Performance-enhancing methods. This is a term we hear so often in cycling; it refers to the practice of using products or processes that elevate your performance beyond what you could naturally do. It is a terribly complicated matter for the fans, and I can only speculate as to how complicated it is for the professionals who do or do not participate in the practice. Doping occupies an indelible place within our sport; faire le métier means “to do your work” in French. In a greater context, it means to conduct yourself as a professional. Within the narrow scope of cycling, faire le métier means to dope. It seems the practice of doping is so deeply embedded in our great sport that the two can hardly be separated.
I recently read K2: Life and Death on the World’s Most Dangerous Mountain, by Seattle mountaineering icon Ed Viesturs. Ed was the first American to summit all fourteen mountains over 8000 meters and only the fifth climber to do so without relying on bottled oxygen. The book focuses specifically on the history of the attempts to summit the world’s second-highest peak and details the circumstances surrounding the various accidents that have resulted in the loss of life during those attempts.
A recurring theme in mountaineering is the effect that being at high altitude has on the body and mind. Being at high altitude has various physiological complications – some of which can be treated, like muscle deterioration and cerebral edema, and some of which that can not, like death. The lack of oxygen to the brain diminishes cognitive capabilities with the unfortunate effect of increasing risk of accidents through making poor decisions in an environment where the margin of error is often already greatly diminished due to external factors. Using bottled oxygen can help alleviate many of these problems; it improves a climber’s health at altitude and improves their ability to reason, reducing the risk of errors made through lapses in judgement. Climbers like Viesturs who are able to summit the highest peaks without using bottled O2 are rare; for most they are impossible to reach without oxygen.
The first successful summit attempt on K2 was made by an Italian team in July of 1954. The circumstances that surrounded that summit bid have fed a fifty-year debate in the climbing community, the salient point of which is that the summit team claimed to have reached the summit without using supplemental oxygen, while photographic and circumstantial evidence suggests that they did.
The controversy sounded a lot like that surrounding doping in cycling and it got me wondering what it is, precisely, about riders using performance-enhancing methods that bother us so. After all, the use of supplemental oxygen amounts to the same thing as does doping: athletes are using an external method to enhance their performance on the world’s highest peaks. “Performance-enhancement” in this case may mean “staying alive”, but never-the-less, being alive does represent a pronounced performance enhancement over being dead and it is the use of an external method that makes the feat possible, or at least more healthy and less risky.
It surprises me that few, if any, in the climbing community consider the use of bottled air to be doping. Debates rage over the purism of it’s use, but those swing wide of labeling the practice as cheating. Looking at the matter objectively reveals little difference between supplementing blood with red-blood cells in order to compete in a three-week bike race and using supplemental oxygen to reach a mountain top. Both techniques utilize an external mechanism to improve the body’s ability to get oxygen to it’s muscles and thereby improve performance. Some doctors have even gone so far as to state that racing a Grand Tour is dangerous for most riders and have justified their involvement in doping practices by claiming that the use of EPO and other drugs make the sport of bike racing more healthy and less risky for the athletes.
There is a void in my brain at the spot where I’m supposed to store the justification for why using EPO and blood transfusions in cycling is labeled as ‘doping’ while the use of supplemental oxygen in mountaineering is not. It appears, however, that in mountaineering we have two conditions that work together to justify the use of the practice: the mountaineers are transparent about whether or not they use supplemental oxygen, and the community largely agrees with the assertion that it’s use is required in order to accomplish their feats. In cycling, neither of these conditions are met: cyclists are not transparent about whether they dope or not, and the public disagrees with the assertion that it is unhealthy to participate in races like the Tour de France without the use of performance-enhancing products or methods.
I think many in the professional peloton believe they need to dope in order to compete in a Grand Tour. The public, by and large, disagrees. Frankly, I don’t think either party has the data to justify their claim. Such data would need to come not from a lab, but from data collected from the professional riders in a three-week stage race. The difficulty in accumulating this data is that we are evidently pretty bad at figuring out if a rider is doping or not, and as such it would be difficult to say whether such data is valid or not. If we somehow overcame that obstacle and definitively found that either yes, it’s dangerous, or no, it’s healthy, then we could start to build an objective case for or against using these processes – both inside the peloton and with the public – and start dealing with the matter rationally. For doping to stop, the riders have to believe they can do without their use. And if a three-week race can’t be done in a healthy and safe way without using performance-enhancing methods, then public needs to accept they are required in order for the athletes to safely accomplish their feats. Their use should then be regulated and used in a medically safe way.
