by AtlasBarfed | 2025-07-30 03:26:03+00:00
To underline this:

So what about baseball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer, swimming, wrestling, boxing, mma, golf, etc?

Cycling got "exposed" by french media because they wanted to go after soccer, but it was a world cup year being held by france, so they went after cycling.

You need to understand something about pro sports: everyone is on stuff. If you can make a million or more a year, most if not certainly all of the athletes are on something:

steroids - vastly increase strength by 10-30% or more (and endurance even)

stimulants - sustain attention and increase endurance and power

EPO - increase endurance and sustained power output by 20% or more. Think that's only cycling? If you breath hard doing something, EPO can help, because it will keep you in Zone 2 and more mentally clear.

Attention drugs - Think that lots of athletes don't want more ability to concentrate? Hello ADD drugs!

Relaxation drugs - Want to keep an even keel for that big tee-off, or for shooting targets? Beta blockers aren't just for heart disease!

Testosterone - Increases strength, but also can critically help in recovery from hard workouts or performances, Floyd Landis got busted for this.

Human Growth Hormone - heal quicker? get taller? recover faster?

Pro sports is a fantasy pageant. These people are supposed to be superhuman, and the pro sports all WANT their athletes on this stuff. Especially the stars, once a star gets big, they get a lot more hall passes.

They just don't want it to be TOO much, and don't want it getting too much press.

Psychologically, there is a bottomless pit of athletes willing to dope.

In a self-reported anonymous poll at a European Ironman (so not even top-end athletes, a range of "good" endurance athletes) more than half admitted to taking performance enhancing drugs.

An article I once read said in Cat 1 amateur cycling races there was tons of doping. Dude, that is so far below the pro ranks it is laughable. No one in Cat 1 amateur cycling will SNIFF european protour.

Cycling is peanuts in terms of money. Tadej makes 8 million euros. He is a legendary superstar of the sport. Now look at what the top quarterbacks, basketball players, soccer players, baseball players make. HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS. You think there isn't worse doping in those sports than cycling?

I mean maybe Michael Jordan, the most ruthlessly competitive person in NBA history, doubled his muscle (while going bald) right after joining the NBA naturally. Maybe Lebron james (also went bald) is 280 lbs naturally. Maybe Tom Brady got a stronger arm and kept healthy as he aged with yoga. Maybe Katie Ledecky just "tries really hard in practice". Maybe Tiger Woods with his popping muscles in mid career was just hitting the bench press.

Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds aren't anomalies or outliers or rogues. Really, they didn't treat the media well and were too big of a-holes to hide, so the media busted them, but other athletes play the game and don't get busted. Is cycling really that bad, or is it sufficiently a "small player" that the dirt-mucking sports reporters are allowed to expose it. Do you think the NFL would let something like that happen? MLB already found out. FIFA sure as hell won't, neither will the NBA.

We are well past the point where the best of the best of previous generations that were shown to be doping have been passed comprehensively by modern athletes and are told that it's just better coaching, science, training and effort.

Enjoy the show.

"How I became a drug cheat athlete to test the system"

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-32983932

Outside Magazine in 2004 tries all the drugs

https://velo.outsideonline.com/road/road-training/drugs-a-ca...

Amateur doping

https://velo.outsideonline.com/road/totally-amateur/