They're all on drugs.

[blameless]

I'm just going to leave this here without comment:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/42409433

[Gangster Octopus]

[Felicity, I guess so]

Denis Law, Purple Hearts for breakfast. Bennos kept Slim Jim Baxter slim. Hughie Gallagher, coal gas siphoned through milk.

No more heroes anymore.

EDIT: not a shred of evidence for the above.

Baxter's drug of choice was 80 shilling and a wee hauf.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Nigel Levine: British sprinter fails drugs test - http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/42465404

[longeared]

That's completely shitarsed of the Mail to be reporting that before the B sample has been tested.

[Furtho]

Canoeist found guilty of spiking the drink of his rival for a place in the Olympic team ahead of a drugs test. Story here.

[Kevin S]

Serial paranoid windbag Paul Kimmage is miffed that a rugby player who has completed his ban can, er, play rugby again.

https://twitter.com/PaulKimmage/status/951038255675342853

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/hajoseppelt/status/957945002616938496

[ursus arctos]

The Austrian and Norwegian police get involved with Biathlon

The authorities in Austria raided the headquarters of biathlon’s global governing body following a tip from the World Anti-Doping Agency that its leaders may have been involved with the vast Russian doping scandal that continues to roil international sports.

The IBU president, who has been in office since 1993, has now resigned (and may be facing criminal charges).

[Ek weet nie]

Serial paranoid windbag Paul Kimmage is miffed that a rugby player who has completed his ban can, er, play rugby again.

https://twitter.com/PaulKimmage/status/951038255675342853

Harsh on Kimmage. The issue here was that Irish rugby have a policy of no tolerance towards PEDs. As I understand it, even after a ban you retain some of the advantage that the doping gave you.

There was widespread discomfort that this contract was a lessening of the no tolerance policy and that it was handled very badly by Munster and Ireland rugby.

[Kevin S]

Recently-retired pro cyclist Lieuwe Westra (oh look, one of Vino's team) admits faking injuries to obtain TUEs.
http://www.velonews.com/2018/04/news...-abuses_464681

edit - though it's just as possible, if not moreso, that this happened when he was at Vacansoleil (Ricco, Mosquera, Novikov were all tainted riders at that team).

[Kevin S]

Zak Hardaker's cocaine positive at the end of last season has earned him a ban until 7 November. In theory he could return for the final one of the three Baskerville Shield matches this autumn then, but that seems very unlikely.

[Janik]

A spate of drugs bans for the US Swim team gets it's highest profile individual to date - Mr Ryan Lochte.

It's hard to see how what one might term the Human Engine sports (athletics, swimming and cycling being the most prominent of those) can ever be clean. Because everyone knows that doping works incredibly effectivelty in them. So the better job the authorities do in catching people, and the cleaner they succeed in getting the sport, the greater the reward for those still willing to take the risk. I refer everyone back to that old Vaughters over the line article.

[Satchmo Distel]

Lochte seems to be not very bright.

[Ray de Galles]

Lochte's isn't technically a drugs ban, is it? I thought there was no banned substance in the IV, though I don't have a clue what was in it and it all seems a bit homeopathic to me.

[ursus arctos]

It's all rather Samir Nasri

[Kevin S]

A spate of drugs bans for the US Swim team gets it's highest profile individual to date - Mr Ryan Lochte.

It's hard to see how what one might term the Human Engine sports (athletics, swimming and cycling being the most prominent of those) can ever be clean. Because everyone knows that doping works incredibly effectivelty in them. So the better job the authorities do in catching people, and the cleaner they succeed in getting the sport, the greater the reward for those still willing to take the risk. I refer everyone back to that old Vaughters over the line article.

Fair points, though we've also just seen a World Cup where a very average side who are able to run further and faster than everyone else can get within a penalty shootout of a winnable semifinal with England.

[Ray de Galles]

It's all rather Samir Nasri

I was trying to recall who got caught up in this crap before, thanks.

[Janik]

Fair points, though we've also just seen a World Cup where a very average side who are able to run further and faster than everyone else can get within a penalty shootout of a winnable semifinal with England.

