Non-motoring > Doping in sport Miscellaneous
Thread Author: Armel Coussine Replies: 31
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 Sun 2 Aug 15 13:36 
 Doping in sport - Armel Coussine
The 'revelations' about top sportsmen using illegal or semi-illegal methods to enhance their performance aren't news to me. I mention, without really recommending it (it's a heavy academic read in places), 'Barbaric Sport - a global plague', pub. Verso, 2012, tr AC.

'Blood doping' - infusions of the athlete's own blood in a hyper-oxygenated state - has been widespread in top-level endurance sport for decades. Other, cruder substances are used too, often in the hope that they will metabolize too quickly to be detected by post-race tests. Or post-match tests, because ball-game team coaches also distribute go-faster drugs.

Athletes are willing to undergo much gruelling pain and suffering to achieve competitive glory. What is less well known is that they are sometimes willing to shorten and blight their lives for it.
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 Sun 2 Aug 15 13:53 
 Doping in sport - Armel Coussine
>> 'Barbaric Sport - a global plague', pub. Verso, 2012, tr AC.

I omitted the author's name: Marc Perelman. He's an architect who has designed stadiums.
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 Sun 2 Aug 15 14:14 
 Doping in sport - Roger.
I find it difficult to understand people's obsession with sport.
OK - it's reasonable to watch a bit to pass an idle hour or so, but fanatical devotion to a bunch of overpaid, self-absorbed, professional sportspeople is just, well, weird.
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 Sun 2 Aug 15 14:17 
 Doping in sport - Clk Sec
Good grief...
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      1  
 Sun 2 Aug 15 14:17 
 Doping in sport - CGNorwich
Not unlike supporting UKIP them
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 Sun 2 Aug 15 15:18 
 Doping in sport - Armel Coussine
>> I find it difficult to understand people's obsession with sport.

Why? They don't read literature or go to the theatre or grown-up movies. Sport is the central interest in many people's empty lives. Perelman theorizes that mass audiences take on a collective identity in stadiums, becoming one enormous, dangerous creature before, sometimes, rushing out and trashing the surrounding neighbourhood. Apparently it's a cathartic experience. Sounds more knackering to me though. And terribly boring of course.

TV is the place for football.

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 Mon 3 Aug 15 08:58 
 Doping in sport - Cliff Pope
>> > Perelman theorizes that mass audiences take on
>> a collective identity in stadiums, becoming one enormous, dangerous creature
>>
>>

Not just in stadiums, although perhaps the Nuremburg rallies were the worst example of that.

Mass communications of all kinds seem to turn normal individuals into identikit zombies, who all think the same, do the same, and work themselves up into a collective hysteria. It may be relatively harmless, as with the Diana effect, or thuggish as with sports hooligans, or darkly sinister when political, racial or religious influences get to work.

I'm suspicious of all groups of people who purport to share views or ideals. But I warm to lone eccentrics :)
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 Mon 3 Aug 15 14:33 
 Doping in sport - Armel Coussine
>> Not just in stadiums, although perhaps the Nuremburg rallies were the worst example

>> the Diana effect,

Seems to me that Diana's funeral audience was the nearest thing to a Nuremburg rally mob we've ever seen in this country. I'm still aghast.
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 Sun 2 Aug 15 15:42 
 Doping in sport - Focusless
>> but fanatical devotion to a bunch of overpaid, self-absorbed, professional sportspeople is just, well, weird.

Don't get that so much in athletics though.
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 Mon 3 Aug 15 11:24 
 Doping in sport - Focusless
Quite apart from everybody injecting themselves with monkey glands, nobody likes athletics. It’s like amateur dramatics in that the participants quite enjoy it while the audience is thinking about what they’re going to have for tea.

www.thedailymash.co.uk/sport/sport-headlines/world-beginning-to-realise-that-sport-is-evil-20150803100725
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 Tue 4 Aug 15 11:22 
 Doping in sport - Mapmaker
I don't know why anybody would care whether or not people use drugs to enhance their performance.
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 Tue 4 Aug 15 11:30 
 Doping in sport - Manatee
>> I don't know why anybody would care whether or not people use drugs to enhance
>> their performance.

That's an odd thing to say. It doesn't keep me awake at night, but if it's against the rules then anybody who does it should clearly be caught and kicked out, and not given a medal for winning.

