[Pisco Sour]

Originally Posted by RayCun

In England, footballers are tested after games and outside competition.
The Channel 4 documentary mentioned upthread revealed that three footballers were banned for evidence of cocaine use. There were no PED revelations.
The closest thing was an allegation that high testosterone levels detected in four players, including three former England internationals, were not sufficiently scrutinised by the FA.

Ha, think you may have contradicted yourself there.

<Snip>

[CoachDudie]

Originally Posted by PainIsTemporary

Not at all. Cheating is cheating, and it's wrong. However, I don't see a thread on the football/soccer forum asking for Rio Ferdinand being banned for life from the World Cup (Olympic Games equivalent for International Footballers).

This thread was about Dwain Chambers been allowed into the Olympics. That has nothing to do with soccer.
Do you think if Ferdinand was banned from World cups and then had his ban overturned would the thread on the soccer forum start talking about athletics drugs use by post 6?
Why bring up other sports?
Athletics has a big history of dirty athletes, pointing out drug use in other sports doesn't change that.

[Hard Worker]

Originally Posted by 04072511

Very naieve. If testing was as stringent in football as it is in athletics and cycling then you could guarantee a fair chunk of high profile scandels in the beautiful game.

I work for a League of Ireland Club. I can categorically state that from my involvement in athletics and football, I have seen far more footballers being tested than athletes. The last time the testers called after a match, the two players who were randomly chosen for testing, had been tested on three and six occasions previously. I don't know of any athlete at National level who has been tested seven times.

[PainIsTemporary]

Originally Posted by CoachDudie

Also are people trying to excuse drug use in athletics by claiming 'sure it's in all sports'?

Originally Posted by PainIsTemporary

Not at all. Cheating is cheating, and it's wrong. However, I don't see a thread on the football/soccer forum asking for Rio Ferdinand being banned for life from the World Cup (Olympic Games equivalent for International Footballers).

Originally Posted by RayCun

Possibly because he missed a single drug test. That wouldn't get an athlete banned for life from the Olympics, would it?

True. Bad example. There are double standards between sports with regards to the drugs issue. People in some sports (ie: athletics) calling for lifetime bans from Olympic Games for athletes returning from drugs suspensions, whereas in other sports (football/soccer) it isn't seen as being as major an issue, and the governing bodies don't seem to have the same interest in pursuing those implicated as say cycling/athletics.

[RayCun]

Originally Posted by 04072511

Ha, think you may have contradicted yourself there.

Come on, we all know there is plenty of doping going on in football.

No. My impression is that the testostorone levels were high, but not so high as to be proof of doping. Just - according to the documentary makers - high enough that the FA should have investigated further.

But anyway, I'm not going to get into this. Apparently everyone knows that there's lots of doping in football, so it doesn't really matter what the testing regime is, or what it finds. It's not fair that athletics has an image problem re. drugs, so let's fling some mud. Fine, have fun.

[Pisco Sour]

Originally Posted by Hard Worker

I work for a League of Ireland Club. I can categorically state that from my involvement in athletics and football, I have seen far more footballers being tested than athletes. The last time the testers called after a match, the two players who were randomly chosen for testing, had been tested on three and six occasions previously. I don't know of any athlete at National level who has been tested seven times.

I would bet huge sums of money that Ireland's top athletes (say top 30-40) are tested significantly more often that Ireland's top footballers. I read awhile back that one player in the English Premier League (can't remember who) went his entire career without being tested!

Anyway, weren't Messi and Ronaldo both given HGH as kids to help their growth as kids so they could become better footballers when they grew up? (rhetorical question, as this is known fact) If somebody did that in athletics there would be uproar.

[Hard Worker]

Originally Posted by 04072511

I would bet huge sums of money that Ireland's top athletes (say top 30-40) are tested significantly more often that Ireland's top footballers. I read awhile back that one player in the English Premier League (can't remember who) went his entire career without being tested!

Anyway, weren't Messi and Ronaldo both given HGH as kids to help their growth as kids so they could become better footballers when they grew up? (rhetorical question, as this is known fact) If somebody did that in athletics there would be uproar.

Messi was not given HGH as a kid so that he would become a better footballer.
Jaysus, if I thought I could be as good as Messi after taking HGH, I'd be downing loads of it
He was given HGH for medical reasons, as are other children with similar problems.

