Well a Premier team dissappearing while he pissed his way around Poland is pretty bad. There are plenty of parrallels in the way their justify their positions.
Point taken about Contador et al. As far as Iâm aware though, no other current members of the Peleton have called for his resignation, even the Sky golden boys. Active athletes just donât call for the resignation of heads of governing bodies, desireable as it might be.
UCI meeting called for tomorrow anyway.
I didnât mention cycling fans. I mentioned the âuninformed Irish general publicâ. The people who turned out in Stillorgan to greet him in 1987, for example. I was brought to that as a nipper. To those people, Roche is a hero.
Have you not been following Bandageâs tirade against Flano over on the Fantasy NFL thread?
Is Sean Kelly suspected of doping or was he one of the few rare clean ones?
He is one of the greatest Irish sports people of all time Mac so donât believe any of the claptrap that is about to be posted.
:lol:
Heâs already admitted to it. Failed tests, to boot.
How long ago did he admit it?
A few years ago, iirc. He failed one test because heâd used the urine of one of the team staff whoâd taken amphetamines or something to stay awake and forgot about it when he gave his piss to Kelly.
Anyway, he admitted to it quietly, but itâs widely acknowledged that the 70s and 80s were radically different times to the 90s and up to present day.
Problem for Roche is that he is, in fairness, the big star. Did the triple crown. Itâs on Reeling in the Years every year. He canât admit to it. And if I was him, I wouldnât either. Hand on heart. Ask someone what Kelly ever won and I doubt they could tell you. Roche is the Tour. Everyone knows it. It is, as was mentioned above, his meal ticket. If we had 5 lads or something whoâd won it over the last 30 years, Iâd hope heâd admit it, but itâs just him. He canât and I donât blame him.
He served a couple of bans as far as I remember. Certainly one anyway. Wasnât widely reported here.
he did yeah. testostorone I think. He did a couple of small bans. But the doping he would have done was mickey mouse compared to the shit that went on since the 90s
Pat considers himself JC Iâd say.
Jesus if it ever came out that Roche was a drugs cheat it would destroy the country.
Itâs already well out there mate and the country is in great shape.
it would keep Joe Duffy busy for an hour anyway.
That maybe so but the it hasnât been confirmed. Roche hasnât come out and admitted it, there have been no positive tests for it so there fore I think people are inclined to want to believe he didnât do it, but if he did admit or there were positive test results then that would be different. It would keep Joe Duffy going for an hour or so, sure even mentioning An unnamed person keeps Joe going for an hour and she isnt even as well liked as Roche.
I find it hard to imagine anyone would give a shit.
The doping was small-fry compared to the 90s onwards. Roche and Kelly were class riders. I believe Kimmage recognised this when he chose not to expose them when he had the chance. I personally donât give a shite if they took testosterone or whathaveyou in their heyday. Though, of course, I do feel sorry for Kimmage. As he put it, it was drugs that were not going to make you win, just to be able to get up the next day and compete. Itâs all very sad.
Ferrari and all his willing riders took it to a new level. Bugno leading the Giro from start to finish, Indurain lashing up mountains alongside scrawny little climbing specialists. Thatâs the real thing. I feel sorry for anyone in the 80s who refused to dope. But look at Roche. He did an apprenticeship asâŠa joiner? Or something like that. This is the 80s. Would you go back to that or utilise your huge talent, ability to suffer and take some of the drugs that were on offer which could help you reach the top of your sport. Iâd have done the drugs too.
[quote=âWatch The Break, post: 152112â]
I find it hard to imagine anyone would give a shit.[/quote]
Jimmy Magee would, if he were still alive.