How do you feel about cheating, generally?

I don't care about sport for the most part, so in a way I don't care either - but I still disapprove of cheats to the extent that I have an opinion at all.
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 Tue 4 Aug 15 11:30 
 Doping in sport - sooty123
>> I don't know why anybody would care whether or not people use drugs to enhance
>> their performance.
>>


perhaps just have a free for all, who's to say choosing the right drugs isn't a skill in it's own?
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 Tue 4 Aug 15 11:35 
 Doping in sport - CGNorwich
I would have though that pretty obvious unless of course you what to watch a competition for the those prepared to take the most effective performance enhancing drugs regardless of their side effects.

Personally I would prefer to see someone win by their own efforts.
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 Tue 4 Aug 15 11:36 
 Doping in sport - Manatee
Alf Tupper thought training was cheating!
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 Tue 4 Aug 15 11:37 
 Doping in sport - Robin O'Reliant
>> I don't know why anybody would care whether or not people use drugs to enhance
>> their performance.
>>
The people who's careers were ruined because they refused to risk their health taking EPO and therefore were unable to compete, and the families of the dozen or so cyclists who did take it and died in their sleep during the early nineties because their blood was like treacle and wouldn't pump through their hearts when their pulse rate was at it's slowest.

Competitors like Armstrong learnt how to safely dope to avoid this, but progress being what it is it wouldn't be too long before some new wonder drug came along with increased performance benefits and little understanding of it's long term effects. It's all very well saying it's their own fault for taking such stuff, but these people are young and naïve and have dreamed of a sporting career all their lives. It is easy to see how they are corrupted when it's join the gang or slink off back to obscurity and a job on the assembly line.
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 Tue 4 Aug 15 16:24 
 Doping in sport - Mapmaker
Who cares; it's only a game. I can't see why anybody would bother to cheat, but if they did, why would anybody care?
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      1  
 Tue 4 Aug 15 17:21 
 Doping in sport - Armel Coussine
>> Who cares; it's only a game.

There are people who would physically assault you for saying that late at night in the pub. Simpletons best avoided... but they do exist.

On a more rational level, some people are enthusiasts who care about sports and sportingness and don't like what they see as cheating. Seems though that the higher the stakes are, the more likely these sporting principles are to go out of the window. There are admirable characters who resist temptation, and less admirable ones who don't.

Personally I never cared for sport, but I was forced to learn to understand it. So I'm ambivalent about so-called cheats. What they do is rational but a bit dishonourable.
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 Tue 4 Aug 15 17:41 
 Doping in sport - Armel Coussine
I don't know whether this should go here or in the Labour Party thread, but the big cartoon in yesterday's comic had a bodybuilding Jeremy Corbyn squirting something called 'Militant Left' from a red syringe into a swollen, bulging-veined right arm and shoulder (the other remaining small and weak).

My comic's crazed obsession with Corbyn is, well, comic.
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 Tue 4 Aug 15 17:34 
 Doping in sport - No FM2R
>Who cares; it's only a game. I can't see why anybody would bother to cheat, but if they did, why would anybody care?

I care. People shoudl do things decently and it annoys me if they do not.

And I care by a factor of a gazilion if its an activity I also actually do, as well as watch.

I watch sport and enjoy it. I want to admire the people doing it in some way, not get irritated by them as cheats.

And how can you not see why? Pretty obvious I would have thought; more fame, recognition, advancement, money, etc. etc.

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 Tue 4 Aug 15 18:21 
 Doping in sport - Focusless
>> And how can you not see why?

I think he's bored - it's a wind-up. Gotta be.
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 Tue 4 Aug 15 17:35 
 Doping in sport - Westpig
>> Who cares; it's only a game. I can't see why anybody would bother to cheat,
>> but if they did, why would anybody care?
>>

Because it makes the whole spectacle false.
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 Tue 4 Aug 15 17:40 
 Doping in sport - Zero
>> Who cares;

I care.

>>it's only a game. I can't see why anybody would bother to cheat,

clearly then, to them, its more than "only" a game

>> but if they did, why would anybody care?

Because its an achievement, its a spectacle, its gladiatorial, its competition, and sometimes its even exciting.

