[gwelson]

I am definitely a layperson when it comes to organized sports, but from my POV it seems like competitive cycling attracts WAY more fraud/cheating/doping/etc. than many other kinds of sports. At least I have heard about it a lot more. I wonder why that is.

[discreteevent]

Because it's such a tough sport. The Tour de France was originally intended to be so tough that only one person might finish it. In other words it was set up to be extremely hard for most normal athletes to compete without some kind of artificial assistance.

So there was a history of drug taking from the start. But after the scandals of 20 years ago it became one of the most tested sports in the world. So now, in my opinion, drugs are not used much compared to other relatively untested sports (maybe some microdosing). Instead sports science has taken over. Pogacar, the current TdF champion works with a someone who is a contributor in mitochondria research. Something that has made a big difference in the last few years is the amount of carbohydrates the riders take in during a stage etc. etc.

[littlestymaar]

> The Tour de France was originally intended to be so tough that only one person might finish it.

The difficulty has been toned down a lot since the early days though. (You'll never see a 466km long stage like the first of Tour de France 1903[1] ever again).

[1]: https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1re_%C3%A9tape_du_Tour_de_Fr...)

[PaulDavisThe1st]

There are still races with much longer "stages" than 466km, but they are not part of the contemporary pro-cycling world. The classic brevet events, Paris-Brest-Paris and Boston-Montreal-Boston are 1200km ridden as a single stage. PBP is older than the TDF also, starting in 1891. The nature of brevet events means that they can essentially never be a spectator sport, hence the lack of any significant attention to them.

[hackingonempty]

With satellite trackers and social media these kinds of events have developed into a spectator sport. Bikepacking races tend to be in more remote locales than the French countryside so racers are required to carry a satellite tracker which reports to a public website. "Dot watchers" who live along the route come out to watch racers go by or leave water/snacks in coolers along the side of the road. Far more dot watchers are limited to the live tracker and check daily updates from racers or journalists covering the event on social media.

After the event some racers upload videos for spectators and it helps them with sponsorship. This video gives a glimpse into what its like to race the Tour Divide competitively. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azJS106xeNA

[PaulDavisThe1st]

What I mean by a "spectator sport" in this context is primarily that the event can be monetized because huge numbers of people will watch it either in person or via video of some sort.

The number of people watching the trans-europe or other similar solo events as they happen is likely less than the population of a typical US liberal arts school. The monetization that might follow from YT videos that occurs later is completely different from what the TdF manages to encourage. The winner of 2023's Tour Divide has 58k views ... even Lael only gets 300k or so views for her adventuring and racing videos. This is not a spectator sport in any sort of historical sense of that term.

[wyre]

Pedantically, brevets are not races.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

In what sense is PBP not a race? It is a timed event, with a cutoff. The organization that runs it maintains a results list that includes times.

If you mean there are no prizes, then fair enough, but that's not my definition of a race.

[wyre]

The nature and culture around the event discourage treating them as races. The point is completion, not competition. It shares a lot of the definition of a race while not being one.

[borroka]

This is a naive view of doping, sport, and physiology. Of course, they use doping nowadays, just as they did yesterday. I would go so far as to say that all top professional athletes in individual sports use banned substances. They use methods and substances that allow them to avoid testing positive. At the highest levels, all athletes are genetically gifted. However, the performance differences created by substance-induced physiological alterations are too great to be compensated for by slight differences in genetics, training, and nutrition.

Almost all records in individual sports have been broken since competitions were basically not subject to doping controls. Athletes from the DDR and the Soviet Union, and more recently from China, have used enormous amounts of hormones. Yet almost all records set in the 1980s have been broken. Is there better talent selection today? Certainly, along with better training, science, and nutrition, as well as better surfaces and shoes/equipment. But physiology reigns supreme.

[ekianjo]

> drugs are not used much

they just switched to drugs you cant easily detect.

[lonelyasacloud]

For the prestigious pro events samples are kept for years afterwards and are subject to re-testing at any time as science advances. If any of those re-tests fails (or if cheating comes to light through any other means) the rider would be dq'd, stripped of the result, and be liable to pay back prize any and sponsorship money.

These are riders in their twenties, that's such a long time to rely on getting away with it I personally do not think it's happening at the highest pro-level.

[koolba]

> For the prestigious pro events samples are kept for years afterwards and are subject to re-testing at any time as science advances.

