With the extent of Russia’s doping programme exposed, many will be wondering at the culture that created such endemic and systematic doping. Pro XC Racer Jenny Copnall, who previously commented on the state of affairs at British Cycling, has once again taken to Twitter to share her views – this time on doping.
She starts out with suggesting that the rot sets in when the emphasis is on winning…
Overemphasis on winning and gaining medals is flawed. Russia is a great example of what happens when a nation distorts what sport is about.
— Jenny Copnall (@JennyCopnall) July 18, 2016
…and goes on to suggest that Britain, through UK Sport, is heading down the elitist route:
It is far from the only nation to have such distortion. Elitism, as we unashamedly see in UK Sport's policies, will ultimately ruin sport.
— Jenny Copnall (@JennyCopnall) July 18, 2016
Oh hang on, maybe we’re already well down that road?
Or maybe it has already.
— Jenny Copnall (@JennyCopnall) July 18, 2016
Hmm…we wonder who she’s talking about?
When you witness, as a 22 year old, the next day's mtb WC winner, running up and down the stairs at 3am with a team mate, you have a choice
— Jenny Copnall (@JennyCopnall) July 18, 2016
Leave the sport you love because cheats occupy large tracts of the WC fields, or carry on what you love aiming to better your own ability
— Jenny Copnall (@JennyCopnall) July 18, 2016
I guess there is a third way but that doesn't occur to anyone for whom cheating is abhorrent
— Jenny Copnall (@JennyCopnall) July 18, 2016
And the impact of cheats in the sport? Well, when athletes are measured on their results, and up against the cheats, the clean can look poor in comparison:
And that is kind of okay except when BC come along wafting WC results under your nose as evidence why you don't have medal potential
— Jenny Copnall (@JennyCopnall) July 18, 2016
The suggestion here seems to be that the late night stairs exercise is linked to doping. Perhaps an attempt to work off something in their system? Or an attempt to keep EPO thickened blood moving? Jenny admits that she was clueless at the time:
Funny thing about that tale is that at breakfast I was like "why were they running up and down the stairs?".
— Jenny Copnall (@JennyCopnall) July 18, 2016
And my friend's answer was, "dunno, maybe it is some secret training technique". We genuinely had no idea what it was all about and laughed
— Jenny Copnall (@JennyCopnall) July 18, 2016
It was quite some time after that that I understood. This was the late nineties, and an early trip abroad. Ah, to be naive….
— Jenny Copnall (@JennyCopnall) July 18, 2016
Jenny reckons it’s not just long term funding chances that are affected when you’re measured against cheats – there was another unintended consequence of this particular cheat:
And if you are wondering why I was up at 3am the night before a race. Our room was beside the stairs and they were making a bloody racket.
— Jenny Copnall (@JennyCopnall) July 18, 2016
So not only was I not doping, I was kept awake by them keeping their blood thin enough not to die so had a god awful night's sleep to boot!
— Jenny Copnall (@JennyCopnall) July 18, 2016
Whether it’s your cheating rivals ruining your funding chances, your cheating team mates getting your whole country banned (well, maybe), doping is not like E-Bikes – everyone agrees it is A Bad Thing. Opinion however is more divided on whether the perpetrators are ‘Bad People Who Should Have Said No’ or ‘Victims Of A System’, and whether they should be banned for life, or can be rehabilitated. Whatever your view, it seems that the powers that be have decided that in the case of Russia there can be no excuses, and many Russian athletes will not take part in the Olympics – clean or not. But with funding streams focused on elite sport, are other countries at risk of encouraging doping, inadvertently if not systematically?
Comments (3)
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I’m (unfortunately) sure it is out there, as Jenny says, if it’s all about results and people’s need to have them, then some will crack under the pressure. It’s a shame that sport does this to young and probably also naive people, who feel they can’t say no. It doesn’t matter what the sport is either, cheating just isn’t cool and the people pushing the drugs need to be dealt with in the strongest ways possible: prison maybe a good deterrent?
I’d never really considered all consequences of doping for the clean riders until reading this. I’d always imagined that the dopers hopefully got found out, which in turn gave way to the 1st clean riders getting the posthumous upgrades in the results sheet. (albeit once the cheering crowds, media attention, related subsequent sponsorship and perhaps non-bike industry product endorsement chances have long gone) which is all bad enough. But when you consider the old WCPP rule of only podium contenders can get an entry to the race, well, then those people’s short careers are over before they start.
“you’ve got to be in it to win it” seems pretty relevant here – if there were 3 or more people doping in your race, you’d have a very slim chance of getting to compete due to said selection process, and therefore no way of getting podium results on the day or later on when the positive doping results came to light. All pretty sad. Good on you, Jenny, for speaking out. I guess you have had your dreams crushed and have nothing to lose by doing so.
Pretty depressing really.