It's hard to believe that there was a brief period of time (1) where I actually wore this bracelet above. I have a visceral feeling of shame and nausea even thinking about it now given all that has recently come to light- or, rather, what has been blazingly lit up all along but passed over with the averted gaze of collective denial.
The question of doping in ultrarunning / trailrunning seems to come up periodically and for reasons that elude me it seems to stimulate debate. It has always seemed to me like an inherently uninteresting question. The equation is simple:
human nature + professionalization of sport + $$ = unethical behavior
The particular domain hardly matters here. The conception of 'ultrarunners' as purely nature-loving, laid-back, fun-loving, vaguely-spiritualized-mountain-worshipping denizens of a higher ethical realm shouldn't hold enough water to even merit a concerted debunking. With the advent of increased reimbursement at premier races comes the inevitable dark side of sport.
Consider Christian Hesch. This guy was popped for EPO chasing $500-$1000 paychecks at midlevel road races across the US. He can run a sub-4 minute mile as well as a 1:07 half mary (which he did the day after the former). Ask yourself how many elite ultrarunners have this kind of aerobic capacity and then ask how long it is going to take for these dudes to switch gears, change their training focus, and start showing up at trail races that pay out $10,000.
Footnotes:
(1) 1 week.
 |
| Uintas. |
 |
| Upper Millcreek. |
 |
| Timp Fun Run + detour. With Evan "Fast Evan" Honeyfield and Matt "I heart gluten" Hart. |
 |
| Ibid. |
 |
| Summit of Timp. |
 |
| Camping. 20 degrees F. |
It's a shame that the combination of sports and money equate to bad ethics. For the longest time I thought of Lance as a clean athlete. Now that he has be exposed I wonder what the future holds for him and for us the fans who follow athletes like him?
ReplyDeleteFor years I was an avid cycling rider, racer and seriously into pro cycling. I fell for it with Lance thinking he was bullied, wrongly accused. Now I'm embarrassed that I spent so much time defending him to people who knew the truth about Professional cyclists.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately I'm completely turned off to the sport now. In January of this year I started running and loved the freshness of the Ultra running and Trail running Universe and have jumped in with both feet : ) and become a super-fan! Now I hear the rumblings of deceit now yet again...Bummer. I think I'm just going to become a fan of myself and do what I do honestly. "F" everyone else. -sick of professional sports...