Spilling the Tea on Testosterone

Scott Seaton, despite occupying high-octane posts that include being a firefighter with Bend Fire & Rescue and a longtime elite masters cyclist, knows what it’s like to live with low testosterone levels.

Even so: nope, no way — Seaton, who’s 66, ain’t takin’ no stinkin’ testosterone replacement therapy.

That, he considers, is performance-enhancing doping. So agrees the World Anti-Doping Agency and the domestic equivalent, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. The Oregon Bicycle Racing Association, which governs racing in the state and parts of Washington, has adopted USADA’s criteria whole hog.

OBRA also adopted Seaton’s 2023 proposal that requires athletes who receive TRT — along with any other medication found on WADA’s list of banned substances — to file for and receive a Therapeutic Use Exemption from USADA.

The state’s governing bike racing body isn’t aware of any OBRA racer having submitted one, the Source has learned. OBRA, with 2,500 members and an annual budget of around $250,000, cannot afford the $9,000 fee for a USADA control team to visit a race. Sponsors aren’t interested in picking up that tab, says OBRA president Chuck Kenlan.

The problem, as Seaton sees it, is that testosterone supplementation has become de rigueur among his rank of masters-level (typically 40 and up) competitive cyclists. Seaton races for Hutch’s Bicycles, a team that explicitly prohibits TRT in its member agreement.

“It’s all anecdotal, but a friend asked someone if he was taking TRT, and the guy got so angry,” Seaton told the Source. “My friend just got reamed by the guy.”

The cure-all for dimming energy?

Testosterone replacement therapy is everywhere in national news headlines. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wants to make annual testosterone testing mandatory for soldiers over 30, recommending TRT for low-T individuals. Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a proud user and proselytizer. There’s the recent Enhanced Games, which is backed by Peter Theil. And let’s not get started on Joe Rogan and his “manosphere” of male influencers that pump the stuff.

Elite masters bicycle racer Scott Seaton, also a retired firefighter with Bend Fire & Rescue, helped the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association shore up its doping controls, which also test for supplemental testosterone. Costs preclude the nonprofit governing body from testing at races, however. Credit: Scott Seaton

Seaton has raced competitively since 1984. That’s the era when some racers would, “skin pop” amphetamine, or inject the drug below the layers of skin, as detailed in Joe Parkins’ Belgium bike-racing memoir, “A Dog in a Hat.”

Seaton won the National Championship cross-country mountain bike race (age 45-49) in 2006 and the National Championship mountain bike marathon race (50-59) in 2011. While Seaton’s evidence of TRT is anecdotal, nearly 10 racers, speaking on background, told the Source that testosterone replacement therapy is widely used among Central Oregon’s male racers — even among some competitive female cyclists.

Throughout the country, about 3% of men 40 and over receive TRT, according to the National Library of Medicine. And an estimated 6 to 12% of men in that age group have low T levels. Many uncounted others find testosterone throughout online providers — some illegal, that allow them to bypass a doctor’s recommendation and subsequent supervision.

For the sake of extrapolation, it’s fair to imagine that in health-minded, sporty Central Oregon (with its myriad clinics, spas, gyms and competitive racing) men 40 and over are at least tracking with national rates of TRT.

Last he checked, in his early 50s, Seaton learned that his T levels are slightly low, at 280 nanograms per deciliter (300-1,000 is the normal range).

“My doctor was like, ‘That’s normal for your age. It’s fine, you’ll just have to live with it,’” Seaton said. He’d already done his homework on what happens to men around 40: testosterone levels drop about 1-2% annually. Life factors such as being overweight, having diabetes, a stressful job and lack of sleep can diminish T counts. Overtraining causes it, too.

Low testosterone symptoms include low energy, obesity, depression, reduced sex drive and erectile dysfunction, noted the New York Times Magazine in the story, “Testosterone Land.”

Less than aging, Seaton regrets what he calls, “the erosion of age-group racing and the validity. … They get prescribed testosterone and they become some kind of Franken-master: they’re old, but they have the hormones of a 20-something.”

Yet, here in Bend and across the country, the ethical dichotomy is being diluted by a surging mainstream popularity of testosterone replacement therapy that’s marketed, in so many words, as the cure-all for the pains of male aging.

Regain youthful lust. Evaporate brain fog. Get out of bed with a sense of optimism. Lose weight and gain muscle because you want to do stuff.

