be a prime example. You can buy DHEA over the counter in CVS. So the idea of cross contamination of a legal OTC substance in a supplement is certainly possible. This can even happen in certain factories. Like, I am fairly sure this is what happened back when those Hammer-sponsored athletes got busted. Hammer had their stuff made in a factory that also made some of this other stuff and there was cross contamination. This is relevant because you can have a generally reputable manufacturer that can suffer from this. Less likely now, but I'm sure it still happens. This is way more of a possibility depending on what the positive test was for. For synthetic testosterone? Unlikely. Testosterone is a controlled Rx substance. If it were DHEA, then, yes, that's a lot more likely. Or this was more common back before ephedra was taken off the market too. But there are some other supplements - mostly stimulants that you find in a lot of "fat burners" - that are legal to sell OTC but are not legal under WADA. If you get busted for one of these, then I'd say it's a lot more credible to say it could be cross-contamination.

If you read through USADA's "high risk list" you'll get a sense of contamination risks, both in terms of what stuff is likely to be contaminated and also with what - http://www.supplement411.org/hrl/

That said, the Hammer nutrition case showed that cross-contamination does indeed happen - http://www.cyclingnews.com/...ver-contamination-1/

I would never have thought twice about taking Hammer stuff before that. I *did* take Hammer products around that time, including Endurolytes. I just was never tested.

But you can be a lot more diligent now. There are plenty of manufacturers that take steps to ensure quality. There's the NSF "Safe For Sport" designation. First Endurance works only with manufacturers that do not produce ANY banned substances in the facility where First Endurance products are manufactured. First Endurance and several other companies provides COA (Certificates of Analysis) that offers a guarantee as to what is - and what is not - in each batch of whatever they make.

You can be careful. And be smart.

This is actually one thing where I object to the whole, "Supplements do not work." There are actually quite a few supplements that we know work really well - caffeine being the first that comes to mind. But beta-alanine, nitrate (beet root juice), vitamin D, and some others are have been pretty much proven to be performance enhancers. And there's others where the verdict is still out - like carnitine and some of these "super juices" acai, etc with high ORAC scores - where more research is warranted. Heck, I think it's a mistake to extrapolate from the fact that the "average" person doesn't need a multivitamin to say that professional athletes who beat the shit out of their body doesn't need one. But WADA hurts their credibility, IMO, by basically taking this stance of supplements don't work. Because it's a blurry line in many cases. Is whey protein a "supplement" or a food, for example. Fish oil vs eating fish. Etc, etc.

I do believe, however, that this "out" has been abused though. There was that case of the cyclist who had the pharmacist who testified, "oh, I dispensed some testosterone (or something) right before I sold Mr. X a bunch of empty gel caps that he used to make salt pills." It was something like that. Of course, that's entirely possible. It's also entirely possible that the cyclist was doped to the gills, paid the pharmacist off (it's not like the pharmacist did anything "wrong" if he somehow made that mistake), and everyone was happy. Or the sprinter who got off because he had been taking some Chinese "male enhancement formula" that was SHOCKINGLY!! laced with some testosterone.

Sort of a long answer. Yes, lots of athletes claim this as an excuse. But, yes, innocent athletes have suffered because of cross contamination. And yes, other athletes have likely manipulated this to explain how it happens.

In the case of the Hammer athletes, they basically got a clean slate, because it really wasn't reasonable that they should have worried. In the case of the sprinter, he had his results from that meet wiped, but no suspension.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Tom D was reading the High Risk List right now, looking for something laced with synthetic T, ordering up a bottle, claiming he took it all along, and trying to craft some story of, "well, I got this girlfriend on the side, and I need a bit of help, and so I took..." Historically, USADA has actually been relatively forgiving in cases like that. I can understand that - athletes do dumb shit all the time and the purpose of testing is not to suspend someone for 4 years for being dumb. BUT, you also then open the door to abuse by people pretending to be dumb...

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

Very. Two things would need to happen.

1) You'd need to have a contaminated supplement with a controlled substance. This is hard.

2) You'd need to actually absorb the (theoretically contaminated) minuscule amount of T through your digestive system in order to produce a positive result under carbon isotope scrutiny. This is VERY hard.