That’s easy to solve. Use some of the prize money to stage an elaborate heist of the blood sample and replace it with a clean sample.

I bet this would make a good movie. Could be called “Blood Spoke”.

[defrost]

Their Wheel Be Blood by the Traffic Cone Brothers.

[borroka]

Of course it happens. At the highest levels and at the amateur levels. People want to win. It's like telling people they shouldn't commit crimes because they might end up in prison or worse. But people continue to commit crimes and end up in prison when they are caught, or worse, when they are killed.

If prostitution is the oldest profession in the world, according to some, cheating is the oldest way to gain an advantage.

I mean, just a few weeks ago, we found out about a guy who was working for I don't know how many companies at the same time, that a start-up had developed some artificial intelligence software to cheat during tech interviews and had secured some good funding. Well, but that can't happen in sport, even though it's been happening since the dawn of time. Sport is business, and business is dirty.

[stefs]

ah, the magic undetectable drug that's just the right kind of effective without the pesky side effects, which you'd need other undetectable drugs for.

this drug would be worth a lot of money, but we'll keep secret except just for the one top performer, because wide distribution would increase the risk of a leak substantially.

and remember: the top performers getting busted would probably mean the end of pro cycling as we know it for decades. cycling isn't a huge money maker for financial investors like football, rather it's a money pit for sponsors. do sponsors love a podium placement more than being forever associated with dirty cheaters? they'd risk it all for modest gains. a young superstar would trade a life of a good salaried position with some more money but also a high risk of being banned from the sport forever, thus no source of income at all and also the questionable title of being the killer of a whole sport.

so imo: it's possible, but unlikely.

[pge]

I would argue that history suggests this is likely. The dopers have substantially more financial resources than the testers. EPO is a great example. It was widely used in cycling for almost 10 years before tests were developed. It was pretty much a miracle drug from a performance standpoint and undetectable. The very few cyclists that tried to blow the whistle were run out of the sport. Similarly, blood doping was widely used for a decade after the EPO test was developed and no one ratted out the teams doing it until USADA brought the hammer down on Armstrong.

It’s also worth thinking about the incentives to test and catch cheaters. Do the organizers of the Tour de France really want to bust the biggest names in the sport? That would destroy their livelihood. Do the national anti-doping authorities want the athletes from their country busted (look how many national antidopingborgs have successfully appealed adverse rulings through CAS)? It’s in everyone’s best interest to bust a low level doper here and there to make it look like they are watching but to ignore the big names that fans are coming to see. All of this is also why motor doping is unlikely. Motor doping leaves incontrovertible evidence of cheating. Positive drug tests can always be challenged as either inaccurate testing or unintentional contamination.

[stefs]

i'm unconvinced. EPO was undetectable, but not anymore. new undetectable substance would run the risk of being detectable in a few years. who would ignore whistleblowers today? and the USADA did bring the hammer down on LA at some point.

sure, they pay off is high, but the risk - at least in cycling - is even higher, exactly because they've been caught once and now all eyes are on them. if pog gets popped, nobody will trust cycling to be clean ever again; it's hard enough today, as this thread proves.

[pge]

We can agree to disagree. People said cycling would be clean after the '98 Festina affair because all eyes were on them. All that happened was that teams (that could afford it) switched from EPO to blood doping. The next Tour after everyone said the Festina bust had cleaned up cycling was Lance Armstrong's first win (1999).

[ruszki]

Looking at how Armstrong and Contador are revived, there is not much downside getting caught years after doping.

[labcomputer]

EPO was always detectable. The trouble was detecting synthetic EPO. In fact, the maker of synthetic EPO (Amgen) was the title sponsor of the Tour of California!

After they developed that test stage speeds dropped dramatically. Now speeds are back up to where they were right before the EPO test was developed. You really think that’s natural?

Cycling has a doping scandal once every decade or two. Why would another one kill the sport this time when it never did before?

[0xAFFFF]

It's not necessarily a new performance-enhancing molecule that nobody has heard of, but alternative posology or training regimen to stay under detection threshold, new masking products, etc.

Doping has been a cat-and-mouse game for decades, it's not unrealistic to think this is still happening.

The fact that Pogacar this year managed to reach Bjarne "Mr. 60%" Riis levels of performance in the mountain makes you wonder if this is only standard athletic and performance science or if they're something else.

