Entries tagged with “cycling” from Strangely Topical

Most track sports have a single defined action: sprinters sprint, hurdlers hurdle, pole vaulters vault.  Here's a sport, a wild crazy sport, that has two distinct sections of competition which are almost opposites.  The video is oddly fascinating to watch; who thought people going so slowly would be so interesting.  Is this more interesting than a pure one lap sprint would be?

There was yet another doping scandal at the Tour De France today.  You can read about it in the Times if you want.  I understand why people use performance enhancing drugs (such a literal compared to our usual euphemisms), but who cares about the Tour de France?

There's a relationship between doping, drug testing (negative), gain (positive), and sport popularity (positive).  In the case of the Tour de France, it's a sport that simply isn't very popular here compared to our many American sports, or in Europe to soccer.  There has been a semi-rigorous drug testing regime for the past few years, so the answer must be that the gain from using the drugs is simply too great to ignore.

You could question how, facing the same factors, Lance Armstrong was able to win so many Tours de France against opponents who were doping.  Assuming a standard rate of technological innovation with regard to these drugs, his decisions would be predicated on the same sort of data that riders see now (and a much lower popularity)...