Ai_1 wrote:
burnthesheep wrote:
So, here's an honest question.........what's the testing like in running, swimming, triathlon versus pro cycling?
I find the news cycles and grandeur of cycling pops to other endurance sports a bit odd when it basically took an award winning documentary to get the public onto the whole Russia/Olympics athletes thing revived. I say revived as it's always been there in Olympic sport.
It's like cycling is the public whipping boy for the rest of the dirty crowd in sports. By all means, keep up the work of getting the bad guys/gals..........but I find it hard to believe the news cycle by coincidence mostly hits cycling the hardest. It's not a conspiracy against cycling, I think it's the fact other groups aren't doing the same things to catch and shame people at the same level.
We've still got people outing Lance in public, today, but I don't see people routinely booing the Russians when they show up to something.
I wonder if the cycling general public has higher demands than the other sports. Like an elephant, we never forget.
It's pretty certain that other sports have lots and lots of doping going on too.
One distinct thing about cycling however, in my opinion, is that doping can be the entire difference between being irrelevant and being the "best". Skill or technique are not crucial in cycling. There's performance and some strategy, that's about it. So, if you can inject sufficient performance, you can win. Also, it's easier to identify and quantify improvements. you can't easily explain away significant improvements by claiming improved technique for example (well maybe TT position to some extent but not climbing). Runners, swimmers and others can certainly also gain hugely by using PEDs but there is also a much greater technique element to those sports. For most other sports, lets say tennis, rugby, football, or golf, for example, the drugs probably still pave the way to success PROVIDING the skills are also at the requisite standard.
there's a lot of truth in this, though i would say running, track and field in general, have similar levels of skill/technique vs power/endurance to cycling. in cycling there is some pedaling technique plus tactics, positioning and handling.
it is a shame that for a variety of reasons cycling is seen as the bad boy of sports doping and too risky for many sponsors who happily pour money into far dirtier sports either oblivious or confident that any controversy will be swept under the carpet. look at the sharapova case - a major star found to have been taking PEDs for years, slap on the wrist, a short holiday and all is forgiven and most of all forgotten.
i believe cycling does more than any other sport to combat doping and is probably now at least as clean as any sport with such big benefits to be had from PEDs. that's not to say there isn't more work to do but it would be nice if the public recognised it and moved on from the sordid past that was exposed in cycling rather than covered up or ignored in so many other sports.