[GateCrasher]

It's been proved scientifically that microdosing EPO is undetectable and results in a significant performance boost:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36317927/ https://www.usada.org/wp-content/uploads/R058.pdf

Now I cannot say this cannot be proven in the future, but right now it is definitely possible, and not even a secret.

[labcomputer]

I think that you have to actually watch the grand tours to understand why this seems plausible:

Both Pogacar and del Toro (UAE’s gc riders in the Tour and Giro, respectively) are able to keep up with (and even drop) the strongest climbers, and then look fresh as a daisy across the line. Like they aren’t even trying.

This was most obvious when del Toro lost to Yates on the last stage of this year’s Giro, but Pogacar does it too. They start the final climb a few minutes behind the leaders, then match the fastest rider up the climb and then magically have zero fatigue for the final sprint across the line to pick up a few spots. Yates only won because del Toro made a huge tactical mistake of focusing on Carapaz

Everyone else is dying and the riders from this one team look like they could do another stage… and we’re supposed to think that’s natural?

[sjw987]

Perhaps there's drugs which mask the actual performance enhancers now. The women's marathon record was broken last year by Ruth Chepngetich by a considerable margin. Seemed too good to be true, and many of the groups I'm in called out doping straight away.

She has just been suspended for 2 years for a drug which I believe (may be wrong) masks other performance enhancing drugs.

[littlestymaar]

> and remember: the top performers getting busted would probably mean the end of pro cycling as we know it for decades

You mean, like when Lance Armstrong got caught?

It was less than 20 years ago and yet you still argue like it didn't happen. Undetected doping was indeed possible (he did it for years) and no it didn't destroy pro cycling…

[stefs]

this also supports my point, though: armstrong got caught. he was stripped of all his titles. there were whistleblowers (even though they were ignored back then). everybody knew they were cheating but nobody did anything about it ... well, until they did.

i don't know how hard pro cycling was affected after his bust, i just remember reading that it took a few years to recover (i.e. a few teams got dissolved, some sponsors jumped ship).

even today, if you talk about cycling to an outside person the FIRST thing they ask you about is doping.

so in my opinion, professional cycling is on its doping redemption part - forced, whether they want it or not - because if they (and by "they" i mean Pog) get popped big time again, it's going to be viewed as irredeemable. they'd have had their chance after LA and blew it.

[le-mark]

This sounds like the same fud Armstrong conned most people into believing. In his case EPO was so hard to detect he got away with it for how many years?

So imo: it’s possible but more likely than you think.

[borroka]

"cycling isn't a huge money maker for financial investors like football, rather it's a money pit for sponsors. do sponsors love a podium placement more than being forever associated with dirty cheaters? they'd risk it all for modest gains."

To me, this is an interesting comment, because on the surface it may sound true, like come on, this is common sense, but it is far off the reality that it is in front of us everyday. People want to win. They want to be better than others. You go to any gym and there are plenty of people who assume substantial quantities of hormones--test, hgh--just to look better in pictures. You go to any martial arts gym, and there are plenty of people of all ages, including 50+ years old, who are on TRT and more to win some rolls at the gym or dream about winning a cheap medal at a local tournament with 5 people in attendance.

People buy local teams because they want to be known, popular. They want to win. They want to humiliate the owner of the other team. Athletes are getting caught? Well, I strongly condemn their actions, they say.

You can do worse than reading "Speed Trap" or the book by Sandro Donati on doping, if you can find it translated from Italian.

[rantallion]

Do you have a source to support that claim?

[f4c39012]

"just"

[swores]

That word can mean several different things. In their sentence "just" means "only", as in "only switched, not stopped", it doesn't mean it was simple which is presumably what you are replying assuming it meant.

[sumo89]

It's the most tested sport by far. Mostly because a couple of huge scandals - Festina and Armstrong. It's an endurance sport which is a natural target for doping because of the huge gains that can be made and it's also probably the most popular endurance sport too. That said, it's a problem in other sports but they just don't test as much or publicise it as much. It's become a real problem in Rugby, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/50785122 and in Football where they hardly test anyone https://warrenmenezes.substack.com/p/doping-and-english-foot...

[brrrrrm]

> endurance sport which is a natural target for doping

This makes a lot of sense to me. A very singular goal of "maximum output" without much need for fine motor skills and strategizing. I'd guess sprinting/marathons might have similar issues?

