cleansed
Out for a ride, and I get caught in an incredibly refreshing afternoon downpour…
It breaks the heat, and the mood I’m in..
I want to be as far as I can from the horribly depressing news coming out of the Tour de France…
Bicycle racing is such a beautiful sport… and at the professional level, it’s being destroyed….
Baseball is going to be facing its own version of this agony in a few days, when an uber-doper breaks the all time home run record…
and the NFL is incredibly successful, at sweeping massive problems under the rug.
I try to hope that an essentially skill based sport like speedskating, it’s a lot harder to “dope to a win” when technique is such a dominant factor.
Also the elite speedskaters are tested ALL the time. Far more than any of the top American sports–
A central tour contender just had a massive positive test, and the current leader of the tour is accused of the same offence as speedskater Anthony Lobello.
Missing a test by not informing the testers of where you are, essentially is interpreted as hiding so you can dope, get freaky strong, & pee clean by the time they find you.
I don’t know Anthony personally at all, but I was paired with him for both of my 500m races last year at US nationals, and he beat me twice by tiny margins.
Was Anthony clean? I don’t know enough to say, but it adds an intriguing, personal & painful twist to all of this for me.
If he was cheating, he almost took away something that means the world to me (finally cracking the top 10 at nationals).
If he was competing clean, I feel bad for him, as being accused of something like this must be a HORRIBLE kafka-esque nightmare.
More soon, I’m actually writing this from Oregon, where I will be attending a wedding of a friend, and taking a small break from training.
Filed under: on the road
I think (and hope) speedskating will stay clean… on a whole, never can say what one individual will do. There’s not enough $$$ in it (at least not here in the U.S.).
Most of the problems in other sports seem to stem from people chasing big $$$, or not being smart enough to handle the big $$$ that they get.
I worry that human nature is such that the species is incapable of not cheating at sports.
watching tour de france on tv - almost allways just after wimbledon, sometimes at the same tine of summer - was a nice way to get through the heat of summer and boredom of long vacations. the heat of summer seems to have gone and replaced by rains and thunderstorms (at least in our country) - why are innocent tv-citizens who mostly not even own a race-bike being punished and why not the drug-cheaters?
Before tv and even in the radio-days the real tour fanatics gathered at the village square at around 5 pm and waited for the handwritten results (provided by regional paper)of the stage of that day. i remember the excitement when a next door neigbourcyclst participating in the tour almost won: he hit the sidewalk with his pedal and was beaten with an ninch by NENCINI (yes the one and only). (I so promised my kids not to talk about the old times– so sorry)
In this century the show and commercials come first and must go on. I stopped watching after Lance’s incredible feats — I still don’t know what to think. How wonderfull to beat all these other non-clean cyclists (but how could that ever be possible… I get confused. Rather don’t think too much about nowadays professional cycling)
Skating and doping? Who can tell? a couple got caught. and who could tell what’s going on… Who could have predicted that quite a few well known cyclist took all kinds of drugs as peanutbutter (nowadays nutella i guess)on their daily bread. And in quite a few countries the personal bests decide on whether you are in or out (in europe: Netherlands, several former russian states, germany). And in at least one country the salaries of the skaters are quite high. skating clean: who can tell and I hate to think too much about it. i go skating myself - but sure i love to see those speed-miracles, these stars, these heroes: they just do what i never could do. (I have to confess: in my worst moments i just don’t care whether they use nutella, kerosene or any other weird stuff..)
catastrophy - here in the catskills i’m reading my daily doses of dutch news and guess what: Rasmussen is taken out of the tour. By the manager of Rao-bank - sponsor. R.lied about his where abouts. He wasn’t in mexico at the time of a nissed out of competion controle but in Italy. I thought he was just narvelous in his first tour coming from mountain biking. He was first in this his last tour.
The nonsense of cheat cycling.
WShat a frustation.
keep on pedalling
jules
Like everyone else, I wish I knew what we all should do about this problem. Of course the Tour de France, all of cycling, speedskating, and every other sport should be totally clean, should inspire young men and women with effort, honesty, and accomplishments… But not everyone is honest, and I can live with people not being honest when it’s not really hurting anyone or when it’s a little mistake (things like saying we’re busy when we’re not or not telling a friend this or that).
Cheating hurts everybody in a big way. For one thing, it plants doubt in the mind of every spectator and every participant. Every year during the Tour, people ask me “is speedskating like that?” regarding drug use only - not whether the athletes are similarly impressive, what training involves, how our events are structured… People should of course ask whatever they’re wondering, but I want all of us to have the luxury of being impressed by - and even setting goals based on - incredible, clean performances.
Cheating also obviously hurts competitors. Have a place, and maybe a piece of your future, taken away by someone who did something entirely unfair…that’s not hard to understand from any perspective.
