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Boonen on coke - again!?

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Susan Westemeyer said:
And American politics really have nothing to do with this story, so let's get back to cycling, Belgium and Boonen, please.

actually they do... i think politics are very relevant to almost any discussion, your political views, or the country you live in can have an enormous influence on your opinions..

steel4ever wins a prize, im not sure what yet, but something for being the person that got what i was hinting at with my "screwed up country that endorses the death penalty and locks people up for anything comment", it was an apparantly too subtle dig at the us..

i hinted at this with my earlier post regarding american pipe smoking crack head, v cocaine socialite.. although i jest i had a point.. not in the reality of drug users, but in the reality of peoples perceptions.. in europe, certain countries especailly drug use of certain drugs is met with a fairly nonchalent shrug, cannabis, cocaine, yeh, people take em, so what.. we dont really lock people up for things like that... america is seems unless you are whiter than white, you are probably going to be incarcerated during your lifetime for something.. the american justice system and system in general seems a little less tolerant of things..

anyway.. my point is.. reading thorugh the posts, and the difference in opinion seeming to be divided into the a) ban him for years or b) for god sake it was a bit of coke camps, i was thinking that maybe opinion is divided actually by which side of the atlantic you happen to live on.. Europeans, or people from certain parts of europe.. "coke.. yeh ok.. so do a course tom, and then everyone get over it.. " other parts of the world "ban him, 2 years, lock him up, castrate him and call him vera"

am i in trouble now for being political.. :eek:

can i just point out before anyone gets upset that my whiter than white comment related to someone who was "clean and pure and without any sin or criminal activity", i was in no way making the point that americans only jail people from non-white backgrounds..
 
Apr 12, 2009
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elapid said:
So Boonen blames alcohol-induced amnesia for his cocaine hit, but admits he has a problem (with alcohol) and that he needs help. According to CN:

Tom Boonen says he may have used cocaine on an afternoon when he had too much to drink. However, he claims to have had a black-out and does not know what happened.

"I do not think I have a problem with cocaine, I have problems when I drink too much. 364 days per year I am good. But if I drink too much, it's exactly like I change in my head," Boonen told Belgian Radio1.

The Quick Step sprinter was suspended by his team Saturday after it was announced that he had tested positive a second time for cocaine.

"I need help," he told sporza.be. "Someone should teach me to understand what happens when I drink too much."

Looking to the future, he said, "Whether I will continue to be a cyclist? That is the least of my concerns."
I do believe this story...
 
May 9, 2009
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Leopejo said:
Really, does anybody know what is the legal status of cocaine use in Belgium? Is it a criminal offence there (to use it as opposed to sell it)?

Taken from the U.S. Department of State website:

"Penalties for possession, use, or trafficking in illegal drugs in Belgium are severe, and convicted offenders can expect long jail sentences and heavy fines."

Yeeeaaaahhhh riiiight! And Boonen got what?

Oh, but wait! If he was TREATED differently than a common citizen...does that imply he should ACT different than a common citizen (i.e. ROLE MODEL)?

I'll stress again, I do NOT have a problem with Tommy B snorting it up. What I do have a problem with is all the authorities involved (Belgium legal, UCI, etc.) not having their sh*t together and not really knowing what to do. It makes a mess of everything.

At least he's not doping it up for competition. But then again, Museeuw was his mentor and role model.
 
Mar 18, 2009
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Leopejo said:
Really, does anybody know what is the legal status of cocaine use in Belgium? Is it a criminal offence there (to use it as opposed to sell it)?

I believe CN has quoted the offense is punishable by 3 months to 5 years in jail.
 
Mar 18, 2009
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Mar 17, 2009
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Since coke has no endurance benefits (though it's been rumored to be a drug of choice for some basketball players, at least for a little while), and it's not on the banned list, the UCI really has no say here. It could pose a hazard to the other riders, as coke heads have this problem with following the white lines on the road a bit too closely.

One can rank Tom out for being so foolish, especially as he had one warning and got off easy. It wasn't a once a year thing. It never is. I had a friend get in trouble with nose candy, it's evil stuff. Alters your judgment, gets you to come up with some pretty far fetched rationalizations. A top athlete, who's accustomed to handling anything thrown at him, hits the one thing that can't be controlled.

My heart goes out to him, coke will get anyone who gets near it too often.
 
