You guys are cranking out blogs so fast that it’s making my head spin. What has gotten into you two??
Disjointed thoughts on doping… and… begin.
I feel a little bit like a broken record when we have long debates on the telephone, but I’ll try to summarize.
Jen, after listening to my heated debate on the phone, reminded me of a principle that we try to follow in making our marriage work, but it’s a pretty good principle to follow in general debate too. That principle is to NOT make absolute declarations. I failed at that on the phone. So I’m going to back off a bit and say that it would not surprise me if a large majority of professional athletes are taking some kind of performance enhancing stuff. I use the term “stuff” because the word “drug” has a lot of negative connotation. Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) = Doping (another bad word), but performance enhancing stuff (i.e. amino acids, equipment, coaches) = Getting stronger, faster, better, etc. What I’m trying to say is that almost anyone who wants to excel at something is always looking for ways to get just a little better. That might translate to a lighter bike, a better golf club, a corked bat, a new coach, or… dope.
And so, the discussion of doping gets convoluted in my mind because what I think the REAL issue is for athletes is whether or not they are doing something to improve their performance that is illegal as defined by the regulating body in the sport. In going around and around, one of the things I tried to convey to you, Ed, is that I believe that there is an entire industry dedicated to creating performance enhancing drugs that those regulating agencies don’t know about yet, and therefore they haven’t been declared illegal. I’m a human, so I can see how easy a sell it could be to an athlete, and it would go something like this: “Look, this is going to improve your performance by insert-percentage-here, and it is NOT illegal in insert-your-sport-here. It’s not a banned substance. There’s no down side to this. It will only make you better. Why would you pass up on a chance to be better??”
Of course, none of that directly answers your primary question, “But what is cycling doing about the doping issue?” Well, for one thing, as per my previous paragraph, you can only test for what you know is out there. On another side of the issue, I will fully admit that I cannot speak intelligently on actual testing methods. Asking the question, “Why did Armstrong never test positive all those years?” is a valid question. I suspect that there was some type of collusion on the part of the International Cycling Union (UCI). In fact, according to the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), Armstrong himself led them to believe that was the case.
I don’t want to make it sound like the UCI shouldn’t care about doping in cycling, but I still don’t quite understand what exactly that you think they should do in order to demonstrate that they do care about it. Maybe they should have a big press conference and say the words, “We have a problem with doping in cycling,” and then walk off the podium. Would that do it? Do you walk around with a video camera on the riders for 24 hours a day so that the world can see what they are doing every second of every day? Perhaps the UCI should get into the business of urinalysis and blood testing and spend $200 billion to open up their own testing laboratories and hire their own lab specialists. I don’t know. I just don’t agree that cycling is burying its head in the sand on the issue when both race organizers and riders openly talk about doping every single day. I would have to watch video to verify, but I would be willing to bet that Lance Armstrong never addressed doping from the top of the podium in the yellow jersey in Paris. The fact that Chris Froome DID says a lot about acknowledging the doping issues in cycling.
Money is the root of all evil, so they say. Could that be the case with doping? I don’t know if it’s the root, but it’s a major contributing factor. A minor league baseball player makes $1100 per month, plus $25 a day for meals, and spends hours each week travelling around on a bus. The minimum salary for a professional baseball player is just shy of $500K, and the league average is about $3.2 million. A college basketball player can’t even sell a signed basketball for $100 without getting a suspension, but the NBA league minimum salary is about the same $500K, while the league average is over $5 million. I’m no mathematical genius, but that’s a whole lot of economic pressure to try to find a little bit of an edge. What do you have to lose if you dope? Maybe a 4-game suspension? A measly fine? The cost of getting caught is negligible of you can't make the cut WITHOUT doping. From what I can find online, a professional tour cyclist, if he’s REALLY good, can make a little less than $200K per year. Keep in mind that none of the figures above include endorsement money, but I would venture a guess to say that you have to be in the top tier to tap into that big money. Froome won around $650K for finishing in the yellow jersey at Le Tour. I can’t substantiate this, but if the BEST tour riders in the world make $200K per year cycling (there are roughly 18 professional teams of 8 riders), you really have to be one of the best to be able to make a living doing it. Alright, I know you’re tired of the numbers, but you get the point. If you make it to the top tier you have the opportunity to make a lot of money. If you don’t, you aren’t going to make ANY money. That’s a lot of incentive to dope if you don't have the natural ability to get there. There's not a lot of downside.