It also makes the clean athletes pay. Even worse than a cheater not getting caught, in my opinion, is an honest athlete being accused. I think I would rather compete head-to-head with someone I knew was using some kind of drug than watch a friend get taken out of the sport for something they didn’t do. (None of this is personal, by the way, just thoughts - I’m considering how I will enthusiastically race with fast guys in workouts, conveniently forget I’m using worn-out equipment, or intentionally disregard whatever my iron numbers are… But I absolutely hate to see things ruined unfarily.)
oh, we just commented at the same time…and I just saw that, too! No matter how much we talk about money and whatever else, I will never completely understand why people are cheating and lying in their sport.
After the opening London stage I found a blog with some great photos. One was a union jack hung on the route with Tom Simpson spray painted on it. Not knowing who Tom was I found him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Simpson
Of the many reasons Tom Simpson died on stage 13 of the 1967 TDF was the combination of alcohol and amphetamines found in his blood. That flag proudly hung as a memorial to the last great Brit cyclist should have been viewed as a warning to the 189 participants who rode by probably without seeing it.
Perhaps blood doping won’t kill you but by doing it something dies. I can’t remember a yellow jersey holder so loudly booed as Rasmussen was this morning by lots of people who hold a trust that is the most important thing in sports.
My heart is heavy but I will keep on pedaling too.
This year’s Tour has certainly become the Tour de Domestique. Rasmussen didn’t even test positive for anything during the Tour itself. It almost seems like something else is happening behind the scenes.
Doping has been part of the tour for a long time. In the era of frequent, random testing it doesn’t seem too smart to continue to do it. I guess some of the competitors will do anything to survive.
Just heard Christian Moretti was pulled for testosterone and Confidis has pulled their team out.
Doping is a problem in all sports, even in chess. To think that a particular sport has less, or more doping problems than other sports is very naive.
Cycling seems to have the largest doping problem because they are very aggressive in catching the dopers and it always makes the news.
I think it’s a great move to see the sponsors not wanting dopers in their teams and pulling them out as the governing and anti-drugs organizations seem to be powerless. Can you see the San Francisco Giants pulling out Barry Bonds? Yet that is the legacy of “America’s favorite pastime”.
I’d say we have not much longer to worry about testosterone and EPO because the era of Genetic Engineering will commence probably as soon as Beijing 2008. Then we’ll just probably all sit back with a bag of pop corn to watch Hulk vs Spiderman battle it out!
Panch0 touched on this, and as an athlete what worries me the most is what is on the horizon. Soon if not already athletes will be altering their genes for optimal performance. Gene doping will ruin sports more than Barry Bonds, or Alexander Vinokourov ever could. One day we will look back and say “remember when sport was pure and we could catch athletes cheating”.
All this manipulation for a short few moments of glory? I just don’t get it!
It’s true that gene doping is on the horizon, and super-strong mice have already been created. The main thing standing in the way right now is the same problem that is faced by scientists who are trying to do gene therapy to cure genetic diseases, and that is how to create a carrier molecule, or vector, that will protect the DNA and target it to the organ or tissue of interest.
I’m glad I got out of sports before the era of gene doping came on, because I think that this is one of the most evil misuses of science that is possible. However, my experience in USSPEEDSKATING was far from pure, and, regrettably, I’ve seen how far corrupt sports administrators will go to manipulate results and selection criteria, even within a supposedly “pure,” time trial sport. So, in terms of “fairness” and “purity,” elite sports were ruined for me way before the dawn of gene doping.
The problem is not the money to be made (although it sure adds to it). The problem is the fact that an athlete has invested incredible amounts of time and money into getting to where he is at. Once he is within reach of some serious money or prize or validation of one way or another for the time and effort he has invested in the silly pursuit of a sport, the pressure is on. Can you go back to being just you or do you take that extra little kick to give you fame, glory, or at least to be able to say later on (when you are sitting at a bar with friends) that all that training you went through since the age of 9 was not a big waste, but you where a “champion, Olympian, etc.”
I have always said that if you can’t walk away from it and be happy just to do what you do, then you are lending yourself to a hole lot of internal pressures to cheat on yourself and others.
After all is said and done, IT IS JUST A GAME.
The problem is not, how much money is there in the sport. I do not think there has to be money as a prize to get someone to win. To me the problem is the time and money that an athlete has already invested into a sport. If you have practiced since the age of 9 and all sense of self-worth depends on your performance at this one activity, then you have to succeed in order to validate your life-time efforts.
