In article <
[email protected]>,
"
[email protected]" <
[email protected]> wrote:
> On May 25, 7:02 pm, Ryan Cousineau <[email protected]> wrote:
> > "B. Lafferty" <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > > I wonder how you would feel if you raced clean and lost Olympic Gold or
> > > the
> > > Tour to a doper. I'd want justice and the medal.
> >
> > And it pains me to admit it, but Brian's not only right, he's probably
> > been right about doping prevalence more often than most people in this
> > group.
> >
> > About the worst thing you can say about WADA-world is that it's a
> > McCarthyite witch hunt. Overzealous, willing to transgress the
> > principles it claims to get to its targets. And like McCarthy, the
> > witches it's hunting are mostly real.
> >
> > I can't remember who keeps quoting "it's possible to frame a guilty
> > man," but all I think of a lot of the time is a quote by Kissinger:
> > can't they both lose?
> >
> > My saving grace with the whole "justice and the medal" approach is that,
> > however proper it would be, moving everyone up a rung is probably
> > better-than-even odds of just promoting a different doper in a large
> > number of these cases.
>
> Dumbass,
>
> I said "Even a guilty man can be framed." I'll take
> credit for coining the phrase, unless of course I
> unconsciously cribbed it from somewhere. If it makes
> you happy, I originally said it about Alger Hiss, who
> was almost certainly guilty but not proven beyond a
> reasonable doubt until many years after the fact.
Dumberass:
Benjamin Franklin, DUH!
More seriously, a quick google suggests your phrasing may be unique, but
the thought may not be.
Here's a link to a 2004 article about the Rosenbergs titled "framed but
guilty?"
http://www.workersliberty.org/node/3408
[as an OT aside, the article seriously argues in one place that the case
was an example of anti-semitism, as evidenced by the fact that the
judge, prosecutor, and defence attorney were all Jewish. I have no
words...]
> It may not be very fair; cycling is a game with rules
> and is supposed to be fair, but still you make your
> choices and then you live with them. Or you can go
> on muttering about it years after the fact and
> turn into a street crazy. From there, it's a short
> step to posting to RBR.
>
> Ben
The two things that drive me nuts about doping cycling are the fairness
and, for what it's worth, the children.
I have a reasonably strong connection to the children, despite not
having any myself. My club runs a substantial and effective
youth-development program (dEVo): we've got a lot of kids going through
this program, including ones that are national-level riders in this age
group. I'm not directly involved with the dEVos except for seeing them
on rides and working for them in races when possible, but I'm proud of
the work our club does.
I don't want to developing these kids and pushing them into high levels
of competition in a sport in which at some point the rule becomes "to
win at the next level, you must cheat the rules." That's not a
gamesmanship thing. Whether one agrees with it or not, cycling's doping
sanctions position doping as among the most serious transgressions you
can commit against the sport. Get caught even once, and your career is
brutally carved up, at a minimum.
Further, I'm pretty doubtful the answer is to let the pros dope. First,
I suspect a trickle-down effect to Fatty Masters, amateurs, and the
aforementioned kids. Second, I don't trust the pros to do it well or
safely, given that once "safe" doping programs are established, the
temptation will remain to push the legal limits to the edge of
detectability without much regard for safety. Just like today!
Finally, I think there may be an argument to be made about what the
limits are and what the line is between "fair" performance enhancement
(motorpacing, altitude tents) and "unfair" performance enhancement (EPO,
deka, autologous blood transfusions). This debate is ongoing, as seen by
the near-miss with altitude tents and the moving caffeine limits, among
other things. I think that's fairly healthy, and I also think that to
the extent I agree or disagree with current WADA proscriptions, they're
probably reasonably to the best answers right now.
The dark background to all of cycling's doping scandals has two parts:
the culture of doping, and the ease of cheating. Interestingly, a severe
weakness in either part would be enough to unravel the current
prevalence of doping.
If we could detect the cheating better, this argument wouldn't be
happening because nobody could cheat. It would be like the rules
governing safe finishing sprints: debatable moments, a few
controversies, but mostly no news because most riders know that if you
deliberately impede another rider in a sprint, you'll get relegated.
Of course, if cake had no calories, I could eat cake without getting
fat. Maybe WADA could work on that too.
As to the culture of doping, I have more hope here, and despite the
"cycling is over!" pronouncements, stories like Riis coming clean are
probably steps in the right direction. Maybe only in a "heighten the
contradictions" way, but if riders start getting the idea that Omerta is
dead, that everyone now thinks, whatever Riis did, that it was wrong and
is wrong, then we might have ourselves a new culture.
Back on topic, that stage today sounds wonderful. I can't wait to check
out the highlights. Anyone else looking forward to the finish atop Monte
Zoncolan on Wednesday?
--
Ryan Cousineau
[email protected] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos