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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@Mark Twight, @mark
Thanks for your great input; I agree that what it seems to come down to is transparency - that's really the difference between cheating and not, isn't it?
cheating(a): violating accepted standards or rules
The rest is all murky ugliness, but that's at the heart of it. Of course, so long as public opinion diverges from what the athletes believe (wrongly or otherwise) to be required, transparency is impossible, but that gets beyond the point of the question.
Thanks for contributing, mates.
"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. "
Agree that not that many climbers are VOCAL enough about this but there are some like Mark Twight, Steve House and Vince Anderson who has been outspoken along time.
I'm Swedish and the alpine community is small like in really small. I have been loud and vocal and "slammed" the O2 zipping pretenders hard in public. I raised this issue in an outdoor community and out of plus 11.000 views and about 160 posts i'd say 3 people agree with me that O2 is doing. The rest send hate emails to me and my some of my sponsors....
I wrote this one for R&I in October 2010
http://www.rockandice.com/articles/letters/article/820-letters-issue-189
David Falt
@Mark Twight
Hold on, is this THE Mark Twight, the climber? Wow, if so, welcome to the site! (I have done a bunch of climbing all over the world as well and am very good friends with Geoff Tabin.)
It is also interesting in the climbing community b/c climbers also use other PED's besides oxygen. This goes WAY back as well. Hermann Buhl's first asecnt of Nanga Parbat in '53 was credited as without oxygen but he was taking amphetamines to stay awake and keep going. Diamox is commonly used prophylatically even on small mtns like Rainier and I have seen increasing numbers of climbers using dexamethasone on larger mtns before they are in trouble.
Very interesting thread but I have to agree that using oxygen is definitely a PED use.
Gentleman if you haven't heard of Mark Twight, he is worth a google. A Hardman indeed.
David, nice, cogent letter to R&I. I'm sure it didn't win many supporters. The O2 emperor has always been without clothes for anyone who cared to look. Sadly, when someone who has climbed Everest with the aid of supplemental O2 and a "servant" to carry the extra bottles and prepare the route tells a group of normal people that he climbed Everest that is all he says. He fixates on the outcome and not the means used to achieve it. And if the audience isn't well-informed enough to ask about the means the speaker lets the omission alone, allowing them to think better of him.
When I started racing a bike it never occurred to me that at my meager level (now a Cat 3 and not a young man) any of those others on the road might be using PEDs. Then Chodroff spoke up and Coyle and Schubel were suspended and I had to open MY eyes, to inform myself. Apparently no one is special and no one is immune: when a group of human beings get together some percentage of them are going to cheat or be susceptible to the idea of it. Sadly, it appears this is true for any sport and at some point our habit as an athlete or spectator one of distrust.
We dearly want to believe in extraordinary human performance but there will always be a voice inside urging skeptical review. That is what the cheaters have done to us.
MFT
p.s. Buck Rogers, yes, the climber. I found my way here via a link to The Rules - to which I refer frequently.
@Mark Twight
Beautiful account of the way people "forget" to mention the details of how something was achieved - not just Mounteering, but everything. I think Mountaineering - and I say this as someone who reads about it but doesn't practice it - is undergoing a very off-camber growing pain. You've got the pure sport which is largely an indy sport with a (relatively) small base. Then you have the appeal of Everest. Inexperienced Fuckwaffles going for the top with no class and no skill.
(It might be comparable to how cycling is viewed in the States, with only the Tour getting attention.)
From the various books I've read, the way people get to the top of Everest is completely lacking in class and dignity - which is everything The Rules are about. Getting into the sport, doing it well, and being a good athlete, well - fuck - that's up to you; you're on your own for that one. But The Rules are about how you do it. It's about the subtle things. About making it all worth while. Various people have (rightly) pointed this out: there are about 6 Rules that have anything to do with actually riding your bike. The rest are about class, style, culture, and dignity.
And while that may well be embraced by the group of non-Everest Trophy-seekers, I'm under the strong impression that Mountaineering is really struggling to deal with the commercialism presented through the publicity of that particular hill.
As far as cheating goes, it goes against everything that we believe when we start out. We fall in love with the challenge and pursue it. Then we become acquainted with the pain that first seemed such an unfamiliar companion. Then we start down a slippery slope.
I'm an asthmatic (a real one, unlike 80% of the Pros) and I have an inhaler. I don't need it ever in the summer, but fall/spring my lungs can't deal with the change in weather and I have to use it pretty regularly. One time I took it right before a ride. I felt the oxygen coursing through my body. I was strong that day. Could be the inhaler, could be I was on form. I don't know, but I credit the inhaler. I can't deny it's been tempting - when the legs are lacking - to use it even though I don't need it. It's human nature.
But that's what makes us different from animals, we have morality, dignity, and self-control. I don't take my inhaler when I don't need it because it isn't right. It's as simple as that.
Side note: I hold a coworker last Spring that I was riding Tour de Blast and she asked, "Oh, is that the one where you ride up Mount Everest?" I don't know how to respond to that.
"Yes, that's the one. Then you swim back down."?
Frank, I assume your co-worker's sole job responsibility was to check the expiration dates on the bottles of Liquid Paper.
As for PEDs in cycling, I'm inclined to take Anquetil's position--they are pros. They can't do what they do on bananas and water. However, I would want disclosure that PEDs are allowed. I think I'd stop at full disclosure. Part the competition is coming up with newer better synthetic elements for injecting, ingesting, snorting, or shoving up one's ass. Maybe we could see the cycling version of this:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/4090/saturday-night-live-weekend-update-all-drug-olympics
I've heard the argument about how legalizing PEDs turns any sport into professional wrestling--basically scripted entertainment. Isn't that what we had in professional baseball in the 90's? Isn't that essentially what we have in the TdF now?
@Jeff in PetroMetro
It's what we had in Pro cycling (or the Tour de France as you call it) in the 90's. As for Anquetil's position: how does one become a PRO? They are good amateurs, amateurs start out as juniors and youths. So the argument for legalising PEDs is bullshit. It will mean that anyone who finds themselves as being good enough to become a PRO will know that if they want to take that step, they will have to take drugs - if they aren't already as the logical result of PRO filling themselves full of pills is that the practice will trickle-down to lower ranks and age-groups.
Fuck. Took the bait again.