German-language press

[Grazerism]

I live in Europe, the backbone of T&F support, and I worry about it's future. Despite the efforts of track to clean itself up, German-speaking press coverage is "all drugs all the time". WRs of athletes that we Americans see as clean (JJK, Michael Johnson) are routinely called "suspect". My local (Graz, Austria) paper's preview of M100 featured an interview with convicted drug cheat Andreas Berger, who routinely stated, mini-white-Ben-Johnson style, theat it is hardly imaginable that the Osaka M100 finalists were clean.

Probably the worst thing I have read/seen/heard was on German national TV today (ZDF). They showed about about 5 seconds of an interview with Torrie Edwards, in which she was asked about her drug penalty. She started to speak, then said "No, I can't do this." All of us on this board know that Torrie's penalty was itself very questionable, as she was given 2 yrs for a minor substance that has since been taken off the list. It was clear to me that talking about the punishment was simply too emotionally painful for her. But ZDF spinned it that she was about to "auspacken", to reveal the whole story, like Kelly White (who they mentioned), then backed off. So German viewers are manipulatively led to lump her in with the worst drug cheats. Sometime today I heard the line on TV about Edwards, "If she got a drug penalty before, why is she coming back now and running even faster?"

This, by the way, is exactly what the anti-Blonska posters are saying on the Hep thread.

[26mi235]

TE did not have a performance enhancing set of marks, as the downgrading of the penalty by WADA indicates (would she take something that might give her a temporary advantage for such an important April get-the-rust-off meet ?).

[mump boy]

Re: German-language press

I live in Europe, the backbone of T&F support, and I worry about it's future. Despite the efforts of track to clean itself up, German-speaking press coverage is "all drugs all the time". WRs of athletes that we Americans see as clean (JJK, Michael Johnson) are routinely called "suspect". My local (Graz, Austria) paper's preview of M100 featured an interview with convicted drug cheat Andreas Berger, who routinely stated, mini-white-Ben-Johnson style, theat it is hardly imaginable that the Osaka M100 finalists were clean.

Probably the worst thing I have read/seen/heard was on German national TV today (ZDF). They showed about about 5 seconds of an interview with Torrie Edwards, in which she was asked about her drug penalty. She started to speak, then said "No, I can't do this." All of us on this board know that Torrie's penalty was itself very questionable, as she was given 2 yrs for a minor substance that has since been taken off the list. It was clear to me that talking about the punishment was simply too emotionally painful for her. But ZDF spinned it that she was about to "auspacken", to reveal the whole story, like Kelly White (who they mentioned), then backed off. So German viewers are manipulatively led to lump her in with the worst drug cheats. Sometime today I heard the line on TV about Edwards, "If she got a drug penalty before, why is she coming back now and running even faster?"

This, by the way, is exactly what the anti-Blonska posters are saying on the Hep thread.

but torri isn;t running faster and wasn;t on steroids so the comparisons make no sense.

it'sthe same in the press here though drug stories make the front pages of newspapers track resluts barely make the sports pages

[croflash]

The German media are crazy, they think that every athlete is on drugs. While we all know that not everyone is clean, it's a shame to say that all the time.