AdventureRacing said:
They should really listen to someone like you who has competed in the TdF at a competitive level.
Your post stinks of elitism and really as far as i'm concerned it's BS.
I agree with KHarvey as well, you haven't actually provided any evidence above "well of course he's cheating, that's obvious!".
I went up to cat 3 racing (couldn't hack it beyond that and quit...only amassed 15pts of 60 required to move up in 12months). Cat 5 and cat 4 were from what I could tell, devoid of doping but for people that could afford it and wanted to seriously move into cat 2, cat 1 (and subsequently pro beyond that), it wasn't unusual or uncommon for people to start dipping into doping around the cat 3 level. Hell, a friend of mine managed to get his hands on EPO when we were both training at the cat 3 level (dunno if he used it as he was debating the ethical ramifications of using it and what not).
Granted, I can only extrapolate what goes on from my experience as well as what I've observed. From that, though, it's far more difficult to believe that top athletes aren't doping than to believe that they're clean. That's not to say they should be guilty until proven innocent and be prevented from racing. The whole Operation Puerto and removal of riders suspected (but not proven guilty or innocent) of doping from TdF was pretty shady and I don't think the notion of guilty until proven innocent would have stood had it been in the US, though the removals came with the agreements from the team managements. But that doesn't mean one's not allowed to believe they're innocent or guilty.
Doping detection requires knowledge of the dopant or what potential effects the dopant has. Trying to detect an unknown that's metabolized from something that's known isn't easy at all. Trying to detect something that isn't known at all though? You can run a biological sample through a mass spec and potentially find something that doesn't belong there based on mass, but without more elaborate time consuming experiments, the unknown still for the most part remains an unknown. Trying to develop an accurate and robust way to determine if a dopant is being used by way of surrogate marker is also difficult. To qualify and validate a protocol to determine if an athlete's been doping is time consuming and implementation of a compliance protocol is a pain in the ass. Chain of custody protocols, sample handling protocols, storage protocols, etc. To unambiguously be able to say "this athlete is guilty of doping" isn't as easy as one might think. The general acceptance criteria for bioanalytical work which is what detection science for doping would fall under, atleast in the pharmaceutical field considered to be acceptable if the errors fall within +/-10~15%. Add to that, the scrutiny that the entire procedure from sampling all the way to data reporting can comes under, it's more astonishing that people can be found guilty imho for certain dopants. I do a similar line of work in the pharma field and I'm all too familiar with how easily an assay can be botched...bureaucratically, experimentally, and logistically.
Also, go back and read again. I never said he (or any athlete at that level) is cheating; just that I find it difficult to believe. Doesn't mean I won't give them the benefit of the doubt.
