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Tennis

Page 20 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
Mar 13, 2009
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sniper said:
true, but he's not very sportsman-like on court.
the high raised fist, the little rituals.
I don't like it, though he's not the first nor the last of course.

the media lumped on Victoria Azaenka in her Semi against the young American when she took a medical break for ambiguous reasons when she was serving for the match.

they dont do that to rafa do they, and he pulls worse $hit re:sportsmanship
 
Mar 13, 2009
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SundayRider said:
Yeah of course they train - but when you get teams where the lightest player is 90Kg at a low level of BF% you have to ask questions.
right.

NOT NORMAL.

rough rule of thumb should be muscle mass size = positive correlation to bodyfat%.

And folks over 90kgs should have tissue, red and white intrafacial tissue, muscle and white tissue, on their face. and no just male model cheekbones, jawlines and brow. A 200lb athlete used to have cheeks and not just cheekbones two decades ago.

now, all non-functional tissue is riven from the athlete's frame. And still they get heavier with muscle. No cheeks, 100 kgs, cheekbones and getting heavier with bigger heads. NOT NORMAL.

I cant see how a doping program could help rugby at all , channel BigBoat, hehehehe.
 
Mar 13, 2009
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Don't be late Pedro said:
I wager that you could replace Spanish with most, if not all, nationalities and Nadal and Ferrer with their relevant top players.
Ferrer? At 30

no way.

one year younger than Hewitt, with a similar game. And when Hewitt won Wimbledon and US Open, the sport was at a very low ebb, and ripe to to be cherry picked. Hewitt very ordinary #1.

If Ferrar had talent he would have cherry picked some Grand Slams when Hewitt was #1. Safin had talent, but was a nutcase, who could not fulfill his ability, and Roddick had flaws. That Swede, was it Johansson who won Australia, he was verrrry mediocre, even given that it is an absolute adjective and does not need a qualifier.
 
Wimbledon proposes to double its miserly £100,000 annual contribution to the ITF's antidoping budget. Tennis spends about one fifth of what cycling spends and it looks like they want to keep it that way.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/te...-drug-tests-brought-Grand-Slams.html#comments

By comparison, Wimbledon is reckoned to be spending £100 million on improvements to its centre court, including a rumoured £20 million on its retractable roof.

Pathetic really.
 
Oct 16, 2010
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zebedee said:
Wimbledon proposes to double its miserly £100,000 annual contribution to the ITF's antidoping budget. Tennis spends about one fifth of what cycling spends and it looks like they want to keep it that way.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/te...-drug-tests-brought-Grand-Slams.html#comments

By comparison, Wimbledon is reckoned to be spending £100 million on improvements to its centre court, including a rumoured £20 million on its retractable roof.

Pathetic really.
tells us where the priorities lie.
 
Clearly nothing will happen to turn the tide of sport doping until governments really start twisting arms. Without back-up from the panoply of state agencies who could make life difficult for the dopers and their doctors, as the Italian Carabinieri and their investigating magistrates have occasionally shown, antidoping is going nowhere whatever your sport.
 
Feb 3, 2013
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There have been speculations in the past that (Brazilian) Ronaldo's knee injuries are a result of early steroid use

(e.g. http://grg51.typepad.com/steroid_nation/2008/02/reports-of-socc.html)
Ronaldo Was Doped

Bernando Santi says that the reason why Ronaldo has suffered so many injuries is because when he signed for PSV Eindhoven in 1994 as a 17-year-old, he was regularly pumped full of anabolic steroids in order to build up the player physically and help him grow.

As a result Ronaldo then developed muscles that were unable to co-exist with his knee’s bone structure, leading to devastating problems in later years.

"I spoke to colleagues in Holland who know people at PSV,” Santi told the daily Folha de Sao Paulo. “I did not get to talk to PSV doctors. They gave supplements to Ronaldo, who was very thin, and among those supplements they included some anabolic substances which could make him grow a bit more.”

Santi is in no doubt that it was these drugs that have caused the injuries. "It is a consequence of having grown beyond what his muscles were prepared to grow," he insisted.
"He gained muscle mass very fast, when he still had not reached maturity. The bill for the use of steroids shows up long term, 10, 15 or 20 years later."

