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Because it's such a tough sport. The Tour de France was originally intended to be so tough that only one person might finish it. In other words it was set up to

Because it's such a tough sport. The Tour de France was originally intended to be so tough that only one person might finish it. In other words it was set up to be extremely hard for most normal athletes to compete without some kind of artificial assistance. So there was a history of drug taking from the start. But after the scandals of 20 years ago it became one of the most tested sports in the world. So now, in my opinion, drugs are not used much compared to other relatively untested sports (maybe some microdosing). Instead sports science has taken over. Pogacar, the current TdF champion works with a someone who is a contributor in mitochondria research. Something that has made a big difference in the last few years is the amount of carbohydrates the riders take in during a stage etc. etc.

ekianjo 1y ago
> drugs are not used much they just switched to drugs you cant easily detect.
- lonelyasacloud 1y ago
  For the prestigious pro events samples are kept for years afterwards and are subject to re-testing at any time as science advances. If any of those re-tests fails (or if cheating comes to light through any other means) the rider would be dq'd, stripped of the result, and be liable to pay back prize any and sponsorship money. These are riders in their twenties, that's such a long time to rely on getting away with it I personally do not think it's happening at the highest pro-level.
  - koolba 1y ago
    > For the prestigious pro events samples are kept for years afterwards and are subject to re-testing at any time as science advances. That’s easy to solve. Use some of the prize money to stage an elaborate heist of the blood sample and replace it with a clean sample. I bet this would make a good movie. Could be called “Blood Spoke”.
    - defrost 1y ago
      Their Wheel Be Blood by the Traffic Cone Brothers.
  - borroka 1y ago
    Of course it happens. At the highest levels and at the amateur levels. People want to win. It's like telling people they shouldn't commit crimes because they might end up in prison or worse. But people continue to commit crimes and end up in prison when they are caught, or worse, when they are killed. If prostitution is the oldest profession in the world, according to some, cheating is the oldest way to gain an advantage. I mean, just a few weeks ago, we found out about a guy who was working for I don't know how many companies at the same time, that a start-up had developed some artificial intelligence software to cheat during tech interviews and had secured some good funding. Well, but that can't happen in sport, even though it's been happening since the dawn of time. Sport is business, and business is dirty.
- f4c39012 1y ago
  "just"
  - swores 1y ago
    That word can mean several different things. In their sentence "just" means "only", as in "only switched, not stopped", it doesn't mean it was simple which is presumably what you are replying assuming it meant.
- stefs 1y ago
  ah, the magic undetectable drug that's just the right kind of effective without the pesky side effects, which you'd need other undetectable drugs for. this drug would be worth a lot of money, but we'll keep secret except just for the one top performer, because wide distribution would increase the risk of a leak substantially. and remember: the top performers getting busted would probably mean the end of pro cycling as we know it for decades. cycling isn't a huge money maker for financial investors like football, rather it's a money pit for sponsors. do sponsors love a podium placement more than being forever associated with dirty cheaters? they'd risk it all for modest gains. a young superstar would trade a life of a good salaried position with some more money but also a high risk of being banned from the sport forever, thus no source of income at all and also the questionable title of being the killer of a whole sport. so imo: it's possible, but unlikely.
  - 0xAFFFF 1y ago
