The riders are just regular employees - a philospher's view

ricadus

http://www.spiegel.de/international/eur ... 11,00.html

'…What happened then was what Barthes called the "jump": a sudden burst of energy that enabled Armstrong to press on with the fury of Achilles…'

'You believed that you were watching Hector and Achilles, supported by the gods, but in truth it was Bjarne Riis and Jan Ullrich, probably with EPO in their blood. Are you disappointed?'

knedlicky

I don’t understand where Sloterdijk stands.
He seems to regret the ‘veil’ about doping having been lifted, so that much of the romance and ‘poetry’ of cycle racing and its supermen disappeared. He also apparently feels doping is necessary, whether to climb the mountains like pro-cyclists do, or to create role models in an artificial world, the two going hand-in-hand (these attitudes fit with his statements elsewhere about modern cynicism having evolved from the ‘mourning of lost innocence’).
But then he says “we can expect an interminable continuation of the malaise, leading to the gradual ruin of the concept of sports overall”, as if he judges doping (the ‘malaise’) negatively after all.

Sloterdijk has written about the dilemma of genetic engineering and I wonder how much doping in cycling was at the back of his thoughts then - though physical performance-enhancing drugs are probably nothing compared to the cognition- and memory-enhancing drugs now in discussion, and apparently already in use on American campuses. (There was someone on Radio 4’s ‘Broadcasting House’ last Sunday morning advocating them).

As for Riis, I don’t actually believe he meant what he said about his yellow jersey (and what Sloterdijk is disappointed about). I think Riis was just being petulant, having been pressured to admit about his doping.

I also wonder if Sloterdijk is right about who the Protestants of sport are. I sense more moral righteousness in the UK than in Germany, albeit the UK carries much less weight in road cycling.