(Mod Post #61)The news we've all been waiting for....

shotgunmcos

Folks its a good discussion so far, please refrain from making assumptions about who did or did not dope or who did or did not assist etc...

ThisRegard

To be fair, I'm not making any wild assumptions or accusations. I've said one thing at this stage that is all over the worlds media, from the Times to the Guardian as well as being brought up in judicial proceedings in the US so I'm not making any assumptiopns. It's a matter of public record at this stage.

Whereas if I said Mr. X in the pub told me that he works with a dog whose owner told him that his grandmothers nurse administers EPO when doing transfusions I fully understand that being snipped.

tunney

shotgunmcos wrote: »

Folks its a good discussion so far, please refrain from making assumptions about who did or did not dope or who did or did not assist etc...

I think mloc dopes.

tunney

Sorry, meant "is a"

shotgunmcos

ThisRegard wrote: »

To be fair, I'm not making any wild assumptions or accusations. I've said one thing at this stage that is all over the worlds media, from the Times to the Guardian as well as being brought up in judicial proceedings in the US so I'm not making any assumptiopns. It's a matter of public record at this stage.

Whereas if I said Mr. X in the pub told me that he works with a dog whose owner told him that his grandmothers nurse administers EPO when doing transfusions I fully understand that being snipped.

I hear you and point taken. It was a general post not aimed at anyone Its an interesting thread and would be better on topic than spiral into the same debate that both camps cannot agree on

Que Tunney with a Funny...

tunney

Jordan Rapp -pro Ironman, works for SlowTwitch, by all accounts a nice approachable guy. A pro who will help the average bloke with position, training etc etc.

These are his comments on ThunderBears FaceBook post on Lance:

"I think you are missing the crux of what Torbjorn wrote. At least, what I took as the crux. I don't think anyone would ever dispute that Lance is a phenomenal athlete. *IF HE DOPED* (which is certainly an "if"), that didn't make him a great athlete. It's not like he popped some pill that turned him from couch potato into TdF champ. Marion Jones was probably the greatest female high school sprinter of all time (at least until Alyson Felix came along and broke her records), and I'd be fairly sure she did that cleanly, but - ultimately - her performances at the elite level were tainted by PEDs. The drugs did NOT make Marion a great athlete. Likewise, *IF* Lance took drugs, they did not make him a great athlete. There's a reason it's called a "Performance ENHANCING Drug" and not a "Performance Creating Drug."

But the two really salient points are this (as I read it):

- Lance is certainly not the only cyclist to - *as far as I know* - never really address the fact that cycling has a drug problem, but he is the most high profile cyclist to fail to do so. Now, I'm not a Lance-o-phile, so if he has made some very public statement about his commitment to cleaning up the sport in cycling, I may have missed it. But, I do consider myself relatively informed, and I certainly haven't seen anything from him on the larger issue of systematic doping in cycling. Lance's comments have always been related to his own testing history. And I think what Torbjorn is saying is that when you are THE most high profile cyclist in the world, it's a bit disappointing that you haven't made some public comments about cleaning up the sport that is responsible for your fame and fortune. Now, other folks can disagree with that assessment, and it's certainly not Lance's "responsibility" to do anything along those lines, but I think that - as with some of the bigger NFL/NHL names now pushing for greater transparency regarding concussion policy - it's encouraging when a champion makes a commitment to leaving the sport better than they found it. Lance has certainly done that with regards to media/money/etc., but it would cost him nothing and earn a lot of goodwill for him to take a Vaughters-esque (though maybe with a smaller serving of crazy) approach to eradicating doping in cycling at large.

- the second is the fact that there is VERY compelling scientific evidence that the training benefits of doping are essentially permanent. Most of the drugs that athletes takes, especially endurance athletes, are designed to enhance recovery. It's not that the drugs make you faster (for endurance sports; anabolics certainly help explosive sports); it's that they allow you to train more. And the benefit of that training load does not disappear once you stop taking drugs. Essentially, if a cyclist was able to ride 35,000km a year for 10 years instead of 25,000km because of drugs, the benefit of that does not go away once they stop taking drugs. In other words, there is evidence that once you have doped, you can never really be truly "clean." *IF* (again, *IF*) Lance was doping for any of the time he was a cyclist, that represents a massive advantage over other athletes. So the fact that he may (and I believe he is) clean now doesn't mean that it is a level playing field. IF (IF, IF, IF!) he doped as a cyclist, that does represent an unfair advantage and one that I think people are justified in being concerned about. "

mloc123

tunney wrote: »

Sorry, meant "is a"

Thats my day ruined.

tunney

Its his point two that for me is the important bit to remember. Both when thinking of pro cyclists and domestic athletes.

ThisRegard

shotgunmcos wrote: »

I hear you and point taken.