[david-gpu]

There is actually a lot of strategy in road cycling. Remember for one thing that there are teams -- ask yourself why is that.

[cvwright]

But like Jorgenson said this year, there’s no tactics that can beat Pogi going up a steep hill at 7w/kg. At some point it all comes down to power to weight.

[peter422]

Stage 21 was a great example of how tactics can beat a stronger rider. Pogacar was probably the strongest but Matteo burned up his energy chasing attacks in the final lap and then at the right moment WvA was ready to pounce and take the stage.

[cvwright]

Sure it was great to see Wout win again - in Paris no less! And it does kind of validate the TVL strategy of “wear Pogi out with 3 super hard weeks of racing.”

Unfortunately for them it just wasn’t enough to make the difference in the GC.

[david-gpu]

Did tactics have anything to do with how Pogi lost the 2022 TdF on stage 11?

More generally, there is a lot more to each stage and to the race as a whole than the general classification.

If power to weight is all we cared about, we could rank all riders based on their power curve as measured on an indoor trainer and call it a day.

[brrrrrm]

I wouldn't deny that (and probably should have caveated this in my OP), but compared to a basketball or football team, the benefit of smart play doesn't seem as significant compared to doping up and pressing hard.

[registeredcorn]

>the benefit of smart play doesn't seem as significant compared to doping up and pressing hard.

For the athlete, or for the team?

For professional racing strategy is in the hands of the team members on the sidelines - it's less of a team sport (as in athlete) and more of a group sport (as in information parity.) Whether it's motor races or TdF, there's a significant number of factors to consider. What you are going to have your team do? What are other teams doing? What you should do in response to what they're doing? What will they do in response to your response? What is the average performance of your team? What is the current and maximum performance? What's the condition of the equipment? What tires are being used? What is the forecast for the next few hours? How will changes in weather impact the equipment used? Will you have enough spares to make it through? Do you have good comms between you and the athletes? Etc.

For example, sometimes two athletes on the same team might be one behind the other, only for the coach to tell the lead to let the other teammate to pass. For the audience, it might be unclear why or it might even feel unfair, but there are reasons why they made that call.

Maybe the leader looks gassed and needs to hang back to collect himself.

Maybe they want to encourage the secondary by giving him the reigns for a while, and in turn, push the lead to work harder.

Maybe they want to keep the wear and tear a little lower on the lead by holding him back in case a team close behind ends up overtaking in a sharp turn up ahead.

Maybe they're worried about a pile up that hasn't been cleared yet.

Maybe the sun will be facing the direction of their next turn, so the secondary is providing shade for the lead.

So on and so fourth. An individual athlete can only receive and process so much of that information in a cohesive way.

[Mawr]

You can break down any activity down to minute detail. It doesn't make it more difficult than another one.

Compare cycling to football (European of course). Nothing about cycling compares to the complex strategy and player skill involved.

[brrrrrm]

sure, numerous examples can be shown to say smart play does help. but, would you argue the net benefits of smart play are identical between a sport like basketball and racing?

[Azrael3000]

I thought the same but after watching the Netflix TdF documentary I would not agree to your statement anymore. Team strategy plays a huge role as e.g. driving in the slipstream saves up to 40% of your energy expenditure.

[Mawr]

Not compared to any real team game like football, etc.

Teams in cycling are just there to leverage drafting. It's all pretty boring and just comes down to power output in the end.

[chollida1]

> It's the most tested sport by far.

Is it? I don't know how to ask this without it sounding argumentative, but how are you measuring this?

Just by the number of times an athlete is tested a year?

If so where are you getting the data for this to compare it to other sports drug testing regimes?

[rajbot]

From the article:

> Cycling now spends far more money on anti-doping programs than any other sport

[chollida1]

ha:)

I did see that but it doesn't answer where they got the data to conclude this:)

[bogdan]

> it's also probably the most popular endurance sport

I believe long distance running takes that spot

[isk517]

Depends on what is meant by popular. In terms of participation then running, in terms of non-participatory viewers then cycling is probably more popular

[sumo89]

Yeah I meant viewership, tv coverage etc.

[h11h]

One way of thinking about it is how much a sport is skill-based versus fitness-based. Team sports and racquet sports tend to rely more on skill. Cycling and track and field rely more on fitness. A good soccer player isn't going to become a great just by getting a bit fitter, but the advantage given by doping is exactly what it means to be a better cyclist.

