Wednesday, December 16, 2009

The Dope Show, It Never Ends

Cracked open the Times yesterday, and while reading the sports section came across this article. Looks like with the right people coming forward to name names, this could turn into the Canadian version of Operation Puerto. The good news is that it there was no mention of any cyclists working with this "Icehole" (an asshole from somewhere cold). The bad news is that athletes are still cheating, and some doctors will do anything to help them. Any time I read about a doctor who is perscribing HGH to people over 40, only so they can slow the effects of aging, it seem fishy to me. Odds are if this doctor is willing to give a rich guy/gal steroids for the right amount of money, they would probably be willing to give athletes steroids as well.

It was nice to see that this doctor carrying Actovegin in a medical bag while crossing international lines. For those of you who have never heard of Actovegin, go find a copy of "From Lance to Landis" by David Walsh, and read the epilouge/afterword. It is a quick story of a mountain biker from the states dumping out a quantity of Actovegin, rather than trying to smuggling it across the pond for a pro roadie friend. The pro roadie friend who wasn't named turned out to be Michael Rasmussen, and we all know that he is both 1.) honest, and 2.) completely opposed to doping.

The bigger news from the article was the athletes who have worked with this doctor who could potentially be brought down from this doping scandal. Sure Operation Puerto took out four potential contenders from the 2006 tour, but this could take top athletes from various sports. Tiger Woods was named in the article, and if it turned out he had doped in his career, this would complete the fastest free fall from grace in the history of sport. Last summer the Dara Torres story seemed too good to be true, turns out it may have been. Donavon Bailey was once the "worlds fastest man", and for good measure there were two NFL players thown in the mix as well. I know, people are innocent until proven guilty, but it just seems like it has been so long since an athlete who was named in a potential doping story, and the story turned out to be false. More than anything I just hope that authorities figure out what is going on here sooner rather than later, and get this whole mess cleaned up.

1 comment:

  1. Odd coming across you blog on an "actovegin" search...I think too in the book 'From Lance to Landis', actovegin was once caught with a cyclist's team and they managed to wiggle out of it by saying a staff member had "diabetes" (here I don't want to name names, I have the book and think I remember but I'm not positive but I think it's another case besides Rasmussen). Why are we talking about actovegin, well, I'm a cyclist but in this case, it looks like it's connected to Tiger Woods. Since you are a cyclist too, maybe you say 'ho-hum' to that like me. So that is not the only place in the David Walsh book talking about actovegin. Now, it raises suspicions about anyone caught with actovegin, it's not as obscure as we may have thought.

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