I agree pretty much with all you said, except i would argue with you on this point #6 you posted;
6) Doping does not continue as a long term benefit...as a matter of fact it does the opposite in many cases, that includes ALL types of doping, steroids, EPO, T...once you remove the "assist" your body returns to normal or worse, because you may have permanently F-ed up your production of (T, RBC's, etc) as your body adapted to having naturally occurring homeostasis disrupted. As a matter of fact, mitochondrial density starts to fade in days and Vo2 improvements associated with doping (or training) has been shown to return to "normal" in 12 weeks. ///////
Just because levels return to normal does not mean there is no benefit left over. What about the strength, speed, muscle twitch, etc., that was gained during the very long periods of doping? As any athlete, especially a pro one can attest to, once you reach a certain level of speed, it is a 100 times easier to achieve it once you have laid off, or been injured, than it was to get there in the first place. You are just talking about numbers, i'm talking about performance. When i retired and was out for a very long time, i was able to come back at 50 and do a pretty decent 1/2 ironman on 6 to 9 hours a week of training. And it was solely because of how fast i was. There was a ton of muscle memory that was just laying dormant, but with just minimal training, it would awaken and i could get 95% of the way back on training that most would be out of shape with. That is the true long lasting advantage of doping. And if we are to believe that a lot of these ex pros are now clean, then how the hell are they going so fast still if they are so damaged by all the years of doping?
And it is not 0% tolerance on Testerone, looks like A-Rod actually got a TUE for it. That is going to be some shit hitting the fan there, no way he should have gotten that. But probably not that hard for a guy who did roids most his life to do a couple things to get some ridiculous low reading. It will be interesting to see what the numbers actually were when they granted him that TUE, certainly was not reported in the news when it was done. So someone is hiding something.
6) Doping does not continue as a long term benefit...as a matter of fact it does the opposite in many cases, that includes ALL types of doping, steroids, EPO, T...once you remove the "assist" your body returns to normal or worse, because you may have permanently F-ed up your production of (T, RBC's, etc) as your body adapted to having naturally occurring homeostasis disrupted. As a matter of fact, mitochondrial density starts to fade in days and Vo2 improvements associated with doping (or training) has been shown to return to "normal" in 12 weeks. ///////
Just because levels return to normal does not mean there is no benefit left over. What about the strength, speed, muscle twitch, etc., that was gained during the very long periods of doping? As any athlete, especially a pro one can attest to, once you reach a certain level of speed, it is a 100 times easier to achieve it once you have laid off, or been injured, than it was to get there in the first place. You are just talking about numbers, i'm talking about performance. When i retired and was out for a very long time, i was able to come back at 50 and do a pretty decent 1/2 ironman on 6 to 9 hours a week of training. And it was solely because of how fast i was. There was a ton of muscle memory that was just laying dormant, but with just minimal training, it would awaken and i could get 95% of the way back on training that most would be out of shape with. That is the true long lasting advantage of doping. And if we are to believe that a lot of these ex pros are now clean, then how the hell are they going so fast still if they are so damaged by all the years of doping?
And it is not 0% tolerance on Testerone, looks like A-Rod actually got a TUE for it. That is going to be some shit hitting the fan there, no way he should have gotten that. But probably not that hard for a guy who did roids most his life to do a couple things to get some ridiculous low reading. It will be interesting to see what the numbers actually were when they granted him that TUE, certainly was not reported in the news when it was done. So someone is hiding something.