A Tale Of Cyclists And Dope

As a cyclist and long time fan of the sport it’s a fascinating morning. The Lance Armstrong saga finally played out yesterday when 11 of his former teammates came clean about their doping practices and the USADA traced more than a million dollars of payments from Armstrong to doping expert Dr. Michele Ferrari. The jig, as they say, is up.

I don’t say shocked because most of us who’ve been around the sport for a long time knew what was going on. Tyler Hamilton’s recently released book, which was supposed to blow the lid off the Armstrong era, only confirmed what many of us already knew to be true (though it had some outstanding anecdotes and is an excellent read). It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure something to be amiss when today’s generation of cyclists, despite improved equipment and training protocols, is across the board 10% slower than they were a decade ago, especially when some of them are the same people.

I say fascinating because of the way it happened and to see the public react, as well as watching Armstrong and Bruyneel continue to play innocent when everyone around them is losing their head and blaming it on them. Can money really buy you out of everything? That part is still to be played out.

But as a cyclist it’s nice to have a clean slate, and today we do. Long term it will help the sport, even if racing is a bit more boring (it was fun to watch Armstrong, Pantani et al charge up mountain passes like they were on motorcycles). Sure, there are still dopers, but racing is decidedly believable now and with the knowledge of physiologic human potential much better understood it’s likely to stay that way, at least for a little while. The pressure on young cyclists to dope has been diminished.

I’ll leave it at that, as further commentary starts to become off topic for most of my readers. Those of you looking for more should have a look at this. It’s the full USADA v. Lance Armstrong report. 200-plus pages, which I have not had time to read but will someday. Apparently there are a thousand pages floating around somewhere but, looking at the ToC, this will satisfy even the most rabid fan’s curiosity.

The USADA vs. Lance Armstrong

foto: the bygone days of another era crédits: panoramic

"One Hell of an Epic"

I’ve got to admit it’s been the most spirited Tour de France in a long time. We’ve seen sprinters winning mountain stages, rouleurs wearing the sprint jersey, and the guy who’s dominated every recent grand tour he’s entered getting dropped on climbs. The race leader is currently an attacker who hunts for stages and claims that he doesn’t train with a power meter, heart rate monitor, or even a speedometer. With only three stages to sort out the overall it’s an absolute crap shoot as to who will come out on top, leading one Eurosport commentator to sum it up as “one hell of an epic”. And to think, when it all began I was ambivalent.

The flat stages have been the most fun. Cav looks as though he might finally hang onto Green but it hasn’t been easy, especially since when the roads have gone up the sprinters have not only hung on to win intermediate points but actually won stages. World Champion Thor Hushovd has been the man of the race, followed closely by Phillipe Gilbert, Tommy Voeckler, the HTC lead out train, Garmin/Cervelo, the country of Norway, and a slew of other guys who’ve been fighting out every mountain, hill, sprint and finale like its life or death. To tune in on the Interweb click here.

The only complaint I’ve heard is lack of early attacking in the big mountains. Long gone are the days when the Postal and Telekom trains would lead into a 20 kilometer mountain finish as though it were a sprint. You don’t ride up L’Alpe d’Huez at 20kph breathing through your nose unless you hematocrit is well north of 50. And, while there’s no way to say doping is gone from the peloton nobody is being called “Mr. 60%” anymore either, leading to my friend Josh’s comment/question, “so, is Thor the only one doping? I’m confused.”


However, it wouldn’t be bike racing without a bit of controversy. Over at the The Inner Ring you see a lot of banter from those a bit more in-the-know, or at least willing to dish dirt, than the TV commentators. Such as this tidbit on how race heroes according to the press might not be the most popular guys among their colleagues.

Then, of course, there’s Lance. Even though he’s retired, this time we think for good, it wouldn’t be the Tour without some further revelations about “the comeback of the century” or whatever other monikers the PR machine heaped on the Armstrong era.

Losing Face

Even though I don’t report on doping anymore last night’s 60 Minutes piece is too much to pass up commenting on. The show got me to click the doping label on my blog to see what I’ve written in the past and how accurately I was conjecturing. By recent accounts it seems as though I was doing okay. Anyone interested in doping in sports, particularly cycling (not that it’s so different elsewhere), might want to give it a perusal. Today I’m adding one more tidbit on my personal doping history for your entertainment.

To me, and most of my friends, the only thing astonishing on 60 Minutes last night was that it was actually playing on 60 Minutes. Tyler, nor anyone else, said anything we didn’t know (or at least thought we knew). When Tyler said “I’d bet my life” that every other team was doping it was nothing different than what I’d heard from many other racers over the years, except that it was on the record.

