You can’t say that, No. 2
December 18, 2014 § 23 Comments
Incredibly, his mother forgot to tell him that something can be both a favor AND forbidden.
“I threw the bag in the suitcase without covering it. It was mixed with clothing. I didn’t know I was doing anything forbidden, just a favour.” Mexican racer Jose Alfredo Aguirre, busted at the Alicante airport in Spain with EPO and human growth hormone in his carry-on baggage, allegedly given to him by his coach. Cycling News, December 16, 2014.
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For example, he would totally dispense with that “getting caught” stuff. And the kidney failure.
“I wouldn’t dope, or I’d at least do it differently.” Disgraced, banned, and self-admitted “idiot” Riccardo Riccò at his book signing, explaining what he’d learned from a career that ended when he almost killed himself due to a botched home-job transfusion. Cycling News, December 17, 2014.
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But then, goshdangit, they made him pee into that little cup-thingy after the race.
“After having served a suspension in 2011, I never expected to find myself in this situation again.” Old fellow Todd Robertson, 51, after receiving an 8-year ban as a repeat doper at masters nationals in Bend. USADA sanction list, May 14, 2014.
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Or, it could just be the rather pedestrian story of another cheating dirtbag.
“I am confident that this will soon become a dramatic story about professionalism and family, with the outcome of the results of the counter-analysis that will be demanded by my lawyer.” Matteo Robattini, just prior to the counter-analysis demanded by his lawyer that confirmed he had in fact doped with EPO. TuttoSport 24-Ore, September 17, 2014.
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Cycling in the South Bay 
Some classics there, you really could make that stuff up.
Maybe we should just embrace doping, if only for it’s comedic value, it sure gives you something to write about once or twice a week.
It’s all entertainment.
What I like is, WADA and USADA and all them have terrorized all sporting competitors the world over into never ever having anything to do with performance-enhancing substances. Whoops, I mean the performance-enhancing substances that WADA and USADA and them have declared “illegal”. I mean, all the corpses on the pyre of righteousness, the ruined careers, the witch hunts and the mountains of bad publicity resulting, the loss of long-time sponsors, and their institutionalized farm teams, et al., the farcical re-ordering of race results (“not that doper, *this* doper really won, because he didn’t get tested!”), the near-total loss of personal rights, the obvious lying-and-job-saving and “that doper still gets to be a DS”– all of it, it’s all been worth it, because athletes are too scared to go near *anything* that might be “dope”, ever since they all quit in 1999.
“What do you take for a Puritan Hangover?”
Maybe we’re getting close to the answer.
As long as they quit stealing my childhood dreams (I mean my leaky prostate dreams) I will be happy!
And Betsy.
Just like big-time wrestling, with more faking and less show-biz talent.
Not to mention fewer muscles.
near-total loss of personal rights
Today’s example of not letting facts get in the way of a rant.
I will be sure to ask Levi and Big George about how their rights were trampled on their way to comfortable retirement.
Let us know what George and Levi say, please.
Thank you.
Were any of these riders caught with water in their water bottles? No. So they’re clean by my and pretty all of LB bike community standards!
Yep. As long as they’re not riding with water, they’re clean.
Just don’t squirt a big blast in the ol’ eyeballs.
Here is the thing. Cheating undermines the morals of society. When kids see their sports heroes cheating and barely getting a slap on the wrist if they get caught at all, it says that cheating is ok. Well if cheating in sport is okay then cheating on history and math and whatever else tests are okay too. And of course that leads to people who are dishonest in business and with their loved ones because cheating is just the accepted norm. Once again, if the organizations that run sports really wanted to stop doping, all offenders would face a lifetime ban on the first offense. All doping is premeditated, there are no accidents. It is all about the money and that is why Astana still gets a license.
The real thing is that cheating and lying and stealing are endemic to humans, at all levels and in all spheres of human activity. Follow the rules as best you can, and sleep well at night. Someone is always gonna steal a march on you, literally.
Formulating rules that can’t be– or aren’t, for whatever reason– fairly and evenly enforced “on the day” is what “undermines the morals of society”.
Bad rules, bad enforcement. Where’s the “morality” in that?
The drug cops have repeatedly, with intentional wide publicity, shown the value of ratting out fellow competitors.
