Dull boy
There is that old saying:
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
To inoculate myself fully against creeping dullness (I’ve been working a ton), my wife and I are taking a few days off from work, and heading up to Idaho to ride our bicycles through some rural mountain country.
Therefore I will be off-blog, and out of touch till Wednesday. I am not taking my laptop, since rural Idaho isn’t a hub of wireless connectivity. There, one connects with other things (and I am looking forward to that)
I was upset that I would not be able to keep up with the Tour De France, but after the recent cosmically bad doping scandal, I have been sickened by the whole thing.
Cycling is a beautiful sport, and at the pro level, it’s image is being ruined.
Does elite speedskating hold its own doping problem? Certainly not to that extent, it’s fundamentally a technical sport, and certainly does not seem to have a critical mass of wealthy athletes & desperate teams willing to do anything to win…. if speedskating were 20 times its current size, maybe it would be more of an issue.
More soon…
Filed under: on the road
I am an admitted Tour de France “junkie”. I will watch it every day…maybe twice a day, for the next month. I am just amazed at the talent and spirit that arises in this event.
That was until I woke up to watch the prologue this morning…and a lot of riders that I’ve been waiting to watch are not in the start house. Then I read online of all the dismissals. Unbelieveable. It makes me so sad.
OLN’s catch phrase is “cyclism”…this year it should be “stupidism”.
Flandis must be kicking himself right now…
Have fun riding your bikes and taking a little R & R break!
Hey Andrew,
I can see that nobody wants to touch this one with a 10-foot pole. I don’t think it’s that the image of cycling is being ruined, but rather that the truth is finally starting to come out.
I believe that doping is pretty rampant in the Tour de France peloton. I think a lot of the riders “play the calendar” in an attempt to beat the system. I think there are a lot of bad chemists and doctors involved with cycling teams who are one step ahead of the good chemists who are trying to stop them.
The problems involve figuring out who is lying and who is telling the truth (what does “under oath” mean anyway?), being able to tell the difference between natural talent and doping, and making sure that someone who is clean doesn’t have their name smeared by false accusations. I think the best way to prevent doping is to make sure the good scientists are staying ahead of the bad ones!
In speedskating, doping offenses are rare, but they do happen occasionally, as when Kotyuga was caught at the end of the 2004-05 season with steroids and EPO.
Obviously I’m no expert here, but from what I know, they test all year round in cycling just as with all other competitive sports, so I don’t understand what you mean by “playing the calendar”. Again, I’m no expert.
Granted, I totally believe there is doping in cycling, BUT I don’t believe that you can just ban a whole group of people because of allegations. If that were to become the norm, none of us would ever be able to get anywhere in life.
It’s simple, really. Out-of-competition tests are not that common, and for most of these riders, the Tour de France is the main race for which they prepare. During the Tour, the cyclists get tested all the time. But how often do you hear of some cyclist getting caught with drugs during the off-season? That’s when the odds are stacked in the favor of the cheaters, because of the infrequency of testing, and people are more likely to take chances.
The point of using drugs like growth hormone, steroids, and EPO during the training season is to help riders recover more quickly from a hard bout of training, so they can get back to training hard. With the help of their friendly local biochemist, athletes’ bodies can recover more quickly than they can on their own.
For example, with the help of drugs, 4-day hard training cycles can become 5-day hard training cycles, and that’s how a dirty team can show up at the Tour with a slight competitive edge: By being slightly more fit than the rest.
There are two sides to the doping debate, and each side argues their point passionately. But if I had a kid right now who was about 10-12 years old and trying to choose a sport to pursue, I’d try to steer him or her away from cycling, or at least be very clear on what I BELIEVE is going on in that sport, and what it takes to get to the top.
Thanks so much for the clarification, because I really didn’t know exactly how to use those drugs. I guess I can go out and use them now. hahaha With all of my riches to get them and all of my hard training to put them to use. Even more more of a hahaha.
So, I’m waiting to read all of the opinions of the people in SLC of no ice until mid to late August.
Hey Steph,
I think it’s a shame we don’t have ice in SLC, just because USSPEEDSKATING can’t pay its share. Salt Lake City could be as much of a training destination for foreign teams as Calgary is, but there is no housing near the rink for athletes, so teams don’t want to come here to train.
Personally, I don’t care if there’s ice right now or not, because I’m having fun skating on inlines. It’s been both funny and sad to watch USSPEEDSKATING fall apart; it looks like I got my revenge, but I’m sorry that the athletes are hurting right now without coaches and ice.
If the Oval can’t get people to come use their facility, then the Utah Athletic Foundation should just start coming over there and sending some of those people upstairs home. If they don’t have a job to do, they should MAKE one. Until then, go home and think of ways to get people to come use the Oval.
TRY A LISTER BAG in your TEE-PEE
That was a bag of water hung from a tripod in the center of the room, It drew the heat and cooled the room
Col Ed