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Laurent Benezech - "Doping in Rugby as bad as cycling" [MOD WARNING POST #1]

Pisco Sour

http://www.sportlive.co.za/rugby/morerugby/2013/04/06/doping-in-rugby-as-bad-as-cycling-says-ex-hooker

Serious claims.

MOD WARNING:
No speculation on specific players doping/juicing/etc.

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aimee1

.ak wrote: »

Or they were all clean?

I find that hard to believe to be honest. The players are getting too big and I dont believe it is all down to hard work in the gym. 200 tests out of about 600 players to not get one positive test to me looks suspicious. Much smaller fields in olympics athletics and they get much higher positive results. In my mind it doesnt stack up.

Befor the 2007 WC I watched a warm up game. It was when all kit suppliers went for the much tighter fit jersies and it was noticeable how bulky certain players had gotten even since the end of the previous season, even allowing for the jersey fit.

aimee1

.ak wrote: »

Or they were all clean?

durkadurka

Well ROG has decided to wade in

@RonanOGara10: Can't sleep after reading @PaulKimmage article ... V interesting .. Maybe there's another reason why RWC2007 went the way it did...

Frankie Lee

There is "le dossier de presse" that Kimmage referred to in relation to the disgraced Alain Camborde. There is an obvious question mark over the players and teams mentioned although nothing is proven.

CatFromHue

durkadurka wrote: »

Well ROG has decided to wade in

@RonanOGara10: Can't sleep after reading @PaulKimmage article ... V interesting .. Maybe there's another reason why RWC2007 went the way it did...

What does that mean?

Is he talking about Ireland or the other teams?

Frankie Lee

Camborde was involved with Argentina and numerous French players.

barneystinson

CatFromHue wrote: »

What does that mean?

Is he talking about Ireland or the other teams?

Well if he's talking about Ireland, the drugs didnt exactly ENHANCE the performance much, did they :rolleyes:

durkadurka

Perhaps he's pointing the finger at the French or Argentina.

From an Irish pov both his form and Ireland's form stank before we played those teams .

I think he wouldn't have tweeted s comment worded like that if he was suggesting that it was related to Irish players

CatFromHue

It's almost as if ROG had some sort of dislike of the Argies.....:D

Fireball07

Unlesss he means that it disimproved Ireland's performance, I don't think you could blame that on Ireland's results... even if all the other teams were doping like crazy, we were really bad in the things we did.

ionadnapóca

Chiliboy Ralepelle anybody?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/article-1351317/Chiliboy-Ralepelle-Bjorn-Basson-exonerated-drugs-charges.html

And again!
http://www.espn.co.uk/scrum/rugby/story/229185.html

there is of course banned PED's drugs been taken. I just hope its not as widespread as the cycling.

[Deleted User]

durkadurka wrote: »

Well ROG has decided to wade in

@RonanOGara10: Can't sleep after reading @PaulKimmage article ... V interesting .. Maybe there's another reason why RWC2007 went the way it did...

to be fair i do remember (and i believe it was widely commented on) that players got wayyyyyy bigger in a relatively short space of time before that world cup but it was pretty much across the board as a matter of fact i think old hooky was saying the irish player where after getting to big

Sangre

The fact that there have been so few players caught suggests to me that this is actually a widespread problem (rather than the reverse) and the authorities aren't massively pushed to clamp down on it.

Giruilla

Wonder why rugby is in Kimmages crosshairs now..

Everyone knows the sport is riddled with roid abuse and has been for years.. but then again so is tennis, golf, swimming and athletics.
You don't dope you won't cope.

Slideshowbob

Giruilla wrote: »

Wonder why rugby is in Kimmages crosshairs now..

Everyone knows the sport is riddled with roid abuse and has been for years.. but then again so is tennis, golf, swimming and athletics.
You don't dope you won't cope.

Sure that's a great reason not to question things .....:rolleyes:

Seriously though, wouldn't it be great if all sports were cleaned up to the point that kids coming through won't have to make unethical and potentially unhealthy choices.

Apart from that, taking PEDs is very unfair on those who decide not to cheat

Giruilla

Slideshowbob wrote: »

Sure that's a great reason not to question things .....:rolleyes:

Of course it's a reason to question things, where did I say it wasn't.