[robinph]

Originally Posted by Pherekydes

It isn't though. The BOA are breaking the rules by doing what they're doing. The rules they are breaking are WADA's. They are the World body for drug testing. CAS has found in WADA's favour; their decision is binding on all subscribing bodies.

The BOA want their athletes to be honourable and live and compete by the rules; they should too!

Following the laws set down by WADA then yes the BoA were wrong to issue lifetime bans.

However, WADA is wrong to not issue lifetime bans and should have taken this opportunity to update their rules to be more stringent and bring themselves into line with the BoA's stance.

[Hard Worker]

Originally Posted by robinph

Following the laws set down by WADA then yes the BoA were wrong to issue lifetime bans.

However, WADA is wrong to not issue lifetime bans and should have taken this opportunity to update their rules to be more stringent and bring themselves into line with the BoA's stance.

The problem WADA would have with lifetime bans is that if a top Premier League or Spanish, German or Italian player tested positive, you would effectively be "depriving" him of 5 million euro annually. The story would be similar for basketball and American Football. None of those bodies would sign up to lifetime bans. Therefore, it would be unfair to treat athletics differently.
Personally, I would like to see the Olympic movement sticking with lifetime bans.

[fiddy3]

Originally Posted by Hard Worker

Messi was not given HGH as a kid so that he would become a better footballer.
Jaysus, if I thought I could be as good as Messi after taking HGH, I'd be downing loads of it
He was given HGH for medical reasons, as are other children with similar problems.

Yes, and who paid for his treatment....... BINGO, FC Barcelona! I guess they just wanted a tiny Argie to have a better life for himself, right? Anyone who doesn't think Barca and Real Madrid dope players has their head in the sand. Interesting last week how Pep Guardiola was lauded as a hero in the media as he stepped down. This is a man who was positive for nandrolone during his own career in Italy. This is a man in charge of a club, who, in 2005, tried to hire Eufemiano Feuntes as their team doctor. Who's Dr Fuentes.... just the godfather of doping in Spain who was nabbed in Operation Puerto in 2007, and had hundreds of elite sportspeople on his books. Funny how only the cyclists on his books got caught, mainly because as bad as cycling is, they at least aggressively pursue the cheats. One of the cyclists who was doped by Fuentes and got caught, Jesus Manzano, reported that he saw several high-profile Real Madrid players at Dr Fuentes' clinic in Madrid when he was there. The French newspaper Le Monde also reported at the time that it got access to Fuentes's doping programmes when police raided his house in the canaries, and saw doping plans made out for players from Real Madrid, Barcelona, Real Betis, and Atletico Madrid. Due to the police case being conducted, they couldn't report any specifics.

Zinedine Zidane was reported to have had blood transfusions in Switzerland during his career. Didier Deschamps was reported to have a haematocrit in the mid fifties during one test, over 50 usually means EPO unless you have a rare genetic condition. Arsene Wenger has stated in the past that he has seen disturbing blood values in several of the players who transferred to Arsenal from Spain and Italy which almost certainly suggested doping, which then normalised after a period there. What's more disturbing is the lack of effort to catch anyone in Spain, more than in England or France, for example. In La Liga, two matches are selected for post-match testing every Saturday, and from those team, just two players are picked. NO testing is done on Sunday matches. You do the maths on how likely a Messi or Ronaldo is to get tested on any given week. I make it about a 1 in 50 chance each week.

No one is pretending athletics or cycling is any cleaner than soccer. It isn't. What pisses people off is the double standards applied. For example, you have an <Snip> Irish Times writer Brian O'Connor writing about Barca during the week, asslicking of the highest order, while in the same article writing off athletics as not even worthy of mention due to how dirty it is. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...315049414.html
People as painfully ignorant as him perpetuate the idea among the public that athletics is rotten to the core... that the olympics aren't worthing watching because, as joe schmoe thinks...'they're all at it'. All the while never wondering if maybe, just maybe, there are some immoral people in their beloved sport, who, ya know, might just stumble on the idea to juice up if it means being able to run the legs off a team in their own league one Sunday, do it again Wednesday night in Europe, then do it again three days later in El Classico. Nah, sure drugs don't help soccer players.

Ask yourself this, if an athlete or a cyclist dropped dead in the middle of a competition, how would the reaction have differed from the way fans and media reacted to Muamba and Morosini's over the last few weeks?

