Bonds and Ullrich: Lessons for Climbing

Jan Ullrich has earned an easy retirement. After winning the ’97 Tour de France at age 23 he became a German national-hero. For the next five years he battled Lance Armstrong earning a record five second-place finishes, too bad for him but it sure made for great racing. This year it was revealed that DNA samples collected during a Swiss justice department raid at Ullrich’s house matched 9 bags of blood in Dr. Werner Fuentes’s office. Dr. Fuentes, of course, is the doctor who was providing performance enhancing drugs to a number of now-indicted criminals ... I mean ... professional cyclists.

The cycling authorities have destroyed the most famous bike race in the world. From now on, every time a champion dons the yellow jersey the rest of us are left wondering: Is that athlete successful today because of hard work and careful training and talent? Or is he doping?

Barry Bonds is slowly and surely working towards breaking the most hallowed record in baseball, Hank Aaron’s 755 career home runs. (Bonds has 751 as of today) To say that Bonds has been a dominant player is an understatement. Since 2006 Bonds leads the major league in career walks (2,454) and intentional walks (656), he ranks 2nd in extra base hits (1,417), 3rd in both at bats per home run (12.9) and runs (2,175), 4th in total bases (5,872), 5th in RBI (1,960), I could go on, but you get the point.

Through its inaction, Major League Baseball has destroyed the most-loved record in baseball. Why? Because every time Barry swings his bat all we see is a cheater.

Because enforcement is so difficult, it seems the only way out at this point is to change the rules and make all doping legal. They’re going to do it anyway, you might as well let them. That is as long as the incentive to succeed at any cost is there. Let the viewers and the enthusiasts decide whether or not to support such games. Hopefully people will finally get fed up with these childish antics and go grab a bike, or better, a climbing rope of their own, and leave the TV and go outside themselves.

Climbing itself has a long history of drug use, though the vast majority of it is decidedly not performance-enhancing. However, it is widely assumed that Herman Buhl used some kind of amphetamines during his solo-ascent and first-ascent of Nanga Parbat in 1954. In the late 90’s I personally knew one climber who supplemented with creatine. (remember that craze?) This legal, over-the-counter compound exists naturally in your muscle tissue. Supplementing with it allows you to recover faster and therefore train more frequently.

Doping is distasteful because it artificially changes one athlete’s physical reality. It is true that in certain specializations climbers wouldn’t reach their goals without cheating. Yet it remains relatively rare in climbing. Why?

I think it is because there is little financial incentive for excelling in climbing. I could count the number of American climbers climbing full-time with sponsor support on the fingers of one hand. This is a good thing. I believe we have a responsibility to ourselves to avoid fostering an environment where people might be tempted to cheat within the climbing/skiing/velocity sports we love. In that vein, we should avoid situations that reek of competition and emphasize the process and the innate power these sports have. And if we do include athletes as ambassadors in our community it is correct that those ambassadors are asked to do real work in contributing to the community.

There are two areas of climbing that are threatened by doping’s specter. One is sport climbing. There is no financial incentive to climb 14a – a routine event here at Smith Rock – but if you climb 15a, you have more than enough sponsor-support to climb full-time. If you’re not scared yet, check out 8a.nu, the online scorecard for hard sport climbing (8a is the equivalent of 5.13b in the French grading system and, as I understand it, the easiest redpoint you can add to your “scorecard”).

Everest is the other example in climbing where the financial incentive to succeed (to not squander that $60,000 permit) has people doping like fiends. 514 climbers have reportedly summitted Everest so far this year and most (maybe all?) used supplementary oxygen. Sucking O’s is definitely doping. And clearly it is cheating. Not one ascent made with O’s counts in my book.

What does this have to do with real climbing? With me? You might be surprised to learn that after Nanga Parbat in 2005 six separate journalists asked me if we had been using steroids or EPO.