Some dopers go to the guillotine, some get promotions.
Where’s the “morality” in that?
Your “lifetime ban”, as implemented by these cowboys, is just a bigger chip to trade for whatever it will bring in the market.
I didn’t ever even once come close to saying “cheating is okay”. Again, the people who traded favors for information (plus power, control, “finally getting that SOB Lance Armstrong”) did that.
The clear message is: “Just don’t get caught, but if you do, make the best deal you can!”.
Meanwhile, pee in that cup right now because you don’t have any rights, and “We knew they were doping”.
“Unsolvable problem”.
Doping is a problem. It’s a problem when there are no rules and no enforcement (death on Mt. Ventoux…). It’s a problem when there are rules and no effective enforcement (the WorldTour 90’s, or SoCal masters racing). And it’s a problem when there are rules and a passable attempt at enforcement.
No, the current situation isn’t rainbows and unicorns. But, in my opinion, it’s a pretty decent attempt. I applaud the efforts of anti-doping organizations to enforce the rules that “we” create.
And it always mystifies me that whenever the anti-dopers have the most success, they get the most criticism….
One of the great ironies in this whole mess is that Tom Simpson’s death can be fairly put at the feet of the rule-makers who forbade carrying more than two water bottles for fear “the riders would cheat”.
Fotheringham’s “Put Me Back On My Bike” tells the story.
And no, Simpson didn’t say “Put me back on my bike” because he was dead or very nearly so before he hit the ground.
By testimony, Simpson’s skin was dry. “No perspiration” means “no cooling effect”, leading to heat stroke. Amphetamines were the “drug of choice” in those days, meaning that many days of racing in the heat and blazing sun were successfully concluded with no fatalities. Although there were certainly close calls, as Fotheringham relates.
This was a fatality waiting to happen, and not because “they were doping”. Those interludes in old movies where the riders raid the cafés, and grab bottles filled with water where others have cooled their feet aren’t so funny after you read Fotheringham.
And hey, if you want to use Floyd as an example of the palliative effect of good old H2O in treating active dopers, be my guest…
The “current situation” is anything but a “decent” attempt. To paraphrase Mae West, “Decency has nothing to do with it”.
“We” didn’t create those rules. “They” did.
I don’t see the dope cops getting the most criticism when they have the most “success”. Catch someone via a “positive”? OK.
I see them getting “criticism” for practices that drive sponsors out of the sport, that feed the “moralists” (ha! ha!) in the Press, and outright ridicule for “Best Uncaught Doper” historical GC lists.
OK, what’s your solution? Throw up your hands and pretend nothing’s going on? Quit competitive cycling? Cede control of the podium to dopers. None of those are acceptable to me vs. the current situation.
I said “unsolvable problem”. If I thought I had “a solution”, I’d have offered it years ago.
It’s a much different situation, but NASCAR has policed itself with minimal damage over the years.
As I’ve said many times, maybe there’s something in that finger-lickin’ good fried chicken and Miller Lite that is helping them with all that.
I don’t pretend to know.
For instance, they (NASCAR) kept Toyota in the sport even after the Waltrip “intake manifold doping” incident. Scapegoats readily available there– think “Pearl Harbor” and Michael Waltrip’s Michael Waltrip, if you will.
And in recent years, the old “Iffn’ you ain’t cheatin’ you ain’t tryin'” culture certainly has been changed in NASCAR.
All a far cry from “Lifetime bans for even thinking about doping” that some seem to favor.
No solution? Maybe no problem!
Dang, they done took our rights to cheat away. It must be “them” that are the problem.
I’d never heard of Todd Robertson; the USAC link said the stimulant Modafinil was the drug he used. Modafinil is a stimulant often used by the military to maintain alertness.
Seems the criteria used by WADA are often arbitrary.
Modafinil bad, caffeine good.
Caffeine also improves performance in endurance sports, as has Beta Alanine & (sometimes) Beet Juice. Yet these 3 are all permissible.
It’s the inconsistency which irks me the most.
The best definition of playing by the rules is playing by the rules.
Another one:
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/santambrogio-claims-he-took-testosterone-as-infertility-treatment
The more steroids I take, the more infertile I am.