It can be…see The Russians as an example.
However, it can be nothing more than lax / loose doping protocols or enforcement. Spain in the early 00’s was well-known as a “safe” place to live because of that. So while it may not be “state-sponsored”, it is certainly a systemic issue in some countries.
My recollection is that Colombia is one of those countries…
Speculation - Woods sucks at descending. Gossip - its because he’s a runner.
I’m not sure that’s speculation
I wasn’t claiming that ‘all’ juniors across the universe were clean.
I was simply pointing out that I currently know and have ridden with numerous incredibly strong juniors, who are absolutely NOT doping. These kids I’m talking about can’t even afford proper bikes, yet they’re now spending thousands on complex illegal cheating? Please.
Yes, MANY professional and amateur athletes cheat. However, many don’t cheat.
This constant speculation that every great performance is totally impossible is so damn tiring.
It’s usually some washed up amateur master/veteran struggling to amount to anything in cycling. They struggle to get strong. They see the numbers that exceptional athletes make and instead of being further motivated, they feel jealousy. This rampant jealousy turns to anger.
Cue the inevitable baseless speculation on the internet.
I wonder, if these sad individuals actually knew Pogacar personally. He was their life long friend. They knew his actual weight, not what was written on Wikipedia. Would this person still attack them with horrible accusations without even a sliver of actual proof?
I doubt it.
Because, without concrete evidence, it’s just mindless drivel on the internet by sad people, who for some strange reason, think it’s okay to ‘speculate’ using the persons actual name.
Speculate by all means, but calling a rider out by name?
Why aren’t these same people calling out Sepp Kuss and Wout? Both had remarkable performances recently.
Or are these people just attacking riders they don’t like?
If you have to ask these questions, you clearly haven’t followed this thread at all.
Thing is, though, no one’s making that argument. Super-human performance is the ante that gets you into the WT club. These guys aren’t weekend club riders who “Take All The Drugs” and turn into GC contenders. Every one there is a phenom from an early age.
Right? At the end of the day, you have to respect the right of cycling fans to not know.
I see someone who is a self described cyclist of two years telling us what is possible and not.
Pog had a few killer days, with most of his competition dropping out.
I’m curious if you’ve read any of the in-depth confessions from the last 15 years (e.g. Hamilton’s book, etc…) If so, what changed so radically so that no top-tier rider is even tempted to use illegal enhancement? Seems a bit naive.
I think for me, what is the threshold of what is clean and not, seeing how sports across the board aren’t tested to the same degree?
I’ve pointed out the fallacy of some of these arguments and how they don’t stand up to scientific rigor, not really worth repeating.
I don’t think there’s any question that sports like cycling and track & field get a bad rap because of their weak (to non-existent) athletes’ unions. No one is getting tested to anywhere near the same extent in big-name sports like football, American football, baseball, basketball, etc… There’s no evidence that any of those sports are cleaner than cycling, just that their athletes are more insulated from invasive testing. As I’ve said before, for me, the bigger problem at the top levels of cycling isn’t that there’s PED use, but that the current testing regimes makes it inevitable that the sport’s governing bodies will play favorites. (whether that’s burying positives, issuing retroactive TUEs, giving superstars a pass when they get popped by calling it an “adverse analytical finding”, etc, etc…
I would love other sports to suddenly without warning do the same amount of testing as cycling for 6 months…especially soccer, rugby, American football, baseball, tennis, boxing
Then see how bad cycling seems when it comes to drugs!
There is clearly an incentive to cheat (greater success, financial and otherwise).
There is probably opportunity (the testing regime is not super strict, especially during Covid, nor is it apparently that hard to beat).
We also know that cycling has a history of pretty systematic doping, and many of the behind-the-scenes guys who were involved in that are still in the sport in prominent roles.
With those 3 things in mind, it seems most unlikely that no-one cheats.
As for who, well we won’t know until they’re caught, confess, or are convincingly outed.
And while I am all in favour of being innocent until proven guilty, I would point out that Lance never failed a drug test (though there was speculation that one got buried, iirc), so I’d suggest not being caught is not proof of innocence.
I find what Pogacar is achieving remarkable, especially considering his age, but as others have noted, this is a fairly weak field, he’s been very impressive from a young age, and truly outstanding athletes do come along every now and again. With that in mind, I will continue to watch with a healthy scepticism, but not cynicism.
What is proof of innocence?
I don’t think there is any, at least as the system is set up. There’s also the old philosophy problem of proving a negative.
It’s an interesting concept, though.
Legally, here in England we have 2 verdicts: guilty and not guilty (note the latter of those is not ‘innocent’, though it is typically used synonymously). In Scotland, there are 3: guilty, not guilty, and ‘not proven’. The last of these is used when a jury is far from convinced of the accused’s innocence, and in fact may feel he or she is guilty on the balance of probability, but either a) the prosecution have not proved the case beyond reasonable doubt or b) a legal technicality requires an acquittal. It’s intended to record a moral question mark, though legally it has no import: the accused walks free.
Sadly, in cycling, I think we’re in the ‘not proven’ era, simply due to past misdemeanours. I think the history of the sport encourages anyone old enough to remember the exploits of many guys between 1995-2010 to take that line. We’ve been here before, bluntly.
But to return to the legal analogy, not proven does not equal guilty, and I hope my (general, not person-specific) scepticism is unfounded.
So if you recognize that you can’t prove innocence and they haven’t violated the rules (i.e. test positive) what benefit are you getting from hand wringing about if they’ve figured something out that may or may not be outside the spirit of the rules?
In my opinion it’s a bit more complicated: the upper echelon of pro cycling has always been rife with doping. Always. So the extreme claim that requires a higher evidentiary standard isn’t “rider X is doping” but “this guy, out of the vast majority of WT cyclists who’ve been at the pointy end of the spear, is 100% clean.”
Please point out the ‘hand wringing’ you refer to. I thought I’d posted a considered view on the likelihood of doping in the modern peloton.
I’m also unsure how you infer from my posts that I’m suggesting “they’ve figured something out that may or may not be outside the spirit of the rules”.
This seems a non-sequitur to me, though please do explain if you think that’s not the case.
My inference is that you dislike speculation as to who may or may not be doping, or in general are unconcerned with the doping issue. Both are fair positions. But if that’s the case, do say so.
Because when the existing enforcement regime creates large artificial distortions in the field of riders/teams, it creates what to some is a terrible GC contest. To others, it’s what they want to see.
My point is that there is no way for the sport to end your speculation. If you enjoy the speculation have at it. But it can’t accomplish anything.
You have no way to prove that they are doing anything untoward. They can’t prove their innocence. There is no policy change that could be implemented to ‘fix’ the situation. I ‘dislike’ the speculation as much as I dislike any other sports radio, mostly because it’s talking in circle to no end.