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Wiggins/Froome Asthma

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12357…17

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    #122
    robyntmorton
    Registered Users Posts: 4,263 ✭✭✭robyntmorton


    Chuchote wrote: »
    The rules suggested are kind of eugenicist, it seems to me; only the Perfect Man, without any flaw to his native health, can be entitled to compete. If you have to take medicine for asthma or epilepsy or diabetes or depression or any of the horrors that haunt our bodies, you're barred.

    Nail. Head. I have high blood pressure, due to my kidneys getting damaged by a small growth. Not my fault, but it happened. Now I take 3 different medications. One disqualifies me from shooting and archery (taken in competition), one is okay to take, and one comes as a compounded version (that I was taken off last week) that disqualifies me from everything outright.

    Obviously, I am not in competition. I enjoy cycling for the fun of it, and that it can help my health, physical and mental. If I was looking to compete, why should I be barred by an unlucky chance.

    It can't be left to the "perfect man". Let's be honest. Nobody is perfect. Anyone who claims to be is either lying, or needs to see a doctor, who can acknowledge or disprove their perfection, and record it for future generations to admire too.


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    #123
    gordongekko
    Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭gordongekko


    Chuchote wrote: »
    Thinking about this. When I was a youngun I was like a little spring. If it were nowadays I have no doubt I would have been spotted and trained in gymnastics or athletics. I could jump my own height, I was fearless of heights, I could outrun everyone I knew, I spent most of my time standing on my hands or doing cartwheels or cycling.

    But I was sick a lot - measles five times, between German and Allied; bronchial pneumonia a couple of times; mumps; whooping cough; rheumatic fever. It wasn't till I was 15 that I was diagnosed with asthma. By that time I'd already spent six years on daily penicillin.

    If there hadn't been antibiotics (and if people hadn't developed near-immunities to antibiotics due to their constant use on meat, eggs and milk animals) I'd have been dead. But under the rules suggested here, I certainly wouldn't have been allowed to compete.

    The rules suggested are kind of eugenicist, it seems to me; only the Perfect Man, without any flaw to his native health, can be entitled to compete. If you have to take medicine for asthma or epilepsy or diabetes or depression or any of the horrors that haunt our bodies, you're barred.

    Of course you'd be allowed complete. The point being any drugs you were allowed take would be open to everyone to take.

    Of course the healthy ( I don't know how else to describe them ) won't take the drugs as its not a performance enhancing drug. And you since you are taking them wouldn't have a problem with anyone else taking them.


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    #124
    PeadarCo
    Registered Users Posts: 1,937 ✭✭✭PeadarCo


    gordongekko wrote:
    There shouldn't be. Its an impossibly tough race. But what we are seeing is increasing speeds, more climbing and more finishers. We are fostering and encouraging a secret form of cheating where its more of an advantage to be "sick" than healthy.

    The Tour de France these days is a far shorter face than it was for the first 60 years of its life. Before that time it had more in common with a multi stage audax than the stage racing as we know it today, particularly in its earliest years.

    These days bikes are orders of magnitudes better. 2 speed bikes versus 11speed derailleur bikes for example. There have been massive advances in sport science and the training tools available to riders. Stuff like power metres, portable heart rate monitor's are relatively recent inventions. They enable people to train far more smartly and provide far better feedback on a rider's physical capabilities. In addition more powerful computers can far better analysis that data.

    Also anybody who racing the Tour has been at a high level for a number of years and putting in large amounts of time. Take a look at some of the mid level to top juniors in Ireland and you'll see the massive amount of training they put in. Far more than your average sportive or club league/A4/3 rider.

    There is dopping in cycling. But you have to draw a line somewhere. If you have asthma you should be able to take the relevant medicine within reason. The reason I'd imagine TUEs are allowed is because they don't improve performance above what a healthy person would be capable of. From my point of view any action against TUE should only be done on the basis of medical evidence.


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    #125
    nak
    Registered Users Posts: 1,538 ✭✭✭nak


    fat bloke wrote: »
    I go cycling cos it improves and maintains my health. I'm not sure if I found out it was the cause of an induced illness that I would continue to cycle :confused:

    So I should just live a sedentary life and not do what I love?