What it comes down to is the acceptability of a method through the justification of it’s use, and cycling community has failed entirely in building that justification. That leaves us with a terribly complicated matter on our hands which few are equipped to handle appropriately.
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@KitCarson Perhaps, if the Landis revelations bring down Pharmstrong, some of the regulatory bodies, etc, etc, maybe if something that big happened, then maybe some kind of change is possible?? it seems like a revolution of some kind is needed.
@KitCarson
I prefer to take a sceptical approach rather than your cynical line. I think things have and are still changing. I could just take some time.
Why is it hard to resist the temptation? It all comes down to is greed and there is nothing more ugly than greed.
None of the racers have to take drugs, they can easily go off and do and office job or manual labour that doesn't require a whereabouts system and rigorous testing. Privelage, not a right.
It's very interesting to watch the posts develop here on this topic. First of all, everyone has really great points to make, and I love where it's gone. It seems the article has been interpreted within the context of Cycling, which is the lens through which a Velominatus views the world. And that's good.
What's most interesting to me is that everyone seems to have interpreted my comments as a justification for doping. It surprises me because I did my best to be neutral and felt that if anything, I was making the case for the opposite. Maybe I failed in that.
But what I'm trying to do is ask the question that if we step away from Cycling and look objectively at the matter, what does it mean to dope? What I'm wondering aloud about is why increasing the body's ability to carry oxygen in the bloodstream by using an external method is considered doping in one sport and not in another. I'm asking this question out of context of the rules and regulations (which are there for a reason and should be respected), or of the culture inherent, or whether or not doping is taking place in Cycling today.
The question is simple, but very complicated at the same time: why is it OK to supplement in one activity, but not the other. What I'm saying is I think the answer is that the consensus says it's justified in one case, but not in the other.
The problem with justification of either side is that we don't have the data to support or argue against the claim that riders need to dope in order to compete. We all know you can ride the Tour without doping, albeit a lot slower (and maybe over more days). But, to race the Tour is a different question. Currently, there are about 200 people who know whether they themselves raced this year's Tour without doping - the riders. Everyone else has some degree of uncertainty in making a claim that the riders are clean or not. (We also don't know if the hardmen who raced the original Tours were clean, although we know that any doping methods were inferior to those we have today - provided you consider riding a train inferior to blood doping. I actually think that might be a brilliant way to dope - healthy, safe, quick.)
The argument that mountaineering isn't a competition seems wrong to me since competition isn't really what spurs doping. Cycling is a business. There are huge amounts of money to be made by wining races, especially Grand Tours. That is the driver for doping, at least on the scale we're talking about. Remember that the domestiques - the Ralf Aldags - have doped, just to keep up.
Mountaineering has the same issue of profitability. Sure, it's not competition in the same light, but it is also a business, if at a smaller scale. Ed Viesturs made a living securing sponsors who believed in his quest to claim all fourteen peaks without oxygen.
Climbers fight over sponsorship. The fight over book deals to tell their tales after the feat has been accomplished. There is a finite amount of money in the sponsorship pool, and that money is earned through competition, direct or otherwise; the motivation to cheat is the same. Yet, using supplemental oxygen doesn't turn sponsors away like it does in cycling.
It's the lies that turns them away. Cyclist lie about doping. They think they need to do it in order to make a living in this sport. The public and fans (and maybe the sponsors) disagree. We don't know which party is right because we can't think up a way to test either theory.
@frankWhat's interesting in mountaineering is the money comes from the clients - the people (usually the rich, adventurer type) that pays tens of thousands of dollars to be "guided" up the world's major peaks. None of this - business - would be possible without the use of supplemental oxygen.
I'm sure most of us have read "into thin air," so it goes without saying that there are a number of ethical issues around the use of supplemental oxygen, and the huge industry that it created because the vast majority of those who scale the major peaks of the world couldn't do so without it.
So, Frank, you use the term "sponsors" in regard to mountaineering scene and how they are not "turned away" by supplemental oxygen. I think it's safe to say that the major "sponsors" of most mountaineering businesses - that is the clients - are the ones who are using the "dope" so to speak! For the Guides, it's "how many clients can I guide up Mt. Everest" or "How many famous clients can I get, which will get me more future clients." The whole climbing world - at least in terms of the business of guiding people up the world's major peaks, is a pretty big mess and joke, IMHO. They have their own problems. It's also a joke that any idiot with a big enough bank account and in reasonable condition can "climb Mt. Everest" -- using the "climb" here rather loosely.
