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Money and doping

927 views 8 replies 6 participants last post by  RRRoubaix 
That assumes that the riders are the only possible culprits.

How about this: A rider gets popped for cheating - any sort of cheating - and it's game over for the balance of the season.

The team is also out for the season. Ignorance of cheating is no excuse. It's the team's job to know what's going on with the team members, so if they truly don't know about a rider cheating then they're too frikkin stupid to be on the tour in the first place. Pack your !@#$, hit the road, and we'll see you next year, maybe.

Sponsors are out for the season. If your company is putting up ridiculous amounts of money to sponsor a team, it's incumbent on you to make sure the terms of the contract are being fulfilled. If you sponsor teams that cheat, then you are sponsoring cheating and culpable. Out for the season. That includes sponsorship of additional teams, clean or not

The officials who should have prevented the cheating are fired. The biggest reason cheating is such a problem with cheating is because rules against it aren't enforced. The officials aren't doing their job. shitcan them.

In short, everybody involved is involved. One fails, all fail.

Start treating cheating like the crime people seem to want us to think it is and maybe we'll see an end to it.
 
When the teams and coaches are supporting or likely paying for the doping, punishing the riders seems like a really inappropriate strategy. The Fuentes trial has very clearly shown that the riders were heavily pressured to dope by the teams and their managers.
Quite right, and who pressures the teams? Sponsors. If a sponsor ponies-up millions they expect something in return and failure to deliver is not an option. They may not demand cheating, but when millions are on the line and excuses will not be tolerated, how far will you go?
 
Despite my trollin', I think part of why the world loves destroying Lance is because it gives us a sense of quick and easy justice. Fuentes and Saiz are kinda demonstrating how deeply rooted it all was and still probably is. Of course, we all know that Lance was worse because he's a horrible human being. Doping is still doping. I find that ALL parties should be punished and very hard.
Quite right, Spade.

I've began to take a broader view, namely doping is cheating but not the only way to cheat in a bike race. Unless the pattern of greed and lack of rules enforcement is changed, cheating will continue. They may not be doping riders, but they'll find other ways to cheat their way to the podium if they can get away with it and that's what it all about.

There are other forms of racing with a lot more money involved where cheating is nowhere near as big a problem. The bodies that sanction these racing series enforce their rules. Teams still push the rules and sometimes get busted, but it's commonly a matter of looking for an edge via holes in the rules, it's nowhere near as systematic as we see in cycling. There are cases of systematic cheating but it seldom, if ever goes very far and when these teams get caught, they're busted hard.

One thing I see in this is a need to take these people, put them on pedestals they don't deserve and then take such delight in tearing them off and with such perverse, moral outrage. People like Lance Armstrong will do whatever they can get away with to win and they won't be very nice about it. Under the circumstances, what do we expect?
 
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