http://www.german-times.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1834&Itemid=74
Is football really clean? http://www.german-times.com/images/M_images/printButton.png[/url] [url=âhttp://www.german-times.com/index2.php?option=com_content&task=emailform&id=1834&itemid=74â]http://www.german-times.com/images/M_images/emailButton.png[/url] [url=âhttp://www.german-times.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=3&id=56&Itemid=74â]October 2007 Life
After the doping scandals in cycling, Germans are now asking whether their favorite sport is played fairly - By Thomas Kistner
[size=3]
Germans are taking the doping problem seriously and many athletes and officials are surprised as the countryâs top sport, football, comes into the spotlight.[/size]
[size=3]
The bodies have been mounting up again these past few weeks. Three young footballers died on the pitch, and the FĂ©dĂ©ration Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) quickly went on the offensive. But FIFA had little to say about the curious deaths of the Spanish first division professional, Antonio Puerta of FC Seville, the Zambian national team player Chaswe Nosofwa (who played in Israel) the 16-year- old Walsall youth team player, Anton Reid. They said there should be more health checks to combat the risk of sudden heart failure. Days later, Spainâs senior amateur league reported two more deaths.[/size]
[size=3]
Whatever the reasons for the deaths in football, FIFAâs muddle-headed musings are a prime example of the approach taken toward the one theme that professional sport in general, and football in particular, steers clear of: medical science.[/size]
[size=3]
In professional sports, medical science is very often just a short step away from artificial ways of improving performance. Doping is the biggest taboo subject in the entertainment industry. So itâs even stranger that itâs the favorite, football, which manages, to this very day, to sell itself as a clean sport. Because there is mounting evidence that doping does take place.[/size]
[size=3]
Letâs recall Zinedine Zidaneâs farewell gala at the World Cup. The 34-year-oldâs energy was sensational. In the qualifying matches, he had still played like a pensioner on the pitch. But then Zidane turned up the heat. Just like Ronaldo, his chubby colleague from Real Madrid who, despite a sudden, steep and unexpected upturn in his performance curve, went down with the rest of the Brazilian team in the quarter final - losing to the French and the positively zippy Zidane.[/size]
[size=3]
Today, such leaps in strength and endurance are eyed with mistrust in all sports, just not in the richest sport of them all - King Football refuses to tolerate any suspicion whatsoever. Here, the rule is as formulated by the doyen of notorious German sports medicine, doctor Joseph Keul from Freiburg: doping disrupts the ability to coordinate properly, which such a complex sport as football demands. Therefore, football players donât dope.[/size]
[size=3]
This senseless argument still applies today. In May, the German Football Federationâs (DFB) internist, Tim Meyer, asserted that âthe complex factors which determine performance are the best defenseâ against chemical cheating. Itâs a bold claim. Doping doctors will always lie and doctors, who are against doping, will never learn very much about how cheating works. Doctors, therefore, are questionable witnesses on the subject. The fact is that football is constantly waging a massive defense against independent controls. There are hardly any tests done during training in German football, either: only 87 in the 2006-07 season in the top three professional leagues.[/size]
[size=3]
It is in football especially that athletic demands have risen so hugely. Studies show that players in the past went full pelt seven to eight percent of the 90-minute playing period - today itâs a good 15 percent. If they once ran 5 kilometers per match, today itâs up to 12. At the same time, the number of compulsory matches is increasing while recovery time is reduced. As early as 1999, Franceâs world champion Emmanuel Petit complained, âThings have come so far that we all need doping. Some are doing it already.â[/size]
[size=3]
Thereâs no questioning that steroids promote muscle regeneration, testosterone shortens the recovery time and the blood doping agent Epo improves endurance in the game considerably. Testosterone or Epo can be taken during training without worry, they are traceable for only 48 hours but they still work intensively for days afterwards - on match days, too, on which there are hardly any blood tests like during the World Cup. Itâs humbug to call the World Cup clean: A raised haematocritic value isnât noticed if nobody measures it.[/size]
[size=3]
Sure, drugs canât improve either on-the-ball talent or how to read the game. But Epo helps every player whose legs are getting tired. The best technician is useless if he lacks that tenth of a second that enables him to take possession, the half step that gets him into a shooting position. Just ask that powerhouse and doping addict Maradona or Zidane or consult the football archives: football and doping goes right back to the âWunder von Bern,â the German victory in the 1954 World Cup.[/size]
