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What Price Victory?

FEATURE BY MAX NOBLE
31/08/2016

All mainstream sports have suffered drug scandals. From the modest, golfers taking prescription drugs to lower their heart rate, still their shaking hands, and so improve their putting, through to massive schemes such as the USSR athletic programs, or Lance Armstrong.

Many of us have just delighted to the Olympics. Yet these days the nagging doubt that maybe that stunning performance wasn't all hard work and a healthy dose of natural genetic gifts but rather a significantly scientifically assisted win haunt many of us and remove the innocent delight of pure competition.

This (European) Summer I've already watched Chris Froome dance up the side of mountains, just like Armstrong. Pulling away from exhausted world class athletes, just like Armstrong. Recovering in the blink of an eye from hours of extreme effort, just like Armstrong.

Has Chris elected to pay a price for victory, that the ever-quick-to-judge moral court of sporting fans would deem a down-payment too far? I like to think it is not so. But I do not know it is not so. So sadly world class cheats thus taint the show for us all, clean competitors, and judgemental spectators alike. A shame, but thankfully it will not kill me... Others have not been so lucky.

In the 1920's the organisers of the Tour introduced the first drug bans because they could see the toll being exacted on the riders as the endless use of pain killers and stimulants to boost performance destroyed their bodies. A tragedy that only fully unfolded with the sad death of Tom Simpson on the slopes of Mount Ventoux on 13 July 1967.

Now we marvel at the remarkable Olympian feats of Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps. Then at our leisure we can spend the next decade wondering if bio-technology advances will facilitate the tests to prove those unbelievable performances to be just that... fakery of the worst kind. Even if nothing comes out, the nagging doubt that these two, in particular, are like the big global banks and "Too big to fail" will result in cover-ups at the highest level suppressing any awkward findings. As a result doubt lingers, tainting what we all hope are pure achievements of the most inspiring kind.

Armstrong managed his team and drugs brilliantly and his enemies poorly. He then made it clear he was likely to seek political office, possibly the American Top Job. That galvanised his enemies into a course of action where trashing the Armstrong legacy was worth the public fallout for the prize of socially crippling the man himself. If Bolt and Phelps avoid making such enemies and voicing such high powered desires then any required cover-ups are likely to hold strong and the truth will never out. The cheats have tainted inspired victory for us all.

So to F1. Other than out of season party-related silliness by B-grade drivers F1 is totally free of this blight on every other sport on the planet. Yes really, all teams, team owners and drivers are saints that wish to win fairly or not at all... Really?

Let's explore a few aspects of human nature and see how we feel at the end of this little exercise.

All aspects of human power structures have suffered scandal over the years. The usual motivators are power, money, sex, or, more usually, a particular hypnotic mix of the three. All topped with a fine sprinkling of ego, and misplaced belief in being unstoppable, incapable of being wrong, and an entitlement to be more equal than those around and thus deserving of victory at any cost.

F1? A sport, a political battle ground, a drive for new technology, and road safety, and viewers, and advertising revenue, and fame, and as a result fortune... Fame. Nay, adulation, from public, team, and, no doubt, good looking people of whatever sex most appeals. Bit of a powerful mix I think. Not unlike Rome in the good old days.

Is F1 driving a sprint or a marathon? Given races can be around two hours in length, and usually take place in warm to hot climes, I'm going toward marathon. At the Olympics we dispense with the idea of a race being a sprint as 200 metres flies-by in a few scant anaerobic seconds. One needs to be a lean economic athlete to excel at endurance, not an Arnold Schwarzenegger. Do any other fields of human sporting endeavour hold such a similar need? Well let's sample a few, frequently used as cross training by drivers; skiing, swimming, running, weight training, oh, and cycling.

Has ever such sporting beauty been cursed with so unspeakable a pox? The simplest of machines gracefully integrated into the human form to provide enough speed to excite, enough sweat to show passion, and enough human touch to make house-wives across France weep each day for three weeks. Since the tears of the Festina drug scandal of the 1998 Tour de France cycling has given us all the wrong reasons to cry. Too much drug, not enough love.

Those with long memories, and a sad interest in questionable TV series, will remember Jody Scheckter winning the BBC "SuperStars" series back in 1981. At the time many that didn't follow F1 wondered how a F1 driver beat former stars of track and field. The general public saw driving as something you did sitting down. Just as rowing for a university must be an easy Pimms-fired jape, surely driving a car for two hours, with no on-coming traffic or roundabouts, must be easy! Well folks, simple fact, Jody was super silly fit. Just ask all the guys he cheerfully beat. Since then drivers have become far fitter. As an example, Mark Webber and Alain Prost cycled up L'Alpe d'Huez in the French Alps a few years back, underlining the great fitness of both men. They did a time to be proud of too.

So no question drivers are athletes, even if the forearms of Hercules are no longer required thanks to narrower tyres and power steering. And they perform at an elevated sub-maximal heart rate for around two hours.