Barring a lab fuck up, he's screwed. If so, my guess is he was doing long weeks during the mid-season lull and feeling shitty. He's old (relatively speaking), and his endocrine system was somewhat adapted to receiving synthetic help, so what'd he do? Easy, rub some cream on the nuts or go straight subcutaneous if he was feeling spunky.

cognitive dissonance on Gaimon's part

Popular now
Phil Gaimon ‏@philgaimon Jul 29
Proud to write about being clean for @Cyclingnewsfeed http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/phil-gaimon-what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-clean-bike-rider/ … @OPTUMpbKBS

if he decides to keep mum on this, he loses all credibility in my eyes.




incorrect at least as far as EPO is concerned.

FDA put out a black box warning for prescription of EPO back in 2006 in cancer patients. This stuff is not "Orange Juice" and has actual, deleterious, side effects.

Gaimon did post a quote on twitter, along with a handful of other staunch anti-doping athletes, and some others who have been banned. But, the silence and cycling omerta is deafening right now. Very, very few active pros (I'm focusing here on top domestic U.S. racers and World Tour guys that might be racing in the U.S.) have made any comment. If everyone is clean or the sport is trying to get clean, when a top U.S. racer gets busted, I would think all the clean guys would stand up and be super pissed at yet another rider tested positive, in this day of 'clean cycling'. It's all a marketing PR scam, as it has been for decades, in my mind, with many riders still doping.

An amazing- clean rider- quit cycling 16 years ago- Rewind to cycling’s dope-soaked days of 1997, and such a friendship would have seemed unfathomable.
Mercier, then aged 28, had just quit the US Postal team after refusing to pump himself full of erythropoietin – EPO – prescribed to him by the team’s doctor.
His place had been taken by Armstrong, a brash young buck who had no qualms following the team’s orders and went on to become the most successful athlete in the history of the sport, before his downfall in June 2012, when Travis Tygart’s US Anti-Doping Agency laid bare the biggest conspiracy “in professional sports history”.
twitter today-
Scott Mercier þ@ScottMercier1 8h8 hours ago
And when a guy who is a "massive natural talent" is popped - who has been getting his ass handed to him - it's not encouraging
Scott Mercier ‏@ScottMercier1 9h9 hours ago
Seems like a huge hole got blown into the theory that it's all clean since 2006 - There's only so much bs we can take...
Scott Mercier ‏@ScottMercier1 8h8 hours ago
I wonder how many #marginalgains can be found at the tip of a needle?

Matt Cooke ‏@matthewlcooke 6h6 hours ago
Its funny actually, if Travis Tygart had actually done his job this would not be happening now. @usantidoping
Matt Cooke ‏@matthewlcooke 2h2 hours ago
Creed, teammates w/ Lance, Danieson, Vaughters, Sevilla,,Leogrande, Mancebo. Oh yeah and I have f@cking text messages where he outs himself.
Matt Cooke ‏@matthewlcooke 2h2 hours ago
Read this, both Creed and Horner say "Lets wait and see." 2 guys who...well I've told you already.

Ben Jacques-Maynes ‏@Benjm1 13h13 hours ago
Countdown to @matthewlcooke Twitter 'splosion in 3...2...1...

Phil Gaimon þ@philgaimon 3h3 hours ago
Still digesting everything. If he did it, I believe it was tragic desperation or perhaps some kind of addiction. All I feel is sad.
Phil Gaimon þ@philgaimon 2h2 hours ago
I hope folks don't blame me or feel like I was duping them if it turns out I had things wrong in the book. I wrote from the heart.

Fearless GLþ@Doefnix 9h9 hours ago
@lancearmstrong @Digger_forum @matthewlcooke they told me doping stopped when you retired, why did they lie to me? so sad today...

Steve Tilford- amazing blog- another clean rider- check out his blog about Tommy D- some highlights:

Tilford writes: "This is one of his tweets from last night. “Especially after everything I have gone through the last years.” He is saying that it makes “absolutely no sense” that he would take drugs currently, even though he took drugs to get into the Pro ranks of the sport and was only “caught” after he was subpoenaed to testify concerning Lance. And even then, it wasn’t public until his team director, Jonathan Vaughters “leaked” it so brilliantly.
I already wrote a pretty long post on my views of Tommy D It pretty much summed up my experiences with him over his “career”.

Anyway, addressing his tweet. My question is why wouldn’t you “take anything”, especially after what you have gone through. You’ve been racing on drugs your whole career and have never turned up a positive doping control, so what would be the reason that you wouldn’t dope? The reason is the small, minute chance that you might get caught. And that happened. Dang. Bad luck.

