I’m not suggesting some sort of program sanction, just vacating victories over team you defeated after in-season in-person scouting. Note also I’m suggesting it be applied to everybody. That seems objective, focused, and consistent.
I chose cycling as an example for two reasons. First, it’s my true passion and second, it’s very relevant here. It appears you’re confusing different types of doping. It’s a broad term for many practices in many sports, some of which are dangerous to the athlete while others are not at all dangerous. They’re simply cheating.
Read Armstrong’s book “It’s Not About the Bike” and you learn he was a mediocre cycling pro before testicular cancer, largely due to his biathlon background. Swimming builds upper body muscles, which are dead weight for a cyclist. Grand tour GC contenders are freaks of nature with very low body mass and incredible ability to process oxygen (VO2 max). The chemo that saved Armstrong‘s life somehow withered away his muscles but left his lungs intact. He returned to cycling without the upper body mass but with the highest VO2 max ever measured at the place that tested him. The rest is history.
I‘m a 68 year old male with very respectable estimated VO2 max, but my 60 year old wife’s is incredible, in the top 1% for her age and comparable to a 20 year old athlete. There are very few 50 year old males who can hang with her on a tough climb. Armstrong was likely unbeatable even w/o doping (like MI w/o scouting) but greed for a bigger edge took over (like MI). Doping in cycling is focused on increasing the amount of oxygen your blood can carry, while anything increasing muscle mass is terrible. One of the most common doping methods was blood transfusions, often using your own blood, banked earlier. This is absolutely harmless to the athlete, but it nearly killed the sport. Fans grew disillusioned (like B1G fans over MI cheating), sponsors started to ditch the sport, and the boom in recreational/amateur cycling faded as the American hero was exposed as a cheat. When news leaked out about Armstrong’s team reclined in their bus receiving transfusions, the UCI did not act to save the athletes (it was utterly harmless to them), but to save the sport.
“Everybody did it“ in that era and many have since been punished. Testing is now incredibly thorough with blood drawn from every stage winner and violations are now rare. Ironically, Armstrong might well have won even w/o doping. We’ll never know whether it affected the outcome (like MI cheating). Maybe he needed to have his team doped to win? Just about everybody agrees vacating his wins was only fair. Now there’s focus on possible hidden batteries and motors, with bikes x-rayed after victories in climbing stages. The UCI learned their lesson on cheating. It’s corrosive and shouldn’t be tolerated in any sport. So yes, I’m for zero tolerance, a level playing field.
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