In article <
[email protected]>,
[email protected] wrote:
> On May 28, 6:00 am, Ryan Cousineau <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > Yes. But we don't worry about enforcing things that are allowed.
>
> Hmmm. Don't you see the circularity there? (In addition, it appears
> many people didn't much worry about enforcing disallowed things as
> long as they didn't know about them).
Heh. I missed that the first time. Another way to say it is that the UCI
is mostly enforcing the right things.
> > At the
> > risk of dragging those bloody children into this argument again [there
> > should be a special text colour to set off my rhetorical cheap
> > shots...], I don't think I'd be worried if generic talented junior
> > trained had a good hematocrit and was reading Coggan and doing his
> > intervals.
>
> Why not? What if you were wealthy and could afford wind-tunnel time,
> while other kids couldn't? Which performance-enhancing substances,
> devices, training, and knowledge should be allowed, and which
> shouldn't?
I think rider health and safety has to be the first principle. At some
point in my hypothetical example, the problem is we're just talking
about a kid: the main goal of youth-dev programs is not to make the kids
fast right away, it's to find the ones who will be fast. The chance that
a wind tunnel will take Junior from also-ran to next David Millar
(er...) is not great.
Back to drugs, I'll answer in a moment...
> > Right, doping: I think I've articulated how I think doping differs from
> > bread, water, intervals, and even altitude tents, but I'm willing to
> > express it explicitly and at great length if necessary.
>
> Perhaps you have, but I missed it. Is it necessary?
I don't know.
But briefly and bluntly, I don't much want to watch racing where the
riders are driven into quasi-experimental (quasi- because it's not very
scientific in many cases...) drug practices that might get them dead or
badly hurt.
If I come up with some dumbass new training technique like super-low
cadence, the most likely problem I'll give myself is a use injury and
bad results. Life goes on. If I mess with roids or EPO and do it badly,
I box my liver, or die, or experience exciting long-term effects.
The libre-drugs proposal skirts the issue that right now, even our
"useless" drug-enforcement system actually forces a lot of drugs out of
the sport. You can't use most steroids at all, because they show up too
easily. You can't use speed for the same reason. You can only use EPO in
small, circumspect doses, lest you get caught over either the 50% HCT or
by a drug test.
HgH? Not so good yet. Testosterone? I thought it was well-screened, but
now that I've been talking to Floyd...
All this makes doping both less effective and less dangerous, for the
most part. There are some perverse effects with steroids, where it's
likely that the ones least likely to mess with your body are avoided
because they can be seen on tests, but on the whole I'd say there are
substantially fewer drugs in the system because of testing, and they're
used in smaller quantities, than there would be in any plausible "drugs
are acceptable" system.
> > Aha! But the 6.8 kilo limit is an _easily enforceable_ safety standard.
> > It makes the bikes so heavy that, given current technology, they're
> > within the margins of non-craziness. There's no incentive to mess around.
>
> Dude, they're building bikes lighter than that and then adding weights
> to bring them up to 6.8kg.
Some of them, but a surprising number of pro bikes that actually get
weighed are 7+ kg. The "high" weight limit (note to weight-weenies: I
will buy your useless and outmoded 7.5 kg bike!) has driven innovation
into aerodynamics, where it belongs. Deep wheels, aero frames...I see
Cervélo as the obvious vision of the future.
That said, I would not object to a weight limit that gradually dropped.
If, by mutual agreement, the bike companies told the UCI they could
safely build, say, 6.3 kg bikes, then go for it.
Same goes for drugs, by the way. After messing with the caffeine limits
for years, these days WADA basically says, "ah, forget it," and allows
quantities that are clearly performance-enhancing but not obviously
unsafe, and not outside the realm of consumption experienced by a great
many office workers who hardly even think of their morning cup as a
drug-delivery mechanism.
I think we should expect to see this trend continue, and the questions
will get harder, not easier. I still think the right answers in terms of
proscription (if not enforcement) are closer to WADA's answers than the
libre answers.
Still thinking about that bodybuilder whose body seized up while posing,
--
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