For me there are two aspects here. Sports where fitness is an absolute fundamental, where training is majorly about wattage and VOmax and so on, which by their very nature are ripe for dopers as it is just massively effective at increasing the level participants can do these sports at. They are unavoidably permanently on red alert. It's not athletics/cycling/swimming's fault that they are there, but they have to cope with that being where they are.
Then there are other sports where doping will almost certainly provide benefits but a doped athlete or team can still be out-competed by an undoped one due to the chance nature of the event. These are yellow alert sports, but can easily become red alert if the controls and procedures are ineffective or corrupted. If, for example, the players association runs the day-to-day aspect of the sport and is therefore responsible for organising anti-doping controls. Or is a body that makes the Borgia's look like sticklers for honest dealing.

[Hot Pepsi]

I've read stories of the new medals being "presented" by an IOC flunky in a McDonalds.

I have some friends who got married in a McDonalds. They won a radio contest.

[Hot Pepsi]

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

I remember getting up early 30 years ago today to watch that men's 100m final. Brilliant race. Ben Johnson, everyone's favourite, the explosive underdog upsetting the unbeatable Carl Lewis to take his crown. And then, of course, it all came crashing down. Johnson stripped of gold. Lewis awarded that medal, despite the fact it came out that he'd failed a drug test at the US trials for which the US authorities had, extraordinarily, "excused him". Our own Linford, promoted into a medal despite failing a drugs test in the 200m at the same games, something British athletics lobbied the IOC to accept must have been a "mistake".

I think that 100m race in 1988 was the moment that the lid finally blew off the boiling pot of secrecy about drug use in sport. Earlier that year the Tour de France had been won by Pedro Delgado, despite him failing a test for a masking agent during the race. There had been dark mutterings about its use in football for many years, right back to players in the 1970s being told they were being injected with monkey glands. Things took a long time to get better. I like to think though that now, it's at least a lot harder to cheat. Cheat not just to win, but to cheat fans of the thrill of thinking they've seen something genuine, something honest. I think part of the reason I treasure having watched Usain Bolt win in 2012 was my memory of feeling cheated as a child by Ben Johnson and his contemporaries. Thank heaven that -as far as we know - Bolt's achievements were earned fairly and are real.

[Janik]

The problem is, the cleaner any sport gets, the greater the advantage that doping provides. People who campaign for tougher doping controls talk about risk/reward, but they focus entirely on the risk element of it; they want that amped up to tip the balance far enough one way. Except, if they succeed increasing the risk factor substantially and that does scare some athletes into compliance, all that does is increase the reward for any who are willing to make the higher stakes gamble.

You also have the monomania and paranoia of athletes to deal with. Athlete A, who is ambivalent about cheating (they will do it, but only if they think they can get away with it) and extremely but not untypically egocentric ("I'm the best at this, no-one can possibly be beating me fair-and-square") sees that a competitor, B, who A has previously beaten, is now winning events that A was targeting. Assumption, B is cheating and getting away with it! Yes, they haven't failed a test, but that just means they beating the testers, because they must be doping. There is no other explanation for their victory, at least that A can contemplate. If B is doping, then there is a way of beating the system. And if it exists, athlete A wants it for themselves so that the playing field is level again and A is back on top of the podiums.
Then the news breaks that athlete C has failed a dope test. So A is reassured that the system works, right? Those cheating are being caught? Oh no. Not in A's eyes. It shows the system was failing previously as despite the claims the sport was clean, here was C cheating merrily away. There is no way they were caught the one and only time they cheated. Be real! And it also shows that A was right all along, their are competitors doping! And if that is so, they were also right; they are being cheated of victories that are rightfully theirs! OK, C hadn't actually personally beaten A, but if C was cheating then the person winning must be doing so. Stands to reason, because everyone knows that doping works. If A doesn't make the stupid mistake that C made to be caught (which they won't, because they are brighter than C, at least in their own mind), and that B is clearly successfully avoiding, then they can go back to being the champion they ought to be.

It's all laid out in that wondrously allusive Jonny Vaughters article that I've linked to before. The line is there, and the benefit of crossing it is victory. And nothing else matters...

[Satchmo Distel]

Flo Jo was already 30 years ago, of course, but got away with until it probably killed her.

[VTTBoscombe]

Although not just about drugs - link below is rather a hatchet job on previous OTF pin up boy Fat Jan - as if he needed one. Sad story we all unfortunately know, and the fact that "The Texan" is the only one seemingly showing Jan any love is even sadder - but certainly a self destructive nature.

https://www.velonews.com/2018/09/com...-shadow_479358