Doping

I'm tired of all this slagging off Wiggo. Especially from some young fucker who's fucked around with UV/blood transfusions. He can get fucked.

I'm not, so long as it doesn't come from JTL

He did say that he thinks people who have considerable difficulty breathing ("schwer atmen") don't belong into the 'pool' of athletes competing in mainstream elite sport. This is what I think is discriminatory.

It's not discriminatory, it's a defensible alternative view to the current WADA guesswork over what level of performance enhancement is "levelling the playing field" and what is turning cripples into superhumans. You wouldn't want running races to be open to people who can't walk without the assistance of a powered exoskeleton. Once you accept that, the drawing of a boundary becomes a matter of fairly arbitrary morality. Whether somebody who uses as much product as Kittel does is the best spokesman for natural performance is a separate issue :)

I'm talking about the methodology behind the Equality Act, and before it the Disability Discrimination Acts. There is no 'fairly arbitrary morality' in those, but a standard of reasonableness. This leaves a level of interpretability, of course, but in practice it works well.

A common reaction when people are told they should make reasonable adjustments is that they worry these will be completely excessive, and they will say things like 'but we couldn't put a lift in here'. Well, no, it may not be reasonable to do this, but a wheeling ramp some steps up to the entrance might well be. Likewise, the 'powered exoskeleton' clearly fails the test of reasonableness (and will continue to do so, and will only have a place when powered exoskeleton racing is taken up by many as a sport, which may well happen, but as a kind of motor sport).

Disability legislation aims at inclusive access, e.g. to sport, and that most certainly should include elite sport. There are disabled riders who ride at amateur level all the time, e.g. Paralympian Christian Haettich, who has only one arm and one leg.

Take a potential case in cycling analogous to Oscar Pistorius (pre-murder): It's perfectly conceivable that a lower leg amputee could be fast enough to be an elite pro. In that case, their prosthesis/es should be considered a reasonable adjustment for disability.

Likewise, it is perfectly reasonable to consider non-performance-enhancing asthma medication a suitable adjustment. I completely understand that when the medication has to be steroids that there's a problem. However, ruling out asthmatics from non-Paralympic elite cycling with this kind of broad brush approach is discrimination. It's like saying that wheelchair users can't be lorry drivers. One of the hardest things to achieve for disabled people is that things are considered reasonably on a case-by-case basis.

it is perfectly reasonable to consider non-performance-enhancing asthma medication a suitable adjustment

All asthma medication is performance enhancing. If it wasn't, I'd be round to my doctor tomorrow to get some that was. If the drugs which are currently permitted were banned, pretty much anybody who uses them to compete at a high level could continue to compete if they so chose, they would just be doing so at a much lower level. Not taking your asthma drugs while exercising if you have exercise induced asthma is bad for your long term health, but then so is training for and competing in elite level sport so that's no excuse.

ruling out asthmatics from non-Paralympic elite cycling with this kind of broad brush approach is discrimination. It's like saying that wheelchair users can't be lorry drivers

No, it's like saying that people who can't pass a lorry driving test can't be lorry drivers. In the case of lorry driving, the test is based on safety, and some diseases rule a person out of doing the job.

Obviously, I disagree profoundly with the imposition of "equalities" burdens on private enterprises, but sport is categorically different from an offer to provide goods, services or employment. In elite sport, the test is whether you can go fast (or high or far) enough without artificial assistance, the definition of "artificial" and "assistance" being somewhat arbitrary ones agreed among the competitors. It would be possible to ban the artificial assistance of variable gears in Le Tour (as Henri Desgrange wanted), and the winner would probably be different. It would be possible to ban the artificial assistance of shoes in running races. There is no duty on sport to have reasonable rules, so the reasonableness test is moot. Sport is not a public accommodation or an employment, it is an agreement among people to engage in a pointless contest based on mutually agreed rules of conduct and means of deciding the result.

Has Millar admitted more than he did in the books?

Where's Wiggo?

Where's Wiggo?

On an overnight flight, apparently.

Seems pretty similar to the stuff he details in Racing Through The Dark.

Very uncomfortable listening right here, an hour of waffle from DB and not one key question answered

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/telegraph-cycling-podcast/id665713706?mt=2&i=376714289

I know a good way to cheat at cycle racing! Replace the 52 tooth chainwheel on your racing bike with a 58 toothed chainwheel then you will be able to cycle much faster!
Yes I know its a joke!

http://www.ukad.org.uk/news/article/amateur-cyclist-robin-townsend-banned-for-epo/

Middle aged amateurs smashing cocktails of drugs to win TTs?

Amazing.

lolwut

what an utter weapon.
Had taken it for so long that there was no trace of natually produced EPO in his sample....

shame that it has no effect on the ban length, should be lifetime...

what a sad individual, must be tough as presumably he never fully comprehended the impact of taking the drugs, and given his ridiculous defence, still thinks he can weasel (no offence to weasels intended) his way out of this.

On the Current Sanctions page of the UKAD site 14 of the first 19 sanctions are rugby players. Amaze.

What a bellend.

South Wales has a huge steroid problem in the general population and some of them also play a bit of rugby.

Yet his Nat 12 results stands

Oh, if he ever beats me in a race...

his ridiculous defence

What do you mean?

I totally buy his defence of being spiked by a rival.

Systematically.

Over the course of however long it takes to develop tolerance to EPO stimulating agents to the point that his body is dependent on them.

How do you think they all get that big aged 20?

I wonder if his Strava KOMs still stand...

there's probably someone hacking into his computer digital EPOing them and uploading them again...