Velonews added a different perspective with Neal Rogers’ article:

Scott Mercier: Former Postal rider says Hamilton’s charges ring true

Mercier’s account is level headed and hard to discount. Riding for Postal in ’97 he was offered a doping regimen. When he couldn’t complete the training he was given without it he took the other path and resigned from the sport.

Mercier packed the drugs with him and said he contemplated using them but ultimately decided against it. He attempted the training program anyhow but found himself unable to recover and instead left the sport and moved to Hawaii. In the years that followed, he said he “assumed that anyone that had stayed on as a professional was using some sort of performance-enhancing drug.”

“In the off-season races, or the shoulder season, the big races in America, or anywhere other than Europe, you could compete with some guys, but in Europe you just couldn’t,” he said. “I’m not sure that I really viewed the doping as cheating; it’s just that I could not live with the hypocrisy and lying associated with it.”

On a personal note this was the same decision I made in college. I doubt that I had Mercier’s talent, and always stated my choice was lack of commitment because I didn’t see my upside as worthy of the risk. Doping, back then, was not the controversial topic it is today. If you were serious that’s what you did. The rest of my thought process was identical. I knew similar athletes to myself who doped and were better, so I assumed the guys with extraordinary talent were doing the same. It was not a value judgment as much as a rational observation.

My friends always seemed confused as to why I didn’t dope since I’d almost habitually test my body’s limits with very little regard for its welfare. I’d experiment with diets to the point of starvation, hydration til I’d go into electrolyte shock, and exercise until I couldn’t get out of (or make it in to) bed. But, to me at least, doping was less interesting because we knew that it would work. And if it was already known then there was little to be gained from the experience. Winning, and maybe money, I suppose, if you’re into such things, but winning by knowingly cheating has always rung hollow, which leads to my final anecdote.

My friend Phil and I were discussing something once about training and volume and challenges, likely a birthday challenge, when someone at the table, upon hearing that all of our numbers weren’t witnessed, said “what’s to stop you guys from just making stuff up?” Phil and I looked at each other, shrugged, and said we’d lose face.

Looking up colloquial definitions of losing face I see it referenced as losing public respect, which is something I find as mixed up as our society is in general these days. Our interpretation is different. Losing face was only about a self reflection. As long as you were attempting the right thing you could not be totally wrong. If you were deceitful, no matter the outcome, you had lost face to yourself. One of us added, “and then we’d have to commit suicide.”

Which brings me back to The Grand Boucle of deceit. As Tyler tried to point out last night, Lance was only doing what everyone else was doing or, at least, everyone else who had a physiological chance of winning the Tour de France was doing. Does that make him so wrong? And, ultimately, no matter how this turns out in public, he’s eventually going to have to reconcile that one with himself because it’s the only self that matters.

Doping And You

"I don't think it is possible for a weight man to compete internationally without using anabolic steroids," says Dr. H. Kay Dooley, director of the Wood Memorial Clinic in Pomona, Calif., one of the few physicians who openly endorse use of anabolic steroids. "All the weight men on the Olympic team had to take steroids. Otherwise they would not have been in the running."

That excerpt is from article from Sports Illustrated on doping in sports. I mentioned last week that I got sick of covering this topic because of the way it’s handled in the media. This article is fresh and candid. Of course I’m interested in doping. Any person’s whose job is human performance can’t ignore anything, medical or not, that improves it because the latest research always trickles down. Whatever sports scientists are doing to help athletes win gold medals will in some form become a component of the next version of P90X.

In both training and nutrition we distill what’s happening at the pinnacle of the sport; tossing aside anything dangerous and embracing that which works. Of course we never advocate doping but drugs generally stimulate natural reactions which can be improved through diet and supplementation. The latter is not as effective but trends still follow medical research. We look through natural pathways for similar reactions. Famous sports surgeon Dr. Robert Kerlan explains the problems with this difference in the article.

"I'm not a therapeutic nihilist," says Kerlan "Situations arise where there are valid medical reasons for prescribing drugs for athletes. There are special occupational health problems in some sports. However, the excessive and secretive use of drugs is likely to become a major athletic scandal, one that will shake public confidence in many sports just as the gambling scandal tarnished the reputation of basketball. The essence of sports is matching the natural ability of men. When you start using drugs, money or anything else surreptitiously to gain an unnatural advantage, you have corrupted the purpose of sports as well as the individuals involved in the practice."

Doping is a well known problem but the press, for the most part, has done a horrible job explaining it. I guess our love of black and white has led the media to create heroes and villains and pit them against each other. The article paints a slightly different picture of drug use in sports.

The whole matter has been succinctly summarized by Hal Connolly, a veteran of four U.S. Olympic teams.

"My experience," says Connolly, "tells me that an athlete will use any aid to improve his performance short of killing himself."

