People doping, this includes TRT, to win some random masters bike race really amuses me.
Do these people actually take pride in any result or win?
They must know they’ve cheated. So, they’ll always know they were a cheat. Long after the people they thought they were impressing have forgotten about the insignificant race. They’ll remember…
Forever.
That seems a poor trade off.
The cost of ego stroking is priceless apparently. Cheating always has a cost and a lot of ppl have no ethics. It’s a clash of values and cost isn’t a factor
I don’t see anything wrong with people feeling good about doing well in a sport. Most people on supplements just want to be active and maybe a PR or see if they can do as well as their times in their 20’s. If it gets a 40-80 year old happy and in shape and active, it’s a bigger win in the overall picture. Who cares about amateur podiums?
You care when you were second place and first place was cheating. Or, you can’t even break the top 10 because half the pack is doped.
TRT is not just a supplement. IMO, one is risking their health taking pharmaceuticals unnecessarily. Of course people risk their health in all sorts of ways that way be more harmful - drugs, alcohol, smoking, etc.
Still it’s a hormone a healthy person doesn’t need. And being tired all the time because you train 15 hours per week doesn’t count.
I wouldn’t care if I was 2nd, 30th, or 250th. It’s amateur sports. And even the pros are doped but that’s a different topic.
All these people who have taken PED’s, you would think people are falling dead left and right. I doubt there is major difference in mortality. And if there was, I think someone at 45-55 would take 20 years of higher quality activity and libido and 10 years less life in a nursing home. Have you seen the average 75 year old? They are not the poster child of good health.
Also, times evolve. Why is it ok to treat decreased cardiac function or pulmonary function as one ages? It’s ok to get a new knee when one fails. But leave the endocrine system alone when it diminishes in function because a cyclist or runner somewhere gets offended? Treatments evolve over time. We may find out that in 30-40 years, everyone will benefit from it. Never know.
Thing is though bud, is that a lot of people who race have a deep seated sense of fairness and work ethic. They believe that to strive hard and diligently work towards a result in a race is a worthy ambition.
To know that some people will be justifying taking performance enhancing drugs (whatever your argument, that is was they are) on the basis that they are getting older, makes a mockery of their dedication and can really pull the rug out from under their feet.
That’s not fair or right.
Take those medications if thats your bag, but dont compete with clean people. You make your choice.
WADA publishes a list of what’s not permitted. There’s very little room for interpretation.
I get it.
But is your dedication less worth because someone else cheated? Your placement in a race is dependent on who shows up to a race among many factors.
I guess I see it as just a fact of life that life isn’t fair. It’s not fair that I have to work years to get to a 280FTP and someone else who picked better parents goes 300 with no training.
I do the best I can and at the end of the day how I feel is largely dependent on my execution more than anything.
It would affect how I felt about racing, yes. A good bike race is a wonderfully basic way to celebrate life. I don’t want it polluted by dickheads justifying cheating to themselves and others. The world’s too full of that already.
My vet 40/vet 50 cx races are as much about laughing at our advancing decrepitude as our prowess on the bikes. It’s part of lifes rich tapestry.
I don’t think they care. It’s kind of a funny thing. The people who are clean look at doping and think, “how could they live with themselves? Wouldn’t they feel bad? Wouldn’t they feel guilty knowing that their win is illegitimate? I could never live with myself knowing I cheated.” But the people who cheat don’t usually feel bad at all. They don’t care that they cheated. They don’t see the win as illegitimate. They just see a win. That’s why they cheat. As they stand on the podium, I doubt they have any regrets in their head, they won. The only thing they fear is getting caught.
Also, it’s not like doping automatically gives you the win. It’s not like you take a pill and bam you’re a cat 1 winning everything. You still have to put in the hours to train. You still have to learn racecraft and strategy. You still have to work. You still lose. You can’t say the people doping aren’t hard workers. They just get more for their dollar than everybody else so to speak. Which is why it can be easier to justify it to yourself.
I want to stress this again. When I discuss meds that people are on, they are shocked that some of these meds are prohibited in/out of competition. I’m giving a lecture because most physicians are totally unaware that even some simple, very common medications can get you a multiyear ban. At no point in medical training is there a class on what is prohibited in sport and it is impossible to know that list of thousands of medications and each sport has a very different list of what is allowed and what is not. The prohibited list for archery is very different than the list for power lifting. Most athletes are oblivious to what they are taking. Just look at the number of posts in forums like “should I consider pedaling during a ride” or whatever silliness. Do you think those people are worried about the legality of every supplement?
We are talking about cheating in sanctioned sports. I have no problem if you want to take T, hgh, and EPO to ride centuries with your friends and feel 30 again.
At 56, I’d take whatever was available if I knew it was 100% safe but I don’t think we know yet. Some cancer is driven by hormones.
T might help me recover but it is usually an injection and your endogenous T production shuts down so you have to keep taking it. That’s not convenient enough nor side effect free enough for my tastes. I’d also want to see long term studies on what happens if healthy males take T from age 40 or 50 into their 70s or 80s.
I’m not sure about bike racing, but what about marathon running, where amateurs fight and claw their way towards finishing times that might qualify them for entry into the Boston Marathon (or other big races)? I can imagine that, if you finished just seconds behind what you later determined was the cutoff time, you’d view PED cheaters in quite the negative light. There are probably similar concerns with cheating in triathlons and other, similar qualifying races…
It’s not the Doctors job to know what’s legal in and out of competition. The rider should be responsible.
Take your same argument, and flip it around: someone competes fairly / cleanly, and is constantly beaten by other people taking PEDs. The clean person gets discouraged / disgusted, and quicks the sport. How do you explain to the person competing within the rules that it’s okay for other people to cheat, so the cheaters can feel good about themselves?
Welcome to the US stock market.
Jokes aside, it’s a tough situation for the sport. Obviously you want to keep the fields clean, and it sucks to keep getting beat by the same person if they were doping. But logistically, it’s tough. And expensive. If my USAC license fee increased and race fees increased to add testing, I’d pick lower cost and less testing every time. Simple as that. Race fees are already getting crazy, and with the prices of everything else going up, increasing the cost to race just to weed out the dopers isn’t going to help grow the sport. Sorry, but I’ll pick getting beat by dopers every now and then but still getting to race over testing at every event for added costs.
Man people get butt hurt about some 50 year old taking TRT. If they went to a legit doc and had a legit reason for it, why shouldn’t they compete. .
It doesn’t turn them into a pro
If they want to get faster then still have to do the work. It’s not a miracle drug, it’s simply placing them at the same level as a majority of the people competing.
I bet more people would go through the process of getting a TUE done if it didn’t cost an arm and a leg.
I totally get your point. I was reacting more to: it’s ok for people to cheat if it helps them feel better about themselves comment.
Are people going to cheat? Yes. But that doesn’t mean we need to legitimize the cheating.
How is that different to always losing to someone better than you? In your hypothetical scenario, if you always come 2nd, then the winner is always the cheater? So then you quit? That makes you a quitter.
99% of the people on something have no shot at winning a race. The race is just something they do as a hobby.
But even if your hypothetical is true, I rather have 1 quitter than thousands of people not being active.
The simple fact is that there is a category where they are supposed to be testing people. It’s called the pros category. There is 1 winner of the race. AG podiums, are just abstract categories created to give all the losers with a sense of accomplishment. We can make a category of 30-40 who are over 180 lbs and don’t like to shave legs and give podium awards, etc.
There are other races. Get back to training.
Again, if 30% are cheaters, what’s your excuse for not beating the other 70%?