If its pre ordained by chemistry its none of those things.
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 Tue 4 Aug 15 18:03 
 Doping in sport - Robin O'Reliant
>> Who cares; it's only a game. I can't see why anybody would bother to cheat,
>> but if they did, why would anybody care?
>>
If you earn what most professional sportsmen earn (Not that much) in a very short career with no job security, and you have a family and a mortgage like most other people it matters a great deal when those you compete against are cheating.

It's only a game for spectators and amateurs.
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 Tue 4 Aug 15 18:45 
 Doping in sport - Dutchie
I remember Tommy Simpson died of drug overdose.I used like watching him on Dutch television struggling but never gave up against the superior Belgian riders.

When there is a lot of money at stake the temptation is big to look for that edge.
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 Tue 4 Aug 15 19:31 
 Doping in sport - Robin O'Reliant
>> I remember Tommy Simpson died of drug overdose.
>>

A combination of amphetamines, brandy, heat exhaustion and a very unusual ability to push himself well beyond the limits where other riders would have given up. Simpson was reckoned to have been close to being technically dead and beyond revival before he actually collapsed off the bike.
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 Wed 5 Aug 15 10:51 
 Doping in sport - Mapmaker
>>If you earn what most professional sportsmen earn

I don't really understand that either. I cannot really conceive why you would pay to watch somebody else play a game. I cannot conceive why you would be a 'fan'. It is only a game; why care which side wins? Enjoy watching people with high levels of skill doing something well if you wish; but why worry who wins?
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 Wed 5 Aug 15 11:07 
 Doping in sport - No FM2R
>>I cannot really conceive why you would pay to watch somebody else play a game.

Or what about paying to watch someone pretending to be someone else. Like actors, for example.

>>Enjoy watching people with high levels of skill doing something well if you wish; but why worry who wins?

Because its part of the enjoyment.

I think you're being a little silly about this. Surely not trolling?
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 Wed 5 Aug 15 14:14 
 Doping in sport - legacylad
I used to pay to watch soccer....Huddersfield Town, Leeds Utd but gave it up 20 +years ago when I went into retailing. To be honest I preferred a busy ten hours in the shop on a Saturday to watching soccer anyway. I played competitive sports, Rugby, Cricket, Squash and even 5 a side until my late 40s, maybe a little later with the latter, but not to a very high standard. Sunday morning pub football I gave up in my twenties after being kicked up in the air once too often by some Neanderthal. I would have been very peed off if I thought that I was playing against anyone taking performance enhancing drugs, so multiply that a thousand times by some honest pro sportsman competing again cheats.
I'm trying to 'save' my body these days, so kayaking & skiing are the only strenuous sports I participate in. Long distance walking, backpacking & wild camping are just hobbies for want of a better word.
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 Wed 5 Aug 15 14:48 
 Doping in sport - Mapmaker
>>I think you're being a little silly about this.

Honestly, I think you're being a little silly about this. I don't expect to convince anybody, nor necessarily for anybody to agree with me. But why trolling?

I quite enjoy watching racing. I think it's essential to have a pound riding on the outcome. Even snail racing can 'almost' be exciting; the key thing is that it is a close race.
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 Wed 5 Aug 15 16:51 
 Doping in sport - Manatee
Perhaps it isn't surprising that 'cheating' continues wholesale despite rigorous testing. In fact, it would be more surprising if it didn't.

Why? Because

- the objective is that nobody should use proscribed substances; but

- the tool for enforcing that is that the athlete has to pass the drug tests

So, the sport internalises this in the usual way and sees the objective as passing the test. It's exactly the same as the police under-recording crimes so as to hit the detection rates, or A&E units leaving patients waiting outside in ambulances so that don't don't exceed the four hour target for getting them through.

In effect, they are set an upper limit for the amount of each substance. If they can stay under that, then they are achieving the target they have been set, so it can be rationalised as 'not cheating'.
Last edited by: Manatee on Wed 5 Aug 15 at 16:52
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 Thu 6 Aug 15 11:36 
 Doping in sport - Mapmaker
>>In effect, they are set an upper limit for the amount of each substance. If they can stay under that, then they are achieving the target they have been set, so it can be rationalised as 'not cheating'.

Which is a very good reason for allowing a free-for-all.
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