OK, so it's not a drug. It's not ingested. And it's "natural", as in you could achieve a similar effect with ice. But is it ethical?
In a "perfect" sporting world there would only be sports-specific training and nutrition that brought you to your peak condition and fitness to race. There would be no difference between brands of clothing or bicycle, or no difference that offered a measurable performance advantage, anyway. There would be no adjunct treatment that modified your body, and thus your performance. There would be no oxygen tent to assist in acclimatising to altitude without having to actually train at altitude. There would be no performance enhancing drugs to boost (or perhaps restrain) specific physiological processes. There would just be you and the work you do to make yourself "peak". Simple, but do you agree?
No, of course not everyone agrees. It's rare to find agreement on any of this in any sport - and we often find huge variations between neighbouring nations and their attitudes to specific performance-enhancers. Often it's pragmatism that gets in the way of a global agreement. Perhaps for some it's expensive and inconvenient to travel to a mountainous region so we relax our "perfect" attitude to allow for artificial oxygen-reduced simulations of altitude training. Whereas a nation that has plenty of high mountain passes may take a dimmer view of altitude simulation and ban it. And we may thus allow ice-baths and compression clothing and a myriad of small but significant variations in technology for reasons of self-interest or pragmatism. We accept that it may make our sport more expensive and lock out some competition, at least until they can reproduce the effect.
In some ways we (and that means the UCI in this instance) take arms against this sea of trouble and restrict the design envelope; and yet some people - quite reasonably - say that these very restrictions hold back much-wanted technological advances. So there's a constant tension between increasing the cost, complexity and technology involved through performance-related innovation and that opposing need to keep the sporting playing field somewhat "level".
Thus it is with PEDs - the drugs that may allow you to boost performance in specific ways and work-around the limitations of our bodies. Now we allow some PEDs as a social necessity (eg caffeine) and others for health reasons (eg drugs to provide limited relief from inflammation or pain) but others we just ban outright without a threshold. Ostensibly we do this to control the practice and limit potentially dangerous overuse, and to avoid "cheating", where an athlete unnaturally boosts their abilities beyond the "natural" threshold and gains a secret advantage over their competitors. It's deemed unfair.
It's that "unfairness" around which the whole argument swings. We either ban unfair practices or accept them, depending upon our judgement of the facts as they are perceived.
Of course by announcing openly that you are investing in cryotherapy you remove the secrecy, but does it make it ethical? Is it fair? Or is it just another thread in our expensive cycle-sport arms race?
AG2R Using Cryotherapy For Tour De France | Cyclingnews.com
In a "perfect" sporting world there would only be sports-specific training and nutrition that brought you to your peak condition and fitness to race. There would be no difference between brands of clothing or bicycle, or no difference that offered a measurable performance advantage, anyway. There would be no adjunct treatment that modified your body, and thus your performance. There would be no oxygen tent to assist in acclimatising to altitude without having to actually train at altitude. There would be no performance enhancing drugs to boost (or perhaps restrain) specific physiological processes. There would just be you and the work you do to make yourself "peak". Simple, but do you agree?
No, of course not everyone agrees. It's rare to find agreement on any of this in any sport - and we often find huge variations between neighbouring nations and their attitudes to specific performance-enhancers. Often it's pragmatism that gets in the way of a global agreement. Perhaps for some it's expensive and inconvenient to travel to a mountainous region so we relax our "perfect" attitude to allow for artificial oxygen-reduced simulations of altitude training. Whereas a nation that has plenty of high mountain passes may take a dimmer view of altitude simulation and ban it. And we may thus allow ice-baths and compression clothing and a myriad of small but significant variations in technology for reasons of self-interest or pragmatism. We accept that it may make our sport more expensive and lock out some competition, at least until they can reproduce the effect.
In some ways we (and that means the UCI in this instance) take arms against this sea of trouble and restrict the design envelope; and yet some people - quite reasonably - say that these very restrictions hold back much-wanted technological advances. So there's a constant tension between increasing the cost, complexity and technology involved through performance-related innovation and that opposing need to keep the sporting playing field somewhat "level".
Thus it is with PEDs - the drugs that may allow you to boost performance in specific ways and work-around the limitations of our bodies. Now we allow some PEDs as a social necessity (eg caffeine) and others for health reasons (eg drugs to provide limited relief from inflammation or pain) but others we just ban outright without a threshold. Ostensibly we do this to control the practice and limit potentially dangerous overuse, and to avoid "cheating", where an athlete unnaturally boosts their abilities beyond the "natural" threshold and gains a secret advantage over their competitors. It's deemed unfair.
It's that "unfairness" around which the whole argument swings. We either ban unfair practices or accept them, depending upon our judgement of the facts as they are perceived.
Of course by announcing openly that you are investing in cryotherapy you remove the secrecy, but does it make it ethical? Is it fair? Or is it just another thread in our expensive cycle-sport arms race?
AG2R Using Cryotherapy For Tour De France | Cyclingnews.com
The French team AG2R-La Mondiale will use cryotherapy to help enhance recovery during the Tour de France, the squad announced today.
Riders will endure three minutes in a special whole body suit, pioneered by Tec4H, which is filled with liquid nitrogen at -150 degrees Celsius.
Cold is said to aid recovery and reduce inflammation, and riders have traditionally taken ice baths to help recuperate from intense efforts. However, the short blast of extreme cold in the new suits, which cover the entire body from neck to ankle, has other benefits, explained the team's medical director Eric Bouvat.