If you cannot just walk away and find happiness in your life, then you are trapped into the “I have to win syndrome”. We all have the competitive bug, we just have to teach children to channel that effort into positive endeavors. I try to tell parents of young children that they have to make a well rounded individual. Not everyone will win the gold medal, will you be a happy man/woman if you are not an “champ/olympian”?
It is JUST A GAME. True, to some it is their lives, you chose it at some point in your life.
I do not care if someone cheats or not, because I had to learn that I am racing against myself. My success is the fact that I am still at the races.
don’t worry, be happy.
Of the people I know, at least, I’ve seen so many more young kids who want to WIN and adults who want to skate technically well and beat their personal. Is it maturity or is something changing? The same kids, though, would definitely disapprove of drugs as strongly as the rest of us.
Elite sports are not pure and I don’t remember when I stopped expecting them to be. Had I heard about drugs early on or did I understand that people cheat in school and while playing games, so it would only make sense that they would cheat in big-time sports, too?
Gene doping is frightening - can’t we all just be idealistic and use gene THERAPY to cure diseases? I’m not going to start typing out all the ethical problems of going beyond legitimate treatment…and besides that, the idea of gene doping does even worse for scientific progress than drug use does for sports - taking away trust for a vast majority of GOOD work and individual scientists’ integrity. And then suppose people use undetectable gene doping one day, what do you do with athletes who are naturally genetically not like most of their peers?
“Win at all costs.” That seems to be the mentality out there, and unfortunately, as Eric points out, we don’t teach our children how unimportant that really is.
I remember a short trackers parent telling me that she always told her son that the gold medal isn’t worth it if he can’t look back and say that he had to sacrific his ethics and integrity to get it.
About the Tour… Phil Liggette said it best, I think, when he said that one day we’ll look back and say that this is the best thing that’s happened to cycling. Unfortunately, it has to get worse before it gets better. At least now you see and hear people/riders/teams openly speaking out against doping and getting seriously angry. Personally, I think this is a change for the better… as a whole, at least, because there will always be a few bad eggs.
Win at all costs is often too costly. A very recent (last week) indoor inline champion takes a corticosteroid to suppress a disease, at very high doses,right before and during national championship competition, which will enhance performance “big time” at the expense of Health risks like Bone Mineralization to name one….Same as osteoperosis(sp) This medication is a “banned substance” in and out of competition, yet they don’t drug test at Indoor Inline National Championships.
Sad but true story. I much rather compete and train “drug free” and mabey place top 10 insted.
My health is important to me. Medals at competitions are just “Icing On The Cake”
At least in speedskating, American athletes who dope are driven by a desire to win rather than to get money, simply because there’s not that much money for speedskaters in the US. I wonder where it places them on the ethical spectrum - is it worse to dope to get money or just to win? Not that I approve of doping of course; Jamie’s comment hits the nail on the head. I wonder if doping in speedskating is more common in countries where more money is at stake.
I asked myself and the visitors of my website some questions. One of them was have you ever felt that a top speedskater had been using dope? And visitors posted that J.O. Koss was using the Fuentes blood tech to be fit on the Olympics. And that the dutch Spaarselect team had the help from a man who is known as a dope-doctor.
And I’ve e-mailed the Dutch Speedskating Association about what’s up with my whereabouts. Because its not clear if I need to tell them where I’m staying and training. The rules are not clear and I do get checked for dope like 2-3 times per season. I’ll share the results..
greets
When I came back to speed skating in 2001, there was one woman who was competing who looked awfully suspicious to me. Years ago, in age group competition, she’d had the slight build of a distance runner, but when I saw her after about 6 years, she had the square jaw and blotchy complexion of an 18-year-old boy, and her thighs looked like shoe boxes suspended from her hips. The overall effect was so “mannish” that I had to do a double-take. I remember thinking, “I sure hope that regular training isn’t enough to do that to a girl, because I might be sorry for coming back.”
None of us will ever know for sure whether there was anything going on in that case.
When people do things like that to themselves, it’s not even worthwhile to ask, “Why?”
Well, now there’s speculation that Barloworld rider, Soler from Colombia, has tested positive. The ASO has called for an 11am press conference, and most are speculating that this is where they will confirm or deny the rumors, but it is said that the Gendarmerie searched the team’s hotel.
All of that said, it’s just a rumor reported by a Belgian news agency and then followed by Eurosport, but it hasn’t been confirmed by the ASO.
Regardless, of how you look at it, I guess on the positive side, you can say, “At least people are actually getting caught now, and they aren’t escaping the tests.” Well, at least not as many as before…
As an amateur speedskater i keep telling myself speedskating is still a clean sport. Speedskating is more than just being in great shape. Technique and ‘the feeling’ with the ice are needed as well.
In cycling the technical factor is of less importance. Lance Armstrong was a technical rider, Jan Ullrich more of a cyclist riding on power. But both could go flying up a mountain.