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    #126
    gordongekko
    Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭gordongekko


    nak wrote: »
    So I should just live a sedentary life and not do what I love?

    Where was that even hinted at?


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    #127
    nak
    Registered Users Posts: 1,538 ✭✭✭nak


    gordongekko wrote: »
    Where was that even hinted at?

    The post I quoted.


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    #128
    gordongekko
    Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭gordongekko


    nak wrote: »
    The post I quoted.


    Nope that just didnt happen


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    #129
    Chuchote
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,368 ✭✭✭Chuchote


    Is it 'cycling' that people are saying could perhaps cause asthma, or speed cycling at an advanced level, or taking drugs to drop weight at speed while pushing one's body with speed cycling? My impression was that it was taking drugs to drop weight.


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    #130
    Lumen
    Registered Users Posts: 31,084 ✭✭✭✭Lumen


    Chuchote wrote: »
    The rules suggested are kind of eugenicist, it seems to me; only the Perfect Man, without any flaw to his native health, can be entitled to compete. If you have to take medicine for asthma or epilepsy or diabetes or depression or any of the horrors that haunt our bodies, you're barred.
    There is the paralympics for people with severe physical limitations and special Olympics for people with severe intellectual limitations.

    If you were that sick you wouldn't have been able to take the physical stress of top level training and competiton with our without drugs.

    In any case, I don't see what's unfair about top level sport being suitable for only naturally healthy people. Isn't that fairly obvious?

    This isn't about fat bloke's weight loss programme. Elite sport is unhealthy with or without drugs, but the idea is that medical intervention should be minimal and appropriate. Oral and injected steroids are rarely either. Doctors are being coopted to prescribe for performance rather than health. If the healthier thing is to not compete then they should be advocating for that.


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    #131
    Chuchote
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,368 ✭✭✭Chuchote


    Lumen wrote: »
    If you were that sick you wouldn't have been able to take the physical stress of top level training and competiton with our without drugs.

    Dunno. I was devastatingly and dangerously sick every now and then, but in between I was healthy as a trout, swimming in the sea every day, cycling everywhere, climbing to the top of tall trees, running and jumping and tumbling. Main problem was that my parents moved house and sometimes country every couple of years.
    The asthma didn't appear until we moved to LA; I'd had one attack, as a result of exposure to forsythia in blossom, before that, but asthma in general was not a factor until the Los Angeles smog did its dirty work - which is why I think that probably the modern rise in asthma comes from the fumes of diesel and petrol engines.


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    #132
    Macy0161
    Registered Users Posts: 9,455 ✭✭✭Macy0161


    nak wrote:
    Salbutamol isn't a fat burner, well certainly not in my case. I'm another one with exercise induced asthma from cycling.
    I'm tempted to up my dose to test the theory though!


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    #133
    Chuchote
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,368 ✭✭✭Chuchote


    Macy0161 wrote: »
    I'm tempted to up my dose to test the theory though!

    Isn't the way to change your weight to speed (for thinner) or slow (for fatter) your metabolism with a different diet?


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    #134
    Macy0161
    Registered Users Posts: 9,455 ✭✭✭Macy0161


    gordongekko wrote:
    Nope that just didnt happen
    It did. Fat bloke said he wouldn't do something if he found it gave him an induced illness.

    In my case, my diagnosis was two years after I moved away from my previous sedentary lifestyle. Pretty sure I'm healthier now, taking a few puffs of an inhaler for exercise induced asthma and doing the sport(s) I enjoy, rather than not take the inhaler and go back obese lazy Macy!


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    #135
    gordongekko
    Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭gordongekko


    Macy0161 wrote: »
    It did. Fat bloke said he wouldn't do something if he found it gave him an induced illness.

    In my case, my diagnosis was two years after I moved away from my previous sedentary lifestyle. Pretty sure I'm healthier now, taking a few puffs of an inhaler for exercise induced asthma and doing the sport(s) I enjoy, rather than not take the inhaler and go back obese lazy Macy!

