On Being an American Euro Pro Cyclist

gntlmn said:

I keep reading in this thread and that thread all sorts of comments accusing prominent American cyclists of doping in the sport. I kind of wanted to get some comment about how an American might survive in Europe in such an atmosphere which might include much doping also among the Europeans. I don't know if the doping is happening or not on such a grand scale, but it seems that the general public believes it is. So I'm wondering if it might be safer, as an American cyclist among a peloton of mostly Europeans, to generate the suspicion that indeed you are doping, just like the rest of the Europeans. The general public might hate doping with a passion, but if the peloton itself is mostly doping, it would hate a cop more than a doper. Your life might be in danger if it thought you were a cop (undercover drug enforcement agent), even though all you ever really wanted to do is race. So to skirt the fence, perhaps it is safer to stay completely clean and not to dope at all in order to always pass the drug tests, but to make questionable comments off the record in order to generate a little bit of controversy. The intent is to get people wondering if you are secretly doping. This keeps your survival odds higher in the peloton, where you might less likely be "accidentally" shoved off a cliff in the middle of a race for being a possible drug informant.

Comments, anyone?

Wrong forum... The doping forum is cleverly disguised as "Road Racing" 😉

wilmar13 said:

Wrong forum... The doping forum is cleverly disguised as "Road Racing" 😉

lmao.... that HAS to be the funniest line I've seen today 😄

Mansmind said:

lmao.... that HAS to be the funniest line I've seen today 😄

My immediate thought was, did I read that right, "Road Raging." 😄

gntlmn said:

My immediate thought was, did I read that right, "Road Raging." 😄

In all seriousness there is never any discussion about road racing in the road racing forum, it is pathetic. The title of the forum really does need to be changed to something that reflects the content of the forum. Hopefully this forum will remain clear of it, at least until the END of the grand tours...

wilmar13 said:

In all seriousness there is never any discussion about road racing in the road racing forum, it is pathetic. The title of the forum really does need to be changed to something that reflects the content of the forum. Hopefully this forum will remain clear of it, at least until the END of the grand tours...

I'm just lurking in the shadows. 😄 I figure by the time the "d" discussion ends, I'll be far enough ahead in training that it wouldn't be a race anyway..lol.

You're right though, I've kept my eye on how many threads everyday are at the top of the heap so to speak. Invariably, it's one containing the continuing battle between our two most popular contestants. I will say that it stimulated some thought from my end....

I'm far from being a racer, or at least a good one, but I've seen myself get enough faster/more powerful over my short riding career that I have to believe that if one trained as much as the pros did (for as many years)...it would have to be possible to compete at that level without help from outside substances. If that's true, the ratio of cheaters/non-cheaters probably falls in line with the ratio of other things in life. Nature has a way of finding it's on balance, even with those things that aren't natural.

Mansmind said:

I'm just lurking in the shadows. 😄 I figure by the time the "d" discussion ends, I'll be far enough ahead in training that it wouldn't be a race anyway..lol.

You're right though, I've kept my eye on how many threads everyday are at the top of the heap so to speak. Invariably, it's one containing the continuing battle between our two most popular contestants. I will say that it stimulated some thought from my end....

I'm far from being a racer, or at least a good one, but I've seen myself get enough faster/more powerful over my short riding career that I have to believe that if one trained as much as the pros did (for as many years)...it would have to be possible to compete at that level without help from outside substances. If that's true, the ratio of cheaters/non-cheaters probably falls in line with the ratio of other things in life. Nature has a way of finding it's on balance, even with those things that aren't natural.

I agree with you on that. Also, don't you think it would be a whole lot easier not to have to keep hearing drug accusations all the time if you happened to be a gifted athlete who kept winning and winning? I realize it's perhaps much easier for the opposition to organize character bashing on non race days rather than a worthy opponent in the race, but some of these guys really go overboard with it. Sometimes I wonder just how bloodthirsty these so called fans might be. They must feel, in some way, that the champions are eating their lunch or something.

gntlmn said:

I agree with you on that. Also, don't you think it would be a whole lot easier not to have to keep hearing drug accusations all the time if you happened to be a gifted athlete who kept winning and winning? I realize it's perhaps much easier for the opposition to organize character bashing on non race days rather than a worthy opponent in the race, but some of these guys really go overboard with it. Sometimes I wonder just how bloodthirsty these so called fans might be. They must feel, in some way, that the champions are eating their lunch or something.

