Olympics and doping

off the back

We all talk so much about cyclings rotten image wrt drugs. Well some great news for a change ....
Paddy Power Bookmaker are taking best on the first sport to have a medal stripped at the Olympics and cycling is ONLY 12/1
http://www.paddypower.com/bet?action=go ... bir_index=

Track and field, swimming, weight lifting all ahead of us

LangerDan

Hope you all put your money on cycling.

http://www.velonews.com/article/81575/s ... o-at-games

Kléber

More Spanish practices :roll: . She pulled ouf of the race claiming an "anxiety attack". It seems the women are joining the men in dreaming up new lies, always unable to tell the truth, to duck their responsibility.

I'd like to see the IOC or UCI threaten - but not act - to ban Spain from international events if they don't clean up their act, to give a big wake up call.

From a cynical view, the Spanish team alone should not be letting their own people aboard the plane to Beijing without checking them before. How could this happen?

skavanagh.bikeradar

I bet she had an anxiety attack: "I've been caught, oh sheet, I'd better nip off home before this gets out".

It's not just the men that make up 'dog ate my homework' style excuses then.

LangerDan

A "proper" athlete wouldn't have been hanging around the Athletes village over a week before her event. Its not just because of "pressure on accommodation" that competitors arrive in a couple of days before events and p!ss off immediately afterwards.

I wonder are the authorities taking a more detailed look at Sammy Sanchez' sample?

blazing_saddles

It's at times like this, I question the whole point of dope testing. What about that 17yo Chinese weighlifter?
The dirtiest sport on the planet and he stands out like a physical freak, from his peers.
Sure, the Chinese are taking the pi*s, just not from their own, so called athletes.



WADA YOU THINK OF THAT?
YES! I've passed the doping controls, too..

mrushton

Call me cynical but do we really think that China/N.Korea etc haven't got some kind of 'chemical enhancement' programme going. They've probably picked up where the E.Germans/Russians left off (if they ever did). i was watching the US swimmer Phelps and at the end of his races which he wins he hardly looks out of breath - despite breaking a record. Perhaps he really is that good.

Kléber

China has the advantage of 1.3 billion people. That's over 20 times the population of Britain or France. So numerically, for every champion weightlifter in Britain, the Chinese could supply 21. By all means be suspicious of doping but they do start with a big advantage.

Besides, weightlifting does tend to go hand in hand with doping. The entire Greek squad was banned from attending and other countries have institutionalised programmes too.

cougie

Glad to see teh doddgy Greek Sprinter was banned.

cougie

Glad to see teh doddgy Greek Sprinter was banned.

Jez mon

IIRC the Russian doping programs went over the pond to get involved in BALCO etc.

andy_wrx

I think the games will be a shining endorsement of Chinese sporting achievement...

...and a wonderful global showcase for their pharmaceutical industry

vermooten

mrushton wrote:

Call me cynical but do we really think that China/N.Korea etc haven't got some kind of 'chemical enhancement' programme going. They've probably picked up where the E.Germans/Russians left off (if they ever did).

Why do you say that? Evidence or prejudice?

blazing_saddles

The entire Bulgarian weightlifting team also tested positive a couple of months ago and were also canned.
It's definitive proof that the sport is far dirtier than cycling.
So, it's not a huge leap of faith to assume a 17YO who already looks like a pocket Arnold Swarchenegger is taking the odd steroid. :roll:

ride1960

I wouldnt bet on cycling not being the first to have a doper caught since it was one of the first events to be presented a medal. Any athlete needing medical attention like for example should be taken to the hospital right away and also given a doping test. Just think how easy it would be to calculate the results if every athlete got cold feet before the event and doping testing could take place. Any nation with 1.3 billion people should have the possibility of bigger stronger faster athletes since it is a law of averages they will have more natural mutants than smaller countries. If any athlete gets caught doping i would like to see their whole country expelled from the olympics with a forfieture of all medals. The weight lifter in the picture sure looks like a mutant so hopefully he truly is. However, If he is doping and not getting caught he should get the medal. It sure would be interesting if one of the chinese athletes got busted. How many times did david millar dope before he got caught? Let me go out on a limb and say he did it more than once before the test caught up with him. Just curious does anyone know how many keynan distance runners have been busted for EPO?

