trail wrote:
PJC wrote:
Well those other people can pay for testing.
I’d actually prefer no shirt, towel or medal. It’s just junk.
I just like to race. Seeing how good I can be.
By comparing yourself vs. other people or just by time?
Because you can just test yourself by time pretty easily. No short, towel, medal, junk, or entry fee.
But if you're trying to compare yourself to other people head-to-head, then it's nice to have some ground rules. Now if those ground rules are drug free-for-all, then that's great. But if the ground rules are no doping, and a bunch of people at the pointy end are doping, then it's hard to see if you can be the best among your particular cohort. And that's what direct competition is all about, lining up head-to-head on a specified day and trying to finish better than everyone you're lining up against.
What you don't get is that the people you are lining up against have so many variable factors that it isn't an objective assessment of your ability. Sure it's great to win a local race but how do you account for some people not showing up, varying levels of equipment, or whether people consider it their A race? Without quantifying that you basically just won a training day.
Now this logic doesn't apply to amateur championship races and professionals. These types of races generally see resources for decent equipment, athletes spend a certain amount of time training and show up to win.In these races people look to peak in performance for the race and thus doping controls would make sense.
Lastly, even with 100% doping controls, there is still going to be constant skepticism whenever someone beats you. You'll never know whether they found a new way to manipulate the system or a found drug that isn't tested for yet. So you will come back to this forum and vent that people are still cheating.