In the press Americans that are yet to be busted often take a holier than thou approach. After getting beaten by some Chinese swimmers one American woman proudly proclaimed she was “the fasted clean swimmer in the world.” The press loved it. However, Americans appear to be leading the race, not following.

"American athletes have the most expensive urine in the world," says Ray Baldwin, trainer at Xavier University.

After all, Americans are, by far, the most doped society in the world as the article points out.

Setting aside ethical considerations for the moment, there are obvious reasons why athletes should use so many drugs. The most obvious is that there are more drugs available these days for everyone than ever before. Furthermore, we have all been sold on the efficacy of drugs. We believe that the overflowing pharmacopoeia is one of the unquestioned triumphs of the age. We have been sold on drugs empirically because we have tried them and enjoy the results. We have been sold by countless magazine and newspaper stories about wonder drugs—many of which later turned out to be less than wondrous—by massive pro-drug propaganda campaigns mounted by pharmaceutical manufacturers, by TV actors dressed in doctors' coats and by real doctors, many of whom are very quick with the prescription pad. Generally, we have accepted rather uncritically the central message of this persuasive pitch—drugs are good for you. These days it is a cultural reflex to reach for a vial, an atomizer, a capsule or a needle if you suffer from fever, chills, aches, pains, nausea, nasal congestion, irritability, the doldrums, sluggishness, body odor, obesity, emaciation, too many kids, not enough kids, nagging backache or tired blood.

The press doesn’t seem to acknowledge this at all, treating dopers as if they some form of modern freak show. Old school athletes are lionized. When plucked from the woodwork of retirement they feign surprise. Instead of copping to the fact that drugs may have been around in their day, they offer their opinions in an air of denial similar to Louie, the corrupt police chief in Casablanca’s reaction when coerced to change his stance on gambling in Bogie’s bar, “I’m shocked, SHOCKED, to see gambling going on in this establishment!”

Yet drugs have been a part of sport for as long as they’ve been a part of society:

By bringing together athletes from all over the world and dumping them into the most formidable sporting pressure cooker yet devised, the quadrennial Olympic Games have traditionally (it took four physicians to revive the marathon winner of the 1904 St. Louis Olympics, an American, Tom Hicks, who proved to be loaded on strychnine and brandy) served as an exchange for drugs and drug recipes.

When Barry Bonds came clean his entire era of sluggers’ records were dismissed by the traditionalists for cheating. The press wants records to revert back to an era where sports where clean. You know, like Hank Aaron’s numbers from the 70s. Greg LeMond, the time Tour de France winner in the 80s, has been once of the most vocal opponents of modern cycling’s drug addiction yet he hardly mentions drugs during his career, even though the most famous drug-related cycling death happened to Tom Simpson in 1967.

But the most fascinating aspect of this article is that it was published in 1969. No matter how the press wants to handle it, we can’t escape the fact that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Ken Ferguson of Utah State University, who went on to play professional football in Canada, has said that 90% of college linemen have used steroids. "I'd say anybody who has graduated from college to professional football in the last four years has used them," said Ferguson in 1968.

Ridin' Dirty

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Ils Sont Tous Dopeurs

I haven’t posted much about doping lately. After all, it’s the height of cycling’s off-season. In celebration of the Vuelta route announcement (won by an accused doper, but who isn’t?) here’s a pretty revealing article about what really occurs in high stakes sports. This guy, in fact, was only a second tier professional and, apparently, the pressure to dope began at even lower levels.

Doping Consequences: A case study with Joe Papp: by Myles McCorry

This is probably the most candid account of doping I’ve seen. Joe Papp doesn’t seem to be holding back. I’d love to hear more about the specifics but it’s interesting to hear how his doping came about,

Papp tells us of a hard to grasp paradox - that he doped not to earn money, but because he loved cycling so much, He wanted to keep cycling and that meant wins-- which is ironic that this love for the sport is exactly what puts the sport and the health of its athletes in jeopardy.

Still, we get more info than most ex-dopers are willing to part with, such as:

And on it went from 2001 to his near-death crash in 2006. Papp admitted to using nearly 100 different drugs including EPO, HGH, cortisone, insulin, thyroid hormone, anabolic steroids and amphetamines. He fell into a definitive program of cycling with substances - unaware of the dangers - or at least unwilling to see them. “When you have a doctor managing your doping program, the risks seem less tangible.”

And an uncompromising look at the reality of how to stop it,

He has put his hand up and said yes I did this and here are the life destroying consequences. We wish all young athletes to be aware of the lifelong opportunity cost of doping which far outweigh the short term gain of drugs Papp, somewhat despondently, admits, “I hate to say it, but a fear based education from an early age, if you dope you put the rest of your life in jeopardy is essential to making doping something that is again unconscionable for the next generation.”

