Idea 5: Salaries & pensions
This may provide the biggest break-through but also meet the most resistance. As with all of the previous ideas, it could work in any sport, it’s not cycling-specific.
Think about the guy who dedicates himself to his sport for a decade or two, struggling to make a living, only to find out that he competed against cheats. The lost prize money, salary, his economic loss would be staggering, never mind his sportive loss. Contrast that with somebody who has made millions per year for many years, then buys off prosecution for a few bucks or by crying in Congress. He lives like a king until the end of time.
So I would suggest a change in salaries. Just like now, a rider can get any level of financial compensation. But we cap the amount that is actually paid out immediately to a certain amount, say 250,000 Euro/300,000 USD per year. Anything above that will go into the sport’s athlete pension fund. As soon as the athlete retires, he will get a pension out of that fund which is related to the amount he put in (the compensation he didn’t get each year). The pension will last his whole life, or until such moment when he is caught cheating through testing (during his career or retro-actively). In that case, he forfeits further pension payments and instead his pension money is redistributed among the honest athletes who are still in the fund. It has several benefits:
- Honest riders may have lost out on some salary during their active career, but they will receive a very generous pension, in line with what they would have earned if their career hadn’t been hampered by the cheats. Imagine the pension a clean baseball player from the McGwire era would make. It would be astronomical.
- There is no need to claw back money from an athlete after he is caught, as he never received those large amounts to begin with.
- Athletes who burst onto the scene quickly, get big salaries and lose themselves in expensive cars, cocaine and dog-fighting are now a little more protected from their own stupidity, as they won’t have that much to spend.
Obviously there could be many refinements (increasing salaries as the athlete gets older, etc), but you get the idea. And don’t say it won’t work because teams will make side deals and image contracts and whatever. If a team is caught circumventing this rule, it is avoiding an anti-doping effort. Teams can’t afford to take that risk (especially since testing for financial tricks is much easier than for doping products). I know there are hundreds of reasons why it wouldn’t work, but why not think about the reasons it will work.
gerard.cc 
October 12, 2012 at 20:23
[…] because doping brings rewards, you can strip results but recovering the money is very hard although there are ideas. If we wonder how well they sleep at night, then with their kingsize beds with silk sheets they […]
October 13, 2012 at 00:23
Can we apply the same to private businessmen?
October 13, 2012 at 00:41
If it serves a purpose. It already happens to private businessmen who go public, there are restrictions on selling stock after going public. Or there is the case of limitations to CEOs who get stock options to convert them.
October 13, 2012 at 08:09
And what about the sponsors, the people actually paying millions to have their products endorsed. Most may actually not know their main brand carrier is cheating, some may well ignore it if it means getting their drinks, bike, clothing onto millions of peoples eyes and ears. If you are going to pay millions and not do CONTINUAL due diligence on your brand carrier, or worse ignore it, then you are just as liable to have your profits picked over.
People cheat in top flight sport because it pays well.