Ok....this is enough! But, what is the solution? I can't believe another TdF is tainted now by doping! It is sad and disgusting, and these riders are putting the sport in serious peril! When the sponsors go away, so do the races. Thanks for putting another nail in the coffin of this great sport Vino.
What are some serious suggestions on how to combat this problem?
Lifetime ban? I think this is a great start, and maybe necessary.
Ban the Team Directors for 2 years if a rider is positive?
No team gets invited without longitudinal testing done by an organization independant of the team. Team Slipstream has the ideal model; riders are tested once a week.
Amnesty for past transgressions, but only if doctors and suppliers are named. It would be nice to get an entire history from confessing riders; if everyone is in the soup then riders will be more willing to talk.
From the amnesty a list of doctors are blacklisted. Any rider with any sort of association does not get invited to an ASO event. No rider may see any outside doctor.
Some sort of sanction that is applied to the entire team for a doping offense. There needs to be motivation for the team management. Controls that fall outside a rider's longitudinally established values count trigger a sanction.
Make the Grand Tours easier by reducing the course lengths and increasing the number of rest days so the riders can recover naturally from strenuous stages.
ASO wants to have their cake and eat it too. On the one hand they want to keep the TDF as difficult as it has always been for the sake of tradition, on the other they refuse to admit that the difficulty has always driven many riders to seek chemical assistance.
Make the Grand Tours easier by reducing the course lengths and increasing the number of rest days so the riders can recover naturally from strenuous stages.
This is a fiction. One of the most doped sports in the world is short track and field events, like the 100 meter sprint.
If the overall doping is reduced then the pace that stages are ridden will go down, making them easier for the non-doped riders.
You could expand the cutoff percentages for stages.
The removal of the profit motive would ensure a clean race.
Question is : would riders race for less money?????
Riders do it for the glory as much as the money, it wont eridicate doping if you lower salaries. Did you see Vinos face as he crossed the line in stage 15? That wasnt the face of someone thinking about money.. It was someone getting his moment of extacy by living the glory that he is addicted to.
Eradicating doping would be hard if not impossible but yes i agree with your first post: first: amnesty. Utter and total, 100 % second: An uberstrict regime, anyone caught is out of cycling for life and looses his income from the last 5 years third: What does a GPS cost these days? 200 dollars? Wear it.. always.. Failure to locate a rider in the proximity of his GPS at any time during the year leads to an automatic disqualification for life.. fourth: DNA of all the riders Fivth: etc. etc.
In any case the UCI and ASO should really take it up seriously if they want to eredicate doping. In the current climate you cannot expect a rider to not use PEDs, you are pretty much forced to if you want to be a contender,
Amnesty??? Declare the doping practices, name names, name dates etc.
Then any rider caught doping subsequently is automatically and permanently banned for life, and is forced to return all prize money won.
I would agree. The only thing that I would be concerned about re: a lifetime ban is 1) integrity of testing practices (many agencies are too political) and 2) any possibility of having tainted samples.
I wonder how teams deal with the security of their nutritional and medical supplies.
I remember seeing some riders grabbing water bottles from spectators. That's just crazy IMO.
Make the Grand Tours easier by reducing the course lengths and increasing the number of rest days so the riders can recover naturally from strenuous stages.
ASO wants to have their cake and eat it too. On the one hand they want to keep the TDF as difficult as it has always been for the sake of tradition, on the other they refuse to admit that the difficulty has always driven many riders to seek chemical assistance.
Well said. They want an engrossing spectacle with superhuman demands and also demand that a sport steeped in doping for decades be squeaky clean.
I note that the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, FIFA, etc., don't share this approach 😎
They wouldn't want real testing to interfere with their ability to market the sport.
I guess it is.. Still i dont expect any time soon to see a biker drop dead of his bike by a poisoned water bottle..
There are talks going on about the ASO starting its own protour without the UCI. Guess that would be a chance to go for a full regime change.
By the way i dont think my GPS idea was all that crazy either. (at least as part of a solution)
Not poison, but given all the testing, if I were a clean rider I'd be wary of what I would eat, drink, ingest, use as an ointment, etc., especially with a life ban as a consequence.
I don't think it will ever be defeated totally but a zero tolerance attitude should be adopted. How about suspending the team of a doped rider for three months or so? Peer pressure from clean riders might work. Just a suggestion.
To deal with doping - plenty and some have been expressed above but until now the UCI has not been serious enough.
One thing for sure, if doping is to be minimized (note, not erradicated, that's dreaming) then the penalty would need to be so great and the damage to the rider and his team so heavy that the mere thought of doping will make them break out in a sweat (AKA targeting the hip pocket).
The removal of the profit motive would ensure a clean race.
Question is : would riders race for less money?????
If we removed the profit, the TDF would die. Maybe the total elimmination of pro cycling would be a good thing. I know I would ride more then spend as much time on this forum.
requiring riders to have gps devises with them at all times? give me a break! these guys deserve basic human respect.
it is a sticky issue b/c doping will never be erradicated. i dont think amnesty would work. forget amnesty, just require mandatory lifetime bans not pathetic retroactive suspensions like basso's and stiff monatary penalties for team owners, ds, doctors, and all others involved. it isnt right that the riders bare the brunt of the punishments. the culture needs to be attacked. peer pressure will have an impact on this.
and then fight back. start a pr campaign. it's a tough sport. i wouldnt shorten the course. i would trully explain just what kind of stress the body goes through and as such allow certain banned drugs in order to speed recovery. but when riders start injecting cows blood or someone else's blood, then that is crossing the line. the entire situation stinks.
The hatred of my doping disclosure posts proves one thing is cetain:
No solutions exist for cheating, doping, illegal gaming, event fixing or fraud.
But it is fun to believe in miracles. Lance does.
Come on big fella, step up to the plate. with all the things you have said & if you know how it's all done then surely you have an idea of ways if not to eliminate but at least reduce.
Eliminating is next to impossible, people will always break rules & laws. But how to reduce the chances of doping?