I wonder if Nadal is a similar case....
 
Nadal has been tested a number of times over the months since Wimbledon. Why would the ITF continue to test a player who cannot compete? That's a daft notion.

Nadal has been tested o-o-c several times because it is now recognised that the probability and risk of doping in tennis players is occurring precisely during those periods when a player is off the tour either training, as Agassi used to do or dealing with an injury, as clearly is the case with Nadal. The talk of Nadal serving a silent ban is a complete nonsense, now of urban myth proportions, sadly, as it tends to distract from the real issues around doping in tennis.

It is far more likely a proposition, as you say, that abuse of anabolics early in his career has led to the knee tendon problems Nadal has today. If it does emerge that Nadal was one of Fuentes clients too, then it more or less indicates the case that Nadal was comprehensively doping from a very young age comparatively speaking.
 
Mar 13, 2009
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zebedee said:
Nadal has been tested a number of times over the months since Wimbledon. Why would the ITF continue to test a player who cannot compete? That's a daft notion.

Nadal has been tested o-o-c several times because it is now recognised that the probability and risk of doping in tennis players is occurring precisely during those periods when a player is off the tour either training, as Agassi used to do or dealing with an injury, as clearly is the case with Nadal. The talk of Nadal serving a silent ban is a complete nonsense, now of urban myth proportions, sadly, as it tends to distract from the real issues around doping in tennis.

It is far more likely a proposition, as you say, that abuse of anabolics early in his career has led to the knee tendon problems Nadal has today. If it does emerge that Nadal was one of Fuentes clients too, then it more or less indicates the case that Nadal was comprehensively doping from a very young age comparatively speaking.
Did uncle Toni take the IQ tests for him.

Rafa looks to me about a 90 intelligence quotient. not smart. but not a dolt all the same.

I think he would test positive for modafinil, cos his hair looked very sparse for a 23 yo, but the thinning seems to have righted itself without resorting to a Joe Biden, Shane Warne, Alejandro Valverde
 
Mar 13, 2009
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Feb 15, 2013
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Briant_Gumble said:
Personally I'm more inclined to believe this explanation than the covered up six month ban.

I agree. The silent ban theory has always been a bit implausible. I think it's either busted knees due to steroid use or simply that he needs constantly to take time out to fit with his doping regime.
 
Feb 22, 2011
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zebedee said:
Clearly nothing will happen to turn the tide of sport doping until governments really start twisting arms. Without back-up from the panoply of state agencies who could make life difficult for the dopers and their doctors, as the Italian Carabinieri and their investigating magistrates have occasionally shown, antidoping is going nowhere whatever your sport.

With apologies to Juvenal, if the bread is cheaper with GMOs and the circuses are more fun with doping, no government is going to do anything about either.

The reason Cycling receives more castigation from the press about doping (and, indeed, does more about it than any other sport I can think of) is that fans of cycling tend to be more "engaged" (terrible word I know) with the sport. Cycling fans tend to ride bikes themselves. The vast majority of tennis "fans" rarely, if ever, actually play. Hell, the vast majority of fans of most sports rarely play the game.

It's only a hypothesis, but I would venture that the more "professional" sports (i.e. those where there is a real dichotomy between practitioner and viewer) actually have the most egregious doping cultures.
 
Feb 8, 2013
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iejeecee said:
There have been speculations in the past that (Brazilian) Ronaldo's knee injuries are a result of early steroid use

(e.g. http://grg51.typepad.com/steroid_nation/2008/02/reports-of-socc.html)

I wonder if Nadal is a similar case....

Are Nadal's knees really that bad?

I remember around late '09 to early '10 he was complaining of knee injuries, and it was thought he career might be winding down because of it. He then went on to win 3 consecutive GS titles in 2010. He also didn't seem too troubled by his knees during a six hour hardcourt final against Djokovic at last years Aus Open.

I'm not saying this is suggestive of him doping or not doping, just an observation. Also his knee injuries have, as far as I know, never been described as anything more than tendinitis, and he's never required any surgery to repair them. This differs a bit from Ronaldo who absolutely wrecked his knees a few times.
 
