Xplora wrote:Alex Simmons/RST wrote:Xplora wrote:Some of his previous articles are pretty good as well. There is something sad about it all... but I think
professional sport is a bit this way inclined. When they are mounting GPS on players in rugby league and sitting them inside hyperbaric chambers half the time not to mention the supplments etc etc etc I just think we are past being able to say that it's just training hard. They say that drugs are bad, but there is a reason people are taking all these supplements and sitting in hyperbaric chambers -
it is beyond the ability of normal human performance, and cannot be maintained without something artificial to support that performance. Steroids, EPO and the like are just much more effective.

It is entirely possible to do these things (play football, race the TdF etc) "clean", just the level of performance is less when done without pharmacological aid.
I didn't say that these artificial means aren't clean - hyperbaric chambers are clean... but they aren't natural. Natural is eating a steak every day and lifting the hell out of some weights to help. Unnatural is eating a cocktail of supplements and sitting in a hyperbaric chamber. Both are clean.
Drugs are not clean... but they are essentially doing a similar thing - allowing the body to recover faster and do unnatural things. Sitting in a hyperbaric chamber is on the same playing field as steroids
to me.
Shrug. Well, the TdF was something that no sane person would attempt and no normal person would complete for pretty much its entire history. Fancy riding through unsealed roads in the Pyrenees on a single-speed bike (it might even have been fixed at one stage

). ? featuring brake technology from the 20s? I know I don't. Whatever your view on the rights and wrongs of this, it hasn't
become like that, it always was that way. So too the marathon, etc etc. And the human race has been applying technology to these competitions since time immemorial.
Now, all of the things you mention are technologies, even cooking meat. I don't think anyone much has anything against using technology to enhance performance per se.
That's where rules come in. So the distinction right now is crystal clear: whether is it against the rules. I gather hyperbaric chambers are not. Supplements are not (for some value of "supplement"). EPO and steroids are. The trend to break the rules in dangerous and unethical ways is to be deplored, but it's nothing new. Sad but true, I'm not sure this is going to be the spark that lights the powderkeg that breaks the camel's back or whatever. There have been so many doping scandals. What's one more to the powers that be?