Bloody ex-hookers are always blowing the whistle as soon as they are no longer on the game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr A
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Bloody ex-hookers are always blowing the whistle as soon as they are no longer on the game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr A
Any pro sport that doesn't blood test or do long term profiling is only paying lipservice to the "fight" against doping.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr A
I don't think there is any doubt that players are juiced in rugby, imo England are possibly the worst culprits in the Northern Hemisphere, though they are following the NZ/Aus/SAF leads. It's unnatural. Rugby is going the way of american football which is tainted beyond recovery.
I'm with Tommy Tiernan, let's have a drugged olympics for the craic. See Usain Bolt not pull up and worry about being caught.
France aren't far off. Wales seem to be slipping down that avenue too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spudulika
Watch the U20 games in the Six Nations. The Irish, Italian and Scottish players look their age, but the French and English guys are just monsters and you just can't get that big at that age without some sort of help.
I think South Africa and New Zealand could plead that it's genetics at work. These South African kids are growing up on farms and I think the polynesian body type just tends to be a bit stockier and more robust, particularly in the teenage years. You'll notice the proportion of pacific islanders in the NZ sides tends to decline as they get older.
Don't see how you can give a pass to some countries and not others, especially given the rumours. France and England have a much bigger playing pool, so bigger u20's isn't definitive to me.
There's more money and more incentive in other field sports. Follow and check out giggs boson on twitter for background on the sport that has us on this website!
Oh, I'm not giving a pass to some countries, I'm saying it's more prevalent in some countries but happening everywhere. Unless you're addressing Spuds.
Even accounting for bigger playing populations, and the fact size is more important at age group-level, there's no reason why every single player should be bigger than his opposite number and I see these guys are they are physically every bit the match of the 30 year olds they're playing with. You get your freaks like George North, but you shouldn't have 15 of them.
Both of ye really - the saffies are probably the most rumoured about! Genetically, most of their players are west European.
Yeah, but the majority of their players are farm boys, think John Hayes rather than Ronan O'Gara.
I don't think it matters about the standing of the sport in a country. 2 Croatian rugby players failed drugs tests (for PEDs) and the younger one was plying his trade in France at the time. I've yet to see or hear it, though he supposedly gave a long interview about being put under pressure by the team doctor to "get with the program". If I didn't know him or the guys he works out with in Croatia I'd have believed him.
I even look askew at football now, these supposed "kids" coming into the game from Academies are massive!
Russian rider caught with GW501516 in his system. This drug was never passed for human use as it causes cancer. It helps burn off fat and get weight down. Depressing stuff.
Even football? Football is high up on the lists of crap testing/ lots of money/ lots of benefits from doping. This weeks european games show the impact that increased stamina can have.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spudulika
I really don't get the focus on the sizes of players coming out of academies - there's other variables that come into play at that age, so that's not where I'd be looking for indicators tbh. For a start the size they went in - they could be selected and fasttracked because of their size. Players bulking up fast, returning from injury ridiculously quickly, late bloomers who late in their career are better physically than they ever were before are better indicators of something that needs investigation than the size of young guys just starting. For example, Leinster have in the past scouted players just because of their size who'd never even played rugby.
Macy, by massive I don't mean just body build, of course improved nutrition etc will make current generations bigger than before, but the energy and activity just surpasses anything that I could say was normal. Football has always been tainted by doping of some sort, not just recently, and the higher up you go the more you get, the Spanish (it can be argued) have it to an art form, though who can tell for sure. Nobody worth much will be pulled up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Macy
I was told a very honest story from a former director of ours regarding peds, she simply said - imagine you have a serve coming at you at 150kmph, over such a short distance, the best trained professional will block it back, but watch the top players, they'll adjust, move and play a shot back - which puts them past the middle rankers. She said that it wasn't just juicing up in the off season that does this, she claimed that players were taking things to "pep them up" before matches. It could be true, who knows, but when you see so many young athletes passing away before time....
Some doping in Horse Racing: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/horse-racing/22258011
Again, hardly a surprise.
Hmm. Horsemeat in supermarket burgers and lasagne. Steroids in horses. Alberto Contador was telling the truth all along!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr A
While I love the sport and love horses I'm not shocked by the presence of performance enhancing drugs in the sport. The real shock here is the fact this has been uncovered at a stable as large and elite as Godolphin. I'm glad they have been found out and exposed but I can't understand how they could be so naïve here. Waiting for the story to unravel.
