I can't answer that question definitively, but my personal belief is that yes, it is.
Few of us were surprised when Lance Armstrong finally received his comeuppance. But I was little confused when the UCI decided to vacate all seven of Lance's victories, rather than give them to the runners-up. Why didn't they give the titles to runners up? Because every one of the runners up for Lance's seven tour titles has been linked to doping as well. So, it's not obvious who, if anyone, was clean during that era. I guess that means that no one deserves the titles. According to the Tour de France, those races simply never happened.
As easy as it is to believe that cheating was common, are we to assume that nobody was clean during that era? I mean, if the 56th-placed rider could somehow prove he was clean and everyone else wasn't, wouldn't he deserve the win?
There's growing evidence of EPO's influence in distance running as well.
These are low-to-mid-tier sports, in terms of both revenue and television audiences. The incentive to take performance enhancing drugs is far greater in football, basketball, and soccer. But yet there doesn't seem to be a lot of discussion about PEDs in these sports. Why not? A mid-tier cyclist might not clear six figures in the Tour de France, whereas the minimum salary for each of the major professional sports leagues in the United States is close to a half a million dollars.
To give one example, in the past three years, only two players have received PED-related suspensions in the NBA. Both players, Rashard Lewis and OJ Mayo, are slender wings, not known for their size or strength.
A typical player in the D League without an NBA contract makes less than a school teacher. And the difference between an end-of-the-bench NBA player and someone in the D league is marginal. None of those players on the wrong side of that dividing line has sought an edge? When we know that weekend warrior distant runners are doing it to collect a few hundred bucks at local road races? Not likely.
The only rational conclusion is that the NBA's testing procedures are either willfully blind or totally ineffective. Either way, I'm sure the truth will come out, eventually. Just as it did with baseball. And just as it did with Lance. Whenever something is everywhere, there's a lot of witnesses. It's only a matter of time when some of them start to speak up.
http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2012/10/25/colberts-million-dollar-offer-to-trump/
http://kottke.org/12/10/the-worst-passwords-of-2012
It would be interesting to analyze the NFL as well. I have heard that testing positive for PEDs in the NFL is a slap on the wrist (although I cannot substantiate this).
ReplyDeleteI suspect that PEDs are being used in 'our' beloved sport too - ultrarunning. Records are being broken left and right. While this may be due to better nutritional knowledge and competition, I find it somewhat hard to believe. Certainly, ultrarunning 10 or 15, or even 20 years ago was a fringe sport. But it still is. And 15 or 20 years ago the number of people who were running 2:30 marathons was much great than it is today. There might not be a correlation b/t marathon times and ultramarathon times and the I'm pretty certain that our understanding of nutrition during long distance races is better. But I'm skeptical. Whenever there is a dramatic rise in performance, I'm skeptical.
uhh...that is all.
I'm sure there's some, but without much money in the sport, it's hard to expect RDs to shell out the money for testing.
DeleteApart from anonymous allegations in blog comments sections, I've never even heard a direct allegation of substance abuse. Though I think some folks were up in arms when Miguel Heras won TNF 50 a couple of years ago. With everyone knowing everyone else in the sport, I would assume that word would get out if someone knew of a big name doing it.
But maybe it's a well kept secret among the elite.