This doesn't explain why cycling seems to attract more doping than running. I don't even know if it's true that it does. But there might be something there given the institutional problems cycling has had with doping. Back in the day, it was entire teams doping, with the team staff and doctors in on it, and it's not like they all left when the sport tried to clean up. Either way, the reputation has stuck around.

[nradov]

Running attracts a lot of doping, it's just less publicized. In particular a lot of Kenyan distance runners have been caught recently.

https://x.com/aiu_athletics

[mkesper]

Soccer very much depends on fitness too.

[pmontra]

Yes, and I remember the years around 1990 when teams with tall men with a lot of stamina and not much else were giving headaches to top teams with top players. But soccer is also a team sport and there are dynamics that go beyond fitness. The morale of a team has a lot of impact. There have been many cases when the same players started playing well suddenly after a change of the manager. Looking at normal workplaces: fire the boss that hates everybody and everybody hate back, put somebody not abusive or toxic in charge, the workers will start performing better.

[Mawr]

The parent did not say it doesn't. He said team sports depend more on skill than fitness, which is true.

[chrisfosterelli]

It's very hard to tell because the true rate of doping is not known. We just know about who we catch (or very questionable survey results) which are skewed by the resources available for testing and the resources available for hiding doping. Competitive cycling is more popular than many sports, so it gets a lot of attention and effort on both.

Cycling was also at the center of the explosion of EPO use between the 1990s and 2000s -- there was no known screening process originally and it was extremely effective at improving performance in endurance sports with low amounts. Cycling has spent a lot of time working to restore the reputational damage from that period.

[dr_dshiv]

When will the average person benefit from all the interesting performance enhancing drugs that have been secretly developed?

[Tuna-Fish]

Generally, never. Because any small change in chemistry is something that evolution is very effective at picking up. Which means that if there is a simple intervention that improves performance, there is always a good reason why nature hasn't already given it to you. In the case of EPO, it's significantly increased risk of blood clots and blood pressure related conditions.

[dr_dshiv]

Caffeine is still the only outlier?

I remain optimistic.

[sincerely]

Aspartame seems to be a newer contender

[Aurornis]

Many of these drugs were developed and used as medical products before being adopted by athletes.

EPO is used in medical conditions.

Several anabolic steroids are prescription drugs and can be used in cases of muscle wasting or cancer.

Most people don’t understand the consequences that come with using these drugs. They’re often not a free lunch where you take the drug and become a better human being across the board. There are negative consequences for altering the body’s systems directly in most cases.

In medical conditions doctors can weigh the tradeoffs and use drugs sparingly to achieve an outcome while monitoring the negative effects. When a 20 year old gym bro starts juicing with excessive doses to get swole, they’re not thinking about how it’s going to damage their testes for the rest of their life or disrupt their HPTA axis.

[unsigner]

I prolonged the life of my terminally ill dog using EPO. It wasn't exotic or expensive. Probably that means it's already in wide use for humans, too.

[thyristan]

Yes, EPO is a normal drug used to treat certain disorders affecting blood formation, or to trigger increased blood formation before donations or operations.

Medication for human use has been availabe in various forms and brand names since before 1990, as Epogen, NeoRecormon, Eprex and lots of other names.

[rjsw]

Medical uses typically come before any performance enhancing ones.

[Gibbon1]

What helps you get a little more oxygen to you muscles thus winning the race is worth nothing to someone pushing a shopping cart around Costco.

[nradov]

Sure, but it could be worth something to a patient going through cancer chemotherapy or struggling to breathe in the ICU.

[lupusreal]

No can do, that would be bad for coca cola and starbucks sales.

[ahi]

Road cycling is a sport of extreme hyper specialization. Skill is much less of a factor than dedication, training, nutrition and genetics. Increasing VO2max by 5% isn't going to make you Messi, but it can put you on a tour podium.

[cujo]

it's a safe bet that your big money sports (not cycling) have a lot more doping than cycling. the issue is that you can't report what you don't know.

* cycling is a mix of moderate money and lots of drug testing. there are significant incentives to dope, but it's fairly hard to do these days since there is a lot of testing.

* big money sports (in the us especially - nfl, mlb, nba) are the jokes of the testing world. they rarely test and often inform their athletes when a test is coming. the big money basically assures that the incentive to dope is also big. but you'll never get caught if the testing process is a joke, so there is nothing to report.

