Quoted post said:Originally Posted by Froze [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]
Doping is done in almost any professional and lower levels of various sports except chess just to name one! Although for me to sit still for a several of hours thinking over a game of chess I might have to dope up to sit there that long!!
Ignorance must be bliss, Froze. :P
Irony seems to have come full circle in cycling - ironic that the country that was at the forefront of blood doping from the very early 80's, Italy and specifically CONI who paid Conconni (Ferrari's mentor if you will - the guy that also oversaw the trainng of teams like Carrera and riders like Indurain and helped Italy take a near clean sweep of the winter Olympics in the early 90's in cross country skiing), now talk the toughest talk against doping and France with there "our atheletes don't dope which is why they don't win too much" approach have their world champion track sprinter banned and their iconic female athelete under suspision...
It's the same with masters racers who'll get busted in the future - just like the ones that recently did. The desire to win, availability of money and the belief that their "lesser" races will escape the ire of the "[censored] in a cup" truck. The pro's know that a result will get them tested and that random tests do happen but the average Joe that races might see a dope control van once in a blue moon and even then the chances of being called to task will be about 1 in 20, very very slim odds indeed.
Personally I think that most sports at most levels will have folks that dope and seek some kind of advantage - whether that be the likes of EPO/CERA or whatever is floating around out there now that's either released or under clinical trials, steroids, hgh or more commonly available less effective "drugs" that are on the banned list. I think it'd be a very interesting exercise if someone like USA Cycling teamed up with a drug screening service like DISA (www.disa.com) and sent out, at random intervals, requests for a random number of race winners to report to their local DISA testing center. They do after hours and weekend testing and are available in most towns/cities in the US. It's a pretty simple process - I was tested 4 times at random last year for work and 3 times in the previous two years... You're in and out within 15 minutes.