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Talkback: We need your views on doping

Is this actually a thing? I'm about to race my first triathlon (Ironman UK) and I hadn't even thought about this possibility. We're all, literally, a bunch of amateurs. I can vaguely understand why you'd be motivated to do something so unethical if you were after a Kona slot but 1 in 7?!? Utterly crazy. Makes me wonder why I'm bothering to get up at 5:30am every morning.

Comments

  • Is this actually a thing? I'm about to race my first triathlon (Ironman UK) and I hadn't even thought about this possibility. We're all, literally, a bunch of amateurs. I can vaguely understand why you'd be motivated to do something so unethical if you were after a Kona slot but 1 in 7?!? Utterly crazy. Makes me wonder why I'm bothering to get up at 5:30am every morning.
  • I think sportsmen or women who are caught doping should be publicly humiliated and NEVER be allowed to compete in any sport ever again! 

  • jonEjonE Posts: 1,113

    Personally, this is blown out of proportion, based on an article, where the results correct rammed together, and if you classify that you took a cold cure, which contained a banned substance, just so you could continue training, or make the start line, then it is quantified as doping, rather than taking an over the counter medicine.

    if you we're to go to the local playing fields and test the under thirteens football team, then you may find that they had been taking a cold cure etc, illegal, yes without a Doctors note, then we have legalised doping, get a prescription note for illness etc and it comes under the same category, inhalers being one target area.

     

    PEDs, require you to train hard to gain benefit from them, they are not magic bullets, that suddenly provide invincibility.

    yes doping goes on, be it illegal, or immoral, if I race, I race clean, I ain't going to bother the podiums, or take away someone else's victory, I race for myself.

    if you get caught, then take the consequences. For those interested in how easy air is to get the garbage to stick in your system, follow the link, it is basically a how to dope instruction list, at the bottom it also has the link to other substances, sickeningly easy isn't it

    www.24hoursppc.org/epo_erythropoietin.htm

     

    this was found with a simple search, before someone shouts foul, and spam.

  • Tri FlyTri Fly Posts: 10
    Zero tolerance



    If a competitor dopes he is not just cheating in the race he is cheating himself.
  • a few points:

    Doping is illegal, it's cheating, nothing more nothing less. Enough of the dramatic outraged hand-wringing. Cheating is cheating, doping is identical to surreptitious drafting in a non drafting race: it's against the rules, that's all.

    Rules are totally arbitrary sets of instructions that govern a sport, they do not confer any stance other than right or wrong. For some bizarre reason people seem build a false moral or ethical construct around PEDs (or recreational drugs for that matter) which only exists because of arbitrary rules. Morality is simply the distinction of right or wrong, nothing more. If you want to get outraged about cheats (and i would empathise) then don't distinguish one cheat from another.

    Rules in sport, in principle, exist for one reason: to create an even playing field, to equalise competition. They patently don't (and realistically can't) work perfectly. In triathlon it isn't illegal to spend £10,000 on a bike and race against someone who paid £300 and yet the competition clearly isn't even. Should that be immoral/cheating? What about altitude training? etc...

    Competition will always be uneven, it's impossible to make it otherwise. The game, that triathletes clearly love to play, is to get as much possible advantage over your competitors in order to maximise the chance of beating them. Most people choose to do that within the rules (throwing money at the problem), a few choose to exist in the grey areas, others blatantly illegally in various ways. That's human, don't expect it to ever change, it won't.

    The key question is where do we draw that arbitrary line between illegal and legal?In principle there is no point in having rules that are impossible to police, hence let's not bother prohibiting altitude training et al. Realistically in age group triathlon, how possible is it to police a PED rule?

    To decide the rules we need to do it dispassionately without the hand-wringing mentioned above. Once done what's wrong with a zero tolerance policy to rule-breakers, any rule breakers? So maybe anybody using any illegal method should should be banned (let's discuss the length of the ban). That means if you're caught in the non-drafting box, you're gone for (let's say) 1 year.

    Or maybe have 2 versions of the sport, anything goes and arbitrary rules? Somewhat like body-building, although the triathlon equivalent of anything goes would cover lots more that just drugs. 

  • I raced this year in a non drafting Standard distance European Qulification race and witnessed a number of expensive looking bikes being powered by very fit athletes who were obviously drafting on the bike leg!  I wasnt the only person who noticed this either if converstaions in the carpark after the event were anythuing to go by! The benefit gained from this alone would probably outweigh any PED gain.  Whilst I was no where near a qualificatuion time if I had been, the peolpe I witnessed could well have cheated me out of a rightful place!  There will always be cheats and fools who try to circumvent any rules that are in force at any time, they are sad individuals who deserve our pity but if caught any transgression should be punished and I would advocate a name and shame policy for any tansgression of the rules.  Perhaps your BTF membership should be endorsed with an H for a helmet violation (I have done this and wouldnt be ashamed, its a simple mistake) however a D for drafting requiring you to wear a coloured race number so the marshals could keep an eye on the cheats if they chose to race again would be a deterrent?

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