But the advice you're giving here is roughly equivalent to telling a young cyclist in their first pro race, "hey, listen buddy. If you want to succeed, you've got to dope. Everybody's doing it. There's no other way."
And yet, if he wanted to ride in the Tour De France, I think we all know he'd lose unless he did a blood transfusion every single night....
Actually, wait. No I take that back, I do not agree. A starting cyclist will compete in local, small time races. There's only one App Store, and it's Pro's take all. These guys may be just beginning, but they're already swimming with sharks.
And if that's not enough mixed metaphors, I'll edit again!
It's not optimal, but it's the status quo that tens of thousands of developers face: you can't win if you don't employ dubious means.
Okay, that made me laugh. Thanks for adding some humor into this otherwise rather downer discussion!
I used to race (although not on very high level), I know the environment and I would bet my balls that last few Tours have NOT been clean.
My opinion is this: cycling may be a bit cleaner in a sense that maybe doping is not as widespread as it used to be and maybe the effect of doping is more limited because they need to be more careful. But I don't believe cycling is clean now. There are new drugs that are undetectable and mentality has not changed. I believe this is more realistic: http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/italian-judge-says-doping-is...
And about SKY team - I have no proof and it's nothing more than just my guess but I don't believe they are clean either. Remember last TdF? They totally ruled, they controlled the whole race. My cycling intuition tells me this is not natural. They certainly compete against some (I would say many) riders who are not clean (some of them even got caught, like Frank Schleck) and they were not even competing on the same level - they were superior. I don't believe it is possible without doping. The fact that they claim otherwise on every occasion means nothing to me - I have seen this too many times.
My guess - and I realize it's nothing more than guess - is that if in 2030 they use their new methods to test today's samples they will find out that there is some substance that is undetectable today.
I would love to be proven wrong on this - I love cycling.
Read more of the in-depth articles about Sky. Their training methods are hugely different, and came from the GB track cycling programme which has taken the world championships and Olympics by storm over the past decade. They're open about what it is, and unlike with others, it's only the performance which makes anyone wonder. Look at the figures, and remember, they're still 10% slower than Armstrong! What they are using is demonstrable physiological science and feedback: a manifestation of the benefits of the Quantified Self approach!