    It's not necessarily a new performance-enhancing molecule that nobody has heard of, but alternative posology or training regimen to stay under detection threshold, new masking products, etc. Doping has been a cat-and-mouse game for decades, it's not unrealistic to think this is still happening. The fact that Pogacar this year managed to reach Bjarne "Mr. 60%" Riis levels of performance in the mountain makes you wonder if this is only standard athletic and performance science or if they're something else.
  - pge 1y ago
    I would argue that history suggests this is likely. The dopers have substantially more financial resources than the testers. EPO is a great example. It was widely used in cycling for almost 10 years before tests were developed. It was pretty much a miracle drug from a performance standpoint and undetectable. The very few cyclists that tried to blow the whistle were run out of the sport. Similarly, blood doping was widely used for a decade after the EPO test was developed and no one ratted out the teams doing it until USADA brought the hammer down on Armstrong. It’s also worth thinking about the incentives to test and catch cheaters. Do the organizers of the Tour de France really want to bust the biggest names in the sport? That would destroy their livelihood. Do the national anti-doping authorities want the athletes from their country busted (look how many national antidopingborgs have successfully appealed adverse rulings through CAS)? It’s in everyone’s best interest to bust a low level doper here and there to make it look like they are watching but to ignore the big names that fans are coming to see. All of this is also why motor doping is unlikely. Motor doping leaves incontrovertible evidence of cheating. Positive drug tests can always be challenged as either inaccurate testing or unintentional contamination.
- rantallion 1y ago
  Do you have a source to support that claim?
littlestymaar 1y ago
> The Tour de France was originally intended to be so tough that only one person might finish it. The difficulty has been toned down a lot since the early days though. (You'll never see a 466km long stage like the first of Tour de France 1903[1] ever again). [1]: https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1re_%C3%A9tape_du_Tour_de_France_1903 https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1re_%C3%A9tape_du_Tour_de_Fr...)
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
  There are still races with much longer "stages" than 466km, but they are not part of the contemporary pro-cycling world. The classic brevet events, Paris-Brest-Paris and Boston-Montreal-Boston are 1200km ridden as a single stage. PBP is older than the TDF also, starting in 1891. The nature of brevet events means that they can essentially never be a spectator sport, hence the lack of any significant attention to them.
  - wyre 1y ago
    Pedantically, brevets are not races.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
      In what sense is PBP not a race? It is a timed event, with a cutoff. The organization that runs it maintains a results list that includes times. If you mean there are no prizes, then fair enough, but that's not my definition of a race.
      - wyre 1y ago
        The nature and culture around the event discourage treating them as races. The point is completion, not competition. It shares a lot of the definition of a race while not being one.
        PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
borroka 1y ago
This is a naive view of doping, sport, and physiology. Of course, they use doping nowadays, just as they did yesterday. I would go so far as to say that all top professional athletes in individual sports use banned substances. They use methods and substances that allow them to avoid testing positive. At the highest levels, all athletes are genetically gifted. However, the performance differences created by substance-induced physiological alterations are too great to be compensated for by slight differences in genetics, training, and nutrition. Almost all records in individual sports have been broken since competitions were basically not subject to doping controls. Athletes from the DDR and the Soviet Union, and more recently from China, have used enormous amounts of hormones. Yet almost all records set in the 1980s have been broken. Is there better talent selection today? Certainly, along with better training, science, and nutrition, as well as better surfaces and shoes/equipment. But physiology reigns supreme.

