Freakonomics Blog » Should We Just Let the Tour de France Dopers Dope Away?:
Now that virtually every cyclist in the Tour de France has been booted for doping, is it time to consider a radical rethinking of the doping issue?
Is it time, perhaps, to come up with a pre-approved list of performance-enhancing agents and procedures, require the riders to accept full responsibility for whatever long-term physical and emotional damage these agents and procedures may produce, and let everyone ride on a relatively even keel without having to ban the leader every third day?
If the cyclists are already doping, why should we worry about their health? If the sport is already so gravely compromised, why should we pretend it hasn’t been?
I can argue both sides of this.
The argument in favor of letting players dope boils down to two main ideas: they’re already doing it, so why not legitimize it? And the other idea is that as long as the athletes know what they’re getting into — why shouldn’t we let them?
The argument against doping is pretty simple: doping kills athletes. Cyclists have been doping with EPO for years, as well as with red cell transfusions and other ways to increase oxygen uptake. And as long as Cyclists have been doing this, cyclists have been dying.
Do you want any sport to become like pro wrestling, where one of the rarest things is a wrestler over age 45?
There are two reasons why sports have drug restrictions. well, actually, three:
First is to keep the athlete from doing stupid and dangerous things to themselves because they’re willing to do so to win. Athletes are not the best judge of what’s in their long-term interest, and the competitive instinct and the political pressure to win causes lapses of judgement. Athletes DO need to be protected from themselves, and from bad advice from those they listen to.
Second is to try to keep the sport on a fair basis: the idea is, in theory, for the best athlete to win. The more you allow an athlete to “hack” this essential fairness, the less relevant the results are (at least in theory). Is the idea to allow the best athlete to win? or the one with the best access of technology?
This is a constant struggle in most sports — hockey limits the size of goaltender gear and what you can do to your stick; NASCAR limits horsepower and other mechanical aspects of cars; bicycling limits equipment as well to try to prevent races from becoming technological challenges. There’s a long tradition of sports trying to manage the compromises between a sport moving forward and the technology changing the sport.
Oh, and third? Drug doping gives some people a lot of power and political push; it’s one reason why Dick Pound ought to rot in hell, because he’s the embodiment of drug testing becoming a means to power instead of a check against excesses.
Personally, I stand firmly in the middle here. I think a lot of drug testing and doping work done today is excessive — the Olympics is a circus of politics over common sense; honestly, I don’t care if hockey players take Sudafed (a no no) or shooters take Benadryl. Neither one is going to affect a player’s long-term health, and the competitive advantages are minimal.
On the other hand, look at wrestlers and the history of steroids and other drugs. Do you really want to give athletes free reign to take the chance that something might happen later so they can win now?
The current state of drug testing in sports is well out of balance. it needs to be dialed back and focus more on the health and safety of the athlete. But do away with testing? allow doping of cyclists?
Where do you draw the line? How much risk are you going to allow an athlete to screw up (or truncate) their future life for current, fleeting glory? it’s a tough call. But the reality is, even WITH drug restrictions and testing you see athletes willing to take chances to win, and we now see with the WWE and with cycling that those decisions have come back to haunt (and kill) athletes.
I’d have serious problems being a fan of a sport where I knew athletes were taking serious risks iwth their health to win; that’s a reason why I stopped following women’s gymnastics years ago, once it became clear how endemic the pressure towards delayed puberty, bulemia and anorexia.
Where does this turn into blood and circuses? Do I want the blood of an athlete on my hands as a fan?
I have trouble with that. And one thing I do know, and which has been proven time and time again, if you don’t protect the athletes from themselves in making these kind of “win now, worry about tomorrow later” decisions, they WILL choose to win now — and pay later. And because of that, those decisions shouldn’t be in the athlete’s hands, or their handlers.
update:
nice piece on this posted on Freakomics from Joe Linsdsey of Bicycling magazine.
Freakonomics Blog » Why Legalizing Sports Doping Won’t Work:
Yesterday, I posted a short piece called “Should We Just Let the Tour de France Dopers Dope Away?” It wasn’t an outright call for legalization of sports doping, but I wanted to put the idea on the table.
Well, Joe Lindsey, a contributing writer for Bicycling magazine, wrote in to say that there are a lot of compelling reasons to keep the idea off the table. Joe, who has written widely on doping in cycling, was good enough to write up his argument in the guest post below.
This article was posted on Chuq Von Rospach, Photographer and Author at Freakonomics Blog » Should We Just Let the Tour de France Dopers Dope Away?. This article is copyright 2013 by Chuq Von Rospach under a Creative Commons license for non-commericial use only with attribution. See the web site for details on the usage policy.