241–250 of 354 posts
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When will the average person benefit from all the interesting performance enhancing drugs that have been secretly developed?
What helps you get a little more oxygen to you muscles thus winning the race is worth nothing to someone pushing a shopping cart around Costco.
I am definitely a layperson when it comes to organized sports, but from my POV it seems like competitive cycling attracts WAY more fraud/cheating/doping/etc. than many other kinds of sports. At least I have heard about it a lot more. I wonder why that is.
One way of thinking about it is how much a sport is skill-based versus fitness-based. Team sports and racquet sports tend to rely more on skill. Cycling and track and field rely more on fitness. A good soccer player isn't going to become a great just by getting a bit fitter, but the advantage given by doping is exactly what it means to be a better cyclist. This doesn't explain why cycling seems to attract more doping…
But something I've noticed across several sports is amateurs really can't grasp how elite some human beings can be biologically due to accidents in evolution
So any significantly elite performance is indistinguishable from tech/drug doping
It's all in the mitochondria and someday they might be able to test at birth (or even before)
And now they are developing mitochondria transplants so just imagine TdF or the Olympics in a few decades
Betteridge's law. There have been suspicions about this for about 15 years. Yet, in that entire time, not a single road cyclist in a UCI competition has ever been found to be doing this. Even just from a practical POV, it makes little sense. Stock road frames do not have room to even mount such a motor. You would also need a sufficiently large battery somewhere on the bike that can deliver enough power to make an imp…
I think it's simply because the top cyclists are now blowing the performance of doped cyclists of decades past out of the water and people get suspicious. I personally think huge advances in nutrition + altitude training are making the difference, but I understand people being suspicious especially in this sport.
I agree with you, btw- I've yet to see anything proving conclusively that this form of doping even exists.
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Yeah, it's so common that literally nobody in high-level road cycling has ever been found doing it. "Motor doping" is the chupacabra: universally feared, never seen. The math doesn't even begin to pass the smell test, with regards to how much energy you'd get out of some tiny battery vs. the amount you'd spend dragging the dead battery around France all day.
> The math doesn't even begin to pass the smell test, with regards to how much energy you'd get out of some tiny battery vs. the amount you'd spend dragging the dead battery around France all day. But there's already evidence that some cyclists were at least dragging around exactly that much extra weight: > In the 2015 Tour de France, bikes in the peloton were weighed before one of the time trial stages. French autho…
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Aero is basically the only thing that matters, second only to recruiting freak-show riders with horse lungs. These guys are averaging 40km/h. Have you seen Vingegaard's ridiculous mushroom helmet that's pushing the boundary between headwear and faring?
Aero doesn't matter at all on hill climbs, they are going too slow there for that.
Occams Razor says no. A proper ebike won't stand a chance against the modern queen stage of the tour de france, even if ridden by a professional with appropriate gears otherwise, because the battery would run out half way on the first HC and it would just be a very heavy bike for the rest of the stage. Same with a tiny motor - you gain tiny amount of force but you'll have to carry a full bidon with you on all the cli…
The bikes have a weight regulation that was set in the 90s, 6.8kg. Ultra light bikes can be as light weight as 2.7kg. That gives 4kg to hide a battery and motor and still hit weight. A really good lithium battery offers 350 Wh/kg. 1kWh can grant 100 miles of range by itself.
You can save at max a bidon before rousing suspicion, and the whole operation is just not feasible in terms of cost vs. benefit.
I am definitely a layperson when it comes to organized sports, but from my POV it seems like competitive cycling attracts WAY more fraud/cheating/doping/etc. than many other kinds of sports. At least I have heard about it a lot more. I wonder why that is.
It's the most tested sport by far. Mostly because a couple of huge scandals - Festina and Armstrong. It's an endurance sport which is a natural target for doping because of the huge gains that can be made and it's also probably the most popular endurance sport too. That said, it's a problem in other sports but they just don't test as much or publicise it as much. It's become a real problem in Rugby, https://www.bbc.c…
Is it? I don't know how to ask this without it sounding argumentative, but how are you measuring this?
Just by the number of times an athlete is tested a year?
If so where are you getting the data for this to compare it to other sports drug testing regimes?
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> Sports + capitalism is bad already (...) I love a good bashing, but are you aware doping runs rampant in amateur levels of any sport or even physical activity? Why do you presume that competitions would be different?
That's why I include "massive leagues". If a city or school district is large enough to impel doping, the entire premise of sport is undermined. Why even bother, the entire enterprise becomes nothing about the sport and everything about "getting noticed, using this platform to stairstep to going pro!!!" It is just exploitative capitalism driving people insane.
I don't think you understand. Some amateur athletes purposely resort to doping even if they are not particpating in major competitions. Hell, check out steroid abuse in bodybuilding circles. Is taking ADHD drugs also a kind of doping?
I'm not sure you get the "performance enhancing" part of performance enhancing drugs. The pull is not from the competition, but the way they enhance performance. Capitalism has zero to do with this.
Occams Razor says no. A proper ebike won't stand a chance against the modern queen stage of the tour de france, even if ridden by a professional with appropriate gears otherwise, because the battery would run out half way on the first HC and it would just be a very heavy bike for the rest of the stage. Same with a tiny motor - you gain tiny amount of force but you'll have to carry a full bidon with you on all the cli…
More likely, you'd use it on select stages for very specific reasons... for example, a rider could use it to avoid the time cut on an ITT stage (effectively getting extra rest vs their competitors). Similarly, a pure sprinter could use it to stay in contention on a punchy "sprint" stage (like a stage that MvdP might be a favorite instead of a pure sprinter).
Edit - I don't think anybody is doing this at the top levels of pro cycling. Maybe in regional racing (masters, etc).