Hey all, I’m Calvin, a Cultural Criminology student working on a research project looking into doping and PED use in non-elite endurance athletes. I know it’s a sensitive topic, and there are loads of discussions out there, but I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas on this.
While doping discussions often focus on elite competition, I want to hear your take on the reasoning behind using banned substances or PEDs in non-elite athletes? Plus, any ideas on how to get personal insight?
Also, if you use or used PEDs, personally know people who do or are familiar with doping and would be up to talk about it, send me a DM. I would like to hear your story and get an understanding of individual and cultural aspects of performance-enhancing drug use. Of course, all talks and potential data will be anonymised, without exception.
I think your starting point with an assumption question “why would an AG even consider taking PEDs (if he’s not getting money out of it)?” is the right starting point. Then, you could consider potential use cases that come to my mind:
Pro or AG, people are ambitious and competitive, also if there’s no money at stake
People get sick and injured, and while a PRO wouldn’t choose a banned treatment without a TUE, an AG often doesn’t care.
Example 1: patient with anemia (the most common VitMin deficiency globally is the iron deficiency) - iron supplements are common, but often ineffective while iron infusion is super effective, but banned. A Pro wouldn’t chose an injection, while an AGer doesn’t care.
Example 2: patient with a serious injury, e.g. broken ankle with damaged ligaments or torn ACL - Pro will choose standard & often conservative treatment, while an AGer (if has access & money) can go even with a local growth hormone injection.
Pro, if they need it, will apply for TUE; national anti doping agencies often don’t review / accept TUE applications from AG athletes, claiming these’re out of their scope / jurisdiction
Additionally, I highly encourage you to review the (in)famous German study, where they claim >10% of AG athletes using doping. Unfortunately, their definition of “doping” includes caffeine shots / gels and OTC painkillers. Highly invalid for the professional analysis.
Winning prize money is great, but winning a competition with no prize money is also cool. A lot of people train really hard, spend a lot of money, and make great personal sacrifices to win competitions that have no prize money. TBH even with prize money the social standing (or one’s perceived social standing) from a big result is worth more to most people.
Think of everything competitors do that could be considered ‘light cheating’. It used to be that your jersey couldn’t be fully unzipped and had to be connected at the bottom. Pretty easy to unzip fully for better cooling, technically cheating. Bike equipment that’s not legal but not scrutinized is also cheating. Using sidewalks to make corners shorter, crossing the center line, passing on the right.
Also the risk of getting caught as an amateur is pretty low.
I think in the AG ranks, it’s really a question of demographics and economics. Long course amateur triathlon is mostly male, mostly 40+, and participants in general have a decent amount of disposable income. So the accessibility of PED’s combined with the financial ability to purchase them makes the barrier of entry lower. If you are a 45 year old triathlete and want to stand on podiums, relatively easy and less dangerous enhancements like T-therapy offer an easy solution.
I think a lot* of people tie their sense of self-worth to their amateur race results.
Triathlon training is a time consuming endeavor. People doing “minimal” training will still train an hour every day. It becomes a part of your life. For those who want to climb on an age group podium in a big race, it’s 15+ hours per week (unless you’re 65 years old and most of your competition are now out of the sport). Then it takes some doing to not become obsessed.
*by “a lot” I mean “a large enough number to matter”. As in: “a lot of drivers text when driving” means “not a big percentage, but a consequential percentage”. So maybe it’s 10% of triathletes who have no life outside triathlon and work. You might find dopers among them. Others have no reason to spice up their hobby with very unhealthy and/or very expensive substances.
EGO, aesthetics, recovery, sex drive, healthy aging
i participate in a sport - not tri - where it is endemic in the age groupers, even among those that do not compete, just do it for training
Its easy to get, relatively cheap, allows you to be more active at a higher intensity more frequently for longer as you get older and can contribute to an improved quality of life
i should edit to add - at 50 I do not see the need - as I continue to get stronger but I suspect in the next 5-10 years if aging is impacting my ability to train and recover I’d consider supplements
Technically I have used a PED. A few years ago (before Covid) I did a trek to Everest base camp, this meant sleeping and hiking at around 18,000’ for a couple of days as we also went onto another mountain trail. To prevent or reduce the possibility of altitude sickness I used a restricted drug that increases hemoglobin. Had I raced at that time I would have surely failed any drug test.
There are many AG competitors who take a variety of restricted drugs to maintain their normal health. You should perhaps include that as an element of your research.
What many don’t realize is that Ironman has a clause in the athletes questionnaire which says they can require a test at any time up to a year after competition.
As others have mentioned here – I think you need to potentially draw the line between intentional doping for the purposes of athletic competition versus either inadvertent / unintentional doping because the athlete is either oblivious or unaware that the WADA Code is applicable to them.
The number of times that the conversation of “I’m not an elite athlete and this was under the care of my physician” has been tossed around with athletes in a wide variety of other forums…for the most part, people are taking things on the prohibited list under the care of their physician in a method that is consistent with normal medical care.