I know how to fix this.. I'll just quit my job/career, train full time instead of 7 hrs. a week, and go when the TDF at about 40 years old 😄

In all seriousness, the bashing seems to have become part of human society. Perhaps from watching too much politics? lol

As a parallel, look at some of the discussion (even on this site) concerning "Bush bashing" etc. I can't believe there are people that spend so much time figuring out a way to make someone else look bad..it's NEGATIVE. We're all guilty of it sometimes I suppose, but how much more productive would society in general be if that same energy were applied to being part of the solution as opposed to whining about it?

Just food for thought.

John

Christ, I hope the doping drone doesn't infect another good forum... tedious, very tedious.

Americans aren't being singled out as dopers, it just so happens that one particular American (and a Texan at that, so he tends to really stand out) has been dominating the sport lately, and in many ways transforming the sport, so he's catching all the grief. Probably a bit of xenophobia involved, too. He must be doping, it couldn't be superior tactics and teamwork.

There have been quite a few Americans rising to prominence in cycling in the last decade - Armstrong, Hamilton, Julich, Leipheimer, Vaughters, Andreu, Landis, Vande Velde, Livingston... one has been found guilty of doping.

Which pretty much matches the European record - roughly ten percent of the top Euro cyclists have been caught doping over the past few years. Which tells me that doping is going on, but it's probably not widespread, and usually by stars that have been injured and are trying to take a shortcut back to greatness. Conspiracy theories, and foaming at the mouth ranting aside, that's about the most informed conclusion that anyone can reach, based upon the known, credible, published information.

JohnO said:

Christ, I hope the doping drone doesn't infect another good forum... tedious, very tedious.

Tell me why the last several posts have been people agreeing the constant doping threads are boring, followed by some discussion of doping? If I inadvertantly infected this forum with doping by making a wise crack about doping infection in the other forum I am going to kill myself. IMO there is no difference between talking about doping, and talking about talking about doping. 😄

Mansmind said:

In all seriousness, the bashing seems to have become part of human society. Perhaps from watching too much politics? lol

As a parallel, look at some of the discussion (even on this site) concerning "Bush bashing" etc. I can't believe there are people that spend so much time figuring out a way to make someone else look bad..it's NEGATIVE. We're all guilty of it sometimes I suppose, but how much more productive would society in general be if that same energy were applied to being part of the solution as opposed to whining about it?

Just food for thought.

John

That's interesting. I'm thinking of this perspective in the curious way that stage racing unfolds sometimes. Consider the 2005 Giro, for instance. Last year, Petacchi won 9 stages in a row. This year, he's having a tougher time of it. The other players are breaking ranks with their own teams to force Petacchi out of the picture. In a way, this roundabout bashing can serve to unite them against their greatest threat without having any true conspiracy. When the bashing gets bad enough, they don't have to conspire. They already know how the other players will react. It's just a matter of playing along with the game.

McEwan is enjoying this turn of events. He's better at jockeying for position than Petacchi in a crowd. So now that the crowd is wise to Petacchi, not from bashing so much as from prior dominating performance, it works to force Petacchi into less favorable position in the crowd. One of the others gets the spoils. Bashing can serve the same purpose in a bike race as to unite the group against the individual. Against a group, an individual will rarely win. TT's don't have this outcome, but road races are clearly about the interplay between rider and group.

If we were talking only about time trials, I'm pretty sure it would be a better race if all bashing were eliminated and riders focused only on the training, recovery and peaking for the race. But in general road racing, because of the interplay between group and individual rider, I suppose bashing can have a very powerful bang for its efforts, if you are inclined to play that kind of game. I never was so inclined. So I suppose I would have been a TT specialist. 😄

I see it like this: Road racing forum will be renamed Flyers paradise a.k.a. doping forum and grand tours forum will be known as the real road racing forum. Sssst don't tell the others about this forum......:p

wilmar13 said:

In all seriousness there is never any discussion about road racing in the road racing forum, it is pathetic. The title of the forum really does need to be changed to something that reflects the content of the forum. Hopefully this forum will remain clear of it, at least until the END of the grand tours...

