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Comment by ip26 | Hacker News Reader

From what I read, main issue is a ban immediately creates permanent enforcement overhead. You have to continually test people's skis for fluoro-doping.

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> You have to continually test people's skis for fluoro-doping.

Why not just only test the winner of every competition? As soon as winner crosses finish line, confiscate skis for testing. Negative = win, positive = disqualified. Ah, but then I suppose you have to test 2nd place's skis to see if they deserved to be bumped to first in the case of DQ... and this process has O(n) worst case where you would have to test literally every competitor's skis to find a winner...

I suppose you could just say "if you are in top 3 and you cheated, you are disqualified for life and nobody gets that medal" and then just let the communities sort it out.

The problem with disqualifying someone for life is that people will start to dope each other's skis.

Well then competitors will hopefully learn to keep their equipment under lock and key and/or maintain a record of custody. If it can be proven that a competitor was sabotaged, the life DQ would be reversed obviously.

Well hopefully it’s already the case that if someone intentionally sabotages another participant, and can be proven, they will receive a penalty worse than permanent disqualification.

So now rather than just testing the winner's skis, you need to track and monitor everyone's skis to prevent tampering?

No, random sampling can be done, although obviously not foolproof would still be better than nothing. It’s a common practice in most other industries, organizations, and even in sporting organizations with drug usage, etc.

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