As I recall, Vince did have to resort to a course of antibiotics to beat a bad case of the shits. And we did consume a few aspirin on the way up the route in seeking some relief from the wicked nighttime headaches that are so common with altitude. And yes, we did carry an emergency supply of drugs in case one of us contracted HACE (High Altitude Cerebral Edema) or HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema). Specifically we carried, but did not use, Diamox and Dexamethasone. But no we didn’t dope.

You see, we weren’t there to succeed, we were there to live. And that is a message we should spread and support in the climbing world. Whether trying to redpoint 5.14 or climb Denali’s West Buttress, the summit does not define success. Success is experiencing, feeling, struggling, and learning. So, here’s to a good fight!

Comments

[p joseph]

Bravo, bravo...I never related to professional athletics...money, trophies and certain color jerseys are poor symbols of passion.

[Brad G.]

The "win at all costs" mindset is not only detrimental to sport, it undermines our country. We are a nation being run into the ground by people who refuse to see that how we achieve something is as important as what we achieve.

[wolfy]

I don't think the public cares about doping. It's just a talking point. Make it legal and it'll disappear. I don't know what about steroids would change the experience of eating pork products, drinking beer and sitting on the couch.

Why anyone would watch baseball on a Saturday afternoon instead of going out and doing something is beyond me. Especially since Robocop and Baywatch Reruns are almost always on at the same time...

-M

[P. Hewes]

As a climber and a cyclist I find this a super complex issue. I agree that once money gets into a sport it tends to corrupt it, like power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I imagine you could even corrolate the amount of corruption to the amount of money in the sport. Climbing is getting more money and will continue to, every year there are more glossy magazines full of new products, new videos, more gyms, more guides, etc. I hope cycling can win this battle and change the culture and that through that it can help the other sports that have yet to really face it like climbing.

[ConBioAdam]

I think when money becomes a motivating factor, any activity, whether it be climbing, cycling, what have you, has the potential to lose some of its soul. I suppose if you're motivation is to make a career out of something, then fine, but I'd rather keep the things I love to do for recreation separate from whatever activity it is that brings home the veggie bacon. I'm passionate about my job, sure, but when it comes to working a cool route or being knee deep in powder, that's reward enough, no paycheck needed.

[Jamesthebigvegan]

Money will always change sport for the worst. Everything becomes commodity and a marketable item. Look at every "fringe" sport that has come into mainstream channels and you will see the same thing. Skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing, cycling, climbing...each of these was and is about a pursuit of the pure joy of just doing it for the good of it. Now, there are video games, x-games bicycles, telecasts with large corporate sponsors which could care less about the sports they sponsor or the impact they have on the sporting environment. For them it is about sales, centralization and competition in the corporate arena (minus a few companies we all know and frequent).

This is not to say that all is bad. There remain groups of people in each sport that remain true to the nature and soul of whatever it is they are doing. Those are the people that know the true rewards and maintain their focus on what is important. Like ConBioAdam says above, "...that's reward enough, no paycheck needed."

Our job as regular joes and janes is to stay true and keep our focus where it belongs. The more of us that do that the better off our respective sports will be.

[CM]

"I can just imagine my son entering a professional race today and being faced with the choice of either you dope or you don't.

The sport is paying the price for the dishonesty and lies. The lies are starting to tumble. The house of cards is cracking and it's coming down. I think it's a good thing for cycling. I think the Tour de France is an incredible event and I think that as this culture and this generation of the past gets cleansed and they really attack the issue of doping...

When I hear people say you can't win the Tour de France without doping, I did, and if everybody starts clean from point A to point B, you're going to have a winner crossing the finish line and I could tell you it would be more exciting.

Nobody owns me, nobody in the world of cycling. There have been a lot of people who do not want to look at the truth of what's going on in cycling because of economics. I've had an economic fallout. If they're trying to say I have an economic reason, I've had an economic fallout. I don't really care because I'm not someone who can be bought off, silenced. I'm doing what's right and what I felt was right was coming here and telling"

-Greg LeMond

[Brad G.]