Viesturs is an interesting chap and a bit of an exception in that he is an amazing natural climber, and has other ways of making money, so hasn't taken the client-money route in the same manner that other climbers have done.
Regarding "the lies," yes, this is a big issue. Someone like Huevos, for example, who is a "hero" to so many -- but lacks an integrated shadow. There is no examined shadow, only "light," and since the "bigger the front, the bigger the back," it's most likely the shadow is as big, or bigger than the '"front." It's why i can't watch him anymore. What would be heroic, would be for him to tell the truth, explain the circumstances that riders get into, explain how it works from the top down - the pressures, that is -- implicate the big names (why is it that the riders are always getting the hammer?). That - simple honesty, truth, would be heroic, and maybe someone at his level, with that kind of courage and truth telling, could actually effect major change. Not that there's any evidence that he's anywhere near doing that, which says a lot. Everyone lies, everyone denies, but of course, that's because they'd lose their jobs and get banned if they told the truth.
That said, I'm a little unconvinced that we need to test theories here. People can race the tour without doping (at the level that is happening now). I think it's safe to say that most doping practices, as they have been performed over the last decade, are probably not particularly healthy, nor safe. I wasn't aware that there were even questions about that. I had always assumed that that was a given, and that for the riders, the "ends justify the means." Anyhow - a good discussion!
I'm going to go out on a limb here - so be kind - but I'd venture to say, that what we're really dealing with, at its essence, in ALL SPORTS, is an unholy alliance between science, technology, and capitalism (greed). I'd say it's that alliance that has ruined my former love of any number of sports (golf, tennis, baseball) because it's killed or at least wounded the "spirit" of the game. Why is it that whenever I watch any sport it seems, I'm faced with what Laurent Fignon refers to as "the robots"?
Well, it's because of all the advances in sports physiology, training, and especially the technology of training, and so we're all very very efficient now, uber efficient, and doped up to the most spectacular level possible, and what we get is Lance Armstrong or Tiger Woods or you name them: the uber efficient, highly paid, robot. We lose wildness. We lose intuition. Instead we are hooked up to heart rate monitors, power meters, cadence calculators, you name it. Those things are even starting to make me miserable when I ride, and i'm thinking of giving my fancy-ass cadence cyclometer the ol' heave ho. It ruining the aesthetics of the ride for me.
So, we have the issue of super-sophisticated doping, super-sophisticated training practices, the best technology, and a lot of money behind it. I'd take any sport in the 1970s or early 80s. To me they were far more wild, unpredictable, and full of very interesting characters. There was life. There was "spirit." Now, as Jarvis mentioned earlier, it's all about money -- greed. And science and technology become slaves to that greed. And this is most likely why we all get nostalgic about the "golden years" of cycling, or any other sport for that matter. Hell, I just excitedly ordered a copy of Laurent Fignon's "We were young and carefree" this evening because I want to taste more of what it was like to be a pro-cyclist before the robotization came along...Ok - I'm going to stop posting as I seem to be rambling a bit : )
@KitCarson
You make some great points. I hadn't considered the "guided mountaineering" side of things. Viesturs has always used Oxygen when guiding; for safety reasons. Again, transparency. It raises his cognitive capabilities, which makes it safer for his clients.
Adding guiding to the picture adds a really interesting dimension. I'll have to think about that before I can type something that sounds authoritative later.
I was referring to individual mountaineers who make a living of simply climbing mountains, like Viesturs and the various characters that pass through his books (I don't know much else about the mountaineering world, I'm a Velominatus, for Merckx sake!) Even guys like Scott Fisher, before they turned to guiding and dying on Mount Everest, were individual people, making a living by climbing and fighting over sponsorship dollars. That's more the area I was talking about. But good point about guiding.
I think something to remember about the drugs is that each and every one was developed for a medical purpose; to treat a physiological condition of some kind. One of my clients in Seattle produces a type of EPO. They didn't develop it for sport. They developed it to keep people from dying.