Tackle

I have a theory regarding the advent of EPO, totally without evidencebut here it is.

Do you remember at the World Athletic Championships about 1996 three Chinese women nicknameed Maws Army, one tall, one short and one inbetween size. They came from nowhere, broke all the world records won all the medals at the World Championships then disappeared. I wonder, I just wonder???

andyp

It was the World Championships in Stuttgart in, I think, 1993 where the Chinese dominated the female distance running.

EPO was around a few years before then. Usage in cycling was widespread by 1992/93.

Tackle

Theory disproven then. Sorry for infultrating the thread.

afx237vi

Weren't cross country skiers the first to use EPO as a PED?

Back to that Chinese weighlifter on page 1. I'm not saying he's clean, but did anyone ever see the Matthew Pinsent documentary about Chinese gymnasts? They're worked brutally hard. Their entire life had one aim and one aim only - to be an Olympic athlete. That kid probably knows nothing but weightlifting.

andyp

Tackle wrote:

Theory disproven then. Sorry for infultrating the thread.

No need to apologise - sadly, as a fan of cycling, I've become quite an expert on the history and usage of EPO. The first suspected users were in the low countries in the late 1980s, fifteen of whom died.

It become the performance enhancer du jour in the pro peloton in around 1990 (those suspected of using it then include Gianni Bugno andClaudio Chiappucci). By 1992 it's use was widespread and remains so to this day, even after the urine test to detect it was introduced in 2000.

Cumulonimbus

I think this is the coach in question

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Junren

Wang Junxia's set a world record for the 3000 metres in 1993 - 8.06. The best achieved in any other season was 8.21.42 by Szabo. The same athlete holds the world record in the 10,000 metres by 30 seconds


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3000_metres
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10,000_metres

Mysteriously they didnt seem to anywhere near as good in any years after that

Kléber

They attributed the training to drinking turtle blood. I've heard of slang for EPO but that's a new one

slojo

The 1997 world rankings for women's 10,000m were hilarious.
Nine of the top ten athletes were Chinese.
And they all achieved their times in the same race.

Tom Butcher

Must have been a fast night.

Jez mon

Read a short article today, in which WADA was quoted as saying, more or less, that if cycling didn't clean up it's act, it would risk it's place at the Olympics :roll:

He even mentioned cycling and weightlifting in the same sentence! Seriously, WADA must know that cycling is one of the sports which has started doing its utmost to remove widespread doping, so why does it continue to bully cycling?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/olympics/article4510339.ece

Kléber

The UCI has dragged its heels. We've had institutionalised team doping for years, it was exposed by the Festina scandal but it's only now we're seeing blood passports, the French adopted them a decade ago but the UCI said no. So that's pretty much 15 years of doing nothing whilst the rest of us have suspected what's been going on. So when the first doping case at the Olympics comes from cycling, no wonder people get annoyed.

Still, the UCI is beginning to wake up now. Track and field still has big problems - ask the Russian team - and other sports too are rife with abuse. Sounds like the new WADA boss is starting off where Dick Pound left off and opening his mouth a bit too quickly.

Jez mon

Isn't there any way the two sides could have some intelligent, calm and quiet dialog before spouting off **** like this though!!?

iainf72

Kléber wrote:

The UCI has dragged its heels. We've had institutionalised team doping for years, it was exposed by the Festina scandal but it's only now we're seeing blood passports, the French adopted them a decade ago but the UCI said no.

Except the blood passport this is probably about to die - No funding. Once again they've made a hash of it. Oh, and coz they annoyed WADA they can't actually sanction someone for a wierd result, just offer a 15 day "no start"

Genius.

nathanbloke

So reading that Times article, 2 female cyclists have been caught before competing in Behjing, and 3 athletes. So let's drop cycling and weightllifting.

Wot? Not dropping athletices? Well, well!