Esports still on the rise

[Orogun01]

 

Drugs should be legal. PERIOD.

 

End, of rhine.

So i other words you would like to see how medicine of the.most advanced country wins in all competitions?

 

I am sure that in 20-30 years we will start seeing some genetic tinkering so we can wait till then. For now I'd rather have all forms of competitions be clean and based on proper nutrition and training regime alone (+ talent)

 

As opposed to how the wealth of the most advanced countries wins all competitions. Let's be honest, banning drugs in sports has nothing to do with fairness and all with politics.

[Hurlshort]

As opposed to how the wealth of the most advanced countries wins all competitions. Let's be honest, banning drugs in sports has nothing to do with fairness and all with politics.

 

 

 

 

Nah.  As I watch every wrestler from my childhood die an early death, I'm pretty sure that these drugs are bad for you.  I'm not going to tar and feather a professional athlete who does them to get an edge, they are adults, they make a choice, they can get in big trouble if they get caught but they can also make a lot of money.  That works fine for me.

 

But is it political to try and create a sports culture that keeps young athletes from doing long term damage to their health?  If you embrace performance enhancing drugs in sports, you are basically giving the green light to every young athlete to juice.  That is a terrible idea.

[Humanoid]

Yeah, it's easy to underestimate how much people think winning is worth. The is a famous study done of athletes done some time ago that found that a majority would knowingly accept drugs that would kill them in five years time, as long as it guaranteed them success in their field.

 

This risk-taking behaviour might sound insane to the general populace, but it's not just based on a theoretical study. Around the early 90s where the drug EPO first found its way into sporting culture, pro cyclists were dying in their sleep. EPO is essentially a blood thickener, increasing the concentration of red blood cells in your bloodstream. This is great when you're working hard, a high heart rate pumping through all that extra oxygen through your body did wonders for performance. But at night, when asleep and your heart rate slows, having blood as thick as syrup... well, your heart basically wouldn't be able to handle it anymore and would just stop. It'd go down in the medical records as heart failure - EPO was undetectable for well over a decade - but that's hardly the complete answer.

 

Did those early deaths scare other athletes off EPO? Not a chance. They developed some primitive "techniques" to try to get around the problem, they set their alarms to go off every few hours, and they'd wake up like that, in the middle of the night, to do some exercises to get the blood flowing again. There is some fascinating eyewitness testimony of athletes and support staff being amazed at finding a colleagues at 3am in the morning upside-down on a shower rail, maybe doing some crunches even - the upside-down thing being another theory of improving blood flow. Maybe it was a sound theory, but geez, it's still putting your life up based on cowboy medicine.

[Orogun01]

 

As opposed to how the wealth of the most advanced countries wins all competitions. Let's be honest, banning drugs in sports has nothing to do with fairness and all with politics.

 

 

 

 

Nah.  As I watch every wrestler from my childhood die an early death, I'm pretty sure that these drugs are bad for you.  I'm not going to tar and feather a professional athlete who does them to get an edge, they are adults, they make a choice, they can get in big trouble if they get caught but they can also make a lot of money.  That works fine for me.

 

But is it political to try and create a sports culture that keeps young athletes from doing long term damage to their health?  If you embrace performance enhancing drugs in sports, you are basically giving the green light to every young athlete to juice.  That is a terrible idea.

 

There have been advancement when it comes to steroids and human growth hormone, plus most Wrestler and Bodybuilder's death are related to heart failure possibly from damage of years of over training. There are actually a lot of myths around these drugs on popular culture that are not true but everyone believes.

[Hurlshort]

So the heart failure is a result of over training and not drug use?  That's an interesting opinion.

 

I do see a big difference between performance enhancing drugs and drugs that help with rehabilitation.  But again, I have big concerns over creating a culture that embraces the short term gain over long term health.

[Humanoid]

A lot of the drugs used today are recovery drugs yes, it's easier to get away with them because they're taken out-of-competition. The thing is, over-training can be very much a result of using this type of drug - after all the idea is that you can now train harder and with less downtime than ever with them - so it's not as if they're unrelated problems.

 

All that said, I think it's going to be difficult to ever wind back the scale of doping, ever. Implicitly I think governing bodies accept and even silently condone PED use provided the athletes don't go nuts on them. It's a thin line between producing a better spectacle (good for business) and risking a scandal (bad for business). The political aspect raised earlier is a very real thing of course, there are certain "talismanic" athletes which effectively have complete immunity for political and/or commercial reasons, and so we have the often unedifying spectacle of the small fry being made an example of to create an illusion that authorities are "serious about PEDs" while the big fish continue on their merry ways with no fear.

[Hurlshort]

I'd hardly say that Lance Armstrong or Barry Bonds, pretty much two of the biggest names in their sports, have continued on their merry way.  Although I think it is pretty farcical when the government tries to go after them for this stuff.  

