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Comment by spaetzleesser | Hacker News Reader

Just read accounts of people who used PEDs first time and how effective they were. Tyler Hamilton's book is an example.

When I did more weightlifting me and some other guys got stuck at around 75 kg and couldn't put on more weight no matter how hard we trained. A few months later two guys jumped to 90 kg in a very short time. I asked what's going on and they told me they got some stuff from Poland. I assume either steroids or HGH.

PEDs are way too effective for somebody to be able to compete against people who take them. It's simply not possible.

In the 100m a lot of top 10 guys got caught or evaded tests in the last years. There is no way that Bolt is beating them without taking something.

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I think it's actually possible for ie bolt to be beating them without peds, I just think it isn't meaningful.

Many peds (ie testosterone) are just extra dosage of something your body produces anyways, or cause your body to increase it's rate of some metabolic process. There is a lot of variance across people anyways: perhaps Bolt just produces an exceptionally high amount of testosterone naturally. In your example, it's not that it is impossible for people without supplemental test to compete with people that have it, it's that it's impossible for someone with dramatically lower test to compete with people that have it, regardless of whether they got it naturally or by supplementation.

I would think that for sports to be as fair as possible, the real answer would be not to forbid people from supplementing, but instead to pick some acceptable level of beneficial metabolic processes and let everyone get themselves to that.

Obviously that's a bit of a crazy idea and is not likely to happen, though.

"the real answer would be not to forbid people from supplementing, but instead to pick some acceptable level of beneficial metabolic processes and let everyone get themselves to that."

that's basically how a lot of doping testing works. They don't know where the testerone comes from but assume that people will be within a certain range. In cycling they called Bjarne Riis "Mr 50%" because his hematocrite level was always exactly at the maximum allowed level.

Read Tyler Hamilton's book. It's a good read and gives a lot of insight into how doping works.

I agree with this. What's interesting to me is when you start viewing athletics as a proxy for an innate quality like endogenous testosterone, the sport loses a lot of the romance. Of course, raw athleticism (strength/speed/agility) carries more weight in some sports than others.

“ athletics as a proxy for an innate quality like endogenous testosterone,”

That’s what top sports is. It’s people who won the genetic lottery and then also worked hard.

> Tyler Hamilton's book is an example.

It's a really good book. I read it as somebody with no interest in cycling and the world it painted was fascinating.

Bolt was fast when he was 10 years old, and probably was still naturally fast when he was 21. After any injuries though, it's likely he started peds.

I was the strongest man in one of the Bay Area gyms for a while, all natural, but essentially that was the focus of my day for several years while I worked at home (next door to the gym) and I had 10 hours of sleep nitely.

I went to a natural bobybulding conference once and all the pros were staring at me - I was huge. So it can be done while you're young, but under perfect conditions and until you get injured.

From what I know you can go pretty far without PED but good genetics. But in world class everybody has good genetics and if some of them use PED you can't beat them without. So my rule is that if people in the world top 10 get caught taking something then the other guys (especially the number 1) must be on something too. Worked with Lance Armstrong who constantly beat guys who afterwards got caught.

Just curious: How big were you? Did other people in your gym take stuff?

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