Let's remember that this issue is largely about professional sport. In the case of pro cycling, races such as the TDF were started as promotional vehicles. The money was smaller and large corporations had yet to step into the arena in the numbers they have now but it was a commercial endeavor from the start.

Many of the riders chose to race bikes because it was better than working in a factory. There was little romance involved. As long as there has been professional sport there has been professional cheating. I'm not sure how you root-out the cheaters when so much is on the line.

To compare the choices faced by people who's very livelihood depends on their success on the "field" with those made by recreational athletes, however committed they are to their sport is unfair. I'm not going to lose my job if I don't redpoint a route.

Doping is wrong. Cheating is wrong. The fact is, in cycling anyway, if you take the drugs out of it the same riders will be winning the same races, just at slower speeds.

In the end, it comes down to personal integrity. Faced with the choice you either will or you won't. No amount of institutionalized enforcement will change that.

[KML]

Have you ever seen those old photos of the Tour from way back in the day?... where the racers are swigging wine, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and lugging around tin water-bottles and wearing extra tubes around their necks like climbing slings. Those were the days... enough of this pushing the sport crap with these leg-shaving, lycra wearing, super competitive, raised to race, monsters. I want to see more alcohol involved. I want to see racers passing a bowl around at rest stops. I want to see cigarettes, costumes, hairy legs, and smiles.

[Iker Oleaga]

You´re rigth Steve:

After 12 years in cyclist i can say, the most important in cycling is the bussines. Not for the cyclist, but is the thinking in the Team Propietaries minds.

Is importat to know that the "coaches", the directors are many times the properties are the owners of the teams, real compañyes with a pair of exceptions.

X % of a 5-15 million € budget + salary for manager, director or anything... too much money... the sponsor can change, the "sport group" with the owners no.

In all that words is the essential of doping... the money... the money and the money.

I changed the cycling for the alpinist, i dream all the days with mi proyects but i go to work all the days for pay mi alpine dreams, here is the diferrence. Mick Fowler works in a oficce, Vince Anderson Works like guide, etc etc etc.. more or less all the "alpine stars" works...

In climbing you can won money, that i think in good becausse is a industrie supporting. But you don´t have a families behind you, the families of drivers, mechanics, assistants etc etc...

For the cycling... 2 options, amateur cycling or "barra libre" (all is posible)

PD: Wery pretty stage today in the Tour.

[mjohnburns]

Legalizing doping opens the door to doping in youth sports, as children, like their adult counterparts, will dope to remain competive and win. It would be a shame for children to have to use drugs to be competitive. Do we really want to do this to our children?

[Les Arcs Underground]

Reading this....I really wonder how many more Tour de France wins LA could have put under his belt...considering that the vast majority of his contenders were dopped whether he was clean and never tested positive....I mean...he could have won a lot more if the competition was not biased...;))))

Life is so unfair....:000000000000000

[olympusslogger]

Sure in cycling as in climbing doping lowers the bar and damages the soul of the sport but the interest lies in where you draw the line in the gray area of "doping". Take the theoretical case of 3 high altitude climbers who are going to climb the same 8,000m peak. Either one Cho oyo or Everest ;) Climber #1 is a backcountry skier who lives in a cabin high above crested butte. Climber #2 is a trustifarian who has the $$ and the time to go to the himalaya for 8 weeks and hang out while his body kicks down a bunch of EPO and hence red cells. Climber #3 is kidney specialist from Florida who takes 2 doses of EPO a month before leaving on a climbing trip. All three could arrive at the base of the peak with the same Hematocrit and same basic acclimatization level. Is one "cheating" more than the other or merely leveling the playing field that was unfair because of geography, money, time, and/or vocation.

This last comment is hilarious....

I also think that rules/criteria should be different amongst people/competitors because all dont have the same privileges, backgrounds and history.
Let's say I want to climb a big cliff tomorrow...it would be fair to drop me by helicopter in the middle of the peak...after all, it's not my fault if I couldnt prepare for the event....and a little help should hurt....