Performance-enhancing methods. This is a term we hear so often in cycling; it refers to the practice of using products or processes that elevate your performance beyond what you could naturally do. It is a terribly complicated matter for the fans, and I can only speculate as to how complicated it is for the professionals who do or do not participate in the practice. Doping occupies an indelible place within our sport; faire le métier means “to do your work” in French. In a greater context, it means to conduct yourself as a professional. Within the narrow scope of cycling, faire le métier means to dope. It seems the practice of doping is so deeply embedded in our great sport that the two can hardly be separated.
I recently read K2: Life and Death on the World’s Most Dangerous Mountain, by Seattle mountaineering icon Ed Viesturs. Ed was the first American to summit all fourteen mountains over 8000 meters and only the fifth climber to do so without relying on bottled oxygen. The book focuses specifically on the history of the attempts to summit the world’s second-highest peak and details the circumstances surrounding the various accidents that have resulted in the loss of life during those attempts.
A recurring theme in mountaineering is the effect that being at high altitude has on the body and mind. Being at high altitude has various physiological complications – some of which can be treated, like muscle deterioration and cerebral edema, and some of which that can not, like death. The lack of oxygen to the brain diminishes cognitive capabilities with the unfortunate effect of increasing risk of accidents through making poor decisions in an environment where the margin of error is often already greatly diminished due to external factors. Using bottled oxygen can help alleviate many of these problems; it improves a climber’s health at altitude and improves their ability to reason, reducing the risk of errors made through lapses in judgement. Climbers like Viesturs who are able to summit the highest peaks without using bottled O2 are rare; for most they are impossible to reach without oxygen.
The first successful summit attempt on K2 was made by an Italian team in July of 1954. The circumstances that surrounded that summit bid have fed a fifty-year debate in the climbing community, the salient point of which is that the summit team claimed to have reached the summit without using supplemental oxygen, while photographic and circumstantial evidence suggests that they did.
The controversy sounded a lot like that surrounding doping in cycling and it got me wondering what it is, precisely, about riders using performance-enhancing methods that bother us so. After all, the use of supplemental oxygen amounts to the same thing as does doping: athletes are using an external method to enhance their performance on the world’s highest peaks. “Performance-enhancement” in this case may mean “staying alive”, but never-the-less, being alive does represent a pronounced performance enhancement over being dead and it is the use of an external method that makes the feat possible, or at least more healthy and less risky.
It surprises me that few, if any, in the climbing community consider the use of bottled air to be doping. Debates rage over the purism of it’s use, but those swing wide of labeling the practice as cheating. Looking at the matter objectively reveals little difference between supplementing blood with red-blood cells in order to compete in a three-week bike race and using supplemental oxygen to reach a mountain top. Both techniques utilize an external mechanism to improve the body’s ability to get oxygen to it’s muscles and thereby improve performance. Some doctors have even gone so far as to state that racing a Grand Tour is dangerous for most riders and have justified their involvement in doping practices by claiming that the use of EPO and other drugs make the sport of bike racing more healthy and less risky for the athletes.
There is a void in my brain at the spot where I’m supposed to store the justification for why using EPO and blood transfusions in cycling is labeled as ‘doping’ while the use of supplemental oxygen in mountaineering is not. It appears, however, that in mountaineering we have two conditions that work together to justify the use of the practice: the mountaineers are transparent about whether or not they use supplemental oxygen, and the community largely agrees with the assertion that it’s use is required in order to accomplish their feats. In cycling, neither of these conditions are met: cyclists are not transparent about whether they dope or not, and the public disagrees with the assertion that it is unhealthy to participate in races like the Tour de France without the use of performance-enhancing products or methods.
I think many in the professional peloton believe they need to dope in order to compete in a Grand Tour. The public, by and large, disagrees. Frankly, I don’t think either party has the data to justify their claim. Such data would need to come not from a lab, but from data collected from the professional riders in a three-week stage race. The difficulty in accumulating this data is that we are evidently pretty bad at figuring out if a rider is doping or not, and as such it would be difficult to say whether such data is valid or not. If we somehow overcame that obstacle and definitively found that either yes, it’s dangerous, or no, it’s healthy, then we could start to build an objective case for or against using these processes – both inside the peloton and with the public – and start dealing with the matter rationally. For doping to stop, the riders have to believe they can do without their use. And if a three-week race can’t be done in a healthy and safe way without using performance-enhancing methods, then public needs to accept they are required in order for the athletes to safely accomplish their feats. Their use should then be regulated and used in a medically safe way.