[Humanoid]

Of all the big drugs scandals that have happened in recent years, they've almost all been instigated by a criminal investigation, so at least we know that part of of enforcement isn't totally broken. Remember that Armstrong was only toppled when Landis went nuclear and talked to the feds. Historically the major busts have been down to police raiding hotel rooms, or drug couriers being caught at border controls (as in the Festina affair). The respective sports' governing bodies most certainly did try to cover up any evidence, and calling them willfully ignorant is being charitable. At least the US it goes that far - in Spain, a major doping investigation - Operacion Puerto - that netted some cycling and track and field stars was shut down by the Spanish government as soon as word got out that some football stars playing for three of the country's largest clubs may be implicated, not to mention a certain tennis superstar.

 

In the case of the major US sports like baseball, they're not even signatories to WADA, so they're a law unto themselves, with slap-on-the-wrist punishments for offenders - suspensions of not even one season, as opposed to base four-year bans. The sports are big enough that they can stand on their own commercially, a luxury smaller sports don't have. The Australian Rules football league for example has been engulfed in a team-wide doping scandal in recent times, and would dearly love to renounce membership of WADA so they can apply their own arbitrary (non-)punishment of the team involved, because effectively banning one of the largest teams in the sport for up to two years would be financially disastrous. But the federal government has made it clear in no uncertain terms that if the governing body were to do that, the sport would lose all government funding, an even more unpalatable option for them.

[Orogun01]

BTW, I thought this thread was about Esports?

[213374U]

There have been advancement when it comes to steroids and human growth hormone, plus most Wrestler and Bodybuilder's death are related to heart failure possibly from damage of years of over training. There are actually a lot of myths around these drugs on popular culture that are not true but everyone believes.

That's not the case as far as I'm aware.

 

"No compelling scientific evidence indicates that specific modes of arduous physical activity and training damage a healthy heart." - McArdle, Katch & Katch： Exercise Physiology, 7th ed. Lippincott Wiliams & Wilkins, 2007, p.463

 

While extremely strenuous bouts of training may lead to acute heart failure, it seems damage to the heart from chronic overtraining isn't documented by evidence.

 

On the other hand, we know that chronic (ab)use of anabolic steroids is harmful in general, and in particular for the heart.

 

But really, even putting aside the clear deleterious effects of PEDs on the health of athletes, just a quick comparison between 70's and 00's top level bodybuilders should be all the evidence anyone needs to make a case against allowing walking pharmacies to dominate a sport. And once it starts happening, reversing course is extremely difficult, because all competitive athletes will be forced into using, as sponsorships depend on performance.

 

How any of this relates to esports, however, I have no idea, but don't underestimate the ability of people to find ways to gain unfair advantages through unintended effects of chemical substances...

[Maedhros]

TI5 prizepool now at 18 million dollars...pretty insane. Main event starts in 2 hours.

[Keyrock]

I can't wait for the TI5 main event, the group stage was pretty awesome.  There were like 7 or 8 Techies matches, most were the standard Tusk/Techies combo, but there was 1 with the far less common (and overall not as strong) but hilariously awesome Tiny/Techies Hand Grenade combo.  

[Darkpriest]

BTW, I thought this thread was about Esports?

 

it is, but it seems that doping found its way to esports as well, hence examples from other sports can be applied here too... I mean some of these guys train in special houses, isolated, for 11-12h a day, then analyze replays, etc.

[Orogun01]

 

There have been advancement when it comes to steroids and human growth hormone, plus most Wrestler and Bodybuilder's death are related to heart failure possibly from damage of years of over training. There are actually a lot of myths around these drugs on popular culture that are not true but everyone believes.

That's not the case as far as I'm aware.

 

"No compelling scientific evidence indicates that specific modes of arduous physical activity and training damage a healthy heart." - McArdle, Katch & Katch： Exercise Physiology, 7th ed. Lippincott Wiliams & Wilkins, 2007, p.463

 

While extremely strenuous bouts of training may lead to acute heart failure, it seems damage to the heart from chronic overtraining isn't documented by evidence.

 

On the other hand, we know that chronic (ab)use of anabolic steroids is harmful in general, and in particular for the heart.

 

But really, even putting aside the clear deleterious effects of PEDs on the health of athletes, just a quick comparison between 70's and 00's top level bodybuilders should be all the evidence anyone needs to make a case against allowing walking pharmacies to dominate a sport. And once it starts happening, reversing course is extremely difficult, because all competitive athletes will be forced into using, as sponsorships depend on performance.

 

How any of this relates to esports, however, I have no idea, but don't underestimate the ability of people to find ways to gain unfair advantages through unintended effects of chemical substances...