It’s strange that it’s almost always cycling in France where the most riders get caught on using doping in one way or another. Is it that the French are testing more rigourously, more intensely or do more riders just take the chance of getting caught for just the few moments of glory.
The Tour de France is live in 51 countries, total broadcast in 77 (or something like that). That might give some sort of pressure to the contenders.
Speedskating live, perhaps 4 countries? Total broadcast about 15?
In The Netherlands (my own country) speedskating is quite big, competition is fierce. Perhaps a nice basis for the use of dope. But without the worldwide exposure, it sounds more like cheating on your local bar’s pokernight than during the soccer World Championship.
But there is another question. Where do you draw the line of dope. EPO, Gen- or blooddope are clear, but a drink that helps you recover quicker? An isotonic drink?
It will never get completely clean but i just hope everyone will keep using their minds…
I just wanted to update the rumor about Soler. The ASO announced that it was a story started by a Danish news agency, and that Soler is, in face, innocent. So, thankfully, there is NOT another doping scandal.
I’m going out on a limb because I don’t actually know facts, but I think the lower drug use we see (or at least think we see) in speedskating might also have to do with the sport’s overall culture. We (meaning speedskaters, and in the US) often live with our families or non-skating friends. We’re pretty individualistic in behavior (I eat this, you eat that), travel plans… and alone in our reactions to good/bad races. I wonder if there is usually more drug use in teams that are together 24/7, training all day, constantly sharing hotel rooms, because of the feeling that “everybody” does this… There’s a difference between against the rules and ethically wrong. It is easier to do something illegal that doesn’t seem bad - like speeding in light traffic on a big highway with everybody in sight going 15 over. I wonder if there are teams where the mentality is that you pretty much have to do this just to keep up…and that just to compete as equals, you need it…(I’ve heard one guy say that, but certianly he doesn’t stand for everyone) and it starts to seem like it’s “just” against the rules. Not that that’s an excuse - don’t read it like that. Along with Reitse’s question, caffeine…”I’m as awake as my training partners in the afternoon if I have a tall soy chai” is totally justifiable, right?
And Steph, “on the positive side”…
I could never understand how an elite athlete could derive pleasure from “victory” that involved cheating. Its such a betrayal of one’s own dignity, and yet I know it happens all the time. People are too quick to chuck their dignity in the trash for fear of someone else beating them to the punch and the podium.
As you get older you come to realize that the important thing was the feeling of true competition and the character it took to put you there. The losses that take everything out of you and define the person you become are more valuable than wins that you weren’t willing to risk anything on. You can’t control whether or not others cheat, but in the decision to cheat, you certainly ruin the last chance you may ever get at a perfect, straight up competition.
I think a lot of my ideas about ethics and fair play actually came from people who have never been to a certain level in sports; from people who have an idealized notion of how a sport like speed skating is run. In my actual experience, I’ve found that being dedicated to ethics, fairness, and a level playing field means recognizing that many of the people who run the sport fear nothing more than they fear a level playing field. You’ll find that if you stand up for fairness, you will be making a lot of enemies.
Yeah, I’m able to sleep at night knowing that I never sold my body or soul to make an Olympic team, and I never put performance-enhancing chemicals in my body. But I’m still the one waking up without that Olympic ring and without that track record.
Another interesting story: USADA and USSPEEDSKATING are fighting a case where a short track skater is accusing them of giving him a missed test violation, allegedly in retaliation for his filing a grievance against USSPEEDSKATING. The grievance involved a conflict of interest on the part of Fred Benjamin, who, as an attorney, represents athletes in court against each other and then is allowed by USSPEEDSKATING to be an official who makes calls against these athletes in short track team selection competitions. If that isn’t a conflict of interest, I don’t know what is.
The bottom line is, if an organization is going to make accusations against athletes for something as serious as doping, we must first know if we can trust the organization.
I have to say, in order of fairness, I don’t know what case Eva is speaking of, BUT I do know that Fred Benjamin is also an official at World Cups for short track, as well as, just for the US, and it a wide spread feeling that he isn’t very well liked. In his defense, I will say that I haven’t ever heard any skater say any officials name that they do like, but I have always felt that it’s a HUGE conflict of interest in both Fred’s professional life, as well as his “skating life” to serve as attorney for skaters and for USS, and then as official for USS and in the World Cups, BUT I do think that’s how it works for all of the World Cups.
To make matters worse, today I read a newsflash that Alessandro Pissilli, a pro _GOLF_ player (!), was caught with finasteride in his blood. Until now they were not checking for dope at tournaments, but under preasure of the global anti-dope agency they start checking the European tour and other international tours…
andrew, you going to be at the oval anytime soon?