Last week I received an email from a radio station out west interested in doing a show on doping in sports, and more specifically why cyclists seem “susceptible” to doping. Interesting idea for a discussion. The show didn’t happen, but why let a good topic go to waste.

If I understood the premise right, the discussion was to focus on the question of why doping seems to be endemic in the world of cycling, and not, say, in the world of (American) professional football or baseball or basketball or other big-time sports. While we certainly see the occasional doping scandal in those sports (think BALCO, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, for example), those scandals seem to be less frequent than the constant parade of stories about yet another cyclist caught imbibing one form of rocket fuel or another.

Even just the stories where someone accuses a cyclist of doping seem to be more common than similar stories in other sports. Or are they? At first blush, it certainly seems that way. Although, if one were to count up all the stories related to BALCO and compared the number to all the stories about Floyd Landis or Tyler Hamilton or even allegations about Lance Armstrong, I wonder which would come up with the bigger number.

I’m guessing BALCO, though that might seem counter-intuitive. With BALCO and its progeny, there have been allegations against not just major league baseball players, but also track stars, and even a few in other sports. On the subject of BALCO, cyclist Tammy Thomas was found guilty of perjury in 2008 for lying about steroids use.

And then there’s the question of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, both of whom were using performance-enhancing substances during their home-run shoot out back in the late 1990s. While the supplements they were using weren’t specifically banned by major league baseball at the time, they were clearly searching for a certain type of edge. The same search that’s common to all high-level athletes (and not a few lesser athletes, too). Some do it within the rules, some skate as close to the line as they can without going over the edge, and some will cross over and break the rules.

More common in cycling? No, I don’t think so. What’s different, though, is the amount of testing that goes on in professional cycling. Professional baseball and football players can count on being tested a few times during the season. Cyclists (and track athletes and a number of other sports subject to WADA rules) can depend on being tested any time, anywhere, in season and out of season, in competition and out of competition.

And the more you test, the more you find. Yes, doping in cycling is an almost time-honored tradition, but don’t for a minute think it’s any less of a tradition in other sports. It’s human nature for athletes to be seeking methods to gain an advantage on their competition, whether that’s through training, nutrition, sleeping in altitude chambers, using various electrolyte replacement drinks during and after competition, and even though chemical means — both licit and illicit.

Steroids have been a part of professional football for almost 50 years now, and part of baseball for at least 40 years. Before that, athletes in both sports used amphetamines. Back in the late 50s, a doctor in New York sparked one of the very first serious investigations into performance-enhancing drugs by claiming that the four-minute mile couldn’t be broken without using amphetamines. The result of that study (which looked at running, swimming and cycling) did find a small performance benefit from using amphetamines, enough to make a difference between winning and not. At about the same time stories appeared that alleged that several Australian swimmers used amphetamines at the 1956 Summer Olympics.

With the advent of blood doping in the 1970s, and later on synthetic EPO around 1990, endurance athletes (and even some non-endurance athletes) have taken to using this newer form of performance enhancement. With EPO, cyclists and others were already using the drugs before they actually came on the market, having somehow managed to divert drugs for clinical trials to their own use.

Yes, a large number of suspicious deaths occurred in the early 1990s among professional cyclists, who had not yet learned how to use EPO safely. But others were using the drugs, too, and have been since. Cross-country skiers, biathletes and track athletes, among others.

So why do we hear so much about doping in cycling? As I said above, the more you test, the more you find. Perhaps it’s the nature of all endurance sports that athletes will try whatever drugs can give them a performance boost, especially those that can increase their endurance — like EPO, as well as old-fashioned homologous and autologous blood doping.

Cycling, in some ways, is an extreme sport. Professional cyclists at the top of the sport can expect to be racing for up to 6 or 7 hours at a stretch, going long distances, day in and day out. (Side note, Paul Sherwen mentioned during this year’s Tour that back in the 1980s when he raced the Tour, some stages took up to 10 hours.) The demands of other sports are different. Football, baseball, and — to some extent, basketball — are more about explosive power, short bursts of speed, and strength. The drugs might be different, but there are definitely athletes using. They just aren’t being tested as much, so they’re not caught as much.

