Where does a cyclist go if he or she wants to stop doping?
Might seem like an odd question but bear with me. It started when I was thinking about junkies. There's no benefit to the junkie or to society if they are criminalised, but we have ways set up to help people get off the shjt. They can go to their doctor, get onto a programme to help them kick the addiction, get methodone etc, as well as get help with cleaning up their lives.
Before anyone shrieks with horror, I know that doping in sport is different to drug addiction in society. Duhhh.
But my feeling is that the focus is pretty always on the rider - he greedy, he's lazy, he's got no sporting morals etc - although we know that teams have, in the past, helped / forced their riders to dope. Riders who blow the whistle have nowhere to go - they lose their job, their team mates, their friends, get spat at in the street and so on. But who's there to pick them up? Family, friends yes - but what kind of support does the UCI provide? Or the national associations?
If the answer is "none - they broke the rules and we will turn our backs on them forever" then it doesn't give riders very many alternatives. It's carry on doping to keep their job and hope they don't get caught, or stop the doping and find their contracts don't get renewed due to poor results.
(This thread posted in another forum.)
Before anyone shrieks with horror, I know that doping in sport is different to drug addiction in society. Duhhh.
But my feeling is that the focus is pretty always on the rider - he greedy, he's lazy, he's got no sporting morals etc - although we know that teams have, in the past, helped / forced their riders to dope. Riders who blow the whistle have nowhere to go - they lose their job, their team mates, their friends, get spat at in the street and so on. But who's there to pick them up? Family, friends yes - but what kind of support does the UCI provide? Or the national associations?
If the answer is "none - they broke the rules and we will turn our backs on them forever" then it doesn't give riders very many alternatives. It's carry on doping to keep their job and hope they don't get caught, or stop the doping and find their contracts don't get renewed due to poor results.
(This thread posted in another forum.)
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Comments
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Yup, just ask Jesus ManzanoMake mine an Italian, with Campagnolo on the side..0
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hehehe
those Kazakhs are priceless.0 -
Not sure why you posted a racist comment there, drenkrom. Not really relevant to the OP.
Andy0 -
With the pals Vino and Kash going down the same road in "training" and then going to the two extremes of the spectrum once they get caught, one going to the European Human Rights Court, and the other pulling a "Robert Downey Jr." and financing a halfway home, I think the "priceless" part is self-explanatory. And I think no one can deny the fact that they are both Kazakh. How the merge of the two facts can be construed as racism is quite beyond me.
To return to the OP (and not as in Operacion Puerto), the dopers who want to stop the stuff seem to be left stranded, with no official support structure. Still, if we are to believe the noise going around that there is much less doping these days than a few years ago, some of them have managed to pull it off. It would be very surprising if anyone ever goes out in front of a bunch of cameras and mics and explains how he did it, though. Any addiction would be a psychological one, which can be alleviated easily by the team if it was its pressure for results that pushed the rider to dope in the first place. I imagine it being a lot more complicated if the doping is caused by the rider's self-doubt.0
