Cycloblogs go buggy over drugs

The cyclingblogs are all crackers over the LAT 2 part article on WADA, USADA, Pound Dick and the generally broken, wasteful, and autocratic system that polices performance enhancing drug use among elite and professional athletes.

TBV is the clearinghouse for all manner of opining and fact on these matters, an informational effort that I think rivals the physical effort of a long distance ride, without the fun and exhilaration. It's like being on a century ride that never ends.

The current interest is not without precedent. Outside mag, sometime last year, wrote an article about Don Catlin's modest proposal that the system was not helping matters and that it should be radically re-imagined, if not scrapped, in favor of a voluntary testing model:

. . .  he's decided to mount a campaign to radically change the way sports go about fighting drugs—an idea that he's revealing publicly for the first time in Outside. Catlin's vision is to replace the current law-enforcement model—in which all athletes are treated as suspects who are monitored and tested to find evidence of specific drug use—with a reward model, one driven by a new voluntary system that, he hopes, would enable officialdom to actually prove that the athletes who take part in it are clean.

All three regular readers of this space (including myself) may remember a somewhat half-baked scheme of my own: trust that everyone is using, and get hard data on what the effects of drugs are, and whether they make a difference, and abandon the system of sanctions in return for full (but secret and anonymous) disclosure by athletes.

I was struck by Floyd's words (reported on Pezcycling) on What Happened - he has derived no benefit from fighting this, and even if he wins his case, he may end up broke. Clearly, winning the Tour is the worst thing that has ever happened to this great athlete.

"If I'm banned for four years and stripped of my title and prize-money, I'll never race again. My desire for it would have been obliterated."

Will the appeals process come down to purely money and staying power? "I wasn't the highest-paid cyclist and it's looking like this might cost me $500,000," he said. "I think the authorities know I'll run out of money. They've said they'll appeal if they lose the hearing and that might take another year.

"How can cycling win? Either the winner of its greatest race is a cheat or the credibility of the system is in tatters if I'm found innocent. Neither is a great result."

For the umpteenth time, Floyd was regretful of his 'excuses' immediately post-test: "It was a mistake to come out with those things but I'm not an expert and I'm very unhappy that I've had to become one."

I could go on about how the tolerance of this kind of physical surveillance is sympomatic of our times: Surveillance of the body, and behavior are both becoming more onerous and paradoxially more tolerated and exptected, but that's another post. . .

Blessings of the Lizard . .