Doping

Really?

Yes, really. A medical condition can either stop you racing altogether, or it can allow you to race with diminished performance. In the former case, you get an out of competition TUE and come back to racing when you're better. In the latter case, you have a choice - stop racing and get treatment, keep racing and take legal performance enhancing treatment via an in competition TUE where required, or race without treatment and accept the lower performance. The middle path is available for certain condition and treatments, but that doesn't mean it's the one a Corinthian would choose.

What's a doctors opinion got to do with it?
Medical issue > TUE > treatment > employment

Calm down love, it's the internet.

Actually Armstrong was also taking corticosteroids in 1999 and got busted for doing so, he too knocked up a dodgy doctor's note, although in his case it was backdated.

It's very clearly a performance enhancing drug, even if (and it's a fuck off big if) he was taking it for legitimate reasons, the other effects of the drug are massively performance enhancing, he knew that, the staff knew that.

I liked Wiggins and I'm no Team Sky basher. But on the balance of evidence produced I'm 99% sure that he deliberately took a drug primarily based on its performance enhancing properties to allow him to win the 2012 TDF.

Keep racing.

Because it relies on the opinion of the Dr that the TUE is required.

Which makes

the only legitimate winner of the Tdf ever.

And?

Opinions are just that.
They have to start getting rid of the grey. It seems ridiculous that like the article about football players having injections to be able to play and that's ok.

Because two Dr's always have the same opinion?

It needs three doctors to agree, your referring doctor and two out of three on the TUEC :)

Fair enough, more robust than I believed but I still feel the fundamental issue of someone say who has asthma can take an inhaler but someone who doesn't can't.

Do the TUEC have the athlete present or is it on the Dr's first report?

Because someone who doesn't have a lung dysfunction doesn't need to.

Do the TUEC have the athlete present

No, they take evidence from the referring doctor, which can be quite detailed medical history. In the specific instance of asthma medication, in order to get a TUE for one of the drugs which needs one, you have to demonstrate that you have tried the ones which don't need a TUE and they don't work for the athlete in question. Similar tests apply for other conditions, since a TUE is only ever issued if there is no alternative effective treatment which doesn't require a TUE.

the fundamental issue of someone say who has asthma can take an inhaler but someone who doesn't can't

Actually, somebody who doesn't have asthma can take the most common inhalers, because they don't require a TUE. Feel free to take 1600μg a day of both beclomethasone and salbutamol if you think it will do you any good, although if I was taking anywhere near that amount I wouldn't be racing, I'd be standing by to go to A&E if things got any worse.

Problem for me is, that until I had my daughter I used to believe medicine was fairly clear cut. Since then it has become very apparent it's not.

The above still has plenty of grey areas for me. I've really lost faith in anti doping on the whole.

Problem is these things aren't clear cut.
A diagnosis that is.

Nothing to do with the human body is. That's why medicine uses things like probability and risk calculations to decide on a course of action for an illness.

I don't see that it's fair that we judge some can use a substance others can't.
And of those some who can some will get more benefit than others.

Wasn't this the argument for flying the mysterious package of fluimicil to Wiggins in the first place?

No, it wasn’t available in France in the form they wanted to administer it in.

The person has an illness or injury. They are disadvantaged because of an illness or injury.

They're not necking a load of 'roids to build muscle fast or EPO to gain red blood cells they wouldn't have already had, they're taking a substance that might've saved their lives or otherwise kept them out of hospital so they can do their job.

For a nation that sells mustard and mayonnaise pre-mixed in a bottle I find this hard to countenance...

But you accept people have different severities of conditions and that people will respond differently?
Presumably you also accept that some once receiving treatment will have greater ability than those without a condition?

So I still don't see how that is fair.

people have different severities of conditions and that people will respond differently?

Yes.

some once receiving treatment will have greater ability than those without a condition?

No.

People respond differently to training, ban training?
Genetics isn't fair, only allow twins to compete?
Climate isn't fair, only allow people from the same place to compete?

So the first isn't fair.

The second we'll have to disagree on. I think you might be being a little obtuse here.

The third I'd agree but it's natural whatever the heck that means.