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Comment by username223 | Hacker News Reader

Controversial? Yes.

Wrong? I can't speak for all sports, but I know an ex-professional cyclist. Doping is less prevalent in the States than in Europe, but even in the States you see amateurs doing it occasionally. Plenty of Euros dope, but more ride the fine line of "therapeutic use" exemptions for drugs that just happen to improve their performance by a percent or two.

They're not all doping, but at least in endurance sports, many are.

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> Doping is less prevalent in the States than in Europe,

That is certainly a strong statement, seeing that Armstrong, Landis or Tyler Hamilton are all from the States. Yes, most of the European riders are also not clean, but there are huge exceptions, like France.

I was a bit hesitant to write it, but that was just my friend's experience on the MTB circuit over the last 15-20 years. US Postal and Armstrong were awful and shameless, but I think they were an outlier among American pro teams. Also, there's less money in mountain biking, and it's not really a team sport, so the kind of organized team doping Armstrong created is much less likely to happen.

Anyways, I don't follow cycling as closely as I used to, in part because the pervasive doping was just so discouraging. Hopefully some combination of out-of-competition testing and biological passport will finally make the sport relatively clean.

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