Rogue Thoughts

Recently I discussed an interesting topic related to professional cycling with one of my friends. The advent was the new “heat” generated around the American bicycling legend Lance Armstrong alleging, yet again, continuous doping abuse, or at least an “uncanny” depth of knowledge of use of substances considered doping.
Being a bicycling enthusiast since my childhood, this is a subject I have given some thought. In the beginning I used to be annoyed at people claiming that everybody in the Peloton is doped (because of the obvious counterargument that then they would have no advantage). Now, however, it is also the feeling I get.
But, why is it that doping is so tied up with professional cycling and why doesn’t the severe punishment like being stripped of your victory have any effect?

Let us be clear about one thing: doping, or the use of performance enhancing drugs, is an arbitrary measure. The actual substances are medication that saves lives and are for the greatest part not dangerous (or at least not more dangerous than sprinting downhill with 100 kilometers per hour unprotected alongside a hundred similarly racing and unprotected bicyclists). The only extra risk professional riders take, wen they use doping, is the risk of being caught. Proper medical counseling makes sure that the use of doping is safe.
Let us be clear about another thing: Doping REALLY helps. Depending on how much you train and what sort of substance you use, you could increase your performance by at least 10 percent.
And a third thing is that the recent wave of confessions to extensive substance abuse by retired riders testifies to the fact that statistically the odds of being caught are low.

This combination seems to be driving the adoption of doping in professional cycling:

Professional cycling is thus a game where cheating gives a huge advantage. The punishment for being caught is severe but cheating carries no extra cost, such as damage to your health. The odds at being caught are low (I wonder if it is possible to frame it in more precise game theory terms)

Every time someone is caught it has consequences, not only for the perpetrator, but also for the whole sport. A typical conclusion is that everyone is doped. Consequently, for every high profiled conviction the prestige of the sport is lowered and thereby the earning potential, hence there is a double angle to the doping story, since the motivation to police is inversely proportional to the number of perpetrators caught. Remember that policing is the only thing that has any effect on doping

It seems that there are two equilibria here: one in which policing may be low, under the doctrine of “see no evil – hear no evil”. In this scenario doping is widespread, because the odds at being caught are low. It may demand one or two random convictions to set an example – TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD
The other equilibrium features extensive policing, and may similarly catch a few, but doping is not widespread, because odds at being caught are high. Here, however, convictions set an example TO THE INSIDE WORLD of the sport.

The severe punishment of taking away the victory and banning athletes for years, does not work, I believe, in the first scenario, because the punishment is felt as a stochastic side effect of doing business; just like you may crash when racing downhill. It is not really felt as something significantly tied to the individual dispositions of the athlete himself, since cheating is part of the game.

In the second scenario, doping is not widespread and therefore the choice of taking doping IS tied to the individual dispositions of the athlete, and hence the punishment is felt as such. Here it would work to punish.

Now, the million dollar question is how do you go from the first equilibrium to the second? Unfortunately I have to stop here, but feel free to continue…