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Yeah, as @hippy wrote. I suspect people are exploiting this shit already. I don't like it and might end up doing only longer races where this becomes unsustainable. However, then another "performance-enhancing" drug comes to play: pain killers.
I guess this sport is between a rock and a hard place. Either regulation comes in and then I'm unsure how they'll take responsibility for safety on open roads etc., or it remains deregulated and people will simply "cheat" (if we can call pill-taking cheating).
One thing that could be implementable would be complete transparency. That is: you must make all your training data public if you want to start in a race. Strava data would do to begin with. Later, this could be improved on. The idea being that of a biological passport (except more basic & cheaper). Then enthusiasts could crunch data and see how off-the-scales crazy a performance was given the stuff a person does in training. If someone consistently races "above his/her" abilities, then suspicion would exist. If that's good or bad, I'm not sure. What to do with it, I'm also not sure :).
plentyfatty-
Good thought but I can't see it somehow!
We don't even have that kind of thing for CTT events. Some people want privacy, don't all want to share everything.
Plus how would you define something as off the scale, by time or by Watts?
Some guy riding across europe at c 120W when he trained at 200W is hardly going to raise an alarm is he?
Or, if you look at time, you find someone like skinny didn't ride more than 6 hours in training, then he rides 18 hours a day for 8-9 days!
frank9755
Following on from the conversation about sleep in the AMR, is there any suggestion that such punishing sleep schedules might increase the likelihood of riders taking alertness drugs like modafinil etc? Obviously this strikes me as undesirable but it would be pretty hard to check up on and the incentives would increase if races became a “staying awake” competition.