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Comment by cujo | Hacker News Reader

it's a safe bet that your big money sports (not cycling) have a lot more doping than cycling. the issue is that you can't report what you don't know.

* cycling is a mix of moderate money and lots of drug testing. there are significant incentives to dope, but it's fairly hard to do these days since there is a lot of testing.

* big money sports (in the us especially - nfl, mlb, nba) are the jokes of the testing world. they rarely test and often inform their athletes when a test is coming. the big money basically assures that the incentive to dope is also big. but you'll never get caught if the testing process is a joke, so there is nothing to report.

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People want to see doped athletes in the NFL, NBA, etc. We don't know that we do but we want to see the biggest, strongest people doing the most exciting athletic fetes that they can. The pure punishment that athletes in the NFL take and then keep taking the field is mind blowing. The human body has a hard time dealing with that on its own. I would be surprised if the majority don't have a dosing regime. A 265lb man with low body fat running at the speeds they run is just not realistic for so many, they are the pinnacle of physicality and that doesn't come naturally for many.

Add on that most of them only play for a few years and there is every incentive under the sun to dope and maximize their earnings. I'm not endorsing it but if its essentially a widely accepted secret and you cant compete without it then you get what you incentivize.

The nfl testing regime is purely surprise testing based.

The bigger difference is that endurance sports have more options for doping than others.

Frankly, I think too many things are banned. Blood doping seems no worse than sleep chambers and hgh in correctly applied regimes would take some of the punishment out of football.

Maybe read some of the stories of the cyclists like Pantani doing blood doping. They would have to wake up every few hours through the night and do some cycling on a stationary bike to get their heart rate up or their heart might stop while they're asleep due to their blood being too thick. Sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber to boost the mitochondria is childs play in comparison.

The NFL (and other major sports organizations) have no incentive to catch their athletes beyond a token amount to make the general public think the league cares about it. They don't want to catch too many as that could lead to a PED scandal that damages the reputation of the league; for example the BALCO scandal in the early 2000's MLB. Plus PEDs allow their athletes to stay healthy and perform at higher levels.

There's a reason athletes refer to PED tests as IQ tests. Only the very dumb or careless get caught, but the reality is nearly all of the athletes in these leagues have used PEDs at some point in their career.

Anyone who thinks cycling of all sports is clean is a total fool.

It is a sport literally built around doping. You can't take things to the Tour De France level and recover from those workouts without drugs. Beating the test is part of the sport.

In the NFL/NBA, drug testing is just a theatrical performance. I know in the NFL because careers are so short, the players basically have a gentleman's agreement that whatever you have to do to stay on the field is fair game.

Cycling though is just such a sport of watts per kilo there is no way around doping being a huge variable.

The stupidest thing to me is every player basically says they will do everything they can to win , no matter what the sport. Everything but the thing that will help them the most in PEDs. For some reason the public just wants to believe this bullshit.

> You can't take things to the Tour De France level and recover from those workouts without drugs.

You absolutely can. However, you will almost certainly be impacted as the days progress, and this doesn't work well for the largest spectator single sport event in the world.

Also, watts per kilo is irrelevant in pack cycling and flat time trials. It only matters on when climbing.

>they rarely test and often inform their athletes when a test is coming. the big money basically assures that the incentive to dope is also big. but you'll never get caught if the testing process is a joke, so there is nothing to report.

This reminds me of compliance training when I worked at a trading firm.

>Canada is perceived to have the least corrupt stock exchange in the world.

>>Makes sense ... wait perceived?

>Yes.

>>So no one looks at the actual amount of fraud?

>No.

>>...

>...

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