LOL! Seems cyclingforums is paying attention there is now a doping forum where they moved all the doping threads to. Way to go🙂

MJtje said:

LOL! Seems cyclingforums is paying attention there is now a doping forum where they moved all the doping threads to. Way to go🙂

Ok well I am going to talk about talking about doping once more and say that is freaking sweet! Now will the road racing forum have less traffic than the single speed?

Without getting into too much detail, it's the same absurd arguments, and has been for a couple of months. Tyler is innocent because he's a nice guy and his dog died. Lance is doping because he didn't meet my criteria for how a champion's career should proceed. Lance is doping because a couple of unbiased people said so, such as a gal who got tossed off the team and a part time mechanic who's suing Lance for half a million. Everyone is doping because I have inside knowledge, but the dog ate my evidence.

When every single discussion in the Road Racing forum dissolves into that same monotonous, negative, unproveable billingsgate, it becomes tedious. So there is a bit of fear that this unsubstantiated negativism might creep to other forums.

Doping controls are pretty good these days. When the majority of the professional peloton tests positive, I'll believe that most of them are dopers. Until then, I only see careless amateurs and a few injured pros getting caught. Conspiracy theories aside, doping is probably not that prevalent in 2005.

And I'm enjoying the Giro, by the way. Judging by the way the Italians are dominating the top positions, I'd say national pride beats doping by a wide margin.

wilmar13 said:

Tell me why the last several posts have been people agreeing the constant doping threads are boring, followed by some discussion of doping? If I inadvertantly infected this forum with doping by making a wise crack about doping infection in the other forum I am going to kill myself. IMO there is no difference between talking about doping, and talking about talking about doping. 😄

JohnO said:

And I'm enjoying the Giro, by the way. Judging by the way the Italians are dominating the top positions, I'd say national pride beats doping by a wide margin.

Yep, I'd say that is probably true. If I were a pro, I'd have a better chance in the Giro as an Italian and the Vuelta as a Spaniard, all other things being equal. It goes back to the subconscious teaming factor of the individual vis a vis the group. If you are an insider, it's easier to reap the rewards. The Tour de France, on the other hand, is not quite like it used to be anymore. Being French is not quite as much of an advantage as it used to be. The interplay is quite a bit more complicated.

Are you referring to me that I talk about talking about doping.........well if you reply to Flyer and co you have to use somehow the word doping.....And for the record: I don´t mind some discussion about doping......but this was just tooo much. But it´s never good in some people´s view......we aren't living in the dream world wilmar get used to it! Oh and don't take everything so serious it is just cycling and doping😉

wilmar13 said:

Ok well I am going to talk about talking about doping once more and say that is freaking sweet! Now will the road racing forum have less traffic than the single speed?

MJtje said:

Are you referring to me that I talk about talking about doping.........well if you reply to Flyer and co you have to use somehow the word doping.....And for the record: I don´t mind some discussion about doping......but this was just tooo much. But it´s never good in some people´s view......we aren't living in the dream world wilmar get used to it! Oh and don't take everything so serious it is just cycling and doping😉

for the record asking someone if they are talking about you talking about talking about doping is the same as talking about doping and talking about talking about doping. :p

wilmar13 said:

for the record asking someone if they are talking about you talking about talking about doping is the same as talking about doping and talking about talking about doping. :p

Perhaps we could start a discussion centered around the conspiracies and cover-ups concerning the people that talk about people talking about doping. 😄

A Fools Paradise is a better title for those who think doping is limited to 10% of pro athletes.

Just multiple by 10--and you'll find your way home.

You can do it. Oh--and don't read the papers or the NAS activities at the Giro. Glucose but no insulin?

MJtje said:

I see it like this: Road racing forum will be renamed Flyers paradise a.k.a. doping forum and grand tours forum will be known as the real road racing forum. Sssst don't tell the others about this forum......:p