*sigh*

from twitter feed of @KevinMcCallum;

It’s just been announced that @Nedbank have suspended their sponsorship of @Nedbank360life after David George returned a positive test.

If this is true then did he get these bad habits from when at US Postal?

PREVIOUS PROFESSIONAL TEAMS
US Postal Service 1999, 2000
…

SA’s top stage race rider on the road made the transition to mtb in 2008

i always knew you couldnt trust lycra wearing off-road riders.

oh no….

Well it is one way of getting cycling teams/managers/riders/UCI etc to understand it will not be tolerated…

(Is it being used as an excuse to terminate sponsorship for other reasons?)

I can’t help but think this kind of knee jerk reaction creates an atmosphere where cover ups, and a repeat of usps/discovery/uci is actually more likely.

Kevin Evans and Dave George, one of South Africa’s top mountain biking duos, became proud health and wellness ambassadors of Nedgroup Life’s 360Life insurance solution in January 2011.

Above from the Nedgroup web site.

Is it just me or is that two health and wellness ambassadors that have been associated with cheating and drugs etc.

This isn’t new, whilst not as endemic as on the road MTBers have been doping for years.

This isn’t new, whilst not as endemic as on the road MTBers have been doping for years.

I wish people would just understand this is a problem in all sports, its just naive ignorance to believe its a cycling problem. Despite the current media focus on cycling, team sports are the real problem.

Thats good news, cheats being found out / thrown out.

Whenever there is a competition there will be people trying to cheat. So catching them is all good.

Catching them is good, sponsors withdrawing/not getting involved is bad.

He was a Junior National Champion in the UK in about 1993/1994. He tested positive when he raced for a South African road team as well. Seems he’s not learnt his lesson…

sponsors withdrawing/not getting involved

might encourage the riders not to cheat, if they actually want to get paid?

well his team mates going to be a bit pee’d off he won’t be getting paid either if he was racing clean, isn’t he?

another doper steals a livelihood from a clean rider/s

I feel for the sponsor, puts good money in only for their brand to be tarnished permanently. Their reaction is understandable, they could try and do some positive PR but as a small team they simply don’t have the impact of Garmin etc

That’s a real shame, anyone want to buy my copy of this?

That’s a real shame, anyone want to buy my copy of this?

[video]http://vimeo.com/43606212[/video]

Despite the current media focus on cycling, team all sports are the real problem.

FTFY. I don’t think you can honestly say that the ‘real’ problem is with (for example) football. I’ve no doubt it goes on, but I don’t think it biases the outcomes of events in quite such the same way.

I don’t think you can honestly say that the ‘real’ problem is with (for example) football. I’ve no doubt it goes on, but I don’t think it biases the outcomes of events in quite such the same way.

I think it’s probably absolutely endemic in football. And although I don’t think it’ll ever make a player more skilful, it’ll still be used in exactly the same way, to gain an edge over roughly-equally-skilful players. You still get that “we’re as good as them but they’re doping and it means they beat us all the time because we’re more knackered after 60 minutes” worry.

Hence I think it’s probably a cycling-style arms race, with early-2000s-quality drug testing having no effect whatsoever.

I say all that as someone who is a season ticket holder at a Premier League football club, and has spent countless thousands and hours watching the game. There’s so much money, there are so few controls, and there are exactly the same “them vs us” worries that cycling faces.

FTFY. I don’t think you can honestly say that the ‘real’ problem is with (for example) football. I’ve no doubt it goes on, but I don’t think it biases the outcomes of events in quite such the same way.

I wish people would just understand this is a problem in all sports, its just naive ignorance to believe its a cycling problem. Despite the current media focus on cycling, team sports are the real problem.

Try quoting the whole paragraph, I say team sports are the big problem because that’s where the big money is, cycling and athletics are a drop in the ocean by comparison. It amazes me that people can’t see the massive impact drugs have on sports like football.

Not sure about the “massive impact” in football.

Cycling is unique amongst sports as it’s as close as you can get to a pure endurance sport – the power output of riders is the most decisive factor in winning races (cf US Postal), much more important than the skill of the participants.

I’d say that sports like football or rugby are the other way round – individuals level of skill and teamwork are much more important than physical endurance (remembering that they play for 90 minutes – there are road climbs in the Alps that take longer than that!). That’s not to say that having a team of players off their tits on EPO isn’t going to give an advantage, of course it is, but less of an advantage than in road biking.

Think of teams sports as a thousand races or personnel competitions rolled into 90 mins, every race for the ball, every jump every turn or chase down. A top class midfielder runs something like 12 miles in a game, much in a series of sprints with turns, jumps and tumbles involved, its a massively physical game, and you can’t see the impact that PED’s would have 😯

I’d say that sports like football or rugby are the other way round

plenty of opportunity for hgh, steroids etc in rugby, take the pack weight pre and post professionalisation.

as for creams, steriods etc to deal with injuries.

I wish people would just understand this is a problem in all sports, its just naive ignorance to believe its a cycling problem. Despite the current media focus on cycling, team sports are the real problem.

I know that this is the argument that many cyclists put forward when their sport is accused of being dirty, but is there much solid evidence for it beyond mere speculation? I know athletics, weight lifting and to an extent, baseball have all had drug scandals, and, as in cycling, it has been a bit of an ‘open secret’ among knowledgeable fans and insiders, but, as far as I know that has never been the case with sports like football and rugby?