Cheers, I don't want someone having a read through the thread and see my post was mod edit, it could ruin whatever name I have around here

shotgunmcos

tunney wrote: »

Its his point two that for me is the important bit to remember. Both when thinking of pro cyclists and domestic athletes.

So would that explain explain a run split?

ThisRegard

Interesting conversation on Off the Ball this evening with the US anti doing agency who are looking to get the information from the US prosecutors who recently dropped their well publicised investigation in which the man in question was part of. Their case was a legal one based on if there was fraud surrounding the whole thing, but USADA is going to be purely investigating doping so another can of worms is about to be opened.

Rawhead

ThisRegard wrote: »

Interesting conversation on Off the Ball this evening with the US anti doing agency who are looking to get the information from the US prosecutors who recently dropped their well publicised investigation in which the man in question was part of. Their case was a legal one based on if there was fraud surrounding the whole thing, but USADA is going to be purely investigating doping so another can of worms is about to be opened.

Wasn't the investigation based on the fact that Postal was a federal agency and thus an arm of the government. They were looking to see if any laws were broken as an organised doping ring in a government agency would be huge. I'm only going off memory.

ThisRegard

I'm not sure what the exact scope of the original investigation was, but as best as I could gather between getting a toddler ready for bed and trying to listen was that it wasn't concerned about the doping itself but fraud of some sort.

Google gives me this
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/usada-still-investigating-doping-allegations-against-armstrong

griffin100

- the second is the fact that there is VERY compelling scientific evidence that the training benefits of doping are essentially permanent. Most of the drugs that athletes takes, especially endurance athletes, are designed to enhance recovery. It's not that the drugs make you faster (for endurance sports; anabolics certainly help explosive sports); it's that they allow you to train more. And the benefit of that training load does not disappear once you stop taking drugs. Essentially, if a cyclist was able to ride 35,000km a year for 10 years instead of 25,000km because of drugs, the benefit of that does not go away once they stop taking drugs. In other words, there is evidence that once you have doped, you can never really be truly "clean." *IF* (again, *IF*) Lance was doping for any of the time he was a cyclist, that represents a massive advantage over other athletes. So the fact that he may (and I believe he is) clean now doesn't mean that it is a level playing field. IF (IF, IF, IF!) he doped as a cyclist, that does represent an unfair advantage and one that I think people are justified in being concerned about. "

That's very interesting. So if you are being treated for an illness and the treatment happens to include drugs that have performance enhancing side effects as well as their intended medical outcome, assuming you recover you obtain a career long advantage from same.

Rawhead

Is there anywhere that tells the full LA story in a (fairly) non biased way. I wasn't aware that he would have been allowed a waiver on certain substances cause of the treatment for cancer. I've read "Every second counts" and although it's impressive I kept thinking throughout the book "is this all a pack of lies".

BennyMul

on Lance, he always stated that he did not take illegal drugs, never mentioned Performance enhancing, I believe him, however his main sponsor was the main company that produced EPO, how come most of his team who left has been caught afterwards.


Do I think the majority of cyclist doped, personally yes. Do I blame them no.
If we look at the sport its stupid, Races were made to be harder faster all for the TV audience. The money is crap in comparison to most sports out there, 95% of them are "work horses" who give their life for their chosen sport, and upon realisation that they will not make it, have two choices take drugs and get money to pay bills, feed the family etc or go home and work in a factory.

Anyone reading this trains hard, we all know how tired we are at the end of a tuff week, month, are PED’s actually a mechanism to keep the body healthy over 3 weeks or racing and not enhance performance?
I am not defending anyone however I don’t think it’s always clear cut. Should anyone caught be banned yes

also I think we should look at the wider sporting arena.
Every sport with athletes at the top or trying to will be prone to cheating albeit PED, match fixing etc

Tennis players refuse to drug testing outside of the season, why when other sports insist on it and have to be available for testing at any time.
Football test primarily for recreational drugs (this may have changed) how can a pro footballer break a leg and be back playing at the top level in 3months (I do know they have correct rehab but still)
Baseball, Basketball was rife with drugs and was commented upon that they were necessary for the athlete to maintain the top level.
Sorry I do not know the level of testing for Tri or Athletics

catweazle

Very good points Benny, I reckon Cycling, Athletics and Swimming have such a bad name as they are far more proactive in weeding out the cheats than some of the other sports.

I have to think with the emphasis on power and explosive speed that rugby surely has a bigger problem than you would think by how few people are caught (perhaps Courdeloin would have a more informed opinion than me on this)

Golfs attitude is a disgrace and they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into enforcing drug testing. With the emphasis on length off the tee in todays courses the temptation has to be there to bulk up to get the extra 10-20 yards of the tee which could make the difference between a 7-8 iron and a 4 iron second shot in which could make someone millions in prize money.

