Yep, all this doping news is really, really sad and bogus.
On the bright side, cycling is at least dealing with it. You get caught, it's two years. You do something to evade the doping controls, like Rasmussen, it's going to end up being two years.
You know what doping gets you in Mike Vick's NFL? Four games.
You know what doping gets you in MLB? Home run records and grateful fans.
You know what gambling on your sport gets you in the NHL? Nothing, outside of whatever the authorities want to dole out.
You know what cheating gets you in the NBA? A repentant sounding commissioner, but probably no real changes in the end.
So hold your skinny chins (one each, unlike Barry Bonds or the typical NFL lineman) up, and be proud that for as screwed up as our sport is, it is leading the way on cleaning up doping. Yeah, it's bullsh1t the way Rasmussen is being 'convicted' without a trial, but you know what? Everybody who races at that level knows that if you evade doping controls, you will, by the rules, be presumed guilty. Accidentally missing a control at a race or in training is a different thing, but Rasmussen told everybody he missed the control because he was in Mexico, and it turned out today he was actually in Italy today. I hope for his sake he wasn't meeting with good old Dr. Ferrari (who knows more about training clean *and* dirty than anybody), it'll go much worse for him if he did.
I've said before that I'm not overly exercised about doping if nobody takes it seriously, but if we're going to take it seriously, then let's do it, and the riders need to be advised. I'd say this is a pretty good warning shot.
So hold your heads up, people. You can't excise a tumor without a sharp knife and some bloodshed.
4 comments:
What's up with all the baseball ignorance and hate among the cycling brethren? Sure, a couple of years ago a first doping offense in MLB called for no more than counseling, and steroids were only effectively banned starting in the 2004 season (this explains why Barry Bonds, well-hated and admitted juicer, goes unsanctioned), but now a first offense results in a ban, albeit a short one.
Hey, I love baseball, but to illustrate why I'm starting to find it grinding, the local sports talk guys were going on about sily french bicycling this morning. One says, "So he was clean, but he skipped doping controls months before the Tour, and now the team fires him? Well, cheating is cheating."
This was followed by a bunch of mocking out pro cycling.
Then the other guy says, "Hey, did Bud Selig go to the game last night? Barry didn't play, so what does Selig do, just hang out?"
Apparently the irony of mocking a sport that will suspend people for *suspicion* of doping for being dirty, while unquestioningly accepting a sport whose greatest active player is an admitted doper (and whose sanctioning bodies can barely bring themselves to suspend people who are caught doping) was lost on the hosts.
Apparently it's lost on MLB too.
Another example is the WADA vice president, who is calling for cycling to be removed from the Olympics because it's a dirty sport. Um, has he never heard of Track and Field? Or Swimming? Or any other sport? It's nothing personal against baseball, just the more-than-typical hypocrisy is giving me a huge case of the @55.
I hear ya. It's a shame it's come to the point we feel the need to boot the maillot jaune for the simple appearance of malfeasance. The 2007 Tour and preceding Operation Puerto will be remembered for a long time.
you need some pictures
I need more words
you need more pictures
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