It's here that I start to have trouble with the attitudes of both the anti-doping authorities and the participants in cycing's racing world.
First, I think the most important thing in athletic competitions is the "level playing field".
Second (and here's where things get really sticky), it would be nice if the health risk to the participant were minimized.
The most commonly used banned drugs in cycling are physiologic substances, and the amounts found in "doping" riders are often within medically accepted normal ranges. Thus the "detection" often depends upon asserting that the amounts found in a given individual don't correspond with past results from that same individual, or that they don't correspond with the end (physiologic) result of the substance's activity (e.g., too high a level of EPO for the patient's red cell volume). Most authorities outside of the USADA would say that we don't know enough about the effects of modern training techniques to be able to make those determinations for certain.
There is clearly a health risk during athletic competitions even when no performance enhancers of any kind are used. That's probably increased by using the performance enhancers (higher hematocrit, higher testosterone, etc.), but quantifying that is difficult.
As has been pointed out on numerous occasions, many medications or supplements used routinely by non-Olympic caliber athletes or non-athletes to improve their health and/or extend their lives are banned in elite athletic competitions.
I don't really know the answers to the questions that can be generated from what I just posted, but I do know that neither side (anti-doping authorities or competitors) appears to be wholly right or wholly wrong.
