This Weeks Excuse

[Smokin Joe]

Well it's just as good as contaminated meat I suppose, though a long way behind your dead twin brother...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/mar/04/kolo-toure-diet-pill-wenger

 

[Keith Oates]

He should have bought his wife and himself a bicycle each so they could ride together and loose weight, then they would both have both benefitted !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[andrew_s]

I thought the twin brother excuse was very entertaining.

It can actually happen - two embryos fuse together at a very early stage in development, like siamese twins fuse together at a late stage in development. You end up with one person, but with different parts of the body derived from one of the two original embryos. It's called chimerism. There was a case when a woman was found not to be related to her children after DNA tests, and only got off benefit fraud charges because she was pregnant with another child at the time who also turned out to be unrelated to her. It turned out that this woman's bone marrow was the sister of her ovaries. Someone in the Tyler camp must have been reading the Scientific American.

It's no good as a blood doping excuse though, as all previous and subsequent blood tests would have shown the same mixed population of cells.

 

[Noodley]

Interesting article here:



http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/mar/04/methylhexaneamine-kolo-toure-drugs

Although the silence raises my suspisions that it may not be this....

 

[oldroadman]

Interesting article here:



http://www.guardian....olo-toure-drugs

Although the silence raises my suspisions that it may not be this....

Bottom line, in the anti-doping rules an athlete is responsible for what's in his or her body. Simple answer really, whay would you take a pill without checking that it is safe from any banned substances? This case is someone who is highly paid in a team set up with full medical support. Which makes any excuse hard to believe, except the one of being stupid. In short, he's been caught, pathetic excuses will probably get him off because of all the money and influence sloshing about in football. Can't have our "national game" tainted by doping like all those dope-fiend cycling people, can we?

 

[rich p]

Bottom line, in the anti-doping rules an athlete is responsible for what's in his or her body. Simple answer really, whay would you take a pill without checking that it is safe from any banned substances? This case is someone who is highly paid in a team set up with full medical support. Which makes any excuse hard to believe, except the one of being stupid. In short, he's been caught, pathetic excuses will probably get him off because of all the money and influence sloshing about in football. Can't have our "national game" tainted by doping like all those dope-fiend cycling people, can we?

Well, Bertie got off despite having admitted the clenbuterol presence. New bottom line now if he gets away with it, as it was 'accidentally' ingested.

 

[andrew_s]

Bertie got off because the Spanish federation accepted that it was the meat.

You can't accept that, and then turn round and say "absolute responsibility - you should have had the beef tested before eating it". It would be completely unreasonable to expect that everything is tested (or samples kept), and if the Spanish/UCI/WADA tried to say it was the consequent legal costs could bankrupt whichever organisation tried to enforce a ban based on it.

 

[rich p]

Bertie got off because the Spanish federation accepted that it was the meat.

You can't accept that, and then turn round and say "absolute responsibility - you should have had the beef tested before eating it". It would be completely unreasonable to expect that everything is tested (or samples kept), and if the Spanish/UCI/WADA tried to say it was the consequent legal costs could bankrupt whichever organisation tried to enforce a ban based on it.

My point to ORM was that the Contador decision defies the strict liability rule however the product got into his system.

FWIW, the Spanish Fed didn't accept that it was definitely caused by the meat but accepted that there was a possibility, however small, that it might be. A subtle but important difference which brings the balance of probabilities into the equation.

 

[dellzeqq]

I think that Wenger's defence of Toure is just plain daft.

I'm with Oldroadman on this. Here's the deal. You get paid £150,000 a week to play football, but the money comes with a set of conditions one of which is 'don't take illegal substances'. Which means that you don't take any remedy, however ordinary, however over-the-counter, unless your club doctor tells you to. Surely that isn't difficult?

 

[oldroadman]

I think that Wenger's defence of Toure is just plain daft.

I'm with Oldroadman on this. Here's the deal. You get paid £150,000 a week to play football, but the money comes with a set of conditions one of which is 'don't take illegal substances'. Which means that you don't take any remedy, however ordinary, however over-the-counter, unless your club doctor tells you to. Surely that isn't difficult?

No it's not, unless you are:

a) dim (possible)
or
b) doing something you shouldn't (also possible and more likely if the excuse is so poor)

Just like Bertie, if it's there then it's your responsibility and if you get caught, better have a good reason. In neither case is there one of those.

 

[BJH]

Yes, the diet pill makes perfect sense, I mean he's a professional athlete who trains 3 or 4 times a week and plays once or twice per week with the physique to prove it. Clearly, he would need diet pills.
why shouldn't he be allowed to take his wife's diet pills if he wants to. I mean, it's not like he forgot about the drug testers being there after training and went out to by some furniture and clean forgot about it.

 

[PaulB]

Can't have our "national game" tainted by doping like all those dope-fiend cycling people, can we?

There's a huge difference between the demands of cycling and the demands of football that must go some way towards rendering doping in football comparatively pointless? The energy requirements of a multi-stage, day-after-day race often involving huge climbs up mountainsides must make the temptation to 'push the envelope' greater than the belief it will do someone going through the rigours of three days' training and a 90 minute game played on a flat football pitch every weekend?

 

[Smokin Joe]

There's a huge difference between the demands of cycling and the demands of football that must go some way towards rendering doping in football comparatively pointless? The energy requirements of a multi-stage, day-after-day race often involving huge climbs up mountainsides must make the temptation to 'push the envelope' greater than the belief it will do someone going through the rigours of three days' training and a 90 minute game played on a flat football pitch every weekend?

A 100 metre sprint is a long way from the Tour de France but that doesn't stop the participants from doping.

 

[beastie]

Doping is most prevalent in sports where physical performance is the over-riding factor. The athletes need strength or endurance or speed. Cycling, running, weightlifting etc. Sports such as football, where a good level of fitness is necessary are then decided by skills where drugs can give no benefit. That being said, sports like baseball, rugby and American football have a high level of skills and a requirement for massive strength, leading to a lot of doping cases in these sports.

 

[rich p]

Doping is most prevalent in sports where physical performance is the over-riding factor. The athletes need strength or endurance or speed. Cycling, running, weightlifting etc. Sports such as football, where a good level of fitness is necessary are then decided by skills where drugs can give no benefit. That being said, sports like baseball, rugby and American football have a high level of skills and a requirement for massive strength, leading to a lot of doping cases in these sports.

The ability of football players to give of their skills for 90 minutes rather than getting knackered after 75 minutes means stamina boosting would be useful.

Having said that, I suspect that drug use in European footballl is probably, on balance, less than in cycling but I wouldn't stake my mortgage on it.