WADA doping code revamp

Anonymous

WADA is going to revamp its doping code in a major way over the next year. See http://blog.procycling.com/page/procycling?entry=wada_code_revamp for a summary.

Are the changes good or bad? What do right-minded readers think?

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Jeff Jones

European News Editor, Bike Online Project

dave_1

I think it's a good idea to revamp the code. I'm sick of the riders denials in the face of such strong evidence at times. I still think being banged up in a jail cell of the threat of it helps more...why no treat it as a criminal offence? Money's involved. Fraud's involved. It's a form of robbery by unseen methods

Sandypro

<font face="Book Antiqua">Are the changes good or bad? What do right-minded readers think?

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Jeff Jones

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I am, of course "right-minded" [:D]

The changes are for the better, but the entire focus on doping, as though that were something bad, intrinsically, is inapt. Doping is being used only as a synonym for cheating, which is not reasonable

There are four distinct issues to address which allow one to think of "doping" :

1 - Medical treatment for athletes who consistently abuse their bodies in sporting activities and who require proper care ;

2 - The standards of conduct for athletes who compete against each other to earn a living, and the conscious breach of these standards ;

3 - The difference between the high ideals of "pure sport" activities and the psychology of losers, who are unable to accept or believe that others can actually be superior ;

4 - The inherent inequality of natural genetic composition which makes it unlikely for disfavored genetic types to achieve a higher level of performance than those endowed naturally.

Each stereotypical category above is part of global social makeup, and is addressed every day with the shortcomings of human judgment and differing moral approaches. In parallel, consider the following :

1 - A doctor prescribes Ventolin for a patient who is an addicted smoker and who is also asthmatic.

2 - A motor additive is marketed as having an "unfair advantage" and with that, is seen as more desirable and for that, succeeds for decades.

3 - Football players on opposing teams who claim an in-touch ball should be played by their respective sides, where one claim must be disingenuous ;

4 - The exclusion of some women from Olympic sport (sometimes involving revocation of medals awarded) because they fail a test of "femininity" (most recently, the case of Santhi Soundarajan).

When your financial advisor achieves superior results, and is coincidentally a cocaine abuser, are you morally obligated to contribute your exceptional gains to charity to offset a criminal offense? When you cross a finish line outside the podium, will it turn into a bitter rebuke to those who won, with the insistence that they must have doped?

Frankly, I think the enormous flow of energy towards inculpating successful athletes is probably welcomed by the political elite, who prefer to divert attention from their inability to improve the abysmal state of vicious conflict in the world, and have us believe that we would find ourselves in Nirvana, just once sport is made a completely flavorless spectacle of chance.</font id="Book Antiqua">

off the back

As it is in the rules are pretty good. More often than not it is the science or people that are lacking. i.e we can only detect EPO in a small window and cannot detect HGH. Also look at Hamilton and the frozen sample in Athens or Landis making mileage over the confusion on his sample markings.

I am a little bit nervous as to the accidental use of substances. I think this could be abused. It allows athletes to come up with the excuse before they dope knowing that if they get caught then they have an out. Also regardless of how it got there you are getting an advantage. I think you need to take a broad view at these cases - how much over the limit was the person. And what benifit does the product give to a person in their chosen sport. All too often people seem to test positive in such cases only with products that are wholly desireable for their sport - a bit suspicious!!

MSAIZ

To Sandy,

Your reply to Jeff's post was probably the most thought out sociological response to a question I have read recently on the subject of doping. In the US we had senate hearings on whether or not baseball players were taking steroids. All the while we are doing are best to alienate people in the mid-east. Tell me in the big scheme of things does this really matter.
One good thing out of all of this is that there will be very few physicians who will take on the responsiblity of assisting in Doping. EPO is not a drug that you can fool around with by yourself without some professional direction. If doctor's know that they are being watched, they are less likely to help. Dr Fuentes will probably be working a malaria clinic in Africa before he gets back into respectable medicine again.

MSAIZ

To Jeff.

We here over in the States think Dick Pound and WADA are a bunch of blowhards. His only influence on American sport is track and field and cycling. They Olympics don't count because we assume all our snow-boarders smoke weed. So for Hockey, American Football, Baseball and Basketball he has absolutely no influence. Americans look at Landis, Hamilton, Armstrong etc and just assume that they may have gained an advantage but assume that everyone else at a similar level is doing the same thing. We call if "keeping up with the Jones" Anytime you establish a seperate governing body it has to provide action to justify its existence. If the UCI would just police thier own organization and have collateral agreement with the other sporting bodies with which they work to give them Juridiction then this could be ironed out. It doesn't matter what WADA does, they just have no business interferring in a sport that really doesn't' need thier help or their speculation on subjects they don't have direct and unfettered supervison for.

cheers

off the back

I defo think we need WADA!

Because there has always been a culture of taking substances it was only natural that athletes moved onto EPO - but this was like moving from conventional to nuclear warfare. The best rider no longer wins as you need to be involved in programmes to win big, Herras, Hamilton... I could go on. The above have all been involved and while Basso and Ulrich etc are guilty of nothing (yet!) time will tell if this is the case. In short the UCI does not have teh finance to fight this on their own. The fight against doping requires a combined resources of all major sports (so we are not including Nascar, NFL, wrestling etc - they are not international so Wada is not interested). This means detection and gaining political will to stamp out clinics involved in it. Why throw martha Stewart in jail for fraud and insider trading and let athletes roam free for what must surely be sporting fraud!!

Simon L2

'Dick' Pound reminds me of a Witchfinder General (or the ponytailed wonder from the place we're not allowed to mention). You'd think that he'd get a life.

Why the panic? Why the angst? Why the aggression? Goethe advised us to distrust those in whom the urge to punish is strong. I'm with him on that one. (But not so on the Elective Affinities)