 

You do know that 70 bodybuilders where juicing ,right? I mean Frank Zane even got the nickname "The chemist"

[Keyrock]

Day 1 of the TI5 main event was pretty great, even with the big delay for technical difficulties (get your **** together, GabeN).  I didn't see every match because the last couple were on during the middle of the night on the east coast.  The highlight of the day for me was the NaVi/VG match with NaVi coming so close to winning, VG barely holding on until their greedy lineup came on line fully, then the crazy finish with a double team wipe in NaVi's base as VG went straight for throne and VG buying back everyone they could and marching straight down mid and NaVi desperately trying to kill them while they took down their ancient.  That was an intense match and, as a bonus, we got to see Luna for, I think, the first time in this TI.  Sadly, no Dendi Pudge this year.

[Chilloutman]

Day 1 of the TI5 main event was pretty great, even with the big delay for technical difficulties (get your **** together, GabeN).  I didn't see every match because the last couple were on during the middle of the night on the east coast.  The highlight of the day for me was the NaVi/VG match with NaVi coming so close to winning, VG barely holding on until their greedy lineup came on line fully, then the crazy finish with a double team wipe in NaVi's base as VG went straight for throne and VG buying back everyone they could and marching straight down mid and NaVi desperately trying to kill them while they took down their ancient.  That was an intense match and, as a bonus, we got to see Luna for, I think, the first time in this TI.  Sadly, no Dendi Pudge this year.

 

Hey spoiler alerts please

[Keyrock]

Hey spoiler alerts please

 

Sorry

[Darkpriest]

Day 1 of the TI5 main event was pretty great, even with the big delay for technical difficulties (get your **** together, GabeN). I didn't see every match because the last couple were on during the middle of the night on the east coast. The highlight of the day for me was the NaVi/VG match with NaVi coming so close to winning, VG barely holding on until their greedy lineup came on line fully, then the crazy finish with a double team wipe in NaVi's base as VG went straight for throne and VG buying back everyone they could and marching straight down mid and NaVi desperately trying to kill them while they took down their ancient. That was an intense match and, as a bonus, we got to see Luna for, I think, the first time in this TI. Sadly, no Dendi Pudge this year.

Ive seen one luna game in the group stage but yeah that game could go either way. I was so sad that two great teams had to meet in the UB, but then again this TI has the best overall level of skill and basically anyone can take games of anyone what group stage has shown. Even though there are still favorites, they are not invincible like for example Alliance was during TI3, LGD during TI2 groups or even dominant group performance by EG during TI4. The top dogs this year are still top dogs but they collected more than a few punches along the way and there were very few stomps.

[Keyrock]

@Darkpriest - My biggest surprise of day 1 was

how thoroughly CDEC demolished Cloud 9.  Cloud 9 picked Io in game 1 and CDEC countered it SUPER HARD.  Then in game 2 Cloud 9 took Io again and managed to ban out Winter Wyvern (a natural hard counter to Io) and CDEC shut down the Wisp completely anyway.  Wisp was utterly useless and did nothing but feed CDEC.  Note to the other teams:  Do not play Io against CDEC.

 

I wasn't that surprised CDEC won the series, because they looked damn good during the group stage, but I was shocked at how hard they stomped Cloud 9.

 

Edited August 4, 2015 by Keyrock

[213374U]

You do know that 70 bodybuilders where juicing ,right? I mean Frank Zane even got the nickname "The chemist"

 

I take it you're not buying the story that he got the nickname for his scientific education then?

 

Yeah, 70's bodybuilders were on gear too. Ahnuld's even admitted to it, somewhat. Not necessarily all of them were, or all the time, though, unlike now. Many present day natural bodybuilders have physiques comparable to Zane's. Back then it was still possible to prevent the competition from being decided in a lab. Too late for that now.

[Keyrock]

Holy ****ing **** at

EHOME massacring Secret.  I have never seen Secret get that demolished.  It was a bloodbath.

 

[Darkpriest]

Holy ****ing **** at

EHOME massacring Secret.  I have never seen Secret get that demolished.  It was a bloodbath.

 

 

I've seen, 2nd game in group stages vs Fnatic

[Keyrock]

 

Holy ****ing **** at

EHOME massacring Secret.  I have never seen Secret get that demolished.  It was a bloodbath.

 

 

I've seen, 2nd game in group stages vs Fnatic

 

Yeah, but that was one game, not an entire series, and that was sorta a pocket strat that just caught them off guard.  Here they got straight up outplayed for an entire series (the second game especially), no tricks.  Still, that Fnatic game was pretty shocking.

Edited August 5, 2015 by Keyrock

[Darkpriest]

FY is a God....

[Keyrock]

A wild Sniper appears!