[size=3]
Following the 3:2 win, syringes and needles were found in the changing room of Sepp Herbergerâs boys. It wasnât just the Hungarian captain, Ferenc Puskas, who suspected doping at the time. Franz Loogen, the DFB team doctor then, swears he used just placebos. But sports historians have collected arguments for the suspicion that the players of 1954, known as the Wunder-Elf, were on Pervitin, a strong stimulant that was given to German soldiers in the war. It turned their fears into aggression.[/size]
[size=3]
The doping history of the East German clubs is full of amphetamines, the same stuff as in the West, where the stimulant Captagon was a long-running hit with professionals in the 1970s and 1980s. This was reported by the former Dortmund forward, Peter Geyer, in 1994. The manager, Peter Neururer, confirmed it this year. But witnesses like these are silenced. Not even Franz Beckenbauer could get his voice heard: In 1997, he spoke about players injecting themselves with their own blood, something that is harmless in comparison with what otherwise goes on.[/size]
[size=3]
Even at FC Bayern there were some who indulged in dubious practices. The former team doctor, Erich Spannbauer, drew attention when he was taking care of the team in the 1980s. Spannbauerâs colleague, Heinz Liesen, a long-time DFB doctor, accused the German national team goalie, Toni Schumacher, of having supplied the Wunder-Elf with hormones. The DFB reacted: it barred the squealer (= traitor) Schumacher.[/size]
[size=3]
Dettmar Cramer, Bayernâs coach in the 1970s, also registers on the radar. Sepp Maier claimed Cramer handed out mysterious white tablets. Just anecdotes? And manager Felix Magath advocated anabolic steroids be used during the regeneration phase. His colleague, Otto Rehhagel, was also attacked during the time he was coach at Bielefeld. Later, during Greeceâs 2004 European Championship, there was a lot of whispering about the iron endurance of his Hellenic eleven players, against which the opposition shattered.[/size]
[size=3]
The DFB has been conducting tests since 1984. But they are more of a bluff. Last season, there were 964 - happily announced - tests during 241 national and regional league games, at matches of the A-juniors, the womenâs Bundesliga as well as the League Championship including the 87 tests during training mentioned earlier. In the same period, there were 1,020 tests in track-and-field alone. According to the findings of the National Anti-Doping Agency Nada, among 100 testosterone values that stood out in the 2006 annual report, the DFB came in second place with nine cases - behind track-and-field with 21. But track-and-field conducted 12 times as many tests during training.[/size]
[size=3]
So what about the irrepressible German fighting spirit, which was as legendary as the Italian dominance in the European Cup of the 1990s? The latter was exposed by the judiciary as pharmaceutically cheating. Between 1994 and 1998, Juventus Turin won three league championships, the World Cup and three cup final appearances in the Champions League - an impressive record which, according to the verdict, was achieved by doping on the scale of a âcriminal plan.â During the trial, various abnormalities were revealed, such as that of Didier Deschamps. In June 1996, he had a haemocritic value of 51 percent, 12 percent more than the previous year.[/size]
[size=3]
In the 1990s, there was systematic doping at Olympique Marseilles and FC Sion. Arsene Wenger, coach at Londonâs Arsenal, spoke in 2004 of âabnormally highâ blood values of new players - he believes âthat some clubs dope players without their knowledge.â Pleading ignorance are those world-class players condemned for doping, such as Jap Stam, Edgar Davids and Josep Guardiola.[/size]
[size=3]
And in Spain? As Zidane transferred from the doping-contaminated Turin to Madrid, it appeared as if he would probably face the same problems there, too. The âDoping Doctorâ Eufemiano Fuentes had admitted that he took care of football stars. The French newspaper Le Monde, which got a hold of Fuentesâ list, published it including the medical records for Real Madrid.[/size]
[size=3]
And Zidane? That he too, after Juventus, fell into Fuentesâ hands, can be discerned from the files. In France, his general attitude toward blood practices is already known. In 2003, rock star Johnny Hallyday revealed how he likes to visit a Swiss clinic for regeneration purposes, where he has blood taken, loaded with oxygen and re-injected. The tip came from Zidane, who, he said, treats himself to the procedure twice a year.[/size]
[size=3]
And Zidaneâs long-time Real Madrid colleague, Ronaldo? Heâs in trouble with Italyâs doping hunters due to a forbidden blood transfusion he underwent, ostensibly, to heal a muscle injury more quickly.[/size]
[size=3]