Doping and Age Groupers

Who will admit to seeing evidence of it???

The fact is it is there, and probably more prevalent than we think, especially with more affluent and competitive age groupers.  They are basically never tested, so there is no risk in their eyes.

If you have the money, you can buy the ability ........ it is unfortunate, but it is the way of endurance sports.

And no, I have not personally witnessed it, nor have I ever done any sort of performance enhancement.

As I am feeling frisky today, I will cross-post my thoughts from the Vino thread:

I am sure that the sport of triathlon is COMPLETELY and UTTERLY DEVOID of those who would cheat using biochemical means.

All endurance athletes who use performance enhancing drugs or blood doping are exclusively confined to the sports of professional cycling and track & field.

Yes, I did barely manage to say that with a straight face.

Either you forgot the sarcasm font, or you're incredibly naive.

or the sarcasm was so incredibly obvious that the sarcasm font was not necessary.

Okay, so what do I know ... actually, some, I went semi-pro (e.g. talented but starving) in another EXTREMELY DOPE-RIFE sport ... but my guess about tri is that a lot of the dopers are people who just ain't that good anyway ... the midlifers with the 5K bikes who can *almost* break into FOP.

I think it's existant but not rampant at the top levels. Tri isn't a money sport like cycling or football. It's also not team-based like cycling where domestiques get kicked to the curb if they can't tow, so there's not as much "everybody is doing it, I have to" pressure.

Now you're really being naive ...... not trying to be rude, but c'mon.

It is even worse because if you are a long distance triathlete the money is not that much unless you are consistently winning.  And BECAUSE it is just you against everyone else, they have only their own abilities to rely on (like track and field and powerlifting/bodybuilding).  The pressure is even higher to perform when it is just you representing your sponsors and your results mean the difference between eating that week or not .......

wow, this paragraph sets of my naivete radar big-time

You don't think there's humongous pressure to be the best (or starve, or go sell insurance) in pro triathlon?

I've heard griping about. USAT has made claims they would start testing age groupers but never have. But that suggests to me that there is more going on than most of us know.

But to answer the question. I would bet money that people do but I couldn't say how frequently. But at the gym there are guys doping just for the hell of it so I think it would be naive to say age-groupers never dope, especially considering how invested some people are in their lifestyle.

I guess I should have qualified my answer. I'm going mostly by articles I've read and a quote from an USAT official which I have at home but I'm at my office at the moment.  Anyway the other part is just an observation about human nature.

I am with you regarding the "why bother?" part. I personally would have nothing to gain, and I would derive little satisfaction from winning an age group event through doping (talk about extreme) but plenty of people do dumb things.

Well, we don't need those dirty hippies in our sport. Let them go try something else, like cyclocross.

Close ....

But what they really do is extract all the white bloods cells and such out of the blood so that it has a very high red blood cell count and then inject this into the athlete.  Makes it VERY concentrated and yes, it is a huge health risk, which is why not many people will do it.

Short story, they pull blood, spin it in a centrifuge, and put it back in.  The issue is that the blood is thicker, and athletes have died from this.  It takes time, but yes, it can kill a person. 

I agree, to me, (and I'm still very new, fat and slow) it would be like cutting off some of the run, or not going out to the last swim buoy or something like that.  Yeah, I might place, but I'd never be able to look at the medal / award / etc without it eating at me.  I do this because I get pride out of doing it.  I like that people look @ me and say "You did that?"  Yeah, not very fast (getting faster), but yeah, I did that.  Cheating by blood doping, EPO, etc would ruin all that for me. 

On a related note though, what do you consider cheating?  I've heard some people who consider things like creatine cheating...  What about an inhaler, especially if you don't need one?  I don't use either, but if you follow the thought to its absurd but logical conclusion, isn't the training itself a performance enhancer?  Can I file a protest someday because somebody trained harder than me?

A very good question. Just thinking out loud here, but I think the line is drawn at substances that will enhance performance without additional training. For instance, extra testosterone in your system will allow you to gain some muscle mass just sitting on your couch. Steroids also enhance your recovery so that you can train longer than you normally would. Creatine will also enhance your recovery ability, but it won't do anything for you unless you actually go and train, i.e., you won't gain muscle just sitting on your couch.

You don't think there's humongous pressure to be the best (or starve, or go sell insurance) in pro triathlon?

Of course there is. Huge, almost unbelievable, perhaps even more so because the rewards (comparatively) are so few.

Depends on the definition of existant vs. rampant ... yes, I think there's doping at high-level tri (and AG, for that matter). Do I think it's at the level of pro cycling? No.

And it never really did much for me. Then again, I never had the patience to take the stuff the required 3 times a day during the "loading" phase, so I probably did it wrong. Which brings up another point. To get benefit from any type of drug or supplement, you really need to know what the h$ll you're doing. The reality is that because drug use in sports is illegal, there's no "how to" manual readily available (although the Internet is changing this a bit). If you're an amateur/age grouper (this is different from the pros who have access to some shady physicians), you're basically relying on word of mouth information from other users. Maybe the other users knew what they were doing, maybe not.

And your factual basis for this belief is...?