The thing is it's an endemic problem among any sports with significant money involved, and Kimmage should know this.. so I don't get why he's pussyfooting around the issue in rugby which everyone already know's is there.

I'm beginning to feel any sportspeople in a sport currently suffering from lax testing should feel entitled to juice.

Cyber Ghost

Doesn't surprise me at all.

The size of the ****ers.

aimee1

Giruilla wrote: »

The thing is it's an endemic problem among any sports with significant money involved, and Kimmage should know this.. so I don't get why he's pussyfooting around the issue in rugby which everyone already know's is there.

Given his history and legal battles, I think he is going to thread carefully.

its_phil

First off, I think Kimmage is a brilliant writer. In any sport there are drugs, that is beyond a shadow of a doubt and I know players at schools level from years ago who have done it. But I take issue with Kimmage's article in that he is basing everything off of the word of one player who has not played the game for a long time with no connections to the modern professional game. It's off the hunch of what he considers to be abnormal sizes. There just isn't enough there to say this is a widespread problem in the game. I don't believe it is a widespread problem of the game but I do believe there are a few idiots at the top level.

What I also don't like is that while the article is relevant, I think the timing is oppurtunistic considering the Autumn Internationals have just closed. It can leave a shadow over the game when it is a brilliant time for the promotion of rugby in this country and none of the information in the article relating to drugs in the game is from Ireland. It is from France, Argentina and Scotland. If he had heard an Irish player at one of the provinces was doing it, hands up it is a great article and time to publish. I'm more concerned with drugs being taken at professional level than amateur level seen as there are so many medical experts in clubs.

The other thing I didn't like was when he brought up the young Scottish player and the pressure on him to get bigger. Kimmage made it sound like the SRU were telling the lad to take illegal supplements. I have no doubt there was pressure on him to get bigger but does anyone really think that coaches are to blame rather than the young player? The player is an adult and if he is stupid enough to take supplements he alone should take responsibility.

Once again I'm a big fan of Kimmage but I think he should have waited a bit longer and digged a bit deeper before publishing.

Slideshowbob

Anyone got any theories on why Heaslip would have a hostility towards Kimmage?

https://twitter.com/jamieheaslip/status/539082264542736384

Cyber Ghost

Irish guys don't have the genetics to get to the size of the lads lining out for the national rugby team naturally imo.

They're not South Sea Islanders.

Teferi

Slideshowbob wrote: »

Anyone got any theories on why Heaslip would have a hostility towards Kimmage?

https://twitter.com/jamieheaslip/status/539082264542736384

Are you posting this in this specific thread because you think Heaslip has something to hide?

specttator

Too many snide implications in this thread. Any mention of any player prompts suspicions, not something which should be facilitated.

Bridge93

specttator wrote: »

Too many snide implications in this thread. Any mention of any player prompts suspicions, not something which should be facilitated.

Agreed some of the stuff is just being said for the sake of making a controversial, big statement. You go onto a thread like this and suddenly all of them are on drugs. Fairly disrespectful.

For what it is worth I feel the original title is complete hyperbole. Yes there is drugs in rugby, more so than your average sport I'm sure (just look st some of them) but I woild be dumbstruck if it is anywhere close to what cycling had.

Frankie Lee

Bridge93 wrote: »

For what it is worth I feel the original title is complete hyperbole. Yes there is drugs in rugby, more so than your average sport I'm sure (just look st some of them) but I woild be dumbstruck if it is anywhere close to what cycling had.

It was rugby's obsession with size - big is beautiful - that had landed Benezech in court. Fifteen months earlier, on the evening of March 2, 2013, he had driven home one night after a game in Paris, shaken by what he had seen.

"C'est pas normal."

This was not the sport he loved.

"C'est pas normal."

This was not the game he'd played.

"C'est pas normal."

How were these guys so big?

Two weeks later, when he had formed an opinion and expressed it to a newspaper, the writ hit the fan. In the months that followed, he spent hundreds of hours and thousands of euros compiling evidence for the case. His first call was to Damien Ressiot of L'équipe, whose brilliant work had exposed Lance Armstrong in 2005.