    We are having a discussion about top level sport. You can do what you like as you are not competing at the top level of sport


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    #136
    pelevin
    Registered Users Posts: 2,630 ✭✭✭pelevin


    Things seem to be gone very hazy. If someone has genuine issues they should be allowed substances banned as they are performance enhancing. Well fine, but obviously as a result one ends up as an inevitable result with a very abused & distorted system. Alot of people were thumbing up Chuchote's comment above - and for which Chuchote one would of course have sympathy - but talk of eugenecism is imo very much turning the argument into a false one where you're on the side of a very ugly extremism if you don't want the abuse of use of performance enhancers things like corticesteroids.

    So often debates become simplified to crude falseness to support one's own position & imo this here is an example. It isn't a simple b & w issue. My mother takes EPO for medical reasons. Perhaps other young people so also. So is simply a eugenecist if one opposes some cyclists' use of EPO whilst performing? I don't know the realities of this regarding EPO but the essence is the same as applies to the use of banned substances like corticesteroids. This to add is sport at an elite level, not ordinary people's participation in sports.


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    #137
    Chuchote
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,368 ✭✭✭Chuchote


    But wait, since an asthmatic is a bit below par in physical terms, and the 'performance-enhancing' (if so) medicines bring him up to par, don't the two factors kind of cancel each other out?


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    #138
    pelevin
    Registered Users Posts: 2,630 ✭✭✭pelevin


    Well I'm actually in a similar boat in ways. I was always naturally at the extreme end of phsyical fitness in an aerobic sense, coupled with low body weight and good access to the fast twitch muscles - so a very good composition for cycling if i'd been serious about it.

    However a few years ago I got a heavy dose of glandular fever - maybe they're all heavy! - which I've never got over though it fluctuates in severity. Now if there was a banned substance I could take that would have me feeling as I did previously all the time, that would be great. However the idea I could take this banned 'performance-enhancing' substance & participate in elite sports, using of course the thought that this only balances out my condition . . . Well to me, that would be ridiculous. The reality of what's going on would be blurred to the point of nonsense. So it would be great for my everyday life & participation in sport for health & pleasure, but unless one is throwing the doors wide open to everyone regarding taking of performance enhancers, it wouldn't feel right to me at all. Maybe if I were in such a situation & so very emotionally involved, I might convince myself that I was only cancelling out my unfair below par situation, but I doubt I'd convince myself beyond a superficial level.

    I'm not saying how this corresponds to other conditions but balancing out the below par argument doesn't weigh up here to me. I was also just reminded of Tyler Hamilton's book where he says how his thinking was warped to feel pleased at how the taking of performance enhancers provided more of a level-playing field balancing out the advantages of the naturally superior few. One could say to deny the more ordinary athletes access to the performance enhancing drugs is to practice or preach a kind of biological elitism where only the very fittest survive!


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    #139
    Macy0161
    Registered Users Posts: 9,455 ✭✭✭Macy0161


    gordongekko wrote: »
    We are having a discussion about top level sport. You can do what you like as you are not competing at the top level of sport
    That's not actually true though, I can't do what I want. Any competitor in a competition/ race sanctioned by a Sports Council affiliated organising body has to comply with the wada code and is subject to drug testing (at least in theory, as unlikely it is that back of pack fodder like myself would get pulled).


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    #140
    ford2600
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,457 ✭✭✭ford2600


    https://youtu.be/hTnNsIgQArM

    Don't know why but thread reminded me of this scene.

    Unmissable series btw


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    #141
    Chuchote
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,368 ✭✭✭Chuchote


    pelevin wrote: »
    Alot of people were thumbing up Chuchote's comment above - and for which Chuchote one would of course have sympathy

    I don't have a dog in this fight; I'm not and would never be a competitive cyclist - I love cycling, but can't see the point in speed. Not looking for any sympathy, thanks.


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    #142
    gordongekko
    Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭gordongekko


    Macy0161 wrote: »
    That's not actually true though, I can't do what I want. Any competitor in a competition/ race sanctioned by a Sports Council affiliated organising body has to comply with the wada code and is subject to drug testing (at least in theory, as unlikely it is that back of pack fodder like myself would get pulled).

    I'm sorry what is your point in relation to top level sport? If you want to embarrass yourself by cheating at a low level sport then off you go. I certainly can't see a point in it. But I'm not you.


