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Comment by dogmatism | Hacker News Reader

1) Armstrong was (is) an asshole who destroyed careers and lives, which is part of why they threw the book at him as opposed to others

2) That said, 7 in a row is still incredible. While he had a few incidents, he was always able to recover and never had an injury or illness that knocked him out. If Roglic could say the same, he'd probably have won at least 2 Tours if not three

3) Of course they're still all doping. WvA winning on Ventoux... Pogacar winning Tours de France and Flanders? Pas normal

4) Speaking of all still doping, the ongoing involvement of former dopers really goes against a stated desire for clean racing. Inigo san Milan making bones with his "zone 2" bullshit...dude was team doctor for Saunier Duval. University of Colorado should be embarrassed

5) all that said...who cares? The NFL barely tests because who wants to watch 1950's football? Same with cycling. I'd rather see van der Poel do inhuman things. Cadel Evans era was boring

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Regarding #5, the main reason why these substances are banned is that they have long-term health consequences beyond what normal performance in the sport might do to the athletes. It's not just a matter of "ok maybe we just have separate clean and doped leagues so we can have literal supermen running around the sportsball field".

That being said, the NFL already chews through athletes anyway so maybe they've already silently decided "football[0] is just inherently doped now".

[0] American football

Is Euro football different when we talk about doping? I catch the odd Euro soccer match once in a while, all those dudes have amazing stamina…

You could probably baseline in it by watching a university club game.

oh for sure. every big money sport is loaded with doping and most hardly test. NFL, soccer, hockey, baseball (still), even golf I’d bet on.

Avid recreational golfers steal their grand/parents beta blockers to help with putting and swing smoothness as well as nerves.

There is a lot of prestige and a lot of wealthy people who play golf.

The same type of person who are obsessed with cycling instead will dope at a crazy level.

So no doubt the pros for whom millions are on the line, have their little helpers.

I don't care the gladiators die eventually. They don't much either. "But isn't there somebody you forgot to ask?", says the longhouse.

> I'd rather see van der Poel do inhuman things. Cadel Evans era was boring

How does doping make cycling a more interesting sport? I'm a mediocre fan, but Armstrong winning every year was boring. I would think that most fans like to see battles on climbs, attacks, etc... Doping makes you fastre, but whether it takes 45 or 42 minutes to do a certain climbs doesn't matter.

I think the answer there doesn't have much to do with doping, but rather super-teams. Especially teams focused on a single event like US Postal was. Reduce the size of each team to 7 or 5 and chaos would ensue (for good or bad). Do you want F1 or NASCAR?

In my view the problem with doping is not that pros take it. The problem is that when pros take PED and do basically impossible stuff this trickles down into amateur and youth sport. So you end up with teenagers and amateurs taking everything they can get without any doctors supervising how much they take. So you have teen athletes ruining their health while trying to make it to the top because it’s the only way to perform at the levels necessary.

That's the outcome of making doping illegal and not really related to the pros doing it. When you ban doping you make it safe (for some definition of it) only for those who can afford professional supervision, which is super expensive because the doctors doing it are braking the law, too.

I do care, I'd never put my time (my worth from marketing perspective) into watching these money-infested events, it doesn't matter if its cycling, football, hockey etc. Constant money chasing deformed these sport events into something I can't respect and won't expose my kids to due to all the toxicity, with the usual hard talk prior it about the reasons.

Also, if somebody is giving their 99.9% to the effort it doesn't matter what the objective results are, the effort should be respected regardless. This kind of competitiveness goes directly against all good that sports can and should bring into healthy society.

Luckily there are plenty of sports where money is scarce and folks do it mostly for the love of sport itself.

You don't want people competing on doping. Doping freely would ultimately lead to bodily destruction being a minimum requirement to compete at a high level. A PED competition is something that is more appropriate for laboratories and test subjects (hopefully non-human.) Is cycling supposed to be a sport or a carnival act?

>Cadel Evans era was boring

Even Cadel Evans had some connections to the likes of Michele Ferrari (Armstrong's own doping doc).

Can we get 1940s football? I'd love to see the return of leather helmets and no facemasks.

> Cadel Evans era was boring

Except for rise of Peter Sagan.

Really? Do prefer watching a bunch of doped kids crying because is raining or is cold? C'mon.

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