So, your choices are you dope and feel great, kick ass racing bikes, or you are a piece of shit athlete and you can’t compete and you have to watch from the outside. You made that choice years ago, I can’t see any reason you would stop."


Michael Rasmussen þ@MRasmussen1974 Aug 2
Only The most naive can permit themself to be shocked

I agree with everything you write, but.....

From everything I've read on this, the capsules independently tested were in the physical custody of Simone Keat prior to testing. The article you link suggests the same, "....Simone had the capsules in question independently tested by the WADA-accredited Doping Control Centre lab in Malaysia in June of 2006..."

And the *only* samples tested were those provided by Simone Keat: "...Vine and Neben then joined the suit, but their actual capsules were not available for testing. ..."

That's a huge chain-of-custody problem, in my mind.

Not calling the them all liars, just saying that's horrible chain-of-custody. That wouldn't fly in any criminal prosecution. I'm surprised the CAS accepted it at all as an ameliorating circumstance. Sometimes the CAS really does use kid-gloves.

I agree on CAS being pretty accommodating here. I think "perception" plays a way bigger role than some may think, which I understand but also don't. As I said, it's crazy to think that you ban someone for (now) FOUR years because they were stupid about what protein powder or electrolyte supplement they used. At the same time, either strict liability is the policy or it's not.

The policy is totally black and white... Except when it's grey.

As you and I have both said on this forum, a lot of this seems to argue for lower thresholds and lower penalties. I mean, why not try it? I was a huge proponent of the four year ban until I actually thought about the number of athletes it would affect versus how many are likely doping.

Jimmy Riccitello and I have had the same discussion regarding drafting. Busting guys often is at least plausibly more effective than only busting the most egregious offenses.

And you have degrees. Just like how you have technical fouls and regular fouls. If you get busted for a T:E ratio of 100:1, that's different than 10:1. If you're riding for 10min right up a guy's ass, that's different than sitting at 11.9m for 2min.

The hard part, though, is that catching guys drafting takes a pair of eyes. Blood tests and urine tests are expensive. REALLY expensive. It's close to $1000/test dollars for blood+urine if you test for EPO. That's an issue not easily solved. Though perhaps the cost of the testing also goes down if the thresholds go down. I don't know enough to comment there.

One of the sad ironies is that this is basically the exact opposite of the criminal "war on drugs." There, it's basically absurdly easy to convict someone. There's a balance. It needs to be harder to throw someone in jail for weed, but it should be easier to penalize someone for EPO...

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

"incorrect at least as far as EPO is concerned."

i'm pretty sure i'm on solid ground in saying that, while it's not without side effects, and while it's cheating, and while you can die from it, because of what cheating endurance athletes and their enabling doctors have learned it is safer now to take EPO than it was in the 90s, when cyclists were dying of hematocrits in the 60s.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

"Safer" does not equal "safe".

And the reality is that we don't really know what decades of widespread T use will bring 10-20 years down the road. We can have a "pretty good idea", but we certainly don't know that it is "safe".

That was the point I was making. And yes, I still find it troubling that a tri coach has such a lax attitude towards the use of T.

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

I think if he'd been riding for any team save Garmindale, the tone of the reaction would be quite a bit different. If it had been Horner, you can bet he'd be getting dragged through the streets of downtown Logan tonight.

Right now, there's the very real possibility that a lot of guys are going to be without jobs and American road racing is going to take a massive body blow from the consequences. No one is covering anything up, but no one is singing about it from the rooftops yet. Make sense?

There was nothing in what I said that indicated that I condoned, or had a lax attitude towards T use.

If you are going to attack someone, at least have a clue what you're talking about.

You seem to be an angry person looking for a fight -- maybe you need a little less T yourself.

Go for a run. You'll feel better.

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"Whether you believe you can or you can't, you are right."

There is only one of us making personal attacks...and it ain't me.

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

Breathe in, breathe out...

That's it.

Now. Don't you feel better?

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"Whether you believe you can or you can't, you are right."

""Safer" does not equal "safe"."

exactly. i'm glad you agree with what i wrote.

"I still find it troubling that a tri coach has such a lax attitude towards the use of T."

i didn't read that in what he wrote. maybe you can point out to me what he said. maybe there was a post of his i missed.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman