Mark Cavendish Interview

leftism · 26-10-2012 02:12AM

petethedrummer wrote: »

They willfully ignore it. Newstalk for example. I get alot of texts read out on Newstalk but they never ever ever read out a text when it relates to football and doping. No problem when it's doping in cycling. No problem when it's not even a sports related text. Doping in Football? No chance.

Ok, i'll accept your point on that.

Would you accept that all the diving that goes on in soccer has far more potential to affect the result of a match than an increase in a footballer's VO2max by say 10mL.kg-1.min-1???

Anyways, all this soccer talk is probably starting to annoy the mods (I have visions of Beasty sitting at home with steam shooting out his ears at the mention of the word).

petethedrummer · 26-10-2012 09:10AM

leftism wrote: »

Would you accept that all the diving that goes on in soccer has far more potential to affect the result of a match than an increase in a footballer's VO2max by say 10mL.kg-1.min-1???

If you are talking about a single player then yes, but I doubt if any team was serious about doping that it would just be one player.

There are scandals about team wide doping in at least 5 hugely successful teams in the last 20 years. Juventus, France and the people involved in Puerto.

12 sprocket · 26-10-2012 10:00AM

HERes an abstract from soccer research and goals scored in the later stages of matches, so theres not much reason to doubt that that the soccer players would gain by doping. I have included a link to the full article below.

Abstract:

The purposeof this study was to record the time that goals were scored in course of soccergames. All matches (n=192) of the three latter World Cups were recorded usingvideo and analysed with computerized match analysis hardware and video playbacksystem for game performance analysis using Sportscout. Chisquare methods wereused for the data analysis and the level of significance was set in p<0.05.

The 45-min analysisrevealed that in World Cups 1998 and 2002 most goals were scored in the secondhalf (p<0.05), while in the recent World Cup (2006) no significantdifference were observed although second half presented greater percentage(52.5%). The 15-min analysis presented that in World Cup of 1998 most goalswere scored in last period (76-90, p<0.05).

Also inWorld Cups 1998 and 2002 there was presented a trend towards more goals scoredas time progressed. Finally, in the latter World Cup most goals were scored inthelast period (32.8%, p<0.05). The statistical analysis showed that there wasnot a uniform distribution in goals scored (p<0.01) and no differencesoccurred between World Cups.

The resultsrevealed that goal scoring might be depending on time and specifically thatmore goals are scored as time progresses. The above could be explained by thedeterioration in physical conditioning, the tactical play, fluid balance and lapsesin concentration.

http://skautingtimdif.rs/biblioteka_analize/Relationship%20between.pdf

desertcircus · 27-10-2012 11:17AM

CramCycle wrote: »

Really? Position dependent presumably,

Not massively; in most positions in either sport, there are frequent breaks in action or phases where the player isn't doing much. A rugby player who makes ten tackles, hits thirty rucks, carries ten times and acts in five scrums and five lineouts before being substituted on the hour has a pretty decent workrate, but that averages at a single high-intensity action per minute (actually less, as a few of the rucks and a few of the lineouts simply require his presence). Same with football, only more so. The number of times a footballer breaks into anaerobic activity in-game would usually come in at single digits - someone like Xavi or Iniesta spends the vast majority of each game at comfortable running pace or lower.

A scrumhalf at a high-speed rugby team would come closest to benefiting from doping, but even then you're looking at an upper limit of ninety uses of the ball per game, which is just over one a minute.

The last point I'm going to make is something that needs to be borne in mind: the reason cycling gets so much attention in terms of doping is because of the sheer number of positive tests, doping confessions, drug busts and so forth in the past fifteen years. We've just been given pretty conclusive evidence that Armstrong's entire team was doped to the gills, and it's not even that shocking to people who follow the sport, because it's just the latest in a long line. Until such a time as an entire team of champions get busted (and get busted, not have some guy make murky claims about what he might know), other sports will not be treated the same way.

In an effort to show that doping exists in other sports, three links were provided in a single post earlier: one referred to various suspicions and mentioned as its prime evidence the German team of 1954, another dealt with a man who played for AC Milan in 1970, and a third mentioned Juventus' steroid history. Leaving aside the fact that Juve have repeatedly shown themselves to be willing to go a lot further than other teams in terms of cheating, that's three stories covering five decades, which discuss about five or six confirmed cases of doping. If you looked for the three most convincing stories about doping in cycling, what would you use? The Festina affair, Operacion Puerto, and Armstrong. How many athletes were confirmed to have doped in those three in the past fifteen years? If you didn't want to use those cases, you could talk about David Millar, or Schleck, or Contador, or Landis, or Vinokourov. The reason people talk about doping in cycling far more than in anything else is because there's vastly more evidence. It's not a conspiracy; it's simply that nobody's even sure if organised doping exists in football, while a single Tour can throw up more definite confirmed cases than a solid decade of twenty leagues of multiple divisions of football.

Wibbs · 27-10-2012 12:03PM

On the rugby front desertcircus would we not be looking at the "wrong" kind of doping? Increasing V02 max likely wouldn't be much use, however for certain positions/players using muscle bulk building drugs, maybe with a side order of HGH be where it's at, if it's going on? I mean American Football, though of course a different sport would have kinda similar requirements in a few areas and they've had their serious issues with doping.

Flandria · 27-10-2012 12:33PM

desertcircus - We have seen from the Armstrong case that the globalisation of sport, money, power, and doping combine to produce a heady mix that governing bodies have proved a) very hard to break, and b) may not be willing to expose. It has also shown us that passed drug controls do not necessarily evidence a drug-free athlete. That in mind, ask yourself the following:

Would FIFA, for instance, consider themselves willing to expose the world's best team and marquee name as part of a PED ring?

Would the IRB consider itself damaged if, for instance, a top test nation or Heineken Cup big name were caught with their hand in the cookie jar?

Would the ITA really, really want to have to deal with a grand slam winner that fails a test? http://tennishasasteroidproblem.blogspot.ie

Would the IAAF consider it to be in the vested interests of the sport to properly investigate the current crop of sprinters and lose out on the prospect of world records being broken every summer?

It is then worth considering why the Spanish Tennis Federation allowed Del Moral to hold training camps with members of their Davis Cup team. It might be worth mulling over why Fuentes allegedly said something along the lines of 'if they knew how Spain won the World Cup I would be either lynched or knighted'. Read Victor Conte's letter to Dwain Chambers/British Athletics and then wonder why Justin Gatlin's three fastest times since his doped 9.77 were all recorded last year, when he was six years older?

It is painfully obvious that mainstream sport is as clean as a whistle and while cycling is around to fill a role as some kind of sacrificial self-imploding basket case, it will remain so...;)

desertcircus · 27-10-2012 12:35PM

Steroid use would certainly be a more likely candidate in rugby than the likes of EPO. It's possible that usage could turn a decent player into a better one by giving them that little extra size, but it needs to be a very specific gain - if a player puts on too much muscle they can lose pace and slow down, and can even end up unsure of their own balance. The Irish team in 2007 were ferociously physical (some players put on almost a stone of pure muscle in the leadup) but the changes to their bodies left them unsure of themselves and they got dumped out of the competition at the group stage. As far as I know there is steroid testing in rugby on a reasonably regular basis - Ryohei Yamanaka got a two-year ban for using a moustache-enhancing cream that contained a banned steroid, for example.

desertcircus · 27-10-2012 12:44PM

Flandria wrote: »

desertcircus - We have seen from the Armstrong case that the globalisation of sport, money, power, and doping combine to produce a heady mix that governing bodies have proved a) very hard to break, and b) may not be willing to expose. It has also shown us that passed drug controls do not necessarily evidence a drug-free athlete. That in mind, ask yourself the following:

Would FIFA, for instance, consider themselves willing to expose the world's best team and marquee name as part of a PED ring?

Would the IRB consider itself damaged if, for instance, a top test nation or Heineken Cup big name were caught with their hand in the cookie jar?

Would the ITA really, really want to have to deal with a grand slam winner that fails a test? http://tennishasasteroidproblem.blogspot.ie

Would the IAAF consider it to be in the vested interests of the sport to properly investigate the current crop of sprinters and lose out on the prospect of world records being broken every summer?

It is then worth considering why the Spanish Tennis Federation allowed Del Moral to hold training camps with members of their Davis Cup team. It might be worth mulling over why Fuentes allegedly said something along the lines of 'if they knew how Spain won the World Cup I would be either lynched or knighted'. Read Victor Conte's letter to Dwain Chambers/British Athletics and then wonder why Justin Gatlin's three fastest times since his doped 9.77 were all recorded last year, when he was six years older?

It is painfully obvious that mainstream sport is as clean as a whistle and while cycling is around to fill a role as some kind of sacrificial self-imploding basket case, it will remain so...;)

Again: the most concrete example is as close as you can get to a pure power output test (Justin Gatlin's sprint times). Asking rhetorically whether FIFA would willingly bust Spain isn't the same as having evidence that they covered something up - especially since they busted Maradona halfway through the 1994 World Cup. There's the extremely vague pronouncements of one person and that's it.

As for the IRB: Schalk Burger, Nathan Hines, Julien Dupuy, Quade Cooper and God knows how many others have been routinely suspended for offences against the game. Again, insinuating that a theoretical offence would be treated with kind gloves isn't the same as proving that a theoretical offence would be treated with kid gloves or even that such an offence is any more than theoretical.

CramCycle · 31-10-2012 12:35AM

desertcircus wrote: »

Not massively; in most positions in either sport, there are frequent breaks in action or phases where the player isn't doing much. A rugby player who makes ten tackles, hits thirty rucks, carries ten times and acts in five scrums and five lineouts before being substituted on the hour has a pretty decent workrate, but that averages at a single high-intensity action per minute (actually less, as a few of the rucks and a few of the lineouts simply require his presence). Same with football, only more so. The number of times a footballer breaks into anaerobic activity in-game would usually come in at single digits - someone like Xavi or Iniesta spends the vast majority of each game at comfortable running pace or lower.

A scrumhalf at a high-speed rugby team would come closest to benefiting from doping, but even then you're looking at an upper limit of ninety uses of the ball per game, which is just over one a minute.

The last point I'm going to make is something that needs to be borne in mind: the reason cycling gets so much attention in terms of doping is because of the sheer number of positive tests, doping confessions, drug busts and so forth in the past fifteen years. We've just been given pretty conclusive evidence that Armstrong's entire team was doped to the gills, and it's not even that shocking to people who follow the sport, because it's just the latest in a long line. Until such a time as an entire team of champions get busted (and get busted, not have some guy make murky claims about what he might know), other sports will not be treated the same way.

In an effort to show that doping exists in other sports, three links were provided in a single post earlier: one referred to various suspicions and mentioned as its prime evidence the German team of 1954, another dealt with a man who played for AC Milan in 1970, and a third mentioned Juventus' steroid history. Leaving aside the fact that Juve have repeatedly shown themselves to be willing to go a lot further than other teams in terms of cheating, that's three stories covering five decades, which discuss about five or six confirmed cases of doping. If you looked for the three most convincing stories about doping in cycling, what would you use? The Festina affair, Operacion Puerto, and Armstrong. How many athletes were confirmed to have doped in those three in the past fifteen years? If you didn't want to use those cases, you could talk about David Millar, or Schleck, or Contador, or Landis, or Vinokourov. The reason people talk about doping in cycling far more than in anything else is because there's vastly more evidence. It's not a conspiracy; it's simply that nobody's even sure if organised doping exists in football, while a single Tour can throw up more definite confirmed cases than a solid decade of twenty leagues of multiple divisions of football.

I'd disagree, I've seen data from hurling teams where the midfielders have run a half marathon in terms of distance over a game (that is an exceptional half marathon time, I had to go and look at the raw data before I believed the guy), despite what people see on the TV, alot of field sports have continuous action for certain positions with boosts of maximal output. The durations of these bursts will be position dependent generally, again Donegal footballers being an exception IMO. Phophocreatine levels would be a big decider for forwards and backs maybe, and these levels can be altered with the right drug regime.

These are just my observations looking in on data from co-workers and wouldn't be my area per se so could be way off the mark. Drugs that could increase alertness, concentration and reaction times would be more beneficial to Goalkeepers maybe although generally beneficial all over the field.

Mark Cavendish Interview

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