Would improved strength improve performance? Yes to a point.
Would improved aerobic capability improve performance? Yes without question.
Would improved recovery improve performance? Yes consistency would improve.
Would improved concentration, via decreased stress and fatigue improve performance? Yes.
Would improved reflexes improve performance? Yes again.

So every area addressed by modern performance enhancing drugs is present within F1. Goodness. Given the power, fame, and money on the line would it ever enter a driver's mind to resort to underhand methods?

But what of the rest of the team? You know, the engineers, pit crew, support staff, when are they ever tested? Actually when are drivers ever tested...? Clearly F1 drivers could directly benefit from drug use, the second question is now could the rest of the team stand to benefit from drug use?

Oh dear, I do wish I'd not opened this can of (FIA non-approved) worms. A large thrust of the argument against the current sad state of drugs in cycling can be summarised as "...if we really cleaned the sport up, no one would be left racing". Well if that means the top layer of clean riders finally get a look in at the professional level, is that a bad thing?

Do we really think the public prefer to shut their eyes and pretend all is good, rather than know it is all good, you know, for sure?

Now that's one each reader is going to have to answer for themselves. Personally I prefer the pain of full knowledge, and the release of knowing competition is as clean and pure as we can manage. Dispatch the fakers and get in the "best of the rest". Sure records will cease to be broken for some time. But clean is good.

I still admire Lance as the best of his drug-taking generation. No one else pulled it together as he did. Did that make what he did right? No! Of course not! I'm bitterly disappointed. Yet he still won. And winning earns respect.

So back to F1. Does Adrian use black label, team issue only, Red Bull to power his brain? I doubt it. But some lesser engineers might use stimulants to keep stride with the great man.

Does any engineer in the whole of F1 use anything artificial to stimulate their minds, keep them awake, give them 'brighter' ideas? Well based on every other area of human endeavour on the planet I'd say it is a significant possibility. When will the FIA appear at the door of the design centres at 7:00am and test each person that walks in? Not this week I'm guessing...

So now we have widened our net, highlighted areas of potential advantage, and identified that substances that could aid do exist for all those areas. So now we get to bedrock. To what extent do we believe that cheating for potential gain is such a part of the human psyche that someone in the thousands employed within F1 is abusing substances for a potential gain?

It's highly unlikely the answer to that is "...none at all they are each and everyone of them, Saints." I mean that's untrue for every sport currently contested at any significant level. It was Bernie who I first saw quoted as saying, "First you get good, then you get rich, then you get honest. Always that order." Bernie knows the extent to which one needs to be willing to take risks to gain the prize. Adapting within the rules is brilliance. Breaking the rules is cheating. Getting caught is surely the worst part...

Does anyone think Lance could have sat on the sofa all day, hitting the fresh puff donuts like a good one, popped a couple of pills and buried the entire peloton for three weeks around France? Of course not. He still had to work harder, train smarter, and hurt more than every other man in the pack to win. But it was more than organic oats and fresh orange juice powering him.

Human growth hormone to allow harder training and stronger recovery.

Blood doping to improve aerobic fitness and endurance (with parallel gains in longer clearer concentration and a retention of reaction speed under duress).

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READERS COMMENTS

 

1. Posted by Spindoctor, 14/09/2016 14:28

"Whilst this kind of speculation is "interesting" in an academic sort of a way, I'd have to echo Rhett Butler: "Quite frankly my dear, I don't give a damn".

Were F1 something approaching a "sport" rather than a cash-cow; and if it were growing not declining then possibly the issues raised might have some relevance. But it isn't really a sport anymore, and despite Bernie's huge PR efforts (shame he didn't put that effort into F1) , is haemorrhaging trackside and TV audiences."

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2. Posted by OpelGT, 09/09/2016 16:17

"All of this makes one wonder if Sports Journalists also should be required to take "doping" tests?"

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3. Posted by phil_gv, 07/09/2016 22:16

"Squared jaw like Webber and Coulthard ! lol
I think the teams started cheating since day 1 ( too much at
stake ). But more in the interpretation of the rule-book ( à la water
cooled brakes ballast for Williams and Lotus to achieve minimum weight
after the race / GV crossed the line in third, but he was disqualified after the race when a protest of his Ferrari's rear wing was upheld by the officials ( USA Grand prix west 1982 ). Even though driving aids were banned in 1992, Williams surely had them in 1993. IMHO, computers are running the show for the past 2 decades. This is why I stopped watching , the cars look all the same or almost. This is what happens when the design is driven by simulation and the more $$$ you have the more simulations you can make. In terms of the staff and engineers , they must be running on something. I've been doing structural and fluid simulations for a long time and I need a couple of Red-Bulls from time to time ( especially after 10 hours in front of the pc swearing at my own mistake ! "

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4. Posted by nonickname, 07/09/2016 15:54

"If you read most of the drivel from the team managers you could almost believe that they are all smoking something."

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5. Posted by jasman, 31/08/2016 17:45

"Beware, the "super boffins" are coming! ;-)"

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6. Posted by BrightonCorgi, 31/08/2016 16:59

"PED's are 100% being used in F1. The stakes are too great, not to. "

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