And I’ll throw in one more economics angle, and it has to do with the regulating agencies of any sport. Do they really care about doping? I hate to bring it up, but professional sports exist because they are businesses, and for the most part professional sports are very profitable businesses. When you talk about what gets the attention of the regulating body, or the commissioner, or whatever that person or organization looks like, the answer is the bottom line: money. Does Bud Selig give a crap about doping in baseball? Eh, maybe. But in reality, is the doping in baseball affecting the bottom line? Probably not. People are still going to games. Tickets are still expensive. About every third person that I see in this town is wearing some sort of Padres gear, and they SUCK (last place in NL West, 45-57). I watched most of the Tour de France and the streets were packed with fans. Paris was a mad house, and in the post race interviews all of the riders talked about riding in the high noise level. I don’t think doping has affected cycling’s bottom line. If I was really cynical, I would say that doping is improving cycling’s bottom line since they are trying to recover all of that prize money from Lance Armstrong! But anyway, the only reason that head injuries in the NFL are getting lip service from the NFL is because they ARE starting to affect the bottom line. There is a line of former players with lawsuits lined up out the door and down the street. I think that former players filing lawsuites, in and of itself, is ridiculous, but that's another blog for another day. But until the NFL actually starts losing those cases and having to pay out multi-million dollar settlements, they will continue to give lip service and the appearance of action, such as 75 cent fines for a helmet to helmet hit. The leadership and regulating agencies have one major purpose, and that is to keep the business profitable. Player safety? Give me a break. So, Ed, I don’t think a lip service press conference from the UCI is worth the money it would cost to send out invitations to the press. The UCI can't fix doping in the Tour de France.
So how do you stop doping? I don’t think the regulating agencies or anti-doping agencies can do anything but react. They can’t prevent it. I would make the argument that the reason that the culture is changing (in my opinion) in cycling is due to the only thing that works: peer pressure. Once the Armstrong affair started to get some wind in the sails, riders started ratting on each other. The riders who don’t want to dope now have the acceptance of the general public in ratting on other riders who are doping. THAT is what will put a dent in that kind of activity. Nobody in baseball is squealing on teammates yet. If a player came forward and accused a teammate of doping, the ATH, PTI, and Rome is Burning panels would tear the whistleblower to pieces. It would only result in that whistleblower getting persona non grata status in most clubhouses. It just doesn’t happen. No active player is willing to talk about other players who are doping. That means it’s still a problem. Floyd Landis and the throngs of people that Lance Armstrong went after during his reign of doping don’t seem like such bad people any more. There are current riders on the tour that have come out and testified against other riders who they were a witness to or even complicit in their doping. Nobody is running them out of town. I know you don’t agree Ed, but I really think, or rather I really hope, that the new generation of cycling stars doesn’t want to be associated with the era of doping. They are riding clean and they want the world to know it. I don’t know all the science to it, but just as an example, Team Sky (TDF winner Chris Froome’s team) shared rider “power” data with the press daily. The commentators were talking about it one day and the average rider output during the doping era was 7.2 whatever-the-measurement-was, but this year the average rider output was 6.5. It was lower, which they seemed to take as an indication that if power output levels are actually down, then it’s probably because the doping has gone away. It’s not that the TDF got any easier; the Alp de Huez stage this year included not one, but TWO trips up the Alp de Huez on the same day!
That's how I see it, at least until doping comes up again in about three months on our blog!
And finally…
- I wouldn’t watch the Food Network, The Bachelor, or the MLB All-Star game. I’d shut off the TV first.
- I’ve already come clean. I dope nearly every time I ride with 600 or even 800mg of ibuprofen!
- I WOULD play a round of golf with Dennis Rodman. That would be some interesting conversation.
- I’m more interested in Tony the Tiger than Tiger Woods.
- WHO declared, and under what authority, that baseball is “America’s past time”?? I’m not buying it. Baseball is "past its time", not a past time.
- All-Star games are kind of like going to watch the Harlem Globetrotters or the WCW. It might be entertaining, but you know that there is no actual competition going on.
- Yes, I blame Ray Lewis.
- I’m out of spades.
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