Doping in Sport

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Sports Argument Stadium > Doping in Sport

Byolante: Mar 23, 2008; by Cyrano4747

Thoguh posted:

Doping doesn't eliminate the need to put in the hours at the gym. It just lets you get more out of those hours and recover faster. Someone who is doping still has to put in the work. I'm against doping in sport as a general rule, but dopers aren't doing it because they're lazy.

Some of the bizarre new compunds that are banned from research for aggresively causing cancers were giving up to 80% better endurance in mice with no actual fitness or training.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 17:43

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 20:01

Byolante: Mar 23, 2008; by Cyrano4747

Protocol 5 posted:

I dunno, made you could have independent doctors determine whether a particular therapy is medically indicated and veto it if it's not? This is not particularly complicated. If you're anti sports medicine of any kind, well, we don't have anything to discuss, because it's an insoluble disagreement, and I have no desire to argue fruitlessly about something so trivial.

TUE in picture form

# ¿ Jul 2, 2014 02:30

Byolante: Mar 23, 2008; by Cyrano4747

EvanTH posted:

I don't care at all about doping because it's not cheating in the slightest, it's little more than a modification of one's diet which is completely acceptable under any current imagining.

The idea that there's some innate "fairness" in sports because of equally applicable rules is wrong in the first place. People are born with varying body chemistries and that's not cheating. People are born with different heights and speeds and coordinations and intelligences and it's not cheating. It's currently legal for an already-rich athlete to spend thousands a day on a team of trainers and nutritionists to trick their bodies legally into producing more of the useful athletic chemicals and that's not at all cheating, but it's Profoundly Unethical for someone who's trying to earn a contract, a deal that could fundamentally change their entire family's lives for the better, to take a supplement that could increase their performance, it's not okay if it's from Column A instead of Column B? If someone thought their family's ability to thrive was on the line then they'd be something of a coward not to risk it.

Naturally I don't believe athletes should be sacrificing their health to play a sport, but if that's the reason you want to make something illegal than go ahead and make contact sports illegal (obviously don't do this).

What difference does it make to the viewer? They get to see more home runs, more dunks, more 150mph serves, and it makes no difference whatsoever if that athlete was simply born with a rare combination of genes that gives them slightly more testosterone rather than took a pill along with their 50000 hours a day training regimen?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with doping aside from the increased risk athletes put themselves at through modifying their body chemistry, and people who are trying to ban PEDs would be disingenuous to claim that that was their aim.

It's an element of a training regimen, it has nothing to do with the actions taken on the court/field/pitch and shouldn't be considered cheating.

You think there's some situation where an athlete starts dominating the sport while sitting on a couch for training because they popped the perfect pill? Excellence in athletics will always require an excessive amount of work and dedication regardless of PEDs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GW501516

# ¿ Jul 2, 2014 09:35

Byolante: Mar 23, 2008; by Cyrano4747

Mornacale posted:

His point is not that PEDs are fair, but rather that there is no such thing. In the arena of "fairness," there's no line between PEDs, supplements, healthy food, working out, or winning the genetic lottery.

I think it is good to discourage dangerous PEDs, just like it's good to discourage dangerous play on the field, but trying to turn it into some moral issue is extremely silly. Much like people do with all illegal drugs, really--it's not good enough to say "these are dangerous so we'll control them," we have to skip past that to "you're a bad person if you use this."

e: ^^^ Now if kyoon isn't posting in this thread by the end of the week I'm gonna be upset.

A-Rod gets doped to his eyeballs and gets a massive set for life contract to play baseball. If you say its ok to be doped to the eyeballs then anyone else will see that part of how he got there was doping himself to the eyeballs and doing the same. That makes A-Rod a bad person for doping regardless of anything to do with the legitimacy of the sport.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2014 12:27

Byolante: Mar 23, 2008; by Cyrano4747

Kibner posted:

So all MLB players that chew tobacco are bad people, too? It encourages others to do the same because of how tightly it is associated with the league.

If chewing tobacco is a performance enhancer than yes

# ¿ Jul 2, 2014 13:04

Byolante: Mar 23, 2008; by Cyrano4747

Sour Grapes posted:

I don't know how "Think of the harm to the athletes!" is even considered a legitimate anti-doping argument, anyone playing competitive sport at a high level is already putting their health and body at a huge risk. There are kids going into the MLB draft that have already had Tommy Johns surgery, hell, even golfers are swinging so hard that they're tearing their bodies apart, let alone all of the [brain] injury problems you pointed out in contact sports.

Does anyone actually work in sports medicine/doping enforcement? I remember listening to an interview with Victor Conte from BALCO and he was pretty insistent that anyone at the top levels of sport is doping and that the enforcement bodies were either incompetent [because the amount of funding doping control receives is dwarfed by the amount of funding the people trying to beat doping controls receive], or complicit.

