Canadian Cyclist Admits to Doping

It doesn't seem to shock me anymore! About a month or so ago another professional endurance bicyclist has admitted to doping. This time it was a Canadian - the best Canadian male cyclist of the last decade. Ryder Hesjedal was outed in a book written by former Danish pro cyclist Michael Rasmussen called 'Yellow Fever'  ('Gul Feber' in Danish).  Rasmussen claims that he observed Ryder Hesjedal partaking of endurance enhancing doping products when they were teammates.
   Ryder Hesjedal. came out and admitted to the allegations - in a way. He claims that he tried performance enhancing substances for a short time about ten years ago. He then realized the error of his ways and has not doped since then. This may be a partial truth! It's like the mayor of Toronto admitting that he did smoke crack - but only once while under the seductive influence of the Rum Goddess.
   Like the party-loving mayor, Ryder H. may be confessing but only to the sins that have been discovered. Only the tip of the iceberg appears above the water. There is much lurking down below in the darkness of the deep.
   Let us look at the facts:

• Ryder Hesjedal. won the Giro d'Italia in 2012.
• Ryder Hesjedal. was contending in the Tour de France the same year. He had to drop out due to injury. The Tour de France is the summit event of professional endurance bicycling.
• Ryder Hesjedal won the Lionel Conacher Award in 2013 as Canada'a best male athlete.

   Are we to believe that Ryder Hesjedal. only took performance enhancing drugs 10 years ago. Eight years later he has his best year ever in endurance cycling. Sorry, but it just doesn't work that way!
Ryder Hesjedal was also a member of Lance Armstrong's Discovery team a few years back. I suppose every one else on Lance's team was dirty except him!
   Don't get me wrong. I like the guy. He seems humble and personable. He is also trying to succeed in a sport in which the culture of doping runs deep. I suspect that a Tour de France aspirant isn't going to make the team without chemical enhancement. You either join the program or quit!
    I remember a triple jumper from Edmonton, Alberta failing a doping test in the early 1990's. He was a heck of a nice kid. He was a perennial Canadian Champion but he kept missing out on making World Championship or Olympic teams. The standards were too tough. The standards, of course, were based on the results of the world's top triple jumpers.Many of them were likely juiced and helped drive the qualifying standards to an impossible level. My triple jumping acquaintance finally got sick of working his butt off and missing out. He got on the program and made the World Championship and Olympic teams. Then he got busted. To his credit, he admitted to it all - not just some of it.
   What I don't like are these partial truths. Olympic sprinter Marion Jones didn't juice before 2000. A Rod only took P.E.D.'s one winter in the Dominican Republic at the urging of his 'cousin'.  Give me a break!  Love him or hate him, at least Jose Canseco admitted to a long history of PED use.

   For many years the Canadian bodybuilding gurus, Joe and Ben Weider, petitioned to have bodybuilding admitted as an Olympic sport. The reason for rejection was usually said to be that posing on a stage was more art than sport. However, the rampant use of steroids at bodybuilding's top levels probably scared the International Olympic Committee the most. Yet other sports continue to operate under dark clouds of suspicion. Track and field, endurance cycling, and weightlifting endure scandal after scandal. Amateur wrestling runs mostly scandal free but got dropped from the Olympics before finally being reinstated!  I don't get it! This brings up some points of debate:

• Could there be an argument to allow these Performance Enhancing Drugs and hire a multitude of doctors to try and keep the risks minimal?
• The users usually seem to be a step ahead of the testers
• Spectators and fans want to see the phenomenal performances no matter how they were achieved.
• There are those who will protest this point of view for moral, ethical and medical reasons.
• Would you rather have your legal age kids on steroids and doing sports at a high level or doing narcotics and hanging with the riff raff? 
• I like track and field, cycling and weightlifting as a fanatical spectator. I don't want them dropped. I love watching them! There are many like me.

I don't have the absolute answers. I just like to provoke a discussion on a topic that seems to have no conclusion in sight!

One other thing. If you are a Fitness Trainer and get involved in the world of Performance Enhancing Drugs you are hovering like a fly - waiting for the windshield on the freeway!


Until next time,...........keep fit!

Little Bobby Strong

Professional endurance bicycling has a long history of  tainted  performers and unscrupulous handlers overstepping the boundaries of fairness with questionable substances and illicit elixirs !

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