All in all, a good read to keep you focused on your off-season conditioning because the fitter you make yourself the less the temptation to dope becomes. Okay, that last line is probably complete bullocks. But in the world of fear mongering at least the threat of death might give one pause.

Le Tour '09

Since I’ve been asked, I guess I’ll write a Tour preview. Interesting year, for sure, and I’m not even going to mention doping. The return of the Texan is the major headline but the course is very strange. There are more “easy” stages than normal, and the hard bits happen during the first and last week. This means that someone could be peaking in week one and fade by week three. The result is that no lead will be considered safe. This should make the drama higher than usual.

monaco teams presentation
The common tactic is to arrive at stage 1 at maybe 90% peak fitness and build towards week three. Young riders, in particular, seem to have trouble with this, which is why it’s rare to see youth win at le Tour, even if they’ve been dominating everything else (Valverde is a prime example). We generally don’t get a true glimpse at the GC until around stage 10.

This year, however, you could easily lose too much time to make up. The first week has at least three stages where significant time gain be gained or lost. The interesting aspect is that no one seems to be very sure how it will go. Certainly the major players have their private thoughts but it’s all feigned confusion in the press. And this is adding greatly to the fun.

Throw in all the confusion and leadership issues at Astana, the last-minute loss of Dekker, the addition of Boonen, the exclusion of Valverde, the sudden verve of Evans, the mind games of Riis (not to mention Armstrong), the cool of Sastre and the quiet of Menchov and you’ve got intrigue galore. I can’t wait for tomorrow. I with, like my friends Bruce and Alisa, I were there.

Demand Media Video -- powered by demandmedia.com

the texan perspective

Armstrong’s return means that there is no lack of press in the US. For straight reporting, velonews.com and cyclingnews.com will still rule the day. Cyclingfans.com should not be missed, either, as they grab video feeds from around the world. Livestrong.com is also broadcasting a lot of pro-Lance stuff. If you can get your head around that, it’s pretty cool. I think personal daily reports from any rider doing the Tour is worth a look. Armstrong is more measured, more practiced, and probably cagier than your average rider but he’s still out there racing and suffering. It’s a pretty cool bonus.

As for who will win, who knows? Lance, Evans, and even Andy Schleck seem confident. And they’re all looking at numbers, so they must have some idea because those reflect their chances. Lance tipped Sastre and Menchov, who are certainly in the picture. Menchov looked unbelievably strong at the Giro and Sastre had better be dispatched by the Ventoux because he’s always strong in week three and climbs like an angel. But Lance didn’t mention Contador, who climbs even better and just crushed everyone in the Spanish time trial championships. No matter how I try, I can’t see him losing.

Exercise Without Exercise

Two drugs could be on the way that would change the world as we know it. I'm not prepared to go into a philosophical discourse on the subject yet. There could be many downsides (and scary sides) to this should it work as advertised, but a primary one could be the loss of sports and competition to the world.

This is a far cry beyond what we now consider sports doping to be. At best, doping creates an advantage over like-trained individuals. In tests with mice, those that exercised while taking GW1516 increased their performance by 77%. This would mean that athletes could actually be made from scratch. What this would do is take away the current explorative nature of our beings to find out just what the limits of the human body are. That is the true nature of sport. While this has been altertered, slightly, with modern doping practices it's now where near where it could be.

I suppose it's possible that we'll roll with this and just accept medical changes as part of sport. But I'm pretty uncomfortable with that thought at the moment.

Here are a couple of articles:

http://www.emaxhealth.com/69/23617.html

http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20080731/exercise-in-a-pill-maybe

Bigger Stronger Faster

I've written a fair amount about drug use in sports over the years. Some of you have pointed out that sometimes I seem to vilify it while other times I'm more supportive. The reason for this is that it's a complicated subject. To the public, it's about as misunderstood as it possibly could be. The media loves to categorize issues as black or white. If you understand what doping actually is, and its history, you'll see that the entire subject is shrouded in gray.

This film is great. It's absolutely a must see for anyone who feels compelled to comment on Barry Bonds or Lance Armstrong or, perhaps, even watch the Olympics. If you want to be an educated viewer, Bigger, Stronger, Faster is Sports 101.

Listen To Your Body

Here's a rant by Gregg Valentino, the man with the largest arms in the world. The guy is pretty controversial but he talks straight. We cover most of these subjects on the boards regularly. So here I offer up another opinion. Elijah, you out there? I'm sure you've seen this. If not...

