Courtesy of Anaconda in the tennis thread, I came across a most interesting article by Alan Moore. I think he's a journo worth following.
http://backpagefootball.com/author/alanmoore/page/2/
Doesn't only talk about cheating in topsport at large, but also calls out the media for not engaging with it.
Anyway, here he talks about his own experience when he joined a soccer training camp in Austria in the 90s trying to get a contract with (then) Bundesliga club RB Leipzig:
http://backpagefootball.com/hippo-room-footballs-dark-past-present-load-red-bull/97672/
Hippo in the room – football’s dark past and present and a load of Red Bull
In December I was invited by a Bundesliga club to join them in a training camp in Southern Germany, or so I understood, it actually was in Austria.
I flew to Munich, was picked up and after a stop in Salzburg, we continued on to our training base in Obertauern. Obertauern was the Centre of Excellence for Austrian Sports and lots of athletes, skiers and tennis players trained there. It was a decent spot and we were to be worked like dogs for a week.
...
The man came to me last – as I was the lightest of the bunch – and spoke with me in functional English. I was to drop back down to flyweight (51kgs) and he’d give me a program to strengthen me up. Honestly, I was thrilled. He believed in me and told me that he’d make me faster and stronger.
On day four we were all to begin our programs, it was injection time. I stopped dead in my tracks and asked what we were being given. “Vitamins, minerals and what you’ll lose in training.” I refused to take anything until I knew what it was exactly. The team manager roared, the balding man smiled like a friendly uncle and, I think, told them to leave me go.
Now, the balding man he talks about is none other than
Bernd Pansold, a famous former East German doping doc who still runs a dodgy medical clinic in Vienna.
From wiki:
It is noteworthy that several notable athletes attend the Diagnostic- and training center to different degrees, to be treated or advised, such as German sports stars Maria Riesch and Sebastian Vettel, who however dispute and deny having ever had any contact with Pansold who is the leader of the operation. A possible collaboration between American Alpine skier Lindsey Vonn and Pansold is also a reoccurring theme in media of the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernd_Pansold#Activity_in_Austria
From glimpsing at this Clinic thread it seems the focus has been on Lindsey Vonn/skiing, but there is much more to this guy Pansold. From the Moore article:
Pansold oversees the training regimes for the Red Bull family, from the New York Red Bulls to Red Bull Salzburg to Red Bull Brasil to RB Leipzig and Red Bull Ghana in football, and their motorsport and ice hockey groups. The growth into football was overseen by two notables, former runner and PR man Olli Mintzlaff and former Liverpool boss, Gerard Houllier.
Has there been a reaction to this or comment in our media? Not a chance.
How can we continue to ignore the Hippo in the room? Easy, it’s not our problem and it’s never our guys doing it. Not in our sport, our club, our country. Never those we work with and never those we admire. We just don’t need to know.
More from Wiki:
Red Bull performance center in Thalgau
Following his dismissal in Obertauern, Pansold continued to work from his practice in Vienna, who was occasionally invited to conferences and lectures, in which he sometimes claimed that the performance of professional athletes had only reached 50% of their potential in today's sports.[8] In 2008 he was hired by soft drink manufacturer Red Bull, whose founder and owner Dietrich Mateschitz had recently begun to sponsor sport clubs and athletes in a major way. Pansold then became the leader of the companies own "Diagnostic- and Training center " open to all athletes who are sponsored by Red Bull.
Since it became known that Red Bull and Pansold were working together, there has been harsh criticism raised against the company. In 2011 the German publication "Der Tagesspiegel" even accused the company of being too secretive regarding their involvement with Pansold, stating that the company were reluctant to share details on how and to what extent the collaboration with Pansold was.[10] The Süddeutsche Zeitung concluded, after a meeting of journalists with Pansold in Thalgau where he refused to answer questions regarding his past, that there are former athletes of the DDR, who are either sick today or who have had disabled children, due to the pills they were given by Pansold in their youth, and that you cannot hold it against them that they find it harsh and cynical that Pansold continues to be allowed to happily continue in his career as a doctor considering their condition.
Several things to take from this:
--> anybody thinking East German doping is a thing of the past is not watching properly. Pansold is just one of many former East German characters still involved in various branches of topsports.
--> Seems formula one doping is a serious thing. Alonso linked to Fuentes, Vettel to Pansold.
--> That bit about Houllier sounds promising but I wasn't sure how to read that. Is Alan Moore suggesting that Gerard Houllier introduced Pansold into football?
--> Could doping in Austria become a way for German athletes to circumvent tougher German antidoping laws?
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