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Cylists are junkies, do you think that distance runners bend the rules?
Well?
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Ironman testing seems very lax and football was non existent.
Operation Puerto involved many sports yet only the cyclists were revealed.
Maybe the shame of handing back a big trophy would have been just too high a price ?
What is a cylist?
It is a bit harsh to describe cyclists in general as junkies. Cycling was the first and until last years Olympics the only sport to test for EPO etc. During the Olympics only 8 sports were tested for EPO and blood 'tampering'. The science is easy, getting away with it complex, hence the need for a bent Doctor. Bearing in mind straight Doctors can get £1200+ per shift how much for a bent one? The sums paid to Dr Ferrari by Lance were 10's of thousands of $. Other cyclists have been caught paying 1000's of $ for 'training plans'. Get the science wrong you get caught or end up in hospital (Riccardo Riccio) and have to admit you are an idiot.
Consequently a sport needs to be well financed, or the competitor already wealthy.
Please don't hammer cycling for hammering the cheats; ask if it is possible only cyclists cannot resist a 'chemical romance'. Are all other sports doing their bit?
As above in Operation Puerto approximately 100 bags of blood were found, approximately 36 were found to belong to cyclists; who else's blood was found by investigators and why were the bags destroyed?
Footballers? Tennis players? who knows...
Well at least cycling is trying to gets its act together after years of constant cheats. Distance runners, who knows. But drug testing in athletics is far more tighter. Unless the mechanism is in place for every sport to test every athlete for drugs and that will not happen for a long time. For now, the cheats will continue.
Wasn't there a story about Kenyan runners being on drugs? It's not just cyclists.
Or cylists as I previously asserted. My profuse apologies.
The weightlifters seem to have featured highly in the junkie stats in previous Olympics. I have to ask, what was reported in relation to the London Olympics? I recall two who decided to go home early. Nothing more. Did I miss something?
I don't know about cycling but athletics are now going back years and cheats even now being caught and banned - there has always been a culture of blood doping etc in athletics. Just look at Lasse Viren matts vaino . Lepid the multi European Cross country champion only ever seemed to get it right once a year - coincidence, who knows? but given the current record of the Russian federation there does seem to be a bit of a culture there too now - back to the bad old days of eastern block cheating - Turkey seems to have gone down that path too. I was never happy with the |Spanish and Portuguese athletics in the 90s - Abel Anton, Pinto etc - where are the Spaniards and Portuguese now? since the advent of stricter EPO testing?
There is talk that the Kenyans may have a bit of a drug culture going on so where does that leave the Ethiopians do all those African distance runners just have a natural advantage over the rest of the world - John Ngugi was once banned for refusing to take an out of season test - they cited naiveté who didn't know what was going on, but this was a multi world champion not some wet behind the ears school boy. Just Cycling - no certainly not - Although if anyone deserved to get caught it was St Lance of the Tour!!!
i think tennis will be the next big drugs scandal in sport.
There are a lot of stories about eastern bloc athletes now mysteriously crippled with health problems. The athletes are going to be the big losers in the long term; how must it feel to know that your fame and ability is (was) all down to cheating? I suppose you could justify to yourself by saying 'everyone else is doing it; I am just doing it the best'. Or maybe the end justifies the means; very Stalinesque.
I cannot help thinking doping when I see an outstanding athlete these days. I just hope I am a miserable old cynic and the testers are doing the best they can on all athletes. But I wonder whether there is the money in distance running to pay the bent scientists? Kenyan athletes already have an advantage because they can more easily train at altitude (this causes the body to produce more red blood cells; which is the effect athletes expect when they take EPO).
I hope that seeing a crop of cheaters harvested on a regular basis shows that the sports governing bodies are doing their best, not that the sport is rotten. But that cynical thought still chips in....