If you’re trying to get the heart of why age group athletes dope – it’s a very different conversation than why they might be using, say, a banned stimulant, or HRT for one reason or another.
There’s also another category of incidental doping. Those who were prescribed a certain drug, whose primary benefit is their health, but the use of which crosses a WADA line, of which they are aware. Athlete wasn’t necessarily looking to take drugs in order to improve their triathlon time as a primary benefit, but they’re not going to stop taking the drug (health reasons) but they’re also not going to stop racing either.
If caught, they’re going to plead the same excuse as athlete who took the drug unknowingly.
TRT is the big one here. Any athlete with any kind of awareness is going to know that taking hormones is against the rules. But not all of these people are going on TRT for the performance enhancing benefits as a primary reason.
I’d argue that this is the most common category - but when caught they pretend they didn’t really know, or hide behind the Dr excuse.
There’s a few doping controlled substances that are relatively common, OTC drugs. Sudafed and Ephedrine are banned in competition but can be bought at CVS.
I realized last month that I fall into this category. I had pretty extreme high blood pressure and worked with my Dr a few years ago for about four months to find a medication combination that would bring it under control. After a lot of trial and error, we settled on a three drug cocktail that seems to do the trick. I was looking over the USADA no-no list last month, and saw that the diuretic I take is on the list. I’m a 57-year old middle of the pack guy who does a few tris, cycling races, and runs a year - just an average age-grouper. I read over the USADA TUE process and submitted a TUE Pre-check form in an attempt to follow the process and received a reply that I am required to apply for a formal TUE. The response said I’d need to provide the following:
Complete TUE Application.
Copies of all examinations and clinical notes related to your condition
Copies of all laboratory results/reports related to your condition
A statement from the treating physician explaining why the prohibited substance is needed and why permitted alternatives are not effective or appropriate for treating your condition
My next Dr visit is scheduled for February, so I’m going to ask about having him support the TUE application. I’m guessing the documentation asked for in 2, 3, and 4 is going to amount to quite a stack and I don’t expect him to be helping out with this for free. I’d like to follow the process to see how things actually work and I’m willing to pay a little bit to have him and the office staff pull the info together, but it’s just not worth it to me if it’s going to cost hundreds of dollars (or more) to apply for the TUE. I guess I’ll find out the cost in a couple months.
Maybe that means I started as an “unintentional” doper and am now an “incidental” doper? I do know I’m continuing with the diuretic. I tried to eliminate it from the medication mix a few years ago any my BP went right back to the unacceptably high range.
Oh for fucksake…tell me you are a moron without telling me you are a moron… What a stupid, ignorant and insulting thing to say.
Never fails to amaze me how the people who have no real concept of hard work, commitment, dedication and genetics always defer to the sooky little doper defense…
I think you may be misinformed about EPO testing. The type of EPO used for PED is detectable and has been so since at least 2005. It is very unlikely that any athlete being tested for PEDs would escape detection if they use EPO. Further the test in question is a urine test which makes the sampling much easier. Based upon what I have read it is very unlikely that there are any pro athletes and in particular event winners that are using EPO and getting away with it.
I think the basic question of your research is why do people cheat. You have just narrowed it to PEDs. I suspect if you look at the body of work done on why people cheat you will find the psychological reasons are basically the same in cases where financial gain are not part of the equation. I think mostly it is vanity, ego, and a basic character flaw. There are many competitors who have moral guardrails that say to them that cheating is not winning. It is the ones who can over look that who are of interest to you.
The use of PEDs is a much more complex question as noted by many posters to this thread. So PED use for the purpose of cheating is a very specific variant of the basic sport cheater.
General thread reminder that unless you have specific proof of an individual professional athlete doping, you do not toss around “everyone’s using EPO” accusations (unless, of course, you’d like to be shown the exit).
With the current thresholds, EPO isn’t detectable beyond day 5-7 after stopped using. If an athlete isn’t on the registered testing pool (ergo, cannot be tested every day, especially out of competition when his location is unknown), it’s relatively straightforward to isolate yourself in a remote location for a winter/spring altitude camp and dope EPO up to eyeballs.
according to the WADA protocol, every athlete covered by that must inform the sport organization of their whereabouts for just this reason for out of competition testing. So that argument may not hold water. I doubt that many if any pro athletes are using EPO. When was the last positive finding? As our moderator says, unless you have proof it is best to not toss around the everybody’s doing it argument.
edit to add since this is a triathlon forum: world triathlon anti doping uses the WADA code for out of competition testing and as well
Athlete Biological Passport (ABP)
The objective of integrating the ABP into the larger framework of the World Triathlon’s anti-doping program remains to identify and to target athletes for specific analytical testing (e.g., recombinant EPO test, homologous blood transfusion test) by intelligent and timely interpretation of biological passport data. The WADA-accredited Montreal IRNS Laboratory is the Athlete Passport Management Unit that monitors World Triathlon’s ABP.
I truly doubt that anyone at the pro level is using EPO.