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Treating or Cheating? The TUE Question

Recent fallout over the hacking of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s athlete medical data files has been far-reaching. Most of the world now knows which champion athletes have competed using a therapeutic use exemption, or TUE; the use of doctor-prescribed medication in and/or out of competition.  Despite this unfair invasion of the athletes’ privacy by a hacking group called Fancy Bears, the old ethical question has again been raised – as to whether the TUE is a progressive development to preserve health and equitable career opportunities, or whether it is simply another loop-hole which can be exploited by certain athletes to win at any cost. Cycling, like many other sports overseen by the WADA codes, allows athletes to receive TUEs from their respective national anti-doping organizations, but only after rigorous medical testing and diagnosis confirmation. The most recognizable examples...

Nineteen Eighty-Three

Brian Cookson, president of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), has stated that its newly-minted Cycling Independent Reform Commission (CIRC) will look approximately fifteen years back in time, as it attempts to understand and address cycling’s modern doping dilemma.  This time frame neatly coincides with the low points of the Lance Armstrong era, but the root causes go much deeper than one man.  Fifteen years may help the UCI to pinpoint and investigate the sinister activities and possible collusion that occurred in cycling’s darkest days, but the CIRC must review about thirty years of history to truly understand and fix the corruption that has poisoned the sport, and to bring about lasting reform. The strange, totalitarian world envisioned by George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four  might seem like pure fiction, but cycling embarked upon its own “Cold War” and dystopian journey in...

The Forgive Me Roadshow

Lance Armstrong has staged a series of publicity events over the last few weeks in which he has reconciled with key victims of his past behavior.  Whether in the company of Emma O’Reilly, his former team masseur whom he at one time branded an “alcoholic whore,” or Christophe Bassons, a former French bike racer whom he helped push out of cycling for speaking out against the doping culture, the formula is contrived and predictable.  Armstrong claims that he is primarily a victim of the times – and maybe to some extent his own personal shortcomings – while simultaneously appealing for sympathy and forgiveness. This “Forgive Me Roadshow” is an image-improving longshot to sway opinions ahead of key rulings in Armstrong’s ongoing legal troubles.  He also appears to be laying a trap for his biggest critics: if they respond with anger or reject his apologies, it reinforces his argument that...

Independent Commission vs. Truth and Reconciliation Commission

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