On Doping

The dopers, and the alleged dopers. What can I say? They fascinate me. I'm far more interested in keeping up with the continued careers of David Millar, Ivan Basso and Tyler Hamilton than George Hincapie or Damiano Cunego.

Hamilton is back. This year he rides for a lower ranked team with a wildcard to the Giro D'Italia. If he does well enough in the Giro, he may find himself inundated with offers from better teams for the Pro tour, and perhaps in 2008, he can show us all.

Contemplating Ivan Basso, let's assume for a moment that he did actually dope, which accounts for his excellent (more at: superhuman) result in last year's Giro. If he is now riding for DC dope free, he may not perform as he did last year, and thus he will be a domestique for Levi Leipheimer in the Tour de France, rather than a contender. However, I believe that Basso is an accomplished and talented cyclist in his own right, doped or not, and on a level playing field he will still perform well.

Not much to say about Millar. Still applauding his gutsy decision to actually admit to doping when suspended, and he's performed as expected since returning.

On doping. If you know for a fact that a drug or method enhances rider performance, and you know also for a fact that a rider is using said drug or method, if other riders are keeping up with ease, does it not follow that they are also probably doping?

Drug and blood doping tests are difficult in sports for the following reasons. Professional sports and anti-doping agents do not have the money or resources to develop tests on their own. They rely on advancements in medicine, applying new techniques to their respective sport. For example, a common substance used by cyclists to increase their red blood cell (rbc) counts is Erythropoietin (EPO), first developed for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. If an athlete injects this substance, his body's ability to carry oxygen to his muscles is increased, and therefore his endurance is also increased. Another way to increase rbc count is to inject, or transfuse blood that contains (almost) exclusively rbcs . If the athlete uses their own blood (they take out their blood, separate the rbcs, then re-inject it), then testing is made even more difficult. The tests used to check for illegal blood doping (as it's called) are all developed from methods used by doctors to test for, among other things, organ donor matches. The inherent problem with this is that wealthy, successful cyclists hire brilliant personal physicians, who are aware of testing methods in modern medicine before the anti-doping agencies are. Unless the World Anti-Doping Association actually became serious enough to literally put their money where their mouths are and pay for external, secret test developments themselves, the mentality of Guilty Until Proven Innocent will continue to be a pervading philosophy across the WDA board. Cyclists who are accused of doping despite clean tests are left to feel raw and betrayed by an agency that refuses to believe them in spite of all available scientific evidence to the contrary. Cycling is, after all, historically famous for harboring more dopers than almost any other sport.

I've personally decided that I do not care. I am not going to think less of a rider because he dopes. Especially if his colleagues have kept up with him in the peleton, but have just been lucky enough to avoid positive tests themselves.