Boxing - even the top guys are calling for more stringent testing as its non existent at the moment

Triathlon, with the great interest i have had in perhaps 4 years since I have took it up I have yet to hear of anyone of note that was caught. I couldnt think of a better endurance sport where peds could benefit you more.

tunney

catweazle wrote: »

Triathlon, with the great interest i have had in perhaps 4 years since I have took it up I have yet to hear of anyone of note that was caught. I couldnt think of a better endurance sport where peds could benefit you more.

Michael Weiss to name a recent one.

Izoard

tunney wrote: »

Michael Weiss to name a recent one.

To be fair, he wasn't caught for tri - that was a hangover from his MTB days from circa '06...

Wthin tri, you've got Nina Kraft and Dimitri Gaag, being the 2 most high profile in recent years.

couerdelion

catweazle wrote: »

I have to think with the emphasis on power and explosive speed that rugby surely has a bigger problem than you would think by how few people are caught (perhaps Courdeloin would have a more informed opinion than me on this)

So I don't fall foul of the mods I can only really comment on Rugby League in the 90's/00's and only at an amateur level and yes at that time there was some drug use in the sport. The players take a lot of hits and the people I know who were taking it were doing so to help them recover in time for the next match. Similar to what Benny was saying it was seen as a mechanism to help keep them healthy and to recover rather than giving them an advantage. There was the odd person who was taking amphetimines before a match too but he was very odd and it made a huge difference to his game. I never saw any of this in Rugby Union though so perhaps it'sa class thing too?

At a pro level the RL realised the problem though and sought to address it and in 2009/10 Rugby League was the most tested sport in the UK. Players are still getting caught though (Terry Newton - HGH, Martin Gleeson - MHA) so I don't think the problem hasn't totally gone away. Terry Newton admitted he took HGH because he thought it was undetectable, how many other drugs are there out there that actually are undetectable?

nerraw1111

There was a very interesting bit of information revealed by the WADA's director general, David Howman, on Newstalk last night which could have big implications for triathlon.

He was saying that WADA have carried out prevalence studies to see whether doping is at a higher level than is currently shown to the case. He said the studies have not been completed yet but "looks like more than are more 10% of athletes out there might be cheating."

He was asked what sports, and he said: ‘It does cover more than one sport, and in fact there was a multi-sport event involved.'

I'm reading that multi-sport event to be a triathlon.

Listen here. http://media.newstalk.ie/listenback/22/tuesday/1/

Comments re multi-sport are made around 50 minutes in.

tunney

nerraw1111 wrote: »

There was a very interesting bit of information revealed by the WADA's director general, David Howman, on Newstalk last night which could have big implications for triathlon.

He was saying that WADA have carried out prevalence studies to see whether doping is at a higher level that is currently shown to the case. He said studies are not t complete yet but "looks like more than are more 10% of athletes out there might be cheating."

He was asked what sports, and he said: ‘It does cover more than one sport, and in fact there was a multi-sport event involved.'

I'm reading that multi-sport event to be a triathlon.

Listen here. http://media.newstalk.ie/listenback/22/tuesday/1/

Comments re multi-sport are made around 50 minutes in.

Picked up on that as well.

I always wonder if the Off the Ball lads will ever accept that their precious bog ball and egg ball are riddled.

Rawhead

tunney wrote: »

Picked up on that as well.

I always wonder if the Off the Ball lads will ever accept that their precious bog ball and egg ball are riddled.

The reason they spend so much time on the GAA is because of the popularity of the sports. In all fairness to triathlons, who the hell has any interest in them outside the few thousand who participate. It's not really a spectator sport and it's full of bores who melt your head. If you go out for a pint with the Gooch or Diarmuid Connolly I don't think they'd spend 3 hours waffling on about bike position or FTP.
As for it being riddled with PED's, where the hell do you think they would get the money to pay for it. The majority of clubs and county's are broke and about to go under. If it is happening then it's being done by a few individuals who have the money, not on any kind of organised basis.
I respect your knowledge and experience in tri's but no need to knock another sport that is enjoyed by millions.

shotgunmcos

Rawhead wrote: »

. In all fairness to triathlons, who the hell has any interest in them outside the few thousand who participate..

GAA is our national sport. Been around for 10 generations. Tri emerged in Ireland in the 80s :rolleyes: Team sports will always generate more interest too

ThisRegard

Rawhead wrote: »

If you go out for a pint with the Gooch or Diarmuid Connolly I don't think they'd spend 3 hours waffling on about bike position or

Very true. They'd most likely give you a good thump while you have your back to them while getting a round in and run down the other end of the pub denying any knowledge of what just happened.

tunney

Rawhead wrote: »

The reason they spend so much time on the GAA is because of the popularity of the sports. In all fairness to triathlons, who the hell has any interest in them outside the few thousand who participate. It's not really a spectator sport and it's full of bores who melt your head. If you go out for a pint with the Gooch or Diarmuid Connolly I don't think they'd spend 3 hours waffling on about bike position or FTP.
As for it being riddled with PED's, where the hell do you think they would get the money to pay for it. The majority of clubs and county's are broke and about to go under. If it is happening then it's being done by a few individuals who have the money, not on any kind of organised basis.
I respect your knowledge and experience in tri's but no need to knock another sport that is enjoyed by millions.