What it comes down to is the acceptability of a method through the justification of it’s use, and cycling community has failed entirely in building that justification. That leaves us with a terribly complicated matter on our hands which few are equipped to handle appropriately.
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Great Article.
What puzzles me is how 100 years ago, guys could do the tour on 30 or 40 lbs bikes without any of the gear, support, or nutritional information that we have today. Sure, they were slower, but they weren't solely cyclists. A lot of them worked in factories or mines for a living, and Le Tour was a method by which they could get out of that lifestyle, if only for 3 weeks.
It's not a question of whether the human body is capable of doing such things without the use of performance enhancing drugs. We already know that it is. It's the entertainment that we're looking for that encourages the use of doping. Would we be able to see the multiple series of vicious attacks we see in the mountains of the Pyrenees without doping? Would we be able to see the spectacular chases and breakaways without doping?
That is where the acceptance or disapproval of doping lies. You don't need to dope to ride the tour, but to win it, you do. For us to be entertained, the pros need to dope.
I think we can all agree that it doesn't make the racing any easier.
But it sure does make it a lot more exciting to watch.
I have to disagree a bit here w/Omar. I think spectators would get more enjoyment from seeing the riders race clean.
Sure we might not see the number of vicious attacks by the same rider, but I believe we would see more entertaining racing. The ability of some of these chaps to mark every move by a competitor is boring. Knowing that they would really have to pick their spot and commit is exciting. Complete collapse could occur at any time if they tried to mark all and every attack by a leading foe. The time gaps I believe would be huge and open up the Grand Tours to a whole new group of riders than before (Chavanel this year comes to mind).
Baseball comes to mind as a sport similar to cycling. The uproar over the use of PEDs only came when Barry Bonds was approaching his record breaking feat. Similar to cycling when Pharmstrong was surpassing the victory streaks of the legends.
My point is this, as long as the playing field is level, than have at it. Bonds was hitting against doped pitchers and competing against doping rivals as was Lance. The problem is that only the best financed players or riders can effectively dope and not get caught, so the playing field is not level, and the best may not actually be winning, just the best financed. A clean sport is much more fair.
What it comes down to is that mountaineering isn't a competitive sport in the same way as cycling is. Now if mountaineering has a structured calendar with mass-start races each year, your analogy might be getting closer.
Difference between climbing 8000m plus mountains and riding as a professional cyclist? Doping doesn't help you avoid dying, in fact it is generally considered that it increases your chances of dying. Whereas going over 8000m will guarantee your death if you're there long enough.
I think what Omar meant to say was, "You don't need to dope to ride the tour, but to make it exciting for people with really fucking short attention spans, you do"
Fucking doping apologists *shakes head*
@Frank, the phrase you're looking to fill the void is, I believe: "oh yeah, mountaineers aren't competing against one another"
The health perspective - haematocrits of 50%+ are dangerous. Putting shitloads of steroids and r-EPO and God-knows-what-else into your body is likely very dangerous (self-interested apologist doctors who wouldn't know the Hippocratic oath if it walked up and smacked them with a bag of blood notwithstanding). Transfusing blood - even if its yours - is dangerous. There is precious little evidence or allegation that PEDs are taken simply (or at all) to reduce the dangers of cycling (cf mountaineering).
The sport perspective - like Jarvis said, different sports, different requirements.
The fairness perspective - turning donkeys into thoroughbreds doesn't seem like a particularly compelling justification, or particularly fair to the genuine thoroughbreds.
The morality perspective - rules is rules. If you compete you are obliged to play by the rules. Of course you, and everyone else, are going to push the boundaries here and there, some more so than others. But since when did that mean you could just forget about all the rules. The sport with no rules is a different sport.