Heck, there are stories of high school athletes using steroids, although you don’t often hear of juniors in the cycling world being busted for doping. What does that prove? Nothing, except that drug use in high school sports is occurring to some extent. And given that cycling isn’t a varsity sport in most high schools, one could argue that the doping problem is worse in football than it is in cycling just because of how young the players start using drugs.

So, why are cyclists more “susceptible” to doping? They aren’t. But because cyclists are tested more often, it stands to reason that they’re caught more often. And that’s why it appears that cyclists dope more. Best guess: They probably don’t dope in greater percentages than any other sport. Appearances, as the old saying goes, can be deceiving.

Tonight’s parting shot

Someone at a certain Fox News affiliate must be a bit thick in the head, having republished an article about Lance Armstrong that appeared on The Onion’s web site earlier today. I’m not sure if the Fox News affiliate is trying to add a humor section to their web site or whether they just didn’t get the joke. My guess is that someone didn’t realize it was a joke. All of a sudden, even fake news can become real.

Then again, as Tom Fine points out in a comment, it could well be that the Fox web site was hacked. A hacker with a sense of humor, to be sure.

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Has it really been three weeks? Time flies.

Vendettas? In Cycling? I’m Shocked! Shocked, I Tell You!

Pat McQuaid seems to think that the current investigation by Jeff Novitzky et. al. into allegations of doping on the US Postal/Discovery cycling teams is the result of a personal vendetta being played out in public. It could be. But if that’s the case, a whole lot of people have a vendetta against certain individuals, and those people are telling the same story.

McQuaid (and, for that matter the writer at CyclingNews.com) seems to be blissfully unaware that this investigation might have been happening regardless of any comments publicly or privately made by Floyd Landis. According to an article I saw in either the New York Post or Wall Street Journal a while back (memory gets fuzzy after a few weeks, don’cha know), Novitzky and his pals may already have been heading down that investigative path through an unlikely connection — Michael Ball and the now-all-but-defunct (is anyone still racing for them?) Rock Racing team. Since several riders that Ball employed — or in Landis’ case would like to have employed, had the UCI granted the Rock squad a Pro Continental license earlier this year — had connections to Armstrong’s 7-time Tour-winning behemoth of a squad.

Did Lance dope? Hell if I know. Seems like a whole lot of people are singing the same tune, and the lyrics seem to be:

na na na na,
na na na na,
hey hey hey,
goodbye

But like I said, I don’t know anything for certain. I know what some anonymous sources have told me, and based on that I think that it will be a long time before this investigation is put to bed. I’d guess that at the end of the whole drawn-out affair, both sides will be able to declare victory. Same as it ever was.

The Curious Case of the 20 Year Ban

Not much to say at the moment, since I haven’t had time to read the full text of the award, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport cut down the ban imposed on Gianni da Ros, a former member of the Liquigas cycling team, from 20 years to 4. According to the CAS press release:

Caught by the police on 11 March 2009 in the framework of an investigation relating to the trafficking of banned substances, the Italian cyclist Gianni da Ros was suspended for a period of twenty years by the CONI Anti-Doping Tribunal on 23 November 2009. The CONI Tribunal found the Athlete guilty of a violation of Articles 2.2 (use or attempted use of a prohibited substance or method), 2.6 (possession of prohibited substances and methods), 2.7 (trafficking or attempted trafficking in any prohibited substance or method) and 2.8 (administration or attempted administration to any athlete of any prohibited method or substance) of the World Anti-Doping Code.

The CAS panel partially upheld CONI’s findings against da Ros, with the exception of the last item listed above. In determining the length of da Ros’ suspension

the CAS Panel considered that a twenty-year ban was not justified and has reduced it to a period of four years which corresponds to the standard suspension provided by Article 10.3.2 of the World Anti-Doping Code. Finally, the start of the Athlete’s suspension has been fixed by the CAS at 12 March 2009, namely on the day following his exclusion by his professional team (Liquigas).

Not having any more information to go on just yet, the reduced suspension makes sense. One person I follow on Twitter observed that since da Ros was, in effect, a pusher, he should get a 20-year ban. From my point of view, that sounds like something for a criminal court to decide. As in, if he’s been proven to be a supplier of banned substances, and he’s breaking a criminal law, he should be prosecuted on those grounds.

