The tour rocked by scandal

Performance enhancing drugs, testosterone, blood transfusions, random drug testing ... all part of the international cycling scene. And this year's Tour de France is marred by controversy again while last year's winner is as yet unconfirmed as Floyd Landis defends himself against drugs charges.

The problem is that the tour is really very very hard indeed. I mean like ridiculously hard. Like almost impossible hard. I mean like people die on those mountains hard.

What do you do ? It's really a distillation of the whole sporting prowess thing that affects swimming, athletics, gymnastics.

Do you make the competitions easier ?

Is there a limit to unenhanced human performance ?

Is it reasonable to expect people to continue to break world records ?

What does it mean if they do or don't ?

Comments

Anonymous said…
There has to be a limit to how fast we can go. It would be madness to think someone could run 100 metres in 5 seconds for example. The secret of being a world record breaker is to choose a sport that is only just becoming "professional" or which requires a long time to do it. That way it is still possible to shave a few seconds off the time. However techniques can help as in highjumping (Boston flip) and materials can help as in the pole vault. Personally I have decided that I am not going to break any sporting records, so I'm not going to even try!
10:28 am
Anonymous said…
this is one of the reasons i respect lance so much. the best performance-enhancer is hard work--sacrifice. i don't think the sports should be toned down, but i do think the drugs and enhancers should be stripped out. what's the good of winning if you didn't do it? that defeats the idea behind sport. if we quit breaking records, it means we've found the best, if you ask me.
1:34 pm
Alan said…
Very true, McCarnan III. I read Lance's "Every second counts" and was so challenged by him training on Christmas Day. It mattered to him that much.
1:37 pm
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