The sporting spectacle perspective - why is it axiomatic that superfuelled racing is better than unfuelled (or lower fuelled)? The popularity of the GT's long before major EPO suggests it isn't. There are plenty of other things we could try first to make things more exciting, if needed - radios, time bonuses, different stages, etc.
Nope, Frank, I'm not there. I still feel very sorry for the poor bastards who feel they have to dope to continue in the sport they love, or who find they are doping before they are old and wise enough to understand what they're being turned into. I still acknowledge the persistence of cultures, and the difficulty of rooting out endemic cheating when ther is no sure-fire way to guarantee chets will be caught. I still love watching the Ullrichs and Pantanis and Virenques etc. But I still hate doping.
@Geof
so much more eloquent than I
This is a great post and I hope to have some time this weekend to give it some more thought. At first glance, it becomes a chicken or the egg kind of problem; riders would most likely prefer not to dope, but they rationalize doping by the thought process that "if I don't do it and this other team or rider is, then I'm not going to be competetive" I don't think it's really an issue of whether or not a Grand Tour can be ridden without doping...I'm sure many have...but the question is, can you trust that the other team isn't..the answer to which (currently) and perhaps, forever, will be "doubtful."
Why? Because people are always going to be looking for a performanc enhancement edge...it's a natural inclination, and it's why we take supplements, watch our diets (or experiment with crazy diets), and it's that kind of urge that led Lance Armstrong to suffer all kinds of silliness at the hands of Allen Lim this last season.
Elite athletes will always look for some kind of edge, and PED's will most likely always be ahead of testing standards. Because any intelligent rider knows this, I think it makes it hard to resist the temptation, as their professional reputation and income depend on it.
But it's a fuzzy edge. In an article in Bicycling Magazine a few months ago on PED use by amateur athletes, the magazine was aghast that some lower-tier racer used DHEA during a race! Hell, my aunt and uncle (in their 70s) use DHEA every day and anyone can walk into a Whole Foods and buy a bottle. I have one on my shelf. It's a natural hormone that declines with age. Where do we draw the line? Some people don't manufacture creatine in their bodies well (or are vegetarian) so they take creatine - it's legal. But, as a 40-year old man, if my DHEA levels are really low for my age, I can't take DHEA?? In my mind the PED situation is a hopeless mess, and I doubt that we're ever going to see "clean" cycling, if we ever have. It's human nature to win at all costs. That said, I am deeply troubled by the lack of transparency, by the idea that those who don't want to feel like they have to. Since someone like Huevos can be the "most tested" athelte and yet apparently/likely is a doper, how much faith can we place in testing for declaring cycling a "clean" sport?
@KitCarson
There'll never be a clear brightline between what's in and what's out which everyone agrees on. There'll always be anomalies. But that's just life. The sport can either keep plugging away to try to make the banned list rational, minimise the "but what about this drug / supplement?" issues and test for and ban cheats and their assistants. Or it can throw up its hands and say "too hard - bring it on - take all the crap you like (whatever the long-term consequences) and may the best donkey-turned-thoroughbred win". At which point, sponsors will desert the sport in droves, and a whole bunch of fans won't be far behind. Because something so openly cynical just doesn't capture hearts and minds in the same way as something which at least tries, sort of, some of the time, more or less, to Do The Right Thing.
@Good Geofelephant I'd have to agree with your assesment, which means, things will most likely continue on as they are. You certainly can't just throw in the towel for the whole thing. I was just riffing on how it's this viscious cycle, a game even, that will seemingly continue. I think Lemond's points and some of the info that has come out from the Flandis revelations really implicates cycling at the highests levels: UCI,various other regulatory bodies, team directors, it's really like a cancer -- in fact a good metaphor. How do we rid our beloved sport of a metastasized cancer, without killing it?
@KitCarson
Yep, agree with that. But, as ET demonstrated, no matter how nasty the cancer looks you don't give up, because there's always hope. And, er, drugs.
@Good Geofelephant Yes, it's important to have hope (damn, even "hope" has been co-opted by a certain politician)and in fact, sometimes I feel the same way about voting! A vacillation between hope and optimism and a dark "realistic" cynicism...Yeah, the doping situation is something I can't seem to wrap my head around fully. I have a hard time seeing how "clean" cycling is going to happen, and yet, something must be done...