[CoachDudie]

It's funny how defensive people get about their favorite sport.
Look at that rant from Fiddy, amazing.
He even said that ignorant people's view is "that athletics is rotten to the core that the olympics aren't worthing watching because, as joe schmoe thinks...'they're all at it'".
He must have missed the irony in his post where he accuses all sorts of teams and ex players of drug use. Even someone who nearly died recently.
Look there are drugs in all sports, not to the high level of cycling/athletics but they are there. What this has got to do with Dwain Chambers being allowed to compete in the Olympics..... well I don't know.

[robinph]

Seems that the reason for Chambers being allowed to compete in the Olympics is because of Spanish footballers then?

Why can the Olympics not have their own lifetime ban rule? They don't allow more than one over 23 year old footballer per country and that is clearly a rule they made up just for the Olympics, why can the Olympics not have their own rule about not having anyone with drug bans compete?

Actually, any kind of drug offence and your chances of getting a UK visa are greatly reduced, can they not just stop anyone at the border who has a drug ban? Would need to stretch the rules a bit to make taking the various performance enhancing drugs a criminal issue, but they could hold people up for a while.

[fiddy3]

Originally Posted by CoachDudie

It's funny how defensive people get about their favorite sport.
Look at that rant from Fiddy, amazing.
He even said that ignorant people's view is "that athletics is rotten to the core that the olympics aren't worthing watching because, as joe schmoe thinks...'they're all at it'".
He must have missed the irony in his post where he accuses all sorts of teams and ex players of drug use. Even someone who nearly died recently.
Look there are drugs in all sports, not to the high level of cycling/athletics but they are there. What this has got to do with Dwain Chambers being allowed to compete in the Olympics..... well I don't know.

Did i accuse Muamba and Morosini of drug use at any point? No. I asked how would fans and media have differed in their reaction to such an event happening in athletics or cycling. Remember the reaction to the Belgian/Dutch cyclists of the 90s who died from heart attacks due to sludgy blood or Bekele's late wife and see how the rumour mill spun for those tragic events. Yet, somehow, footballers are exempt from the same treatment.

Irony... where's the irony? Athletics has one of the worst records in terms of doping, second only behind cycling, and its reputation is rightfully tainted as such. I said as much above about drugs being a major problem so i'm not remotely denying it. What bothers me is idiotic journalists who write off one sport then don't examine their own with the same cynicicm. The ignorance I referred to was in relation to them being blissfully unaware of what the situation is in soccer, not that their view of athletics was wrong or without foundation.

[CoachDudie]

Originally Posted by fiddy3

Did i accuse Muamba and Morosini of drug use at any point? No. I asked how would fans and media have differed in their reaction to such an event happening in athletics or cycling. Remember the reaction to the Belgian/Dutch cyclists of the 90s who died from heart attacks due to sludgy blood or Bekele's late wife and see how the rumour mill spun for those tragic events. Yet, somehow, footballers are exempt from the same treatment.

Irony... where's the irony? Athletics has one of the worst records in terms of doping, second only behind cycling, and its reputation is rightfully tainted as such. I said as much above about drugs being a major problem so i'm not remotely denying it. What bothers me is idiotic journalists who write off one sport then don't examine their own with the same cynicicm. The ignorance I referred to was in relation to them being blissfully unaware of what the situation is in soccer, not that their view of athletics was wrong or without foundation.

The irony is you are bothered by people assuming stuff about athletes, the 'they're all at it' attitude and then you're at the very same thing with soccer.
I'm not a big fan of soccer or anything and I know there has been plenty of drug abuse in the sport but it's no where near the level of athletics.
I suppose if high profile names had failed tests directly after winning something big like the World Cup or whatever then the reputation might be the same.

[fiddy3]

Nope, wrong again. I'm bothered by people who assume that about athletics while maintaining that football is clean. I'd never have a problem with a well-informed fan or writer lashing athletics, it's more than earned its dirty rep. It's when they fail to treat other sports the same that's annoying. It's pretty hard to test positive for this stuff if you don't test players randomly out of competition. The English and the French leagues are a lot better than the Spanish with testing, though still light years behind the way athletes and cyclists are hounded. The Spanish league, or Fifa, just aren't interested in exposing the problem, otherwise the soccer players involved in Operation Puerto would have been released, like the cyclists were.