Are other sports as dirty as cycling?

[Alpe d'Huez]

Good to see you around Issoisso, hope you'll stick with us through the Tour.

 

[issoisso]

Good to see you around Issoisso, hope you'll stick with us through the Tour.

Don't worry, I'm around. Just a busy couple of weeks at work

 

[BigBoat]

If you need to dope to drive a stock car "pick up a f-ing mop!" LOL

 

[gjdavis60]

If you need to dope to drive a stock car "pick up a f-ing mop!" LOL

Yeah, just look how easily JPM made the transition. And Hornish, and Speed, and Franchitti, and Villeneuve, and Allmendinger and ...

I'm not the biggest NASCAR fan, but I do acknowledge the high degree of difficulty and skill involved in what they do. Try driving a 3000 pound car with tiny tires around corners all day at the limit with other cars and cement walls all around you and you'll quickly appreciate the challenge.

In racing most cheating occurs with the cars. The doping tests almost always catch illegal narcotics which impair rather than improve performance, compromising safety.

Still, cheating is cheating, and how other pro sports balance rules enforcement against their sport's image is interesting to me, since cycling's efforts in this area seem to have had such harmful consequences.

 

[Archibald]

does nascar still have cars/teams sponsored by beer companies?

 

[subzro]

does nascar still have cars/teams sponsored by beer companies?

Sure does. Other forms of motorsport do as well. I don't see a problem if it's used to deliver a message of responsible drinking.

 

[subzro]

does nascar still have cars/teams sponsored by beer companies?

Sure does. Other forms of motorsport do as well.

 

[podilato]

Doping isn't just to improve performance but also to speed recovery and recovery from injuries. For example, in tennis with 3-4 hour matches you see them come out in 2 days time fresh as daisies. Guys like Nadal get stronger as the match progresses.

Top level footballers play 60-70 matches per season. They seem to recover pretty quickly from injuries.

As Greg Lemond quite rightly points out the ultimate blame must go to the administrators not the athletes. Look at the superb work of British journalist Andrew Jennings in exposing the IOC and now FIFA. It has gone way beyond a few wads of cash in envelopes under the table. Sports officials now court with dictators and military regimes just to keep power. The local Mafia Don would have more ethics than a lot of top level sport administrators.

With people like this running things why are surprised at the odd doping positive?

 

[sherer]

Doping isn't just to improve performance but also to speed recovery and recovery from injuries. For example, in tennis with 3-4 hour matches you see them come out in 2 days time fresh as daisies. Guys like Nadal get stronger as the match progresses.

Top level footballers play 60-70 matches per season. They seem to recover pretty quickly from injuries.

As Greg Lemond quite rightly points out the ultimate blame must go to the administrators not the athletes. Look at the superb work of British journalist Andrew Jennings in exposing the IOC and now FIFA. It has gone way beyond a few wads of cash in envelopes under the table. Sports officials now court with dictators and military regimes just to keep power. The local Mafia Don would have more ethics than a lot of top level sport administrators.

With people like this running things why are surprised at the odd doping positive?

Not heard of Andrew Jennings what exactly has he uncovered ?

 

[podilato]

Look at his website http://www.transparencyinsport.org. Amongst other things you will see photos of the President of Fifa, Sepp Blatter, at a ceremony presenting the former leader of Liberia, Charles Taylor with an award. He is now being tried in the Hague for human rights abuses. There are photos of the former president, Havelaunge, with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and even more recently, local newspaper articles from Moldova where Blatter was praising their democracy at the same time several journalists were placed under house arrest and several protesters were killed by police.

I think whatever the Lance Armstrong's of this world do, which is bad enough, it is small fry compared what is done by a lot of international sports officials.

 

[Rice Daddy]

Since the professionalization of international track and field, or "athletics" as the Euros call them, doping has been rampant. Don't have the specific reference, but believe I read that there were more doping positives last season in T&F than in cycling. Swimming also has a big problem. And recall, if you will, that there were a whole lot of other athletes supposedly implicated in Operacion Puerto than just cyclists. And let me ask you, who are the dominant international soccer stars right now? From which nation? Viva Espana! Viva el estimulante! Basketball, baseball, football, it goes without saying.