Supplements, Dope, and The Tour, Part II

I'm officially bored of this topic. Well, I'm not really. It's fascinating. But I'm ready for the cycling news to be about racing and training. It's getting better, for sure. A couple of years ago I stopped counting how many days in a row featured at least one doping headline on cyclingnews. This year we've had stretches of weeks at a time. The best thing, I suppose, is that the public is getting a bit more informed about it.

There is no better spectacle for viewing dopers than a grand cycling tour. Bodybuilding and track and field run a close second. One day cycling races a distant third. Next come sports more based on skill, where absolute strength is less a part of the equation.

The reason for this is EPO. Over the course of intense daily training it's natural for the body's red blood cell count to drop as the body breaks down and doesn't have time to fully recover. This lowers your blood’s oxygen carrying capacity and, essentially, your performance ability. For a one day race you can taper and peak. This isn't possible over time, especially when stage races are fast every day (none are as fast as le Tour). By injecting EPO you can offset the nature drop in haematocrit so that, essentially, you're fresher each day as other riders tail off. This is the reason that only 3 of the last 33 grand tour winners have not had some type of doping suspension.

Doping has been around forever, but nothing has changed grand tour racing like EPO. As Greg LeMond said, "You can deal with that other stuff." EPO provides a massive advantage during stage racing.

It doesn't, however, create supermen. They are born. It won't make a club rider competitive with a professional. It won't increase your lung capacity or your VO2/max beyond its natural predisposition. It simply allows you to maintain your peak performance for longer (after reading Elijah's research I should clarify this because EPO usage can ensure you're tapping whatever potential you have aerobically, which is extremely hard to do training naturally, so hard that some say it's impossible to do--David Walsh's Lance to Landis covers this in depth. The point I was attempting to make was that it can't elevate someone with a VO2/max of 60 (good weekend warrior athlete) to 80 (Tour de France rider). Changing your haematocrit changes your VO2/max slightly, but this can also be done naturally by training/supplementing. Among like athletes its advantage is huge. The research provided would suggest that it's also significant in one day races and, certainly, would take a lot of guesswork out of training to peak.)

Here's a good study (thanks Elijah):

Some EPO stuff

Peak performance is possible by natural means. By eating right, training right, and recovering well you can maximize your body's potential (at least to what sports science currently understands). This, however, is very hard to do. Doping makes it easier. If you dope than you don't need to get your diet and training and recovery perfect. Steroids (colloquial name for a lot of performance enhancing drugs) enable you to recover better from hard training, which is most cases is only an advantage over an even playing field.

This is why dopers don't always win. You see dopers lose, especially in one day events, all the time. The advantage isn't all that great. It just stacks the odds in your favor. But in a grand tour, EPO stacks those odds even further; to the point where it becomes almost impossible to keep up naturally.

Supplements are basically legal natural doping substances. “Dope” isn’t always bad--at least as in bad for you. It’s just using medicine to aid recovery. Almost all “dope” has a life enhancing characteristic. It's cheating as defined by a sport. Supplements fall into the “everything that isn’t defined as cheating” category, basically. By definition they are natural but many are synthetic “natural” supplements. Most of the reactions that supplements can be duplicated by eating perfectly. Supplements allow you to eat less well by, basically, condensing nutrition into a supplemental form for easier ingestion, which can also be administered via injection.

Because smart supplementation—and smart doping as well—can enhance your lifestyle, it’s a recommended thing for most people to do. Cheating in sports is defined by sport only. It’s not considered cheating to use EPO to recover from cancer or use a testosterone cream to offset the effects of aging. It’s only cheating when it comes to sport. For most of us, I recommend that we supplement whenever we can, provided that we know what we are doing. Eating well and exercising are the most effective ways to age gracefully but supplements and, sometimes, medicine, will give us more margin for error.

Supplements, Dope, and The Tour, Part I

My friend Heather asked why I wasn't blogging on the Tour this year. I'm not because I'm all about 90X at the moment, but I've also been a bit bored about commenting so much on doping. Yesterday's madness, however, has given me a chance to write about both.

What was looking like a pretty clean Tour got skewered yesterday with a positive drug test for rising superstar Ricardo Ricco, who had won two stages. As the investigation unfolds it seems like it may be a bigger, and more systematic, issue that will lead to more busts. Ricco's team pulled themselves from the race and one of his teammates, who also won a stage, has been implicated. So let's look at three issues: is cycling cleaning up, how much does doping matter, and how is it different than supplementing.

Is cycling cleaner than it was?

The evidence all points to an affirmative. Many teams now have strict doping controls within the team. At CSC, anyone can download physical data of each rider. If blood levels start to get squirrely, it will be noticed.

The biggest evidence, however, is on the road. Racing has slowed down. A lot. Piano (stretches of grand tours where the riders cruise at a pedestrian pace) is back in vogue. Over the 90s and early 2000s the average speed of the peloton was increasing every year. Over the last couple, this has reversed.

