Off Topic Thread 3.0

That crowd reaction when Gatland won though

Ah, Usain Bolt. The man who supposedly is regularly injured but magically manages to be fit and peak every second summer for the past decade and is retiring at 30. Yup. Clean as a whistle.

JG is a drug cheat because he was dumb enough to get caught.

The media and PR machines can make or break someone's profile completely. Farah is about as dodgy as it gets when you go into his training history. But he's a complete media darling and massive organisations like the BBC have built broadcasts around his presence.

Gatlin is evil incarnate in the eyes of the media and, by extension, public consciousness. But you never see it reported that his first ban was due to a completely standard medication that he had been taking for a decade (Adderall, since he was 9 years old) which he had fully disclosed to his training team. The doping authorities were forced to give him the mandatory two year ban but published that it was exceptional and specifically stated that Gatlin had not cheated nor intended to cheat.

Now, in my mind, he's a cheat. Got done proper the second time and should be seen as a doper. But the power of the media in crucifying him and hanging him out as the epitome of a drug taker is ropey. They never mention that the first ban was a technicality.

And some bloke won the Tour de France seven times on the trot without publicly failing a test.

Sport needs its heroes to keep the sport alive. Bolt has been the rock that the IAAF have built their sport on over the past decade. He's too big to fail and, if he did take anything, his public profile is so strong that anyone making an accusation would probably ruin their own lives.

Erik Shin wrote:

I genuinely hope that Bolt is clean....I think he is.... but I can be a little naïve at times

I'd love to think that he is fully clean. But professional sport has made me too cynical.

His training partners have been done for doping, members of his coaching team have been done for it, his country has a terrible record for testing, his times dropped dramatically in a short time at the start of his career, his injury record is patchy keeping him out of a lot of races yet he is always fit come the Olympics or World Championship, he's retiring very young.

Just too many things there for me not to think there's a very decent chance he has doped. Particularly the Jamaican doping system or lack thereof and the multiple failures within Jamaican sprinting when external bodies have managed to test them.

sydthebeat wrote:

I'm not sure about that, much if the commentary I've read about gatland makes it clear that His first ban was unfair. I certainly don't have any sympathy for the guy due to the factors around his second ban. I do fully accept that the media created a bolt=good / gatland = evil vista.

All the reports I have read since the race mention Gatlin's two suspensions but little mention of the details other than to paint it as Gatlin lying and being a cheat.

If you read BBC's coverage and follow up articles on the race now, it's 100% anti-Gatlin. Seb Coe, president of the IAAF, has publicly condemned Gatlin without mention of the first ban circumstances. Before the race he said Gatlin winning would make him queasy. Yohann Blake won the gold in the WC before and was also found to have taken banned substances previously. Not a word about him.

RTE aren't any better. They briefly mention the first ban in their article but paint it as Gatlin making frivolous excuses rather than go into specifics. They call him a two time drug cheat and say "there is no hiding from the embarrassment that the unrepentant American's victory will cause". It's all very simplistic and misleading.

The casual athletics fan (which accounts for most), has little knowledge of Gatlin's first ban I would guess aside from it being for testing positive for a banned substance.

Gatlin has been a convenient poster boy scapegoat for doping in a sport that has massive issues with it. He hit the nail on the head with his comments after the race.

"It seems like the media want to sensationalise it and make me a bad boy because Usain is the hero. That's fine, I know you've got to have a black hat and a white hat, but guys, come on."

Epic stuff in Croke Park just now.

awec wrote:

Great match, Galway will win it outright.

If they can't win it this year, they never will.

Hopefully Waterford win the other semi final. It'd be the first final since 1996 where one of the big three hasn't featured in the final. Hurling needs a name on the trophy that hasn't been seen in a long time.

awec wrote:

Well we're guaranteed a "new" winner, even if cork win it it'll be their first in 12 years.

Meh. Cork have had a quiet period by their standards but they're generally in the mix. They may not have won it in a while but they have contested 7 of the last 18 finals.

If they could sort themselves out off the field they'd have a couple more titles in that period. Was it three times the players went on strike in 7 or 8 years?

I've no desire to see them in the final again.

Latest episode of GoT...

WOW!

When did bar staff stop being able to pour a proper pint of Guinness?

A good fee times recently I've seen them fill it far too high and top it up forward instead of back tap