On drugs in sport. I'll post the link to a fascinating documentary called the 'Record Fakers' on BBC 5 Live at the minute which examines the legacy of state control of sport in East Germany pre 1989. Very harrowing and sad tales of crimes against humanity.
A link to the BBC programme on doping in track and field.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...Record_Fakers/
Enjoyed this piece on doping in cycling: http://crankpunk.com/2013/04/25/a-sl...what-the-hell/
@Giggs_Boson is a decent journalist to follow on twitter regarding the Fuentes situation. He just posted:
"Spanish anti-doping is appealing Judge's decision to destroy the evidence. Bags held in storage until appeal is heard."
https://twitter.com/giggs_boson/stat...69165745639424
Crazy ruling!
Completely ridiculous ruling. If it looks like a cover up, walks like a cover up...
Hardly surprising unfortunately. Spain has a pretty abysmal record on the doping front. Hopefully the appeal is successful and the documentation at least becomes public.
Vijay Singh gets away with it: http://espn.go.com/golf/story/_/id/9...r-antler-spray
Deco tests positive: http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/2931/...s&ICID=HP_HL_1
I totally misread that this morning on my phone. I read it like Spanish AD wanted the bags destroyed. An insane ruling. More needs to be made of this than is at present, he says shouting into the wind.Quote:
Originally Posted by SkStu
I love how all these super famous sports people can walk into a pharmacy and buy these vitamin supplements that contain these banned substances.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr A
Surely the pharmacists need to be questioned as they are a medical practitioner who need to advise their customers of using such medication and supplements.
I mean you can't by solpadeine without getting the Inquisition. It's almost as if there's no pharmacist at all involved...
In regards to the Aussie Rules drug scandal, the guy who prescribed the drugs (which are anti-obesity type drugs) claimed he had a letter from WADA saying the drugs were not banned. Essendon, the club in question, accepted that and let this bloke Dank inject the players. Now WADA are saying that ignorance is no defence and any player involved could face severe bans. (The club have admitted they now believe the drugs given were in fact banned substances.)
While I appreciate zero tolerance to drugs is right, in this case unless the players could analyse the drugs themselves, how the hell were they to know what exactly they were taking? They took what they were told were vitamin supplements in good faith, and it will be interesting to see how all this pans out.
But ignorance is never a defence.Quote:
Originally Posted by gastric
Get two doctors. Have an independent AFL panel. There's always a solution.
A club as big as Essendon should be capable of that.
I can get you as many Nurofen Plus as you need. How many are you looking for, 12? 24?Quote:
Originally Posted by BonnieShels
A fascinating read on suspected doping cases in football down through the decades: http://www.4dfoot.com/2013/02/09/dop...s-of-evidence/
Tyson Gay and a bunch of Jamaicans on the way. Yohan Blake looking dodgy pulling out of Moscow with "injury" and Chris Froome zooming up the mountains. Interesting times.
On a similar note, over the weekend I was reading this timeline of Rafael Nadal's history of injury.
In fairness to Blake, he's been out with a hamsting injury for a while now (April I think). It's certainly possible that that's a co-incidence
There was a load of Turkish athletes caught recently too.
GAS6 seems to be the new drug the rumours are swirling around. There's a bit on it here although the necessity to use google translate makes it difficult to follow: http://translate.google.com/translat...cule-des-dopes
I read last month he might miss out but that he'd likely make it. He has form though (2009 banning) and it probably is just bad timing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dodge
CD, Nadal is playing in one of the worst regulated sports going and there is almost no effort (concerted) to make a change. I am fully convinced that to break the top 50 you have to take something. People get caught, slapped on the wrist and play on. But since Nadal is so high profile and has won so much, to out him would devastate the sport. For any star we'll have to wait until they're not worth as much.
The numbers of OOC blood tests being done in tennis is shockingly low. It's fractions of what goes on in cycling, which is still far from clean. Given how tennis is edging closer to becoming a pure endurance sport, there has to be some reason they're not being more stringent.
I was at a sports industry networking event at the KIA Oval recently. I met a guy from UK Anti-Doping and he said the ruling was entirely correct when I suggested it smacked of a cover-up. From a legal perspective the judge had absolutely no option under Spanish law but to order the evidence to be destroyed. I don't know exactly what the ins and outs were but I suppose it adds another perspective.Quote:
Originally Posted by SkStu
it boiled down to the case being a medical hearing, not a sporting one. The judge had to destroy the medical records (blood bags) rather than destroy evidence in a sporting context.
