In Kenya, EPO is being provided by unscrupulous agents. At least according to Kipchoge. Besides that, I have no clue where they get EPO or other PEDs.

Is doping really cheating? Is what Rita Jeptoo did the same as if she took a taxi to get ahead of the other athletes and win her marathons?

For a different take on these questions read Malcolm Gladwell's article below.

http://www.newyorker.com.../09/09/man-and-superman

As someone said in another thread, life isn't fair. Guys in the states have better training facilities, coaching, kit...etc A runner in Kenya e.g, has added advantage due to longer exposure to high altitude training....

How do we determine what's unfair "advantage" over someone else while clearly factors such as environment, science, genes...etc can give someone an edge?

I say its a progressive world. Allow doping and we get to see how human minds can stretch the limits of science and human evolution through innovation...

why weren't fans jaded in the 60s and 70s when testing didn't exist? why do fans of sports that dont drug test like bodybuilding and power lifting get jaded?

this is a fantastic article

Doping is NOT like taking your child to a good school. It is plain cheating. It is like exam leakage, robbing a bank, mugging, car jacking, pickpocketing etc.

Taking your child to a good school is like hiring a good coach or getting better training facilities.

For a mainstream sport to be legitimate, it has to rely on natural ability and hard work, not unnatural chemicals.

Aside from that, doping has horrible side effects as I posted in the other thread. PIf doping becomes a requirement, you will have children as young as 12 and 13 starting to dope and their lives will be ruined by a myriad of health problems, even death. People should stop being myopic.

Gracias @ Kusadikika, that link is really insightful.

Maybe we ought to rethink sports as a competition in order to factor in advantages such as technological, environmental and genetic advantages. Rank apples versus apples and not oranges. Fair play of sorts...
In powerlifting for example, they measure the lifts either as raw or with a lifting jacket/assisted. Off course, the more you lift raw the more respect you earn from both divides.

Maybe the sports organisations should allow doping, set up and market parallel competitions.... Instead of Nike/Adidas sponsoring a team, it would be Pfizer/Novartis or any other pharmaceutical company with great R&D. Just a thought....

agreed, infact powerlifting also has codes that test for PEDs and those that dont so maybe IAAF and IOC should get rivals set up codes that dont test, if that happened bye bye IAAf and IOC

i also agree re pharma cos, the majority of current PEDs are mainly manufactured by underground labs that have low quality controls, i remember reading an article on how the original dianobal 5mg packed a mad punch, nothing like current d-bols....

Glancing at Olympic medal standings is like looking at a list of the richest countries in the world. Already many teams are alienated from many competitions and medal tables due to little or no budgets all else equal. Meaning, even before the next Olympics, we can predict the ranking of many teams within a small margin of error. Having money is already a very huge advantage. I can bet that it's the single largest unfair advantage in sports. Does it mean the ones without a budget shouldn't participate all together? Not really, because for example, Kenyans and Ethiopians enter the competitions with their own set of advantages.

@ Kizee I totally agree with you. I think allowing doping leads more to convergence than divergence and open up sports farther to more audiences.

@Alba I agree that there might be some problems but what we are saying is that the advantages of doping shall not only be felt in the field. Imagine if a drug company was to come up with a way to make bones denser or faster healing/regenerating cells as you've said, wouldn't that be great for our old people as much as it was meant for athletes?

With regard to doping side effects, let me tell a quick story:

In 1982, Algeria played West Germany at the world cup. German coach Jupp Derwall boasted that if he lost to Algeria, he would take the first plane home.

Derwall had to eat his words because not only did Algeria beat Germany, they comprehensively outplayed them. I have watched a DVD of the match and Algeria literally ran Germany out of the field. They were tirelss running up and down and too fast on counter attacks.

Years later, some Algerian players begun to notice that their children were being born with severe birth defects. It is now known that at least 8 of their children were born handicapped.

It turns out the Russian coach Gennadi Rogov gave the Algerian players PEDs while lying that they were vitamins. The side effects of those PEDs were not known at the time. We now know that they cause children to be born with mental and physical handicaps.

http://www.goal.com/en/n...eria-doping-accusations

The case of East Germany is even worse. The East German women were pumped with so much androgenic drugs that some lost their uterus. One ended up having to get a sex change because her testosterone level became too high.

Here is a pic of Andreas Krieger who ended up having to get gender re-assignment surgery.


Picture of Andreas Krieger

Andreas used to be a woman.
So I urge you to think again of you think making PEDs legal is a good thing