Most drugs used in cycling are medical in origin, so I think there is always a claim to be made that their use may be healthy. I think the bigger question is, is it unhealthy to race the Tour without drugs? If so, do drugs make it more healthy? Which ones? To what point would drugs make it healthy? At what point do they start to make it unhealthy?
Dr. Michele Ferrari likened taking EPO to drinking orange juice, saying if you drank a gallon of OJ, you'd die, too (I'm paraphrasing, or maybe even errorphrasing). Obviously that is a bullshit comment, but there's truth to it. It's 100% healthy for a cancer patient to take EPO. That's what the drug is for. After that, the healthiness for someone to take it probably diminishes, but I don't know how unhealthy it is to race the Tour without taking drugs, either. Maybe it's 100% healthy, in which case the cheats should go fuck themselves and everyone should race clean.
I don't think we know - anyone knows - what the answer is, because it's impossible to study accurately. And so we're fucked, and we continue to deal with an irrational problem in an irrational way. It's like dividing PI by E.
You like-a da juice?
@KitCarson
Missed your second post.
The only thing bad about that post is the emoticon! It offends the aesthetics of the Internets!
I think you might have a point here, though. Drugs or not, racing is very mechanical these days. The drugs, the radios, the training, the computers (I threw out my polar graph-everything-plot-how-weak-you-are years ago. Speed, distance, time. That's all a Velominatus requires.) As you and Jarvis are saying, it's become a business fueled by greed, and greed is ugly.
I find myself coming back around, though. Greed is ugly. Maybe that's what turns us off from doping. But I still maintain that we don't know - really know - if using drugs is greedy or necessary. We believe it's unnecessary, but is it? Do we know this?
At the end of the day, what makes watching a race interesting is to see Rule 5, and I want to see it laid out on the road. I want to see spectacular attacks, I want to see spectacular cracks. I want to see unpredictability. I want to see the Man with the Hammer bop a guy like Contador on the neck for not wearing team-issue shorts with his yellow jersey.
OK, now I'll stop posting, too. (Note the lack of emoticon. The smirk is implied.)
I was just about to type something meaningful and insightful, my fingers were poised above the keys of the laptop, but I now have to go and change a nappy.
@Jarvis
Now THAT is the type of thing there should be PED's for ...
I still think that you're way off the mark. I stand by my earlier comments. Supplementary oxygen on climbs over 8000m is carried as a medical necessity in order to prevent the climber dying. Even if it is not biologically needed for life, it can be needed to ensure the senses are not dulled to the point where you walk off a mountain and die. Blood-doping is used in sport to go faster. It has no medical benefit at all and increases the risk of dying.
Why not use scuba diving as the analogy instead of mountaineering? It's the same, humans aren't designed to exist in those hostile environments. Procycling takes place in environments that humans are able to operate in without supplementary equipment. No comparison really, irrespective of any competition element. Speaking of which, I refer to competition and it's driver for doping as organised events such as the Tour de France where there is a winner at the end. There is no inbuilt competition in mountaineering, any competition is created by the climbers themselves, but your better off comparing it to round the world cyclists.
I'll agree that we can never know with 100% certainty as to whether someone is clean, but anyone can race the tour without drugs. It appears that some fans have taken on the same mindset as the riders and can't accept racing without drugs in the mistaken belief that the racing was more exciting in those days. Maybe some people made the most of the benefits and attacked repeatedly, but am I the only one who found the Armstrong Tours tedious and there is always the legendary clip of Frank VDB towing the field up to a mountain finish in the '99 Vuelta. Literally towing the best riders in the world in a long line, no-one able to attack, or Mapei at the '99 Gent-Wevelgem: two riders towing the rest of the break into a block headwind at such a pace that no-one could attack. How are those exciting? Personally I think that this year has produced some of the best racing for many years and we know that the peloton is cleaner.
Ah, but Frank, like the mountaineering analogy, you are again confusing the issue. It is irrelevant whether it is healthy to ride the Grand Tours (it isn't particularly healthy to be a PRO) the riders choose to become professionals, they choose to race the Tour. People with cancer don't choose to take EPO, they need it to help recover.
As for 'The Robots', it baffles me that people don't like Cavendish as he is clearly not a robot (other than his ability to win). He nearly didn't get into the British team because his numbers were so poor. He is instinct and he is an interesting character. Dave Millar has mentioned how he has rediscovered the soul of the sport and loves the beauty of it - by all accounts he is a velominatus.
Anyway, I have to go and change another nappy