Quote Originally Posted by Kalidurga
At this point, it's a toss-up who's less trustworthy: the riders, or the organizations testing them. .... Reading some of the many articles about Lance's issues over doping and Operation Puerto, it's crossed my mind more than once to wonder if someone out there is planting or somehow fabricating evidence of doping against riders. The magnitude of it and how it's all presented is getting to be borderline preposterous.
I agree to a point here - though I don't think that its a thought out conspiracy. Unfortunately some of the techinicians who do the testing seem to be of the mind that all athletes cheat. One rider mentioned that during one of the times they had to contribute a sample the technican remarked something like "we'll get you all in the end". Some of the testing methods that are used (the ones used for EPO and blood transfusions come to mind) have some subjective componants to them. When you combine a person who is looking for a positive with a test that requires some discrimination on the part of the techinician I think that you definitely get a higher possibility of a result that is unclear being read as positive. People will see what they want to see. I don't know if this has any bearing on Floyd's case, though it does seem that there may be many explanations that do not point to willful taking of steriods on his part. Let's just hope that all avenues are explored before he is condemned.

It seems like if WADA and the UCI are going to come down so hard on riders they really ought to have reliable proof of wrongdoing *before* they sanction anyone. Its a real shame that Vinokurov did not get to ride in the TDF, and it will be even more of a shame if Basso and Ullrich are ultimately cleared too. The evidence that has been presented to the public is thin at best and they are so bad at keeping other things quiet that it seems implausible that if they had hard proof - say a bag of Ullrichs blood or something - they would be able to keep it out of the press. Look at how they handle test results. They cannnot even keep A test results quiet. Even if nothing comes of the B test for Floyd his reputation has take a hit and its unfair.

I can understand the sports orgainization wanting to keep riders safe by banning substances that can endanger their health. As far as the argument that keeping sports drug free levels the playing field I don't buy it. The playing field is never level - some people just have more natural gifts than others, and there are plenty of legal ways of enhancing ones performance through training and equipment and things like wind tunnel testing that everyone may not be able to afford.

I guess in the end I'm not sure exactly what should be done - cycling takes a big hit because they pay attention to cheats and test more than any other sport. I'm sure that other sports have just as big, if not a bigger incidence of players taking performance enhancers, but they pretty much turn a blind eye to it. (Operation Puerto turned up lots of other people from other sports too, but we aren't hearing anything about a bunch of soccer players being dismissed are we)