jt10000 wrote:
What sport and what doping are you talking about? I knew many many people in college occasionally using marijuana and even cocaine.... The former is banned in many sports. I'm not sure about the latter.
I'm pretty sure there is widespread use of stuff like HGH and steroids in big-time college football. Even high school.
In collegiate bike racing, this comes to mind http://stevetilford.com/...tever-rick-crawford/
Yea, I was thinking of the Rick Crawford/Colorado Mesa thing too.
Having raced collegiate triathlon from 2008 to 2012 and with the intention to return to grad school in a year or two, I want to believe that in general, the collegiate/development ranks in triathlon are relatively clean in the USA. I don't think there's the financial/logistical support combined with the potential gains to tip the scales to make doping "worth it" among the majority of competitors in the junior/collegiate/U23ish realm of triathlon. I think it's naive to assume everybody is 100% clean, even discounting the use of recreational type drugs that happen to be on the banned list (and may still confer benefit). However, I think the examples would be VERY few and far between, tending to be associated with some very sociopathic behavior. That sociopathic behavior might even combine with some great natural talent and elevate an athlete or two to the highest levels in that realm of the sport, but again, I don't
think we have the problems of cycling where it's no longer sociopathic.
My undergrad didn't have a cycling team, so I can't directly speak to the culture of collegiate cycling, though. I don't imagine it's a ton different from collegiate triathlon, as the vast majority of the riders I did know who crossed over spoke of it as a similar atmosphere: lots of really fast people, but the ones who really wanted to "make it" in the sport focused elsewhere for their racing.
IG: idking90