As I can vouch personally, you can numb knee pain with strong painkiller which allows you to continue playing. However, any underlying condition will remain and worsen as the effect of impact injury (microtrauma) grows. Nadal may have got away with it in 2009/2010, perhaps using cortisone injections to ease any inflammation too, which itself can aggravate anything underlying. So the problem slowly worsens and you end up with the condition so bad that the knee just goes, as both of mine did. The slightest problem with a knee destroys confidence too, which at the level Nadal is playing at, would be catastrophic for him. Tennis at his level is played as much in the mind as on a court.

If it's degenerative tendinosis he has, then autologous blood injections into the tendon are required (or more advanced blood spinning treatments which I think Nadal actually had) and lots and lots of eccentric work. That takes a lot of time and it is perfectly understandable why Nadal was forced off tour and it's got nothing whatsoever to do with silent bans for doping.

One of the worst aspects of pro-tennis is playing constantly on hard courts which are ruinous for players' knees. Nadal has rightly raised this issue and it's one the ATP needs to address. Nothing to do with peds. Players' health and careers are best sustained by playing more tennis on grass and clay courts.
 
Aug 18, 2012
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Personally, I think it's a mixture of factors that will have led to Nadals bad knees.

Playing over three hour matches on a hard court can't be good. Seeing more matches on grass would be good, I think as that is the surface least hazardous to knees. I don't know how they could implement that with the current calendar, to my knowledge there are four tour events on grass Queens and Halle pre-Wimbledon, Wimbledon itself and then New Haven in America after Wimbledon.

After Wimbledon most players tend to play hard court events to prepare for the US Open although some clay courters play clay events as they do year round to get points to stay in the top 100.
 
A decent clay court specialist could spend his entire career playing clay court tournaments if he wished, particularly when he wasn't so highly ranked that he'd have to attend the obligatory hard court tournaments mandated by the ATP. Tank the odd match every so often for a good payout from an illegal betting syndicate and you might make some half-decent money along the way too. Plus the peds of course. They help too.
 
Feb 3, 2013
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zebedee said:
Tank the odd match every so often for a good payout from an illegal betting syndicate and you might make some half-decent money along the way too.

Hahaha, hell yeah why not go the whole 9 yards while your at it :D
Maybe the real cause of Nadals knee problems are some mafioso types with a baseball bat.... ok, that was lame, anyway.

To me clay court matches seem the most grueling of any surface. Maybe they are softer on the joints, but they require a lot more stamina. Or at-least they used to in the past. Is it a coincidence that nearly all of the top "doped" Spaniards of the last 2 decades were/are clay court specialists. I guess the added conditional benefits of doping are most beneficial on slower surfaces.
 
iejeecee said:
Hahaha, hell yeah why not go the whole 9 yards while your at it :D
Maybe the real cause of Nadals knee problems are some mafioso types with a baseball bat.... ok, that was lame, anyway.

To me clay court matches seem the most grueling of any surface. Maybe they are softer on the joints, but they require a lot more stamina. Or at-least they used to in the past. Is it a coincidence that nearly all of the top "doped" Spaniards of the last 2 decades were/are clay court specialists. I guess the added conditional benefits of doping are most beneficial on slower surfaces.

Or perhaps that Spaniards grow up on clay courts, while others on hardcourts or grass courts.
 
Feb 3, 2013
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del1962 said:
Or perhaps that Spaniards grow up on clay courts, while others on hardcourts or grass courts.

I'm sure French players (among others) grow up on clay too, how many times have they won Roland Garros lately? I guess the Spanish just have better genes or something...
 
iejeecee said:
Hahaha, hell yeah why not go the whole 9 yards while your at it :D
Maybe the real cause of Nadals knee problems are some mafioso types with a baseball bat.... ok, that was lame, anyway.

To me clay court matches seem the most grueling of any surface. Maybe they are softer on the joints, but they require a lot more stamina. Or at-least they used to in the past. Is it a coincidence that nearly all of the top "doped" Spaniards of the last 2 decades were/are clay court specialists. I guess the added conditional benefits of doping are most beneficial on slower surfaces.
Yeah, very sorry, iejee. Tennis players neither dope nor throw matches. That was just me trying to drag a clean sport down and tar it with cycling's brush.
I admit it. Doping is basically unknown in our noble game. There's no point either in the ITF wasting money unnecessarily on an antidoping programme that's not required. Better the old farts who run the ITF and the grand slams spend it on improving those flower displays which make their grounds look so pretty.