[wonderwonder]

People want to see doped athletes in the NFL, NBA, etc. We don't know that we do but we want to see the biggest, strongest people doing the most exciting athletic fetes that they can. The pure punishment that athletes in the NFL take and then keep taking the field is mind blowing. The human body has a hard time dealing with that on its own. I would be surprised if the majority don't have a dosing regime. A 265lb man with low body fat running at the speeds they run is just not realistic for so many, they are the pinnacle of physicality and that doesn't come naturally for many.

Add on that most of them only play for a few years and there is every incentive under the sun to dope and maximize their earnings. I'm not endorsing it but if its essentially a widely accepted secret and you cant compete without it then you get what you incentivize.

[kasey_junk]

The nfl testing regime is purely surprise testing based.

The bigger difference is that endurance sports have more options for doping than others.

Frankly, I think too many things are banned. Blood doping seems no worse than sleep chambers and hgh in correctly applied regimes would take some of the punishment out of football.

[sumo89]

Maybe read some of the stories of the cyclists like Pantani doing blood doping. They would have to wake up every few hours through the night and do some cycling on a stationary bike to get their heart rate up or their heart might stop while they're asleep due to their blood being too thick. Sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber to boost the mitochondria is childs play in comparison.

[PleasureBot]

The NFL (and other major sports organizations) have no incentive to catch their athletes beyond a token amount to make the general public think the league cares about it. They don't want to catch too many as that could lead to a PED scandal that damages the reputation of the league; for example the BALCO scandal in the early 2000's MLB. Plus PEDs allow their athletes to stay healthy and perform at higher levels.

There's a reason athletes refer to PED tests as IQ tests. Only the very dumb or careless get caught, but the reality is nearly all of the athletes in these leagues have used PEDs at some point in their career.

[audinobs]

Anyone who thinks cycling of all sports is clean is a total fool.

It is a sport literally built around doping. You can't take things to the Tour De France level and recover from those workouts without drugs. Beating the test is part of the sport.

In the NFL/NBA, drug testing is just a theatrical performance. I know in the NFL because careers are so short, the players basically have a gentleman's agreement that whatever you have to do to stay on the field is fair game.

Cycling though is just such a sport of watts per kilo there is no way around doping being a huge variable.

The stupidest thing to me is every player basically says they will do everything they can to win , no matter what the sport. Everything but the thing that will help them the most in PEDs. For some reason the public just wants to believe this bullshit.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> You can't take things to the Tour De France level and recover from those workouts without drugs.

You absolutely can. However, you will almost certainly be impacted as the days progress, and this doesn't work well for the largest spectator single sport event in the world.

Also, watts per kilo is irrelevant in pack cycling and flat time trials. It only matters on when climbing.

[noosphr]

>they rarely test and often inform their athletes when a test is coming. the big money basically assures that the incentive to dope is also big. but you'll never get caught if the testing process is a joke, so there is nothing to report.

This reminds me of compliance training when I worked at a trading firm.

>Canada is perceived to have the least corrupt stock exchange in the world.

>>Makes sense ... wait perceived?

>Yes.

>>So no one looks at the actual amount of fraud?

>No.

>>...

>...

[alistairSH]

Cyclists can be tested all year. This includes mandatory tests immediately post-race for top placings. This is true for gymnastics and track&field/athletics as well.

NFL players can be tested once during the season. It's a joke.

NBA players can be tested four times in-season and two more off-season. Less of a joke than the NFL, but still pretty relaxed compared to cycling.

[rich_sasha]

In team-based group start road racing, like TdF, a lot of people aren't really competing. They are top sportspeople by ability, but their job is to support the team star. They are often called in French "domestiques", servants.

I wonder if this contributes. Imagine you're a sport person, your job depends kn your performance, you are at the mercy of your team, and it's not even like you can win. So why not help yourself to some pills.

But then, as siblings say, I don't even know if cycling is worse than other sports.

[cogogo]

I think the format plays a huge factor too but for different reasons. This format of racing is very dependent on aerodynamic advantages - to the point that even on the massive climbs the rider on the wheel still holds the edge to someone doing the work. On the flat stages the peloton is almost always going to catch a breakaway. Any marginal advantage is super useful in that context and the well funded teams push to optimize everything. I think it’s more likely than not there is cheating. Motors seem unlikely but with this kind of money and international attention marginal advantages like microdosing for example will be exploited. People cheat in everything and often get rewarded for it. It’s an infuriating fact of life.