The case was against Dr Fuentes not treating his patients with their best medical interests in mind, rather than against him helping sports stars cheat.
The ruling in Fuentes and the actions after were lawful but not ethical, or rather not moral. It would be wrong to say the Spanish court were covering up, they did what they could to uncover the culture in the country which allowed all sorts to go on and had to stick to the letter of the law. But in Spain, Italy and Germany there are so many loopholes for doping to take place.
CD is hitting the nail on the head, tennis is rotten. Viktor Troiki just got banned for 18months, there are so many inconsistencies in the case. He gave a urine sample, the next day (having been given leave by the tester) gave a blood test, and it turned out that both tests were negative. Yet he got banned on a technicality.
In tennis there are silent bans, which the ITF try to deny but they're complicit in it, and rotten academies, yet nobody wants to open the door to what could pour out.
Viktor Troicki was just handed an 18 month ban from tennis last week for refusing to produce a sample for testing apparently. It follows Cillic getting a 3 month ban during Wimbledon.
There normally isn't very many guys done for doping in Tennis so it's a bit mad seeing two in quick succession, both pleading innocence obviously.
There are lots done AV, just that it normally is in house, from what I've seen. With the amount of activity around the world (just at a professional level) there is little the ITF can do when they don't fund their anti-doping system.
Some really funny posters here in Moscow, they have billboards of Tyson Gay and Usain Bolt with the heading - face-to-face. Nobody seems bothered anymore.
The Cillic ban has certainly been kept very quiet anyway, It took over a month before word got out.
I seen Andy Murray making some bitter tweets about cheats a few weeks ago. It's hard to know with them lads, tennis is an incredibly tough sport at the top level.Just going through some of the notable Tennis player bans in the last 10 years or so. No really big names banned for performance enhancers, bar Cillic (his is a bit dubious) and now Troicki). It's usually #50-100 ranked guys.
Wayne Odesnik is the most cut and dry case, 2 year ban for human growth hormones in 2010, he was the only one I knew about aside from Cillic and Troicki..
Richard Gasquet - Few months out for testing positive with Cocaine in his system.
Martina Hingis - Cocaine too!
Lourdes Domingues Lino - Cocaine.. what kind of partys do these people go to!!
Alex Bogmolov Jr. 1.5 month ban for filling incorrect paperwork on the inhaler he was taking..
Fillipo Volandri - 3 month ban for ''asthma medication''.
Karol Beck in 2005, 2 year ban for clenbeturol whatever that is..
Ivo Minar had a 2 year ban reduced to 8 months after the ITF accepted he had taken a banned substance by accident..
A 16 year old Bulgarian wta player got banned this month too apparently, for proper performance enhancing drugs, no cocaine at all!
How come the cyclists get identified, and the footballers/ other sports protected on a technicality? That's where the cover up is - what's good for one sport, should be good for the others.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spudulika
Macy, you're right, and it is a complete cover up, and it's kind of like the usual bit of picking on the least defensible part of sports (in society it's usually white male 16-70), athletics also gets a belting but nobody is surprised. I firmly believe it's all about where the money goes. As I stand by, my old company and my new one will not allow a player go to training camps in Spain (or academies), Italy, France and Germany - in that order. Also some of the increased performances of average players always catches my eye, especially when you meet them and suddenly they're muscled up and quite different to before. Last year (I think it was at the US Open) I heard Serena Williams complaining about testing and how players shouldn't have to be "on demand", this is the same person who wasn't tested for 18 months and who has had 2 in the past 3 years. It's a joke and the authorities and sponsors don't want any flak hitting them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Macy
AV, great list, and just something that has the fishiest smell (not from you of course :-) ) cocaine! Now, I've been around many tennis players and cocaine is usually not the drug of choice, especially for men. However....cocaine or substances with such properties are often used as masking agents. Some years ago a young Bulgarian (Karatantcheva) was done for using ped's, she first claimed it was because she was pregnant (had an abortion) and thus the nandrolone found could be explained. However it was thrown out and the pregnancy excuse denied. She's since sold herself to Kazakhstan (along with lots of other players) and is playing the circuit. But there was something completely covered up.
The girl was 15 at the time of the test, and supposedly she'd "conceived" at 14, her coach then was well known to have been involved in her and is still on the circuit working with young women. No sanction was taken against him, no questions asked, nothing. So in short, tennis has a heck of a lot of things to clean up but still doesn't do it.