I've been reading the recent threads, and articles in the press, magazines etc, about Kohl and Schumacher, and obviously there are the cases earlier in the year involving Ricco, Piepoli etc, and it has led me to ask the following questions (which I can't find another thread about - apologies if there is one):
Historically, the dopers have always been at least one step ahead of the authorities (sometimes two or three!). In your opinion, are the testing and regulatory authorities (WADA, UCI, AFLD etc) catching up with the dopers? If so, is this a trend that will continue, and will it become more and more difficult to dope without being caught in future? Or is it just a blip before the next untestable 'super-drug' arrives?
There are a great number of intelligent and knowledgeable people on this site, and I would be very interested to read their thoughts on this subject.....
Edit: to correct my spooling eerrors! Edited by facmanpob on 16-10-2008 13:56
I am hopeful that if we get a HGH and blood-doping test then the authorities will be pretty much on top of the dopers, however at som point in the next 50 years gene-doping will be developed and that will be pretty much undetectable, and super-powerful.
It's definitely getting harder to dope up during events. But that being said, I think that doping is still very wide spread in the off-season. A good doping regime in the off season, can make you able to almost train twice as hard, without suffering severe consequences. EPO, HGH and testosterone works wonders for recovery. So in short, by using drugs for training purposes, you can raise your natural potential, and will surely benefit from that during the race season. I'm fairly sure, speculating in the whereabout rules is common praksis in some enviroments.
First, it'd be utopia to think that doping could be removed once and for all, that will probably never happen.
Now, if we look at how important doping is, what do we see ? Riders reached incredibly high wattages in the mid and late 90's, they still produced high wattages in the early 2000's, although a little less. Now the trend is that it's slowing down steadily.
Doping's main effect is too boost your performances, hence your wattages.
It can then be claimed that we're going into the right direction.
Even though there are new doping products, that are possibly more efficient than 10 years ago, they can now be detected, thus they're not used in wide amounts any more.
There remain many heavy products that cannot be detected yet, another problem is that for some products there's only a very short period of time during which it can be traced when its effects will last for days (f.e. insulin).
New tests have been announced for such products, growth hormone, insulin, etc. so it's quite rejoicing news.
Another problem remains : to be positive, you need to have quantitative and qualitative criteria. About 30 riders were suspected to use CERA (indications of its use, or little amounts of it were found), but only 4 were returned as positive cases, as probably, even if there was something wrong with the 26 other samples, it wasn't wrong enough to be declared as positive tests.
All those threshold for positivity should naturally be lowered, but I don't think that's planned.