You are right, we shouldn't prevent athletes from thickening their blood to the point of death, getting cancers from using drugs that have been banned from trial due to their risks or even damaging their body so badly they no longer appear to be the gender they were before they started their doping regime because obviously only the foolhardy would do it and there isn't copious evidence that once one person does it everyone else is forced to follow.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2014 16:08

Byolante: Mar 23, 2008; by Cyrano4747

Sour Grapes posted:

Still don't see how this is significantly different from allowing players to 'walk it off' and putting them back in next play when they should be in the quiet room, or offering scholarships to high school kids for literally ripping their arms apart on the field.

Concussion management in contact sports is done a lot better in Australia.

http://www.nrl.com/About/ReferenceCentre/ManagementofConcussioninRugbyLeague/tabid/10798/Default.aspx
http://www.rugby.com.au/tryrugby/administration/ConcussionGuidelines.aspx

The NCAA system is also hilariously terrible and exploitative.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2014 16:33

Byolante: Mar 23, 2008; by Cyrano4747

WEREWAIF posted:

There was a big ESPN the magazine poll of NFL players, and one of the questions was "How many players are doping" and the answer was like 25-30%. Even assuming large understatement, that means that less than half of players are doing what they consider to be illegal doping. I think it's fair to stretch that for most American team sports.

Endurance sports like cycling are totally different, but there are plenty of riders who don't use anything.

Even in the glory days of amphetamines in baseball, use wasn't 100%.

Where is it 100%? World's Strongest Man, Mr Olympia, sports that are only about muscles.

Cycling is totally different now because of 10+ years of gradually cracking down on doping to the point now they use the biological passport. Its laughable to say that the top athletes aren't at the very least being pressured into using PEDs.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 03:59

Byolante: Mar 23, 2008; by Cyrano4747

Jordan7hm posted:

Of course they are. That doesn't mean they're using them. In a lot of cases, I think it would simply be a "risk is too great if I get caught" type of thing stopping them, rather than any kind of moral or health related reason.

The guys who aren't doping are (probably) the ones who haven't been seriously injured yet, who are still in the peak of their career age-wise, and who are still progressing. There's no reason to take roids if you're already hitting 30 homers a year at 24. A few years later when you have an off year, or you get injured, or you want to get that big contract to set yourself up for life? That's maybe time to reassess.

That is a staggeringly poor understanding of the issue as it stands

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/28/sports/28doping.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1404360643-t9ny0a42H5GxLj2ZBPkU5g

# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 05:11

Byolante: Mar 23, 2008; by Cyrano4747

Mornacale posted:

Oh, well, I guess I just didn't realize that the single factor that goes into hitting a home run was fatigue, I thought that baseball swings were a complex mechanical system where small changes can have any number of effects. In that case it's probably reasonable to make inspecific claims based on "common sense" guesswork in lieu of any kind of data.

Do you develop skills faster if you can train longer and harder. Is being able to get more out of a given weights session so you can spend more time on other training useful. Is being able to play more games a season because you recover from injury faster not something that would improve your play.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 11:31

Byolante: Mar 23, 2008; by Cyrano4747

Mornacale posted:

Someone literally just posted a comprehensive study that says that we are correct. You, on the other hand, are going with common sense and your own ignorance of the sport of baseball. It's not persuasive.

Your comprehensive study posted on the page before was written by a author with a major conflict of interest. It also uses some rather odd statistical choices.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 15:23

Byolante: Mar 23, 2008; by Cyrano4747

Ramadu posted:

Not all steroids do this. You don't see people with an inhaler getting mad muscles bro. There is a world of difference between a corticosteriod and an anabolic steroid. Or are all you nerds who have asthma getting yoked as gently caress thanks to not being able to breathe.

http://www.mayoclinic.org/steroids/art-20045692?pg=2

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Corticosteroid-(drugs)/Pages/Sideeffects.aspx

Cortico steroids are completely safe, nothing to see here.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2014 23:40

Byolante: Mar 23, 2008; by Cyrano4747

Ramadu posted:

All of those effects seem like they would be useful to making an athlete better. Are you just unaware that every drug has side effects or something silly?

Effects like cataracts, hypertension and osteoperosis sure are useful for sports, I agree

# ¿ Jul 5, 2014 00:24

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 20:01

Byolante: Mar 23, 2008; by Cyrano4747

JFairfax posted:

wait is there speculation that they were doping?

I figured that after the whole Armstrong affair that of anyone Wiggins, Froome and the Sky lot would be clean.

He basically taunts interviewers and organisers in interviews about doping substances they can't test yet

# ¿ Jul 10, 2014 10:50

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Sports Argument Stadium > Doping in Sport