Spaniards tend to be particularly proficient on clay, epo or no epo, because there's little else in their country to play on.
 
Feb 3, 2013
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zebedee said:
Yeah, very sorry, iejee. Tennis players neither dope nor throw matches. That was just me trying to drag a clean sport down and tar it with cycling's brush.
I admit it. Doping is basically unknown in our noble game. There's no point either in the ITF wasting money unnecessarily on an antidoping programme that's not required. Better the old farts who run the ITF and the grand slams spend it on improving those flower displays which make their grounds look so pretty.

Spaniards tend to be particularly proficient on clay, epo or no epo, because there's little else in their country to play on.

Possibly you misinterpreted my post, I wasn't criticizing. I just think it's funny how dirty the world of sports really is, based on some of the recent "revelations" in the press. Match fixing, illegal betting, doping etc. It's quite the jungle at the top it seems.

But since everyone is complicit in some way or another, there is very little hope things will change.
 
No, it was only some sarcasm, iejee, feeding off the ITF's less-than-convincing approach to it all. But did you realise that Wimbledon probably does actually spend more on flower baskets and flower arrangements than the £100,000 per annum now disclosed as its annual contribution to tennis antidoping? Everything in the garden is rosy, see?

Makes you want to get out your laughing bag!
 
Feb 8, 2013
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zebedee said:
As I can vouch personally, you can numb knee pain with strong painkiller which allows you to continue playing. However, any underlying condition will remain and worsen as the effect of impact injury (microtrauma) grows. Nadal may have got away with it in 2009/2010, perhaps using cortisone injections to ease any inflammation too, which itself can aggravate anything underlying. So the problem slowly worsens and you end up with the condition so bad that the knee just goes, as both of mine did. The slightest problem with a knee destroys confidence too, which at the level Nadal is playing at, would be catastrophic for him. Tennis at his level is played as much in the mind as on a court.

If it's degenerative tendinosis he has, then autologous blood injections into the tendon are required (or more advanced blood spinning treatments which I think Nadal actually had) and lots and lots of eccentric work. That takes a lot of time and it is perfectly understandable why Nadal was forced off tour and it's got nothing whatsoever to do with silent bans for doping.

One of the worst aspects of pro-tennis is playing constantly on hard courts which are ruinous for players' knees. Nadal has rightly raised this issue and it's one the ATP needs to address. Nothing to do with peds. Players' health and careers are best sustained by playing more tennis on grass and clay courts.

Yep agree, if it is only 'tendinitis' than corticosteroid injections could allow him to play through associated pain, and yeah the injury would likely worsen over time and I'd expect by now it should be impacting his game (whilst playing) more and more. I haven't really seen any evidence of this, although admittedly I haven't watched any of his matches since his return.

Im fairly sure his condition has only ever been called 'tendinitis', but this isn't overly helpful as that is used (and overused) generically for all sorts of joint problems, so...

If his condition is actually 'tendinosis', then c/steroids would be effectively useless as its not an inflammatory condition. I've also heard Nadal has had PRP (blood spinning) therapy, which would be more suggestive of tendinosis as its used to help the tendon actually regenerate somewhat. If he does have chronic tendinosis though then I'd expect there to be a significant risk of actual tendon rupture. I guess this could have occurred in trainning post-wimbledon, and that could explain the extended lay off, but nothing close to this serious has occurred in his matches - he never even seems to limp, or favour a leg at all when complaining about his knees.

For what its worth, i saw that after a match in mexico yesterday, Nadal said his knee was feeling "so much better". It will be seriously interesting to see how he goes for the rest of this year.

Definitely agree that overuse of hard courts is a problem in the game. Accompanying that is also the speed of courts. I think the powers that be prefer slower courts, I guess because long rallies make good TV, but this compounds the problem, making more gruelling matches (which are more conducive to doping). Also, although grass is much nicer on the body, the Wimbledon courts of the last few years are the slowest grass courts i've ever seen.
 

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