In my house there are three toddler sized jerseys. None of them cycling. One Cavan, one Dublin, one Kerry. Strange Dublin/Kerry relationship going on on my side of the family.

I played hurling and football for one club from aged 5-12, gave up football and took a break of 2-3 years from hurling. Joined another club and played minor, u-21 and Junior hurling until mid twenties. Even Captained one of the junior teams for a year.

I've been too more games than I care to count in Parnell and Brefni park. The league final win of Dublin over Kilkenny with my daughter there too was one of the highlights for me of 2011.

I played rugby for six years too.

I enjoy and appreciate football, hurling and rugby.

Just like I enjoy cycling, athletics and triathlon.

I don't let doping ruin my enjoyment of any of the sports.

But I am not hopelessly naive enough to think that football and hurling, at least at the inter-county and senior levels, are not tainted by doping.

tunney

Rawhead wrote: »

The reason they spend so much time on the GAA is because of the popularity of the sports. In all fairness to triathlons, who the hell has any interest in them outside the few thousand who participate. It's not really a spectator sport and it's full of bores who melt your head. If you go out for a pint with the Gooch or Diarmuid Connolly I don't think they'd spend 3 hours waffling on about bike position or FTP.
As for it being riddled with PED's, where the hell do you think they would get the money to pay for it. The majority of clubs and county's are broke and about to go under. If it is happening then it's being done by a few individuals who have the money, not on any kind of organised basis.
I respect your knowledge and experience in tri's but no need to knock another sport that is enjoyed by millions.

As for the bit "If you go out for a pint with the Gooch or Diarmuid Connolly I don't think they'd spend 3 hours waffling on about bike position or FTP."

Of course they won't, however they'd probably talk alot of football if in the company of other footballers.

Triathletes, and late starting runners, do tend to waffle on and on about their sports. However after the novelty of being new to the sport wears off one of two things happen. (1)They stop doing the sports or (2) they stop talking about them.

I don't talk triathlon anymore unless either asked or out training with club mates. Its boring and narcissistic. But likewise rabbiting on about anything thats all about oneself and ones interests is.

I like hurling, football, rugby. I cannot stand soccer. But yet I am subjected to hours of mindless drivel of signings, results, match of the day and so on. I don't give a fvck. But others do and others rabbit on and on about it. Some people just like to talk about themselves and their interests regardless.

Chartsengrafs

I quite enjoy their GAA reporting, it's a nice change from blanket Premier League mania to be found almost everywhere else. Though soccer gets plenty of space too.

GAA seems to be more about industrial quantities of protein supplements from what I can see, particularly the younger fellas.

BennyMul

P.E.D’s are easy to get. I was offered “assistance” during one season by a fellow cyclist. I took great offence to this as did I honestly look like I needed it, and with access to the web you can get what you want delivered. No doctors note needed.

But where does taking something become a PED,
If I take a few gel's during a marathon, I am in essence enhancing my run, would I be able to run the same time without the gels, probably
Or is underage rugby players taking Creatine wrong?

And really until bog ball has carbon based balls or shoes, talking about bikes is more fun.:p

Rawhead

tunney wrote: »

In my house there are three toddler sized jerseys. None of them cycling. One Cavan, one Dublin, one Kerry. Strange Dublin/Kerry relationship going on on my side of the family.

I played hurling and football for one club from aged 5-12, gave up football and took a break of 2-3 years from hurling. Joined another club and played minor, u-21 and Junior hurling until mid twenties. Even Captained one of the junior teams for a year.

I've been too more games than I care to count in Parnell and Brefni park. The league final win of Dublin over Kilkenny with my daughter there too was one of the highlights for me of 2011.

I played rugby for six years too.

I enjoy and appreciate football, hurling and rugby.

Just like I enjoy cycling, athletics and triathlon.

I don't let doping ruin my enjoyment of any of the sports.

But I am not hopelessly naive enough to think that football and hurling, at least at the inter-county and senior levels, are not tainted by doping.

Fair enough. By the tone of your original post you came across as a little anti GAA. I ****ing hate the term bog ball, it is purely derogatory and takes away from the fact that any inter county player would put a premiership footballer to shame fitness wise and they aren't on £200,000 per week.
I was obviously wrong and apologise. I will add that although a few individuals might be doping in the GAA it is by no means riddled or widespread.