Doping has a long, long history in cycling. The wikipedia article is pretty amazing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ses_in_cycling
From the very beginning of cycle racing, doping has been a big part of it. Doping wasn't even outlawed in racing until the 1960s. In 1930, doping was so accepted that the organizers of the Tour de France warned racers that they'd have to bring their own drugs; the tour organizers weren't going to be giving them away for free anymore.
I'm not saying doping is safe--look at all the racers who have died from bad drugs. But it's part of the sport and it always has been, so why not just regulate it for professional racers, making it safer and fairer? That way, most racers wouldn't get an advantage that the very few people who abide by the rules don't get. Cycle racing could become like cross-country ski racing (which has separate races for classic technique, and for the much faster skate technique--faster, but for a while, outlawed.) Divide races into two classes: drugged and undrugged. Let racers chose which class they want to race in, and let doctors regulate the drugging so it stops killing racers.



Reply With Quote