Excuses Athletes Make

[gh]

San Francisco Chronicle humorist Scott Ostler at his usual best in the paper this morning, chronicling (npi) the wacky reasons athletes use to explain positive tests.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 3KUDO1.DTL

I loved this graf:

<<Take marijuana. It's always second-hand smoke, isn't it? Nobody actually smokes the stuff. Here's a tip: The best way to avoid testing positive for pot is, when you're at the party, grab that fatty and suck it straight in, because apparently nobody ever tests positive because of FIRST-hand smoke. >>

[Guest]

Re: Excuses Athletes Make

Garry, my favorite excuse has to be from the Austrian skiing coach. Now that takes some balls and imagination to come up with that one:

"housecleaners found complete blood-doping kits -- needles, transfusion bags, tubes. The Austrian coach explained that the lads were merely trying to avoid colds by zapping small amounts of their blood with ultraviolet light and a magnetic field, then quickly re-injecting it."

Another Olympic winter sport comes to mind.
As Robin Williams once said, "Why even bother testing the snow boarders? Doesn't half-pipe already tell you something?"

[Pego]

Re: Excuses Athletes Make

<"housecleaners found complete blood-doping kits -- needles, transfusion bags, tubes. The Austrian coach explained that the lads were merely trying to avoid colds by zapping small amounts of their blood with ultraviolet light and a magnetic field, then quickly re-injecting it.">

This sounds to me as to what a vampire might do to develop resistance to sun light. Way cool!

[Guest]

Re: Excuses Athletes Make

Do Spike and Angel know about this?

[MJR]

Re: Excuses Athletes Make

>Do Spike and Angel know about this?

Not yet, but Blade figured it out and used it to kill all those Vamps in both movies!!

[Guest]

Re: Excuses Athletes Make

Gary,
I read (and enjoyed) Scott's column. Most of it was old stuff (especially the T&F) but some was new. Do I have my facts straight on Engquist/Narizhilenko? My memory is that her ex husband was in fact, convicted of injecting steriods into her birth control pills, and was convicted of it and jailed. True? I know that didn't cut any water with IAAF, but was that actually the case? I think I read that in TFN or AI or both.

[Guest]

Re: Excuses Athletes Make

I have injested catepillar extract and turtle soup X8, and improved in the 1,500m: from 3.48,25 to 3.44,49 in the same season. I thought taking those ingredients and training hard would help me produce a great breakthrough like those of Chinese women in the distances. I wanted to improve remarkably, especially the longer the distance.

Then my legs never found the easy flow I had prior to injesting that crap, and I have not run faster than 3.49,91 in the past three years - despite steady, injury-free, hard training with great rest during peak season.

I have switched full-time to run the 5 000, and even there, my PR has not dropped from my 13.40,38 set in 1997. I thought I would take a natural way to the top - and add hard work, but it hasn t helped at all. I wanted to be Kenyan, Chinese and European all at the same time.

Now I am just another guy in a fast race who can t use his natural talent any longer to get to the next level.

Do not buy into theories.

[Guest]

Re: Excuses Athletes Make

Chill out dude , Ma did not get caught. This is an AMERICAN entertainment article. If he included Slaney, Young, Jacobs, Carl Lewis, et it would piss off too many people. Its fair game to take a shot at someone like Ma, cause if you did that to an American athlete or coach who did not get caught doing anything wrong .... your ass would be sued baby.

[Guest]

Re: Excuses Athletes Make

You really should do some research before you open your piehole. This from pre-Sydney wire reports which are easily findable on google:

<<DRUGS: Six runners trained by famed women's track coach Ma Junren failed drug tests and were among 40 athletes and coaches dropped from China's team. Ma was among the 13 officials dropped. Drugs were not involved in all the removals, the Chinese said. Six of the seven runners, including former 5,000-meter world record holder Dong Yanmei, failed blood tests for the banned performance-enhancing drug EPO. .>>

[Guest]

Re: Excuses Athletes Make

>>It's hard to explain the astounding times the Chinese women put up in the national championships of 1993, but as far as I know there has never
>been any evidence of illegal drug use. I once heard someone (on this board?)
>suggest a short track, but it would seem that is something that could (and
>certainly should have been) checked out. The world records have been ratified
>by the IAAF, after all.>>

I think the answer lies with THG. i.e. it was long rumored that the Chinese had a "secret undectable drug" and now that THG has surfaced we know that such a thing is possible. Given that some of Ma's people were subsequently found dirty, kind of tilts the scale in that direction don't you think?

[Guest]

Re: Excuses Athletes Make

><<DRUGS: Six
>runners trained by famed women's track coach Ma Junren failed
>drug tests and
>were among 40 athletes and coaches dropped from China's team.
>Ma was among the
>13 officials dropped. Drugs were not involved in all the
>removals, the Chinese
>said. Six of the seven runners, including former
>5,000-meter world record
>holder Dong Yanmei, failed blood tests for the
>banned performance-enhancing
>drug EPO. .>>

If these "failed drug tests"
>have been verified and confirmed, then I stand corrected. But I'm still not
>clear whether any of these involved the athletes who set world records in
>1993.



You are correct old vaulter , the records still stand. Researcher can't read, comments are pertaining to the article. If you do a google search for"moon and cheese" , you'll find articles stating the moon is made of cheese.

[Guest]

Re: Excuses Athletes Make

>>You are correct old vaulter ,
>the records still stand. Researcher can't read, comments are pertaining to the
>article. If you do a google search for"moon and cheese" , you'll find
>articles stating the moon is made