Alternatively it would be interesting to have a race or series of races where it's anything goes, including drugging. It's already such a cat and mouse game so why not just embrace it.
This would just mean the teams with the biggest budgets win. Doping is expensive.
Not to mention, every person responds differently to doping protocols.
What if you're a C rider who becomes an A+ rider when doped? And you race against a B+ rider who becomes an A minus rider when doped. Still not an even playing field.
This is effectively what lance did. He had record levels of hematocrit naturally, and an extremely high vo2. It meant he had a magnified sensitivity to doping protocols that the other riders didn't. So his doping advantage actually increased his relative abilities even -higher- than his also-doped competitors.
Not to mention kids coming into the sport. Would be a massive mountain to climb to go from a prodigy 16 year old against doped pros.
And even that still wasn’t “no holds barred”, leaving aside what little safety rules it had (and how weakly enforced they were) Group B did have rules on minimum weight and displacement classes (with negative offsets for turbo and super charging).
There are high level competitive sports leagues that effectively allow doping. Pro bodybuilding is probably the most obvious. There are tested federations, but they're virtually ignored because the guys competing are half the size of the guys doing drugs. Powerlifting also has untested federations, and strongman I think might do token testing just to appease law enforcement since you can't openly allow something that is illegal is most jurisdictions, but it's designed to be easy to beat and everyone is well aware that the top competitors are not only using drugs but have to use drugs to do what they're doing.
Notably, this is probably part of why the Olympics doesn't have bodybuilding, powerlifting, or strongman on the program, as sports need to have a WADA-approved antidoping program to qualify.
Also, the Olympics itself from the 50s to the 80s basically was what you're asking for. This is the time between when synthetic steroids were first widely available and when tests for them became possible. In the meantime, with no way to catch anyone, it was anything goes. I wouldn't say that led to pretty outcomes. Records that stood for 40 years, sure, but eastern bloc nations with mandatory athletics camps were injecting 12 year-old girls with testosterone and telling them it was vitamins. At a reasonable dose, most performance enhancing drugs are fairly safe for men but virtually none of them are safe for women because of the masculinizing effects. The changes to a female body are permanent.
beacuse what will really happen is, some nation desperate to make a statement on the world stage will take a thousand small children and force feed them drugs to make 10 athletes
100 die of the drugs during childhood
700 suffer the rest of their shortened lives from consequential medical issues
perhaps its easier to just throw the 'failed' 990 into a meat grinder to ensure there is no controversy later
but sure, its fun to watch the 10 athletes at the peak of their game!