I get the argument that they are well paid, so there is motivation to use drugs, but the benefit would undoubtedly be much less than in a pure endurance/athletic discipline. Maybe its also the drugs culture that has more of an impact? Everyone else is doping, so I should be? Cycling has undoubtedly been associated with drugs throughout its history in a way that football and rugby have not.

If footballers were concerned enough about improving their fitness that they were doping, then surely they’d stop getting pissed up and falling out of nightclubs? We’ve had a lot of footballers and rugby players busted with recreational (and decidedly non-performance enhancing) drugs, but hardly any with performance enhancing ones. Maybe it just doesn’t happen at the same level? And even if it does maybe we should sort our sport out rather than just accusing others of having problems with it too?

Who the hell is David George?

That’s not to say that having a team of players off their tits on EPO isn’t going to give an advantage, of course it is, but less of an advantage than in road biking.

I don’t see it’s very different at all.

Take two teams of average mid table cloggers, playing a fixture in January after five games in two weeks.

Feed one on a diet of blood bags and epo. Feed the other on bread and water. Who’s going to win? I reckon the drugs would give a massive edge, all other things being equal. You’ll never take away the element of chance but you can’t do that in cycling either.

(and bear in mind, mid-table cloggers don’t stay in their divisions by beating Barcelona and Manchester United on a regular basis. They stay where they are by having a decent record against fellow mid-table cloggers)

And don’t forget you can really work on your skills a lot more if you can train for 8 hours a day, then take an injection at the end of the day and come back and do the same the next day, and the day after and the day after that.
Through all the revelations we have been through, so many still don’t seem to understand the role the drugs have, It’s mainly about the training and the preparation, not about matchday. You get stronger and faster, increase your skills, strength, speed and your endurance, then matchday is just the display of the work that has been done beforehand.

Just have to look at the operation puerto to see how things are being swept under the carpet in other sports. Nadal, Barcelona and Real Madrid players all implicated but no further investigations. Barcelona players have been kept away from training when the testers were in town. Messi was giving HGH as a youngster, medicinally for a deficiency but what if they gave him a bit more just for good measure?

Of course skill plays it’s part in football and tennis, but Barca and Nadal are so successful because their opponents just cannot maintain the same level of intensity as them – It may just be sour grapes on my part but it just seems too likely that something dodgy is going on.

Look at baseball in the states.
Loads of players got busted, and a lot of the time it was steroids to recover quicker from injuries.
If a baseball player uses drugs for an advantage, pretty much any athelete can.

Of course football is clean
🙄

Juventus drug scandal

MSP, has hit the nail firmly on the head.

MSP, has hit the nail firmly on the head.

Don’t think so, according to recent publications by admitted dopers, such as Hamilton. They talk about testosterone in particular giving a second wind or second effort well into longer races which just isn’t there with training alone, and an ability to get significantly higher wattages on transfusion, past usual pain/threshold ability. So race day benefits as well as training/recovery use.

Midlife, your correct as well in terms of grand tours, but MSP was talking about wendyball matches.

Just calm the gear down a few days before the big match day and your pinging, but as you rightly say, longer events, you need to do more like microdose/blood bags/transfusions/testosterone and keep one step in front of the testers.

Oh and if your called Floyd dont have a tot of whiskey the night before a epic solo ride over several cols and thrash the chasing peleton as it may seem, mmmmmm unbeleivable.

From that Juventus article:

As for those who felt the trial had stained the reputation of a great club, he had a succint riposte. Anyone who thought along those lines was, he said, “a village idiot”.

At least you wouldn’t get cyclists abusing people who dare to question them. Eh Bradley?

Apologies, got the wrong end of the stick. All the doping threads are merging in my head. I’ll have a lie down, unless anyone knows of something I could take…

I would agree that it is possible that footballers could be doping, but I dont see how you can be so sure? According to the Dispatches programme on drugs in football last year, UK Anti-Doping (who do all the testing in the UK, including of cyclists) has caught 43 professional footballers using recreational drugs, which would suggest that they aren’t that great at avoiding drug tests, but has never caught one using performance enhancing drugs.

Equally UEFA do quite a lot of testing too: 2200 players tested in 2011/2012, apparently, both in and out of competition, 776 players tested of the 800 in the Champions League, 456 of those out of competition, 284 players tested of the 368 in the Euro 2012 finals etc. And no positive tests. Cycling seems to get a lot more positives a season, even in what is supposedly now a “cleaner era”, and probably with fewer athletes. Football has undoubtedly had a few positives a season in the past, but again, the majority of those have been recreational drug use.

Now, obviously none of this is conclusive evidence that there is no doping in football, but the allegations that everyone does it because there is no testing seem a bit dubious. While I have no affiliation to, or real interest in football, I played hockey at a decent level, and I just don’t think that drugs in a similar skill-based sport would be worthwhile, when there are so many other legal avenues you can go down first, that will have a much larger impact on results than doping.

Anyone caught taking drugs should be banned from competition for life, zero tolerance is the only way to deal with this in my opinion.

but has never caught one using performance enhancing drugs

Never caught anyone, really 😮 I think that shows a bigger whitewash than even I had imagined.

Different sports have different rules and don’t test for the same things, football doesn’t have retrospective testing, biological passport or the whereabouts system. I think that the revelations in cycling show that even with those rules, catching the cheats is difficult, without them the cheats are laughing.

Equally UEFA do quite a lot of testing too: 2200 players tested in 2011/2012, apparently, both in and out of competition,

How would they detect blood doping?