Dopes

Doping is bullshit. A bullshit category. A bullshit offense. You think that Contador is doing something natural? You think that elite athleticism in the 21st-century is the product of mere aptitude and hard workouts? Dude, an tour cyclist is a machine, a human body broken down and reformed into an engine of motion. The idea that chemical enhancements are somehow categorically distinct from the rest of the training regime, which regulates everything from caloric intake to sleep schedule, is a total fallacy.

And you can spare the concern that the drugs are "unsafe" and might harm an athlete. Becoming an athlete harms an athlete. And I am not just talking about training and competition injuries, which are of course far more prevalent and far more devastating than the side-effects of modern performance-enhancing chemicals. Being a top cyclist, or football player, or whatever, puts a huge strain on the physical body. If an athelete is very lucky, he gets out of it with nothing worse than chronic pain.