ekianjo 1y ago

> drugs are not used much they just switched to drugs you cant easily detect.

lonelyasacloud 1y ago
For the prestigious pro events samples are kept for years afterwards and are subject to re-testing at any time as science advances. If any of those re-tests fails (or if cheating comes to light through any other means) the rider would be dq'd, stripped of the result, and be liable to pay back prize any and sponsorship money. These are riders in their twenties, that's such a long time to rely on getting away with it I personally do not think it's happening at the highest pro-level.
- koolba 1y ago
  > For the prestigious pro events samples are kept for years afterwards and are subject to re-testing at any time as science advances. That’s easy to solve. Use some of the prize money to stage an elaborate heist of the blood sample and replace it with a clean sample. I bet this would make a good movie. Could be called “Blood Spoke”.
  - defrost 1y ago
    Their Wheel Be Blood by the Traffic Cone Brothers.
- borroka 1y ago
  Of course it happens. At the highest levels and at the amateur levels. People want to win. It's like telling people they shouldn't commit crimes because they might end up in prison or worse. But people continue to commit crimes and end up in prison when they are caught, or worse, when they are killed. If prostitution is the oldest profession in the world, according to some, cheating is the oldest way to gain an advantage. I mean, just a few weeks ago, we found out about a guy who was working for I don't know how many companies at the same time, that a start-up had developed some artificial intelligence software to cheat during tech interviews and had secured some good funding. Well, but that can't happen in sport, even though it's been happening since the dawn of time. Sport is business, and business is dirty.
f4c39012 1y ago
"just"
- swores 1y ago
  That word can mean several different things. In their sentence "just" means "only", as in "only switched, not stopped", it doesn't mean it was simple which is presumably what you are replying assuming it meant.
stefs 1y ago
ah, the magic undetectable drug that's just the right kind of effective without the pesky side effects, which you'd need other undetectable drugs for. this drug would be worth a lot of money, but we'll keep secret except just for the one top performer, because wide distribution would increase the risk of a leak substantially. and remember: the top performers getting busted would probably mean the end of pro cycling as we know it for decades. cycling isn't a huge money maker for financial investors like football, rather it's a money pit for sponsors. do sponsors love a podium placement more than being forever associated with dirty cheaters? they'd risk it all for modest gains. a young superstar would trade a life of a good salaried position with some more money but also a high risk of being banned from the sport forever, thus no source of income at all and also the questionable title of being the killer of a whole sport. so imo: it's possible, but unlikely.
- 0xAFFFF 1y ago
  It's not necessarily a new performance-enhancing molecule that nobody has heard of, but alternative posology or training regimen to stay under detection threshold, new masking products, etc. Doping has been a cat-and-mouse game for decades, it's not unrealistic to think this is still happening. The fact that Pogacar this year managed to reach Bjarne "Mr. 60%" Riis levels of performance in the mountain makes you wonder if this is only standard athletic and performance science or if they're something else.
- pge 1y ago
  I would argue that history suggests this is likely. The dopers have substantially more financial resources than the testers. EPO is a great example. It was widely used in cycling for almost 10 years before tests were developed. It was pretty much a miracle drug from a performance standpoint and undetectable. The very few cyclists that tried to blow the whistle were run out of the sport. Similarly, blood doping was widely used for a decade after the EPO test was developed and no one ratted out the teams doing it until USADA brought the hammer down on Armstrong. It’s also worth thinking about the incentives to test and catch cheaters. Do the organizers of the Tour de France really want to bust the biggest names in the sport? That would destroy their livelihood. Do the national anti-doping authorities want the athletes from their country busted (look how many national antidopingborgs have successfully appealed adverse rulings through CAS)? It’s in everyone’s best interest to bust a low level doper here and there to make it look like they are watching but to ignore the big names that fans are coming to see. All of this is also why motor doping is unlikely. Motor doping leaves incontrovertible evidence of cheating. Positive drug tests can always be challenged as either inaccurate testing or unintentional contamination.
rantallion 1y ago
Do you have a source to support that claim?

littlestymaar 1y ago

> The Tour de France was originally intended to be so tough that only one person might finish it. The difficulty has been toned down a lot since the early days though. (You'll never see a 466km long stage like the first of Tour de France 1903[1] ever again). [1]: https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1re_%C3%A9tape_du_Tour_de_France_1903 https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1re_%C3%A9tape_du_Tour_de_Fr...)

PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
There are still races with much longer "stages" than 466km, but they are not part of the contemporary pro-cycling world. The classic brevet events, Paris-Brest-Paris and Boston-Montreal-Boston are 1200km ridden as a single stage. PBP is older than the TDF also, starting in 1891. The nature of brevet events means that they can essentially never be a spectator sport, hence the lack of any significant attention to them.
- wyre 1y ago
  Pedantically, brevets are not races.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
    In what sense is PBP not a race? It is a timed event, with a cutoff. The organization that runs it maintains a results list that includes times. If you mean there are no prizes, then fair enough, but that's not my definition of a race.
    - wyre 1y ago
      The nature and culture around the event discourage treating them as races. The point is completion, not competition. It shares a lot of the definition of a race while not being one.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago

borroka 1y ago

This is a naive view of doping, sport, and physiology. Of course, they use doping nowadays, just as they did yesterday. I would go so far as to say that all top professional athletes in individual sports use banned substances. They use methods and substances that allow them to avoid testing positive. At the highest levels, all athletes are genetically gifted. However, the performance differences created by substance-induced physiological alterations are too great to be compensated for by slight differences in genetics, training, and nutrition. Almost all records in individual sports have been broken since competitions were basically not subject to doping controls. Athletes from the DDR and the Soviet Union, and more recently from China, have used enormous amounts of hormones. Yet almost all records set in the 1980s have been broken. Is there better talent selection today? Certainly, along with better training, science, and nutrition, as well as better surfaces and shoes/equipment. But physiology reigns supreme.