[asdfasvea]

First, what is there to wonder about? Stakes. There are things to be gained from winning (and purposely losing).

Second, no one sport has more cheating than any other with similar stakes.

Third, "cheating" is more of a spectrum than binary. Travelling with the basketball is cheating and sometimes penalized. Having your husband kneecap your Olympic skating rival is cheating as well.

Fourth, "cheating" is relative and always in flux. You could head slap an NFL receiver in the 1970's, but no longer. Forward passes in the NHL were illegal in olden times, but fine today.

[50208]

It's not unique. Different sports police themselves more & less, punish more & less, coverup wrong doing more & less. As you said, you've just heard about it more.

[kube-system]

Yeah, in some sports cheating is so common that the cheating itself has become part of the competition... e.g. finding 'loopholes' or difficult to detect cheats in motorsports, doctoring the ball in baseball, flopping in soccer, etc.

[tokai]

Its not like that. If anything cycling has less doping than most sports. Cycling has been very serious about doping for much longer, than most other sports. Infractions are punished very hard; a guy like Hessmann had his career paused for a year plus, while also losing his contract, even though he hadn't doped. While a tennis star get three months for a clear doping infraction. Cycling also bans more substances than the international doping authorities does. As an example did cycling banned tramadol and other strong painkillers, while other sports don't care.

You have heard much more because from cycling over other sports, because the other sports don't want their dirty secrets aired out, and you heard about the huge scandals in cycling in the 00s.

[stefs]

i think that cycling is cleaner than other sports today. the past doping epidemics led to so much bad press cycling faced a huge sponsorship crisis. if another one of the stars would get caught today they'd take the whole sport down with them.

so, if they don't cheat as much, what's left? todays cyclists are actually a lot better than the stars of yesterday, mostly due to better nutrition. training efficiency also improved as the young stars of today are of the first generation that grew up with power meters.

i'm not very knowledgeable in the sport and my last point is a bit of an assumption, but here we go: pro cycling is mostly based in europe. the UAE team is swiss, astana qazaqstan team (a team representing the state kazakhstan) trains in spain and austria. girona (spain, near the pyrinees) is _the_ classic cycling hotspot. this means testing by officials is comparatively easy.

in other sports the training facilities are, for example, in the chinese mountains, russian provinces or in the iranian back country. getting regular testing there is hard. so imo no: cycling today is probably less dirty than most others sports.

tbh i think pogacar is just one of those rare genetic talents that show up from time to time to dominate a sport, but is doubted more than others due to cyclings tainted history. it may be possible he uses newly developed drugs that are undetectable, but i'd say innocent until proven guilty is still applicable here.

[lbreakjai]

Spain doesn't test during evenings or weekends. They've also historically had a habit of turning a blind eye on positive tests, especially if the athlete was Spanish.

[edding4500]

I think there are different factors. One is that doping in cycling had big media coverage, especially in the 90ies to 2010s. Media uncovered that basically everyone in the race org knew that doping was involved. See for example Cofidis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cofidis_(cycling_team) This adds to the perception that cycling is very prone to doping.

Whether it is so more than other sports... I don't know. As was mentioned before, in cycling as in other endurance sports, doping can push you very far. Then there is the way the whole sport is organized. In the tour de france, privately sponsored teams compete against each other. I think this is very different to, say, a world championship. A country or trainer may have the interest of pushing their athletes beyond what is legal. But in a privately sponsored team, the pressure could be much higher.

[Azrael3000]

Not sure your last statement is necessarily correct, just think of the massive doping in the former soviet union. The prestige gained by countries due to e.g. the Olympics regularly causes people to use illicit means.

[thenoblesunfish]

Relative to other sports it doesn't require much skill that can't be easily quantified. The person who can produce the most Watts over the required window is a strong favorite. I assume that doping simply makes a difference in a way it doesn't for skiing or soccer, and probably not as much as even swimming or running.

[datadrivenangel]

Skijumping has routine cheating with clothing that gives too much lift by being thicker than the regulations.

