Have you considered that those rules and regulations will cause people to optimize PEDs for undetectablility rather than effectiveness leading to people taking even more dangerous drugs than if they were legal? You see a similar thing with recreational drugs where people can't get a hold of or can't risk a failed drug test for relatively harmless illegal drugs so they use much more harmful legal substances.

Look at Pride Fighting Championships(basically japanese UFC) which was around for 10 years without any doping tests. Where were all the problems we're supposed to be afraid of? Or hell, look at pro wrestling. The fear mongering over PEDs is absurd.

There can be rules, but let's stop pretending no one takes drugs. It's just ridiculous to believe that any athlete is not doped at this stage, except for certain disciplines where muscular mass or stamina has no advantage whatsoever.

I think that's highly unfair, and defamatory towards those who do compete fairly.

Like anything in life, there are some bad apples, some honest people, and some in the middle. The rules help keep the honest people honest and give them a fighting chance.

Yeah, life is unfair, that's big news. Many athletes who retire and move away from the competition have revealed over the years what's happening behind the scene. Unless you consider everything they say is BS, it's really a small minority who is not taking any drug.

The ones who have doped obviously want to justify their actions by saying "everyone else is doing it too!"

So yeah, to some degree what they are saying is BS, which is kind of what you'd expect from cheaters.

At some periods in time in some sports, it's probably less BS, because many of them were doing it.

It's a long and complex discussion, without, clearly, much chance of getting accurate data.

But there are guys out there competing clean.

> The ones who have doped obviously want to justify their actions by saying "everyone else is doing it too!"

There's a non negligible chance they are telling the truth, too. What's the point of saying that everyone does it instead of continuing to pretend the said sport is clean? This is rather a behavior indicating they realized something was wrong.

And I'm not really convinced that, in cycling, for example, it's realistic to have cyclists run through hundreds of kilometers of mountains day after day and still being as fresh as ever. But hey, believe what you want.

I don't doubt they're mostly telling the truth about themselves, but beyond that? It's more difficult to say.

> And I'm not really convinced that, in cycling, for example, it's realistic to have cyclists run through hundreds of kilometers of mountains day after day and still being as fresh as ever. But hey, believe what you want.

Ah, "it's tough, so it can't be true!". Those guys are the best at the world at what they do, and the ones they show on TV, are of course in the lead, so by default the ones in good shape. If you go see a bicycle race in person, you also get to see the ones lagging behind, some of whom are suffering a great deal. Truth be told, so are the ones in the lead, they're just going faster.

It's really hard to know exactly what's going on, but my whole point is that there are at least a few guys who compete clean. Saying they are all doping is extremely demeaning to those who do compete clean.