How I became a drug cheat athlete to test the system

In cycling one key is drafting. We have a few guys where I live that do well in big national races. When they show up on the Saturday group ride, weaker riders can keep up thanks to the advantage of drafting. A rider has to be about 30% stronger than me to pull away when I am drafting him.

I think it's honestly getting to the point where some signed/trusted biologically embedded blood analyser/spectrometer is going to be the only thing that catches cheats.

That'd be tricky to set up because drugs are discriminatingly life-threatening depending on dosage and individuals.

The problem is that they're probably nearly all life-threatening (or at a minimum longevity-threatening) in high enough doses.

Fully permitted-doping would escalate into a bloodsport where athletes would be competing to show how many drugs they could take before keeling over.

They seem tolerated in some body building competitions. If you can call that a sport.

Do the military use them?

Beer drinking competitions, debatably.

It is a known that Pride FC did not test athletes and even had statements in the contracts that they would not test. That might be the closest you'll ever come to what you're asking for.

Also, MMA in general right now is going through a huge revolution in PED testing. For a long time it's been a simple matter of testing on fight night, with some athletes being give a therapeutic TRT pass. That is all changing as of this week. All UFC contract athletes will not be given random Olympic style testing year round.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_Fighting_Championships

http://espn.go.com/mma/story/_/id/13014746/ufc-announces-ext...

In many powerlifting federations they are allowed. There are both drug tested and non-drug tested federations to compete in.

Currently the world's most famous athlete, Lionel Messi, is legally permitted to take HGH, one of the most potent steroids ever made, due to an earlier growth deficiency. Johann Cruyff, also considered one of the football greats, went through the same legal HGH treatments.

Their acceleration and injury tolerance is mind blowing. See how Messi blew past 6 players in a cup final last week after playing 50+ games:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOX2QpfMkq4

And also here's Johann Cruyff blowing past players with ease:

https://youtu.be/YU-k-Ots3iY?t=1m31s

The popularity of these two players would indicate that athletes legally permitted to use steroids would be very popular among sports fans

To what end? It's just a little more freak show and a little less sport, that's all. Plus the NFL, MLB track and field and cycling have pretty much done just that to varying degrees over the years.

I always think this is the exasperated "it's just too hard" response. We want the best athlete with the superior tactical mind to succeed. Not the best scientist.

Performance-enhancing drugs were endemic in Eastern-bloc Olympic competition for decades. From the Outside Magazine piece linked elsewhere in the comment thread[1]:

East Germany's state-supported system of doping, which often began before puberty, left a legacy of Olympic medals—along with deformed offspring, heart attacks, facial disfigurement, and lifelong sexual dysfunction.

If you permit the drugs, they'll be used not just in the elite competitors, but in the entire funnel of hopeful competitors starting from high school. These are serious drugs with serious consequences. I for one don't think entertainment is worth that.

[1] http://www.outsideonline.com/1924306/drug-test

Wouldn't call it a 'sport' per se, but in bodybuilding there's two divisions, 'natural' (which is supposed to be drug free), and ''(no formal name).

powerlifting, ifbb (if not on paper, at least tacitly), strongman

frankly, I think the majority of this is hysteria driven by whiny baby boomers pissed their sport's records are being surpassed. Of course, tommy john surgery and greenies are cherished traditions. But Barry Bonds is evil because he's black and doesn't tongue bathe interviewers. Or consider the cherished tradition of cheating in the tour de france which was kosher until an american started winning.

If you allow car racing, why not drug racing?

"The All-Drug Olympics"

EDIT: The Reference: https://screen.yahoo.com/weekend-drug-olympics-000000571.htm...

I think we can get a fair idea of what would happen by looking at the two unrestricted auto racing divisions: Group B and Can-Am.

Group B was a basically unrestricted class in the World Rally Championship. This series was initially very well received by fans, and the manufacturers produced cars that are still legendary to this day. However, in only 4 years, costs of remaining competitive ballooned, and the teams with the deepest pockets were the teams that could dominate. Sadly, the entire class of cars was banned after a series of accidents caused many competitor and spectator casualties. I don't believe this would be the result of unrestricted Olympians, as few events pose a direct risk of grave injury to athletes or fans.

Can-Am, on the other hand, lasted some 8 years in its unrestricted form. Unlike rally, it was run on closed race courses, so safety was easier to keep in check than on the winding rural roads of rally. Like Group B, it started out popular with racing fans, and the unrestricted nature allowed manufacturers and teams to innovate faster and faster. The only restriction was funding. Again, the teams with the deepest pockets began to dominate, and competition suffered because of it. Teams pulled out, and public interest dwindled. The last scheduled race wasn't even run.

I'm not really sure why this was downvoted, apart from because you didn't enjoy my point of view. I personally think it added to the discussion.

You are, of course, welcome to downvote this comment that definitely doesn't add to the discussion.

Rowing would be a perfect sport to do this in. I've heard rumors that there are rowers who do it, but I think the reason why it isn't that widespread is because there's no money in the sport. Although testing is lax, so maybe it is widespread at the top levels and we just don't know about it?

I think it was pretty clear why he did that - now that people know he can MicroDose to very significantly enhance performance, who is going to believe in his performance being "natural" if he does extraordinarily well? Particularly as he demonstrated that even the more stringent systems didn't catch him.

He was trying to make it super, super clear that he know that it is cheating, that it is wrong, and that if he EVER did this outside of this trial, that he would be guilty as sin.

Running and cycling are significantly different sports. A runner’s stride is very important, but cycling is almost pure power output by comparison.

However, if you’re tracing a single athlete over time then skill tends to stay fairly constant and overall heath becomes the main focus of training.

At lower levels, technique can handily beat raw power, and vice versa. At elite level, those lacking either technique or raw power will be filtered out, or forced to work hard on their weak points (example: Federer had to work on his weight training when the likes of Nadal and Djokovic hit the scene)

In sports where competition is strong (1) that, at best, leaves those with good technique and exceptional power or exceptional technique and good power, but likely, top players are exceptional in both areas. In that group, getting more power or endurance can certainly be a decisive factor.

And as another reply said, cycling (like cross-country skiing, and rowing) is a bit different in the sense that raw power (per kg) is a really good indicator of performance.

(1) in weaker competitions, you can still see strong players with weak technique or vice versa. That happens in smaller countries, for example, and, historically in about every sport.

No. VO2 tests are pretty well understood, and just don't vary like that (unless someone is sick).

I think the biggest failure here is not tracking the 4 months prior. Each week, given he undertook dedicated training under the guidance of a professional, he would have seen an improvement in his results. I'm sure his measurements and ride data would have looked meaningfully different between week 2 and week 12 of his 4 month run up period. Now some of that would taper but he'd still see performance improvements after 4 months with regular dedicated training in place. So it would be key to have that context. Perhaps the increase due to doping is 3-5% vs the 7%. Still substantial either way.

I almost agree. Probably the 7% is too much for only getting use to the setup and training, but to be sure I think this experiment would be much better if he compare again the performance after he stopped taking the drug. Something like a A-B-A test.

Article about A-B-A: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-subject_research

Much more information and other variations: https://onlinecourses.science.psu.edu/stat509/book/export/ht...