[jrm4]

I mean, hard for me to regard this as "cheating" worth taking seriously. Unless those clothes have little propellers in 'em. :)

[Azrael3000]

Why not? Its a big difference whether you go ski jumping in leggings or in a wingsuit. Obviously the difference in reality is less, but the principle stands

[raverbashing]

Honestly there's an (unhealthy) dose of self-loathing to want to bike long distances uphill for several days during the European summer

But I'm not surprised they want "extra help" with that

[IncreasePosts]

It doesn't start out that way. And in any case, a lot of people have horribly physically demanding jobs that just barely let them survive, not earn millions of dollars and have fawning fans wherever you go.

[matthewowen]

there's probably just as much doping in distance running but it's easier to evade (top athletes spend most of the year in countries that have limited interest in testing)

[vjvjvjvjghv]

Doping happens in all sports. It's pretty safe to assume that most/all top athletes are on something.

[ahi]

I replied directly to OP, but applies here as well. Cycling is far more specialized than other sports so the pay off for doping is greater.

[PleasureBot]

The incentive to use PEDs is almost certainly higher in other professional sports than cycling. For athletes in leagues like the MLB, NFL, NBA etc. the average career is quite short and you essentially need to make all of the money for your entire life in 3-4 yeas. Plus the step function of being in the league and making millions vs just missing a roster spot and making almost nothing is so extreme you'd be foolish not to take PEDs to give yourself the best chance at a payday.

[floodfx]

Why is pay off greater in cycling than other sports? Salary of the top riders? Compared to say NBA players, pro cyclist make relatively little. Tadej Pogacar (best and top paid cyclist) makes about $8M (euros) in salary per year. Steph Curry (highest paid) NBA player makes $55M (dollars) in salary per year.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

Basketball isn’t as demanding physically as cycling. You need to be fit but not to the extreme degree cycling demands. I would expect doping to be most beneficial in sports where pure physicality is needed. Marathon, triathlon, track running.

[tgv]

There's a lot more money in basketball, though. And money is the number 1 incentive. Growth hormones might be used.

[noelwelsh]

You can reasonably assume that some NBA players are using PEDs. However, the effect is different. To be an NBA basketball player you need to have several attributes, such as height and hand-eye coordination, that cannot be affected by PEDs AFAIK. If basketbally are using PEDs, it is probably to recover faster, which means coming back from injury or training more. More training can lead to a higher level of skill, but it's a second order effect. It's not like cycling where, for example, EPO directly affects performance on the bike.

[IncreasePosts]

Look at all the incidents of blood clots or DVT in NBA players and it starts to look pretty suspicious.

[cujo]

have you seen the physiques and workloads that nba/nhl/mlb players are dealing with these days? these athletes have more incentive than cyclists to dope ($$$), and the testing in those sports is a joke.

there are obvious performance benefits for traditional endurance sports, but the testing infrastructure is pretty robust and the financial incentives are much less than those big team sports. it's harder to dope (and get away with it) and the financial pressure is less.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

I totally believe that a lot of basketball/football/baseball players take something. But the effect won’t be as important as in cycling or marathon or 100 m sprint where you need pure physicality.

[globular-toast]

The "pay off" the commenter is talking about is the results in the sport, not the monetary gain. Cyclists are like the engines in an F1 car. Not saying there is no skill involved, but any skill differences are irrelevant if the other guy is putting out 100W more than you over 200km. So it really comes down to raw power to weight ratio.

That's not the same in basketball or most other sports. You can't just jump on gear, lift weights and suddenly become Michael Jordan. Plenty of people could beat Pogacar if they could use anything they could, though, just like manufacturers could build an F1 car that would dominate every race if they could circumvent the rules.

[darkwater]

Because beside some skill needed in going fast during descends at 70-80-90km/h without dying (which is not easy but not extremely difficult either), a cyclist is basically an engine. Most other sports need physical fitness (speed, stamina, strength, endurance etc) AND coordination skills, and the latter is not easy to improve chemically.

[wonderwonder]

I could agree with this. You do need some physical gifts as far as muscular endurance beyond the capacity of most but after that, its a very limited set of movements performed over and over again for hours. Plus a massive amount of will power and pain endurance. No amount of chemicals will turn even most gifted people into an NFL athlete.

[Aurornis]

> Compared to say NBA players

Basketball is highly skill based.

For a professional athlete it’s not hard to be in shape enough to run for an entire game. It’s just not a limitation.

For cycling, it’s nearly all physical ability.

[xboxnolifes]

Not money. It's highly specialized in what physically benefits it, so even a small doping on that specific physical attribute leads to significant advantage.