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    #143
    Doc07
    Registered Users Posts: 1,063 ✭✭✭Doc07


    gordongekko wrote: »
    No. I said those drugs should not be on the list.

    Unfortunately it's not that simple. Insulin makes normal life possible for a diabetic without making them superhuman. For a non-diabetic insulin can be used as a powerful anabolic steroid. The abuse of insulin is not as widely known to the public or your average journalist or indeed reported compared to more infamous sports drugs. It may not be abused much in cycling but for an example in elite level bodybuilding( ok perhaps not really a 'sport') almost every top competitor has used insulin for muscle building.

    So in summary a drug that serves a medical need in one athlete can enhance performance in another without the relevant disease.


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    #144
    fat bloke
    Registered Users Posts: 5,861 ✭✭✭fat bloke


    Saying what I may or may not do, isn't the same as saying what I think someone else should do. In fairness, I'm sitting here after 140k and I've got a bit of a sore hole, which I may or may not medicate, but it's not going to stop me cycling. But if I was told it was affecting my breathing, then maybe I would change the way I exercise, or the type of exercise I do. Just like I don't eat pies or smoke fags, or drink beer, or ride a motorbike anymore - cos of the unhealthy effects of those activities, enjoyable as they are.


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    #145
    gordongekko
    Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭gordongekko


    Doc07 wrote: »
    Unfortunately it's not that simple. Insulin makes normal life possible for a diabetic without making them superhuman. For a non-diabetic insulin can be used as a powerful anabolic steroid. The abuse of insulin is not as widely known to the public or your average journalist or indeed reported compared to more infamous sports drugs. It may not be abused much in cycling but for an example in elite level bodybuilding( ok perhaps not really a 'sport') almost every top competitor has used insulin for muscle building.

    So in summary a drug that serves a medical need in one athlete can enhance performance in another without the relevant disease.

    Thats exactly the point. Either the diabetic just naturally cant compete at the top level or the drug should be available to all. What we have now is top sportspeople enhancing their illness to gain an unfair advantage. The system now promotes ill people to the disadvantage of healthy people.


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    #146
    Doc07
    Registered Users Posts: 1,063 ✭✭✭Doc07


    gordongekko wrote: »
    Thats exactly the point. Either the diabetic just naturally cant compete at the top level or the drug should be available to all. What we have now is top sportspeople enhancing their illness to gain an unfair advantage. The system now promotes ill people to the disadvantage of healthy people.


    I wouldn't accept that for diabetes but I would take your point re some other illness and actually mild asthma is probably a good example where TUE could be abused to benefit asthmatic athlete over non-asthmatic.


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    #147
    pelevin
    Registered Users Posts: 2,630 ✭✭✭pelevin


    Chuchote wrote: »
    I don't have a dog in this fight; I'm not and would never be a competitive cyclist - I love cycling, but can't see the point in speed. Not looking for any sympathy, thanks.

    I'm saying one's ordinary life & dealing with such conditions is a separate issue to performing in elite sports & taking performance enhancing substances that are otherwise banned.


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    #148
    Weepsie
    Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 20,524 Mod ✭✭✭✭Weepsie


    ford2600 wrote: »
    https://youtu.be/hTnNsIgQArM

    Don't know why but thread reminded me of this scene.

    Unmissable series btw

    Second series is completely missable


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    #149
    ford2600
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,457 ✭✭✭ford2600


    Weepsie wrote: »
    Second series is completely missable

    I meant the first, second is poor. We'recommend a little off topic now...


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    #150
    Itziger
    Registered Users Posts: 4,016 ✭✭✭Itziger


    I have a feeling the Brits are going to be sorry they messed with the Russians!!

    Bradley "I never injected" Wiggins is a huffin' and a puffin' now. "Oh, I meant I never really took PEDs"

    Well not the nasty kind anyway. Lotta smoke here, get the feeling there's little fire going on not too far away.


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    #151
    fishfoodie
    Registered Users Posts: 564 ✭✭✭fishfoodie


    Curious that in Skys never ending search for marginal gains; it never occurred to them to just look for a team leader with fully functional lungs ?


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