Is Riding My Custom Bike Cheating?

When people I race against get caught for doping, it ticks me off.  Mostly because I was left out of the loop-I feel cheated because I didn’t know what was going on.  We all want to be as fast or as good at cycling as we can be.  But we also want to achieve our goals legitimately.  So what qualifies as cheating?

Is riding a custom fit bicycle cheating?  If I show up to a local race or group ride and all of a sudden I don’t get tired like I used to, people get suspicious.  There are several developments that can attribute to my higher level of performance.  One obvious improvement is my new Mosaic (a track bike for my love of the Madison!), but it could be my diet (eat massive quantities of spinach?) or that I am well rested.  Are any of these cheating?  Most people would say no.  Both eating, resting, and owning a bicycle are necessary conditions of training.  Doping is at the far end of the performance enhancement spectrum.  Doping can be made legitimate as well, if it is no longer cheating.

We can embrace doping as a technology (just as we do frame materials or aerodynamics), IF and only if we have these three stipulations:  The first and most important is a take-off of the Hippocratic Oath- first, do no harm.  If the level of doping (remember the “dosage makes the poison”) causes short or long term detriment to the athlete’s health, it is not acceptable.  This will be the hard to prove, but once it is, the practice will be transferable to the general public for profit.  Second- the process/protocol for doping must be easily repeatable.  This means the details of each step are publicly available for anyone to use and doesn’t leave me or anyone else out of the loop.  From there, doping techniques can be experimented with like a science fair project just the way we experiment with diet and supplements.  Finally, a financial limit to how much can be spent per year on each professional athlete (it is normal for the UCI to regulate restrictions on other things such as bicycle weight) should be in place, lest we create a gap between riders from richer and poorer organizations.

So, riding my custom bicycle is not be cheating (whew!), because the creation and implementation of my bicycle follows these three guidelines.  It does not cause harm-rather, it makes you ride more-generally considered a healthy activity.  Second, the materials, building techniques, and fitting process are not a secret.  Any other company or individual can attempt to replicate the final product (the difference here would be the actual skill at implementing the whole process).  Finally, the the bicycle is available to anyone- it has a price, but compared to other racing bicycles, it does not create an economic limit to who can use the technology.

-Derek Loudermilk, category 1 cyclist with the Horizon Organic/Panache elite cycling team, endurance coach, and cardiac researcher.