Ressiot had good news and bad; the good was that he knew a lot and was prepared to help; the bad was that the 'Omerta' in rugby was worse than anything he had experienced in cycling.

Their starting point was a crossover between the two sports and a doctor called Herve Stoicheff, a student of the late Francois Bellocq, whose theories on "hormonal rebalancing" had fuelled successive French cycling teams and champions since the 1970s.

The "Omerta" is worse at least.

Another article from Kimmage from earlier in the year which is focused on other sports too but in relation to rugby:

And what of rugby? In his autobiography, Joking Apart, Donncha O'Callaghan tells an interesting story about the preparation for the second Lions Test in New Zealand in 2005.

"In the build-up to the match they gave us a dietary supplement called Focus. For consumption you added a bit of water. It had the texture of paste and it tasted horrible but I never got such a buzz from anything in my life. There were no labels on the pot and they wouldn't tell us what was in it. I've no doubt it was full of caffeine and taurine, a key ingredient in Red Bull . . . In the first Test Paulie pole-vaulted over one ruck early in the match in a crazy manoeuvre and I've no doubt he was acting under the influence of Focus."

If O'Callaghan was a cyclist, there would be an inquisition . . .

What exactly is Focus?

Are these 'stimulants' the norm?

What about the ritual abuse of painkillers? Is that not doping?

In rugby, they seem happy to carry on.

http://www.independent.ie/sport/inherent-decency-may-be-the-most-effective-masking-agent-of-them-all-30409273.html

Bridge93

Maybe it's the Law education in me speaking but, as I do with cycling and athletics etc, I prefer to work off innocent until proven guilty. I find sport more enjoyable that way. If people are found guilty then by all means bring the harshest punishment down on them. Until then I rather believe in what I am seeing.

[Deleted User]

Cyber Ghost wrote: »

Irish guys don't have the genetics to get to the size of the lads lining out for the national rugby team naturally imo.

They're not South Sea Islanders.

thats nonsense to be honest a lot of the team do have the frame to pack on the muscle paul o connells 6 foot 6 now some people this height will have issues putting on weight due to an overactive metabolism but clearly he does not have that issue and if thats not an issue his 112kgs fit comfortably on his frame. also most of the team would be athletic freaks from a young age so genetics really is a lazy comment.

galwaylad14

I'd be very sceptical on this subject to be honest. Given that it's a sport that where strengtg and physicality is among the most important traits it just seems outrageous that absolutley no one has been caught for trying to cheat the system, that to me is the most damning indictment of all, if people were caught semi regularily I'd be a lot less cynical. I reckon it's a bit of a cover up and there'll be a huge controversy in the next few years.

Also, from people I know who are serious gym rats they reckon it's literally impossible to get to the size some of these guys are without "enhancing", and what makes it even more unlikely is that obviously their whole training regime couldn't be built around the entire focus of building size, they have to prepare for a game every weekend.

Of course I can't point any fingers but there's a few on the Irish team I'd be very suspicious of but that's not to say they're not all at it. It's possible the guys that look "obvious" might just be naturally bigger than the "less obvious" looking guys when in fact they're all guilty of it. I'm really not sure.
And it could easily be the case that they might not even know themselves they're taking anything, they might be just given certain supplements to take and not be told what it is, like ocallaghans lions story. If we heard if a cyclist in the TdF that took some supplement from a packet with no label on it and no one would tell him what was in it and then he failed a drugs test we'd all either brand him a lying cheat or an absolute idiot.

But it just shows that the testing in rugby isn't very stringent if players don't think twice about taking a risk like that.

Giruilla

There's arguably not a team sport in the world more conducive to the benefits of doping from a cocktail of drugs than rugby.

A similar sport - NFL - used to not even test for HGH they knew it was so rife.

.ak

Slideshowbob wrote: »

Anyone got any theories on why Heaslip would have a hostility towards Kimmage?

https://twitter.com/jamieheaslip/status/539082264542736384

This is walking a thin line, and will result in having this thread closed.

No speculation on players juicing/doping/whatever.