Jacomus-rides-Gen said:
I think, and this may just take a while to get out as I have had a few beers after a good few weeks without, and am taking it rather poorly.
I think that doping should be treated as a illness / psycological condition in cycling, and the riders helped go clean rather than punished.
(in my currently rose tinted world) the UCI or WADA or some such body should create an ex-dope team, purely for riders who had sought help to get off the drugs. To get a place on the team the rider must have previously doped, and then gone officially clean, and accepted some kind of help, a bit like AA, except it would be public knowlege Dopeaholics Not-anonymous of something a little more catchy and less patronizing.
The ex-doper team would be allowed to compete in all the major races and its members not only rigourously tested, but made to keep going to Dopeaholics Not-anonymous.
They could be a beacon of hope, riding in unbranded gear so that there is no push for them to bring in the corporate bucks by winning.
Maybe if riders could be given a safe haven like this, and be treated as victims rather than criminals, we would see more come forward. If the riders can slowly be convinced that doping is done because the rider is ill rather than just a cheating scumbag maybe other riders will be inclined to try and 'help' their friends stop doping, rather than condemn them to career ending bans.
Good morning! OK, here goes JRG.
1. The basic premise of your approach is that doping in sport is an illness rather than a method of gaining unfair advantage. I completely disagree with this premise. As does WADA, the UCI, ASO, pros who don't dope, the media who reports it, the majority of cycling fans* and perhaps most pertinently, the pros who have come clean. Yes there are factors that put pressure on riders to dope, but that is different from an illness. You could spend all day defending the position that dopers are no different from drug addicts, just that they have a different compulsion to take drugs than, say, a heroin addict, but for me that misses the point. Cycling is a sporting profession. There is a) money at stake and
(should be) an ethos of "the spirit in which one should conduct oneself". Taking drugs to supplement your income subverts this spirit and places others unfairly at a disadvantage, not to mention the health risks involved. It's easy to forget that the rules are there mainly to provide a level playing field and to protect the spirit of the sport, not just to persecute cheats. Health risks have to be taken into account because it is not just the health of the cheat that is at risk. It's the health of young people coming into the sport and seeing how success can be achieved. No-one can sincerely defend the position that it's ok to say to a young person "if you want success as a pro cyclist, stick this in your arm".
2. OK, that aside, let's say it is an illness and that we're trying to think of an appropriate method of rehabilitation for dopers.
Problems with Team Rehab:
1. Who funds it? UCI and WADA? No because this would mean putting less money into testing, and therefore making it less likely for cheats to be detected, hence less attractive for cheats to confess. I can't think of any private company altruistic enough to be associated with this brand of rider.
2. Criteria for a place on the team.
i) A rider has to have sought help - how would you define this? The addiction with PEDs is a psychological one and not a clinical one. So help with dealing with the addiction would have to be aimed at how to stop a rider from wanting to win illegally or perform better illegally. How do you evidence this?
ii) A rider must have previously doped and then gone officially clean. Official like eg the petition everyone signed in the summer? Which was worthless in terms of establishing who was officially clean or not. What about the likes of Basso who only attempted to dope (ha ha). Or Zabel who tried it and didn't like it (ho ho). Would a rider have to be caught doping to be an official doper? If they've been caught then they aren't complying to i) above, which requires a degree of regret / ownership of the problem. If they haven't been caught, how do you establish that they definitely doped?
iii) A rider must have accepted some kind of help. Only counselling could be offered IMO, due to the nature of the addiction. Counselling that is public knowledge completely goes against the ethos of current methods of counselling in the UK - there needs to be trust between counsellor and counselled. It would undermine the whole process - attend counselling purely to get a place on this team.
3. Team Rehab gets a place in all major races. At the expense of who? Other teams may be cheating, true, and therefore not deserve a place (particularly if it contains the capital of Kazakhstan in its name
) but how to prove it? What criteria? It would surely cause tension in the peloton.
4. Different testing rules for Team Rehab than everyone else (as rigourously tested implies that they'd be tested more often than a standard team) - again, trust issues, and non-parity compared with their peers. So a non-level playing field. Again it also means less time for the labs to devote to the rest of the peloton.
I do agree that dopers now are to some extent victims of the past culture and climate, but they are also breaking the rules. The two are not mutually exclusive terms, and focussing on just one side of the problem is not enough.
*based on my interactions only, in person and on forums admittedly. not unreasonable to assume though I think.
Keep the ideas coming though - I'm all out of them!
What do you think?
