Cleansing Cycling
It is no secret that performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) have plagued cycling for the past few decades. While the Lance Armstrong era has passed, the Cycling Independent Reform Commission (CIRC) estimates that 20% – 90% of the peloton is still doping. The most frightening part of this statistic is its confidence interval, which demonstrates how difficult it is to catch these dopers.
The reason for doping in cycling is simple game theory. An athlete competing at the highest level in cycling is looking for any edge to put them from an average professional to a superstar raking in 450,000 euros in a single Tour de France. There are three possible scenarios: dope with success, dope with consequences, or be clean. The performance benefits of PEDs are unquestioned, some even speculate that there has not been a clean winner of the Tour de France in the past 25 years. The only negatives associated with doping are being caught and banned for a measly two years, and health side effects. However, with advancement in medicine, health side effects are better managed than the past. Additionally, since there is more money in cheating than catching cheaters, testing has fallen behind and advancements like micro-doping are now nearly impossible to detect. For example, in a recent scandal, top cyclist Chris Froome of Team Sky dropped convicted doper and Tour de France Champion Alberto Contador to put Froome an insane four minutes ahead of the second place in Le Tour. Even more scandalous was the fact that Froome was rumoured to have done this, France’s hardest mountain, with an average heart rate of around 160. Many point at this unbelievable performance as impossible, but Froome has never failed an official drug test.
As stated in the LA Times article, Froome’s innocence is irrelevant. The only important piece of information is that cyclists and fans alike believe him to be doping. Since other cyclists believe he is cheating, more cyclists will cheat due to the idea of Nash Equlibrium. Regardless of Froome’s guilt, non-doping competitors will either dope to compete with him and other Grand Challenge competitors, or be rendered obsolete as more dopers rising through the ranks take their spots as top riders.
Even when these athletes are caught, they will not turn on their competitors. This is due to “and agreement among members that if you get caught, you keep your mouth shut and fall on your sword.” Refusal to cooperate with the authorities to avoid the two year ban and turn in a few competitors does not violate the prisoner’s dilemma. A confession hurts the entire sport of cycling, with everyone losing money. However, complete denial such as Alberto Contador blaming his failed test for clenbuterol on ‘bad meat’ or Frank Schleck claiming he ‘consumed a contaminated product’, allows for both athletes to return to a cycling culture where they succeed and profit off of in two years or less. Because of the extreme lack of punishment for participating in the ruining of cycling, it is advantageous for the caught athletes to simply take a couple years off instead of doing the right thing.
The current approach to doping prevention is advancements in testing. These tests are proven to be ineffective. Instead we must look at the example the LA Times article raises about disgraced 2006 Tour de France winner Floyd Landis. He is a man who confessed when he “lost his savings, his home, his marriage, and his livelihood, he reached a state of disequilibrium, and … he apparently decided that he had nothing left to lose and now wants to clear his conscience and clean up his sport.” While I do not personally agree with the destruction of Landis’ life to get him to change his mind on his confession, I do believe that caught cheaters in cycling should all reach that point of disequilibrium. They need to reach that point where it is no longer advantageous for themselves to keep quiet. With heavier fines and longer bans, cycling can reach a point where it may be advantageous in the short term to dope, someone will eventually turn you in because the punishment for silence is too great. When the punishment for cheating even comes close to the financial and social gains of winning, the Tour De France might then be determined by who is willing to go the extra mile and not the extra needle.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/02/opinion/la-oe-0702-shermer-doping-20100702