It’s a tantalizing sales pitch, bandied by numerous male clinics throughout the country and particularly in Bend, that tout the benefits of T like it’s the Fountain of Youth for men.

More muscle mass, synthetically fueled, runs the risk of muscle dysmorphia. When the body’s natural aging process is working in opposition to being leaner and meaner, when is enough enough?

To get a lay of the local testosterone landscape, the Source spoke with an internal medicine primary care physician who is also a masters bike racer. She spoke anonymously because she’s not permitted to speak to the media without approval. The doctor agreed that TRT is common among competitive athletes in Central Oregon. She prescribes it, but only for patients with low T levels. If they compete, however, she tells them that they cannot be on T if they want to race cleanly.

“I’ve never knowingly prescribed to anyone racing,” she said. “But I know of a handful of men who are essentially doping, because they’ve told me this.”

Some men she knows seek a “supra-therapeutic” level of T, which carries them beyond the normal range of the hormone. That can cause polycythemia, or too many blood cells. That thickens the blood. In supra-therapeutic scenarios, risks of heart attacks go up, along with atrial fibrillation, or abnormal heart rhythms. Don’t forget potential prostate cancer and bone fracture. Other health problems include acute kidney injury and clots in the lungs — both potentially fatal.

“It’s not a benign thing,” the doctor said.

Still, she recognizes, that even in the post-Lance Armstrong world where everyone knows what doping is, some racers may carry on with T treatments because, the logic might go, who cares at the local amateur bike racing level?

The scale of perspective

Chuck Kenlan, the president of Oregon Bicycle Racing Association, said the control in place operates on an honor program among the participants who take part in the grassroots racing that OBRA sanctions. (Even among transgender athletes.) Still, after implementing Seaton’s Therapy Use Exemption proposal, Kenlan worked out an agreement with USADA to streamline doping enforcement, yet the cost remains prohibitive. He doesn’t share Seaton’s view that this is a crisis.

“Nobody’s getting a pro contract to race OBRA races,” Kenlan said. “Nobody’s getting a college scholarship or sponsors because of their OBRA results.”

USADA testing at a road race looks like this: The top three finishers are automatically pulled for blood samples; then three racers are randomly selected. Kenlan says racers who’d get ensnarled would likely be those who are using conventional TRT to assuage depression or perhaps alcoholism — general aging and life stuff.

Even if the costs of paying for USADA doping officials to travel to Oregon bike races wasn’t an issue, Kenlan points out that so many racers (who have asthma and use a steroid, for example, or buy supplements from GNC) don’t monitor their chemical intake the same way as professional athletes, who have the help of coaches and nutritionists.

Nonetheless, those amateur racers would end up positive. USADA would hand down the racer’s results to OBRA, which would be required to enforce that ban. That “doper” status would be a Scarlett Letter for the racers, likely resulting in them getting kicked off a club team and losing standing in the cycling community. The high-level of self-monitoring and pro-level testing would also create barriers to entry, and overall amateur racing would suffer, Kenlan says.

“When I watch the Tour de France, as I have every day this month, I absolutely want it to be a fair playing field,” Kenlan said. “We all want that. But I’m not sure that (pro-level testing) at grassroots racing is the place for that.”

Scott Seaton [top of podium of the masters 50-plus mountain bike marathon national championship in Bend in 2011] is vociferously opposed to male racers using testosterone as a performance-enhancing drug. He chuckled when this reporter recommended he get a tattoo on his arm that reads “Clean.” Credit: Scott Seaton

“Toughen up”

Seaton still isn’t satisfied. Yet, in talking about his gripes, he’s good natured, as if he’s discussing those dang gophers that keep uprooting his lawn: What are these people doing, and how do they rationalize it?

“I’ve had some arguments with people in the YouTube comments section about testosterone and bike racing. They say they use it to keep T at normal levels,” Seaton said. “I can’t help myself. I reply that that’s still doping. Then the guy gets angry and says I can’t deny him his right to bike race. As if that’s a right. It’s a touchy subject.”

When Seaton notices television commercials for male clinics promoting TRT, he also gets a little peeved.

“The doctor looks super buff and muscular …Where are we going with this? Is everybody so image conscious? My wife and I shake our heads, like, ‘Can’t people just get old and be OK with it?

Seaton thinks aging should require grit.

“Toughen up.”