Another, more subtle, clue would be riders acting more human. In the old days, grand tour leaders would gain and lose 20-30 minutes in a single stage regularly. No lead was safe because the guy in front could crack at any time. Now, with better training, diet, teamwork, and strategy, this is far less likely. But looking at this years Giro d’Italia we were seeing things that all seemed very, well, natural.

The best example of this was at the final day’s time trial, where the leaders of the overall race where no where in sight of the podium (a far cry from the days when Armstrong and Ullirch would crush everyone through the mountains and then take minutes in the final TT as well). Mario Bruseghin, who won the first TT and came in 3rd overall came in 28th and lost 1:33. Race winner Alberto Contador, second in the first TT, came in 11th. Simoni and DiLuca, who had both made huge solo efforts trying to win the race in the mountains, came in 135th and 112th.

Then there was Ricco. A bad time trialist, he was the only one of the overall race leaders who improved on his effort. He lost more time to the stage winner, but far less to every GC contender.

In the Tour Ricco was riding incredibly well. His attack on the Aspin was like nothing we’ve seen since the days of the Texan. He dropped everyone like they were club riders. He said Piepoli would win on Hautacam and Sanuier Duval then dominated all of the important points of the race. Ricco seemed to be barely breathing while shadowing the GC contenders. Up front, his teammates dropped Frank Schleck the second they decided it was time to go. It was all, as David Millar said, “a bit too good to be true.”
Apparently, they were using a new form of EPO. One of the doctors on the anti-doping committee was surprised they were caught because he didn’t believe there was a test for it yet. He stated that they knew riders were using it, and even which ones, but had no way to prove it. Apparently there was a specific team working on this test and trying to get it ready for the Tour. We may still have more busts. I’d bet against many more. There was one team riding oddly better than everyone else and now they’re gone. We’ll see, but I’m optimistic that the playing field is getting a bit more level.

I’ve got to get to more-pressing work, so I’m breaking this into parts. More later…

pic: Ricco looking astonished at how easy it is to beat guy who aren't juiced.

Performance Enhancing Your Lifestyle

Interesting article on the wires today about doping, and how it's not just for sports but a way of American life. Here's an excerpt:

Delaware senator Joe Biden did in 2004 during a hearing on drugs in sports, "There is something simply un-American about [using PEDs]!"

But it's not un-American. It's entirely American, that search for an edge, that effort to be all you can be, that willingness to push the envelope. That's what Andy Pettitte was doing when he took HGH. That's what Debbie Clemens was doing when she took HGH. That's what male collegiate cheerleaders are doing when they bulk up on anabolic steroids so they can lift more weight, or more female cheerleaders, according to author Kate Torgovnick in her new book, Cheer! That's what a rapper is doing when he receives a package of PEDs at his hotel. That's what Schwarzenegger was doing when he loaded himself with steroids years ago. That's what Kevin and Peggy Hart are doing in the privacy of their bedroom with their HGH and their "test," now as familiar a morning ritual as tea and toast.

And here's a link to the entire article:

Steroids in America: The Real Dope

Le Grand Boucle of Dope

I've had a few adventures lately, which I'll get to later this week, but first y thoughts on this year's Tour. Another Grand Boucle has come to an end and, unfortunately, the doping news far exceeded the racing news. Pity because it was a damned exciting race. I've been a fan of the Tour all of my life. This year they're telling us 'we've turned a corner' when it comes to doping issues. I hope so, but can't help but be skeptical.

It does actually seem to be trendy amongst the younger racers to be anti-dope. This must be a positive sign and is a far cry from when "Mr. Clean" Bessons was regularly chided by the peloton. But when you hear reports such as this one (Kloden Considers Retirement) it's hard to be positive.

I love cycling and hope it can clean itself up. We recreational cyclists have a battle to just keep our bikes on the road. A scandalous professional scene isn't going to help our cause. But scandals make media and, I'm sure, people will keep trying to uncover them. Sometimes they can actually make a difference. Bravo to the David Walsh's and Betsy Andreau's hope dare--and risk--to take on the big guys. Check out Betsy's candid radio interview on Competitor. This women has some huevos.

Below is a list of the Grand Tour winners over the last decade or so and their status as to being involved in drug scandals. Many of them have minor busts, some received two-year suspensions, and some have had their careers basically ruined, like Ramundo Rumsas, who didn't make the list because he only doped his way to the podium.

Grand Tour Winners

Tour:

Riis - doper

Ullrich - doper

Pantani - doper

Lance - clean?