In any event, unless something changes, it sounds like Gianni da Ros will be eligible to begin racing in 2013 — assuming he can maintain his fitness and that any team will hire him. These days, that last part is a bit of a crap shoot. With all the uproar that comes when teams hire riders who’ve served their time, it wouldn’t surprise me much if any doping suspension in the future will be a de facto life ban — at least on the professional side of the sport.

The Even Curiouser Case of the Lost Mountain Bike Found

A couple of years back, 2008 to be exact, a certain someone’s mountain bike took a detour on the way to one of those 100-mile ultra-endurance mountain bike races being held in Ohio. Floyd Landis’ BMC rig apparently detached from the vehicle that was transporting it and vanished into the ether. Not much was known about the bike’s whereabouts until an article popped up a few days ago, in which part of the story came to light. Turns out someone found the bike by the side of the road and later sold it at a garage sale for 5 bucks. Sounds almost too bizarre to be true. Five bucks, for a bike that by all accounts only had “broken pedals”? Amazing.

It turns out, as eagle-eyed reader Barbara Fredericsen found in an article on Deadspin.com, the people transporting the bike verified that this particular bike was actually the mountain bike used by Landis in 2008. The Deadspin article leaves me a bit puzzled about who, exactly, owned this particular bike. I’d been under the impression that Landis did. Perhaps the bike shop does. Color me confused on this point.

No idea if the bike will find it’s way back home — wherever that is — but I suspect there’s at least one more small footnote to the story before everything is all said and done.

But Does It Work?

That seems to be the question that WADA’s David Howman is asking about the UCI’s biological passport program. During the past six months or so, a number of cyclists have been suspended, at least in part, based on results from the biological passport program. In an article published earlier this month by the Los Angeles Times, writers Diane Pucin and Lance Pugmire noted:

World Anti-Doping Agency director general David Howman told The Times on Sunday that his agency might be interested in taking international cycling federation’s biological passport anti-doping program to international swimming, skiing, triathlons and biathlons. However, Howman said he is concerned about the Union Cycliste Internationale’s (UCI) administration of the program and would only be interested if the program is proved to work as planned.

(Hat tip to Liggett Junkie for the link.)

Despite the suspensions that have been handed out of late, Howman is actually right to be concerned as to whether the program works as advertised. One person I’ve spoken to who is familiar with how such programs work is concerned that the biological passport doesn’t actually work, despite its current apparent successes. This individual noted that interpreting blood values is as much art as it is science, and that with the small amount of data collected on each athlete, any conclusions drawn are, well, iffy. Turns out, according to my source, that to make the biological passport really bullet-proof, the number of samples taken from each athlete would have to be so large as to be cost prohibitive.

Take that for what it’s worth, but if I were in David Howman’s shoes, I would want to see a whole lot of proof before expanding the biological passport to other sports.

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Apres Tour

by Rant July 28, 2010

Well, the Tour de France is over for another year. Alberto Contador beat Andy Schleck by a pretty narrow margin (39 seconds, in case you hadn’t already heard). Lots of comments have been made around the web noting that Contador won by exactly the amount of time he gained after Schleck’s infamous mechanical difficulty. I [...]

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The Rest Day Blues

by Rant July 20, 2010

No Tour de France to watch today? Got a bit of withdrawal from your daily dose of Phil and Paul? Stop on by and read a spell. Maybe it’ll help cure your case of “The Rest Day Blues.” One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, now go cat, go… If [...]

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Rest Day

by Rant July 12, 2010

Now that the World Cup is over and the Tour de France riders are on their first rest day, it seems like a good time to catch up. By the way things are going in what some on Twitter are calling LandisGate, it appears that at least a few people who are participating in the [...]

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The Bombshell Hits

by Rant July 2, 2010

Well, well, well. Looks like the fireworks have started going off ahead of the Fourth of July, with the much rumored Wall Street Journal article finally hitting the newsstands and the web. At first glance, the article is stunning in the detail it provides about Floyd Landis’ experiences at the top of the sport, as [...]

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