Mar 30, 2009
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Tom Tom Tom...go ahead and burn your nose out man but can you try a bit harder not to get caught. Doing rec drugs out of competition doesn't bother me, courts will decide but..........There's one HUGE problem here and its really starting to f$#k me off! It seems these days every bet I take ($20 on Boonen to win green at tdf) that rider ends up costing me. And if its not being suspended before a race then its after, but thats too late! I had Andy for Fleche at good odds but do you think Reb is going to pay me back my 100 bucks??? Probably a lesson in there not to gamble on cycling but come on fellas, give a bloke a chance.
 
Mar 17, 2009
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Animal said:
f'cking idiot.

There goes his Tour again this year.

Quickstep should fire him too.

The guy seems to be completely useless as any kind of a positive sporting model for sponsors.

Coke, habitual speeding while driving. He's become an egotistical tosser. End of career.

Wow. Holier than thou much?
 
Mar 17, 2009
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dimspace said:
bringing the sport into disrepute) QUOTE]


I have to respectfully disagree with this. Not even close in my opinion. Sure, it can be argued that taking coke out of competition doesn't help cycling's image - although I could care less if Boonen likes to party - but what Bos did was reprehensible, and was done while actively participating in a race. His actions were also directed at another rider, with disastrous results for said rider. That is bringing the sport into disrepute. Does everything you do after hours reflect positively on your profession? I wish I could say that.:eek:
 
Mar 10, 2009
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Thank you all for your answers about legality (not) of cocaine in Belgium, I didn't read the Cyclingnews news in detail (sorry Cyclingnews!).

elapid said:
Two other interesting cases:
- Martina Hingis was banned for 2 years from professional tennis for a positive cocaine test, and Richard Gasquet (ranked 23 on the men's circuit) has just tested positive to cocaine and will probably face the same sentence. Thankfully there are not bans for recreational drugs in cycling.
But those two cases were in-competition tests, weren't they?
 
Mar 10, 2009
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If Boonen gets away with his over drinking excuse the rest of the guys testing positive should buy bottles of 151 and leave them around the house/team-bus and say "Yea, I over drank and blacked out, somehow I mixed up CERA for heroine, OPPS. I didn't dope I just blacked out due to my drinking problem, hic-up. All's good now.":rolleyes:
 
Apr 20, 2009
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Boonen

I wouldn't know Cocaine if I found it, but I know that it was the cause of the death of Marco Pantani .Above all, he needed help and understanding but ended up alone with his drugs and died.

I only hope that Tom Boonen gets the help he needs and does not succome to ridicule as Marco did. So, it's been said that everyone with the means does it so what is the problem...Come on folks, wish Tom te very best and hope he gets the treatment he needs before he runs out of excuses and falls further into a bottomless pit.

Whatever, he is still a star but a bit stupid with his social life.
 
Apr 12, 2009
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Let me try and put this in perspective if you're Tom's age in Belgium as a young rich superstar and you're at a party and two hot young twenty something model types come up to you and say they want to do wild crazy and wonderful things to you and themselves but to get in the mood they ask you to snort a line of coke and a hit of ecstacy, I don;t know about some of you but the line would be gone the hit of ex gone and I will be already on the bed. now who's gonna turn that down;)
 
franciep10 said:
Let me try and put this in perspective if you're Tom's age in Belgium as a young rich superstar and you're at a party and two hot young twenty something model types come up to you and say they want to do wild crazy and wonderful things to you and themselves but to get in the mood they ask you to snort a line of coke and a hit of ecstacy, I don;t know about some of you but the line would be gone the hit of ex gone and I will be already on the bed. now who's gonna turn that down;)

Didn't you already post this? It was a terrible argument two pages ago and it's a terrible argument now...
 
May 9, 2009
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You guys are very knowledgeable on testing issues so maybe you can shed some light on the following.

If they don't have a rule against cocaine use out of competition, why do they even test for it?

Why would they turn over the results to the media (and police?) if it's a positive for something that isn't a violation of the testing program?

Finally, how can these privately administered tests by a sporting authority count as evidence in a criminal proceeding?

Clearly cyclists need a strong labor union to protect themselves from such oddities.
 
May 11, 2009
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That's too bad because he messaged me on myspace two years ago. We exchanged a couple of messages and I got the feeling that he had some support for clean competition (why else would he message an anti-doper?).

It's a shame. Wish him the best.
 
Mar 19, 2009
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Apparently the also tested positive for cocaine and XTC in an out of competition UCI test on 15 november 2007. But because these products are not on the UCI list of forbidden substances, they did not report it to Boonen/Quickstep/the public at that time.