The Science of Lance Armstrong

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Don't drugs help achieve just that?

Yes, but the Lords of the Bike Race have put some restrictions on them. In any case Armstrong's use of forbidden drugs was never proved.

ruveyn

Well IIRC he refused to submit blood and urine samples as he declined to contest the charges. So WTF has he got to hide, eh?

I have not seen any scientific articles on the web about Dean Karnazes so if you want to find out you'll have to do yer own research. I saw a program about "superhumans" which showed him being voluntarily subjected to laboratory tests. Apparently he has an extraordinary mutation that allows his muscle cells to thwart lactic acid buildup; which helps explain his incredible endurance.

Armstrong also has that characteristic. That is why his endurance is as great as it is. The TdeF is as much an endurance contest as it is a speed contest.

See: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... ong_2.html. According to the researchers Armstrong has one of the lowest lactic acid levels ever recorded.

ruveyn

404 on that link. I really wish National Geographic would do something similar for Dean Karnazes. Armstrong really has a f*cking big ego and is a shameless self-promoter. I mean, yeah he's a great athlete but he's really not as superhuman as guys like you would have us believe. Especially given his refusal to prove that he's not doping himself in the face of eyewitness testimony against him.

try http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... ong_2.html

ruveyn

It is a competitive sport in which official matches ban "enhancement drugs" because they give "unfair" advantage. If it was up to me, this wouldn't be the case.

But if we are going to make a big deal about enhancement drugs, then shouldn't we be making a big deal about super human advantage?

Wouldn't this mean the lords of the biking races are biased towards super humans?

No. The prefer top notch bicyclists to ass draggers In an athletic contest one is looking for the best, not the average. Athletics is a meritocracy, not a democracy.

ruvey

So, define who is the best athlete. To me it would be the athlete who gets the best result. Regardless of what training method he used. If the training method was enhancement drugs or genetics, all right then.

I concur. Personally I see nothing wrong with chemically enhanced performance. No matter what drugs or chemicals are used it is the flesh, bone, blood and muscle that has to deliver guided by an informed intelligence.

However, I think Lance Armstrong came by most of his advantages by a fortunate genetic inheritance along with lots of dedicated and concentrated hard work.

ruveyn

I see a tremendous problem with incentivizing behaviour that causes long term harm to the athlete. I could live with that on the basis of, "you accept the risks when you put the needle in your arm," but I do note that we are left on the hook for the medical issues that arise thereafter. And for every Lance Armstrong, there are hundreds of other dopers who are not achieving his success--putting their bodies at risk for no reward.

But even more than this, I see a tremendous problem with sending the implicit message to youngsters and aspiring athletes that, "your body will never be good enough, unless you use artificial means to make it better." In 2008 we saw it demonstrated that you couldn't win a gold medal in swimming unless you were encased in a thousand dollar suit. FINA, to their credit, saw athleticism being subordinated to engineering and banned them.

In cycling, athleticism is being subordinated to biochemistry. But unlike FINA, UCI is doing SFA to restore athleticism to its primacy.

Winning without undue interference with the other competitors is more important than "athleticism". "Athleticism" sounds like the bogus Cult of the Amateur which was big in Europe at the end of the 19th century. The modern Olympics were predicated on a amateur athleticism that never existed in ancient Greek times. In Ancient Greece winning was everything.

ruveyn

You are drawing an analogy where none was intended nor implied.

Amateurism as practiced by the IOC up until the reign of the odious Avery Brundage was simply institutionalized elitism--amateur sport was for people who had the leisure time to pursue sport, not for people who had to work for a living.

Athleticism, on the other hand, is the principal that two competitors are distinguished not by the quality of their equipment or by the quality of their pharmacists, but by their ability to bring their bodies to the peak of physical conditioning and to push their bodies to the limit of their performance.

And since when is cheating not interference with other competitors? Whether you consider it proper or not, the use of EPO was against the rules. Period. And the positive samples in the hands of LNDD stand from the 1999 Tour de France stand as evidence of a breach of those rules--untested before a tribunal, to be sure--but evidence nonetheless. Armstrong has, through his capitulation, ensured that these samples are unlikely to be retested and their chain of custody demonstrated.

Well the ancient Greek athletes certainly did not have performance enhancing drugs at their disposal. For them it was all about hard work and innate ability.


Armstrong has refused to submit any biological samples for drug testing despite multiple eyewitness testimony that he has been using them and one person claimed he had them in his fridgidaire! WTF has he got to hide? You do realize that when it comes to this sort of thing, the innocent until proven guilty rule need not apply.

He is not the only world class athlete out there. The reason for him getting so much attention has a lot to do with his winning a cancer battle and then going on to achieve meteoric success as an racing cyclist; along with his shameless self-promotion and egotism(which seems to win admiration and respect among Americans). So yeah, he's a great athlete but hardly deserves to be awarded superhuman status. That title rightfully belongs to the Ultramarathon Man Dean Karnazes.

Regarding giving a bad example to children. How about the other careers other than sports? How about classic musicians? http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=1251 . Why is it fine to sport coffee (caffeine is an enhancement alkaloid) as a fine thing in work environments?

Regarding having fair competition and a level field. Well, I am not sure about that. At which point are an athletics traits innate to him and not a boost ? If we care only about the best innate athlete (a bias towards genetics, I guess) then shouldn't we ban training? If athleticism is instead about overcoming the barriers of nature through work, then isn't acquiring and developing these drugs work? As long as the enhancement drugs used are proven not to cause damage to the body. I think it should be fine. There is also the little problem about the risk that a drug that is not traceable to be developed. Maybe it already exists, then we would be putting poorer athletes in disadvantage as they can't get this innovation.

Don't we idealize self-destructive behavior already when using the "Heroic" label on many legendary times at which a sportsman kept paying regardless of injury?

Are you sure about this?

I would not be the least bit shocked to find that ancient guys used "natural" stuff to enhance their energy and stamina or to at least think they are enhancing them.

This page seems to have a completely different perspective than yours: http://sportsanddrugs.procon.org/view.r ... eID=002366.

But I wish I was informed enough to know about this for sure.

The Oracle at Delphi (a female seer and priestess) used some kind of hallicnogenic to get here visions of the future.

ruveyn