Landis - doper

Rasmussen (would have been) - doper

Contador - (currently invovled in scandal but luckily protected under Texas law)

Vuelta:

Vino - doper

Heras - doper

Ullrich - doper

Mancebo - did he win? anyway, he came close and is a doper

Menchov - doper

Aitor - doper

Sevilla - may not have won but almost did and got busted. doper.

Casero - doper

Zulle - doper

Olano- doper

Rominger - doper

Jalabert - doper

Delgado - doper

Hamilton, Perez - both would have beens that got busted during the same race for the same offense.

Giro:

Di Luca (still under investigation but cleared on first offense)

Basso: doper

Simoni: doper

Salvodelli: hmmm, he must have a bust somewhere. anyway, his totally erratic performances certainly must mean dope and, for sure, he ate some of Simoni's grandma's cookies. i hear they were quite tasty. in fact, rumor has it that Grandma Simoni, Rumsas' wife, and Haven Hamilton are opening a restaurant at the Olympic Village which will, no doubt, become quite popular.

Garzelli - doper

Pantani - doper

Frigo - doper

Cunego - clean, but he at least got epstein-barr so he doped to get it or, perhaps, passively doped to get it which might actually make him a non-doper which would be rad because most of the white jersey winners from the tour, like him, have gone down too. So perhaps he didn't dope but he was, like, 21, won in a fluke, and hasn't been able to find the same form since, which sounds like text book passive doping effects on a highly talented youngster. if he ever finds his form again we'll probably find out.

Tonkov - doper

Rominger - doper

Gotti - doper

Berzin - doper

But, hey, as bad as all this sounds it's still a beautiful sport. Here's a fantastic montage of the 2006 Tour.

Doping and Le Tour - David Walsh Interview

Not surprisingly, I've been bombarded with email the last few days about the Tour. It's been so crazy that I haven't even known what to say about it. With Vino's bust, the only rider that I've heard of who has worked with Dr. Ferrari and hasn't been busted is Lance. The Rasmussen case is also interesting. The story of the smuggeled drugs was in From Lance to Landis but no one was named. Furthermore, the original of "men in black" (riders who train in un-marked clothing to avoid detection) was Armstrong. If you watched The Lance Chronicles, he never trained in his Postal/Disco kit. Always in plain black. This, apparently, was one of the things both Vino and Rasmussen did that put them on WADA's radar. Hmmm.

Well, I think things in cycling will begin to improve. WADA seems to have gotten serious. And with a sponsor throwing their own rider off of the team while wearing the yellow jersey it confirms the end is no longer justifying the means in cycling. Bravo. With more and more young riders strongly anti-dope, the situation should begin to steamroll. Let's hope so.

Anyway, here a LONG interview with David Walsh, conducted by two guys famous in the multi-sport world, Paul Huddle and Bob Babbit. It's very interesting--dare I say required listening if you are a fan of the sport.

Walsh Interview

Lance to Landis: Le Tour or Le Suck?

One of our local races made up yellow shirts with "Le Suck" on them. I can see why. With in the insane doping problems surrounding the sport it's hard not to be cynical. The only Grand Tour champion in the last decade who hasn't been busted, Lance, may have been the most guilty one of all. At least that's the opinion in the racing world. And the publication of From Lance to Landis does nothing but add fuel to the fire. This work may not hold up in court but you can't read it with an open mind and not know it's true--at least to a degree. It would be impossible to make up. Not only that, it makes perfect sense if you know anything about doping and sports performance. And, well, when you race your bike and hang out in that world you meet people who've worked/ridden with people.... The big thing I learned from this book was that all teams don't necessarily dope. All have turned a blind eye to it but some programs are leaders and others followers. Postal, um, sheesh. You've got to read it if you enjoy the subject. So, anyway, bike racing has a big black eye at the moment.

But I love bike racing. I love the Tour. C'mon, doping has existed in sports--all of them--as long as there has been performance-enhancing drugs available. Armstrong may have doped to the gills but he still worked harder than everyone else. Dope didn't win him the Tour. Hard work did. Because, ya know, Ullrich and Basso were on the sauce too. If they want to rid the sport of drugs, they need to rid the sport of doctors, which may mean ridding it of money. But that still won't do it. People were regularly doing drugs during my high shcool days! College? Of course. Everyone joked about it. Anyway, cycling has done a lot more to combat this issue than any other sport. And it deserves some credit. I think it's getting better. Dope or no dope, you've still got to train like a maniac and race your bike.

Last year I blogged in depth about the race. This year I won't have the time. But for those who would like to learn more about bike racing, you can read through them starting here:

http://steve-edwards.blogspot.com/2006/07/explaining-tour.html

The race began in England to "the largest crowds I've ever seen" according to most everyone. Today they're in Belgium, it's raining, and the crowds are still huge. Long live cycling!

