Doping

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cycling/2017/02/19/ex-team-sky-cyclist-michael-barryexpands-teams-unethical-use/

Not looking great for Team Sky......

Except, once again, there's nothing there which is against the rules of the sport.

If a headline suggests something is unethical, then it's pretty obvious it's a value judgement rather than showing evidence of any wrongdoing. Wasn't it obvious from the outset that 'marginal gains' pushed right up to the limits of what was allowed?

I guess it depends on the interpretation of the rules.....

Just feels like the clock is ticking until something comes out that they've clearly overstepped the very fine line they seem to have walked/are walking.

It'll be interesting to see if those 'value judgements' have any repercussions.

“The thing with doping is that there is a black and a white,” he says. ‘Did the team [Sky] cross into the black? No, in my opinion. They didn’t dope, but there is a grey area. The use of painkillers falls into that grey area. Tramadol falls into that grey area."

Quite frankly most of cycling and professional sport fall into that grey area. Whether a drug is banned or not is quite arbitrary, hence why Sharapova got pinged for a drug she had been using for years. But he flat out says Sky isn't doping.

As for tramadol the use of it in-competition is well-documented and widespread. A lot of riders carry a finish bottle, usually a mixture of painkillers and caffeine tablets. Will it give you an edge at the sharp end of the race? Probably, but the bottom line until such practises are banned then nobodies done anything wrong.

No, she got pinged for a drug that was added to the banned list.

If fat choppers like me who get tested now and then can keep up with the list, then sure as shit some multimillion £££ full time fucking athlete should know the rules.

Yeah I meant that, she had been using the drug for a fucking long time, her entire career, then it gets banned all of a sudden and she gets popped. So yes she was stupid but it also illustrates the arbitary nature of what is banned and what isn't, and that it can take WADA a long time to decide whether something is performance-enhancing or not, or at least performance-enhancing enough to be banned. If riders shouldn't be using tramadol then the authorities should just fucking ban it, rather than a team or rider's ethics be questioned for using it.

Makes me wonder what other drugs yet-to-be-banned are being used.

Science isn't just on/off. It takes time to discover how substances might be enhancing performance or risky for athletes.

It was on the 2015 Monitoring List which means it's suspect so she had a least a year to think about its use.

All of the good ones you can afford. Why not.

Definitely not disagreeing, but until that research and decision has been reached, and I'll include TUE use in that, it's not for the fans or media to apply a selective sliding-scale of morality to riders and teams. As I said pretty much the entire of cycling and professional sport fall into what the article called a 'grey area'. Either they are doping or they are not, and once the authorities decide something is cheating then that is when it crosses over.

And unknown, BALCO-esque drugs are covered by the WADA code

Absolutely. When articles mention grey areas, ethics or moral codes, you know they are scratching around looking for a stick to beat someone with. In sport, if the substance is prohibited by WADA then using it is doping, if it's not then it's not. There is no grey area, it's laid out in black and white.

I can't wait until the proper racing starts so all these fucking journos have something of substance (geddit, substance?) to cover.

The season starts on Saturday.

Omloop? I used to have a UCI calendar in my Google Cal hmm... where'd it go?

Am excite

inrng.com does one. But yes, Omloop Het Volk, sorry, Nieuwsblad, on Saturday.

Love the Loop, is Storm Doris gonna be wandering over to Flanders' fields?

How do you add that in?

EDIT- very easily apparently, added the inrng one

It's all here:
http://inrng.com/calendar/

Forecast is for pretty stiff winds on Saturday.

hehe he said stiff

Filth.

The weather that is

How have I never done this before

I'm excited for some real racing. RACING!!

Maybe we need a classics thread. For classic discussion on monumental things.

Some of us are clever, some of us are sexy.

I guess you're sexy?

#yourcoatgetit