It's an open race and should be great. You can check it out live on the net on Versus streaming video which, thankfully, is only Paul and Phil and no Al Trautwig.

Versus network

Cyclingfans always keeps you up to date on the latest media options:

Cyclingfans

More Cycling + Less Drugs = More Women

This is a sign someone had posted along the Giro route today. Maybe this is how life is in Italy. If so, I'm moving. Regardless, it's how life should be somewhere.

However, in my experience living in the world we've created it's more like "more drugs + less cycling = more women". In fact, I'm still looking for the society where more cycling = more of anything, really, at least the way "normal" society views us. In the good ol' US of A, it's a constant fight to just keep riding our bikes on the road. The laws don't protect us--in some states a dead cyclist is, legally, nothing more than road kill. Hell, Texas keeps trying to ban riding and it's home to the most famous cyclist in history.

So I'll keep riding my bike and looking for my utopia. And I don't plan to stop until they pry my bike from my cold dead hands.

Giro, Floyd, and Dope

You gotta love the Giro! I turn on the live broadcast this morning and circus music is playing and the peloton is absolutely flying along at 30kph. At first, I thought they must be showing the neutral zone because the riders are barely pedaling, laughing, joking with the cameras. But no, it's in the third hour and they're still just plodding along like a critical mass ride. So they are showing highlights of yesterdays stage along side the parade. Italy, man.

The reason this is happening is that yesterday was absolutely brutal and the next week is far far worse. The finishing climb yesterday didn't look steep but as soon as riders would stop pedaling across the line they'd instantly stop and topple over. The "real" mountains start tomorrw and it's going to be ugly. Everyone should watch. No, really, you should. I'm serious.

Now, perhaps the reason PIANO is coming back into fashion on this brutal course is dope or, perhaps, lack of it. On any given stage doping isn't a real revalation because with time to rest you can max most of the systems that it aids. But in a stage race, doping is huge because it aids recovery so well. So these piano days are like recovery rides. They'll get to some racing at the end but it'll mainly be the sprinters hammering. The GC guys will kick it in the middle of the pack.

So, is Floyd guilty? I'm certain that I know the answer but won't say it. I do hope he gets off though because the way the current system is he's being used as a bit of a scapegoat. With the Telekom revelations yesterday, um, cycling is just going to change. It has to.

Teams need to get rid of full time doctors. Let's see, what would a doctor do on a bike team; fix injured guys? Yes, of course, but that's not a full time job and a PT would make more sense on a daily level. Feed them. Um, no. Doctors don't know about nutrition, necesarily, so you have a nutritionist do this. Train them? Again, trainers and coaches do this. People who studied exercise physiology, not medicine. So, what do the doctors do then? A full time doctor is going to spend their time figuring out how to recharge the hormonal and other physcial systems to aid recovery from training and the ensure all systems are maximized, medically, for racing. But not using nutrition, or therapy, or training, because those are other's fields. The doctors field is, yep, drugs, or at least modalities that can include drugs. So if you are paying a medical doctor to make your team go fast it pretty much stands to reason that his job would include doping. That's what Dr. Fuentes (Operation Puerto) said and, well, it makes perfect sense. Fuentes' line was even something like "what else am I going to do, I'm a doctor?!"

Anyway, you can follow Floyd's trial in almost absurd depth on this site. It's pretty cool, actually:

Landis trial blog

The State of Cycling

Oh, dear.

From an article in Velo News:

Sadly, Hamilton's last day as a pro serves as a painful reminder of just what the sport has suffered through in recent years. That day's stage was won by Roberto Heras (stripped of the 2005 Vuelta title and suspended for EPO), who knocked Floyd Landis (facing the loss of the 2006 Tour de France title on a testosterone charge) out of the leader's jersey. Finishing second that day was Santiago Perez (suspended for blood doping), who finished ahead of third-placed Francisco Mancebo (named in Operación Puerto and ejected from the 2006 Tour).

Great Article on Doping

For your Monday morning reading pleasure (I mean, what else are you going to do at work?) This is an interesting piece about an aging recreational cyclist who tests modern doping procedures. It ties in well to blog I wrote last month on doping in sports and some of the other stuff from the tour. One thing to consider is that this guy is, probably, in his late 40s and the performance boosting difference between him and someone in there physical prime is huge. He's saying 10 to 15% (based on feel), whereas it's much less for someone younger with higher hormonal levels. Then there are the yahoos from Extreme Bodybuilding who chide his regement ("What are you, afraid to get strong?") These knuckleheads have and always will exist. They might, and I mean MAY, get more performance out of themselves but are also the ones getting themselves dead.

This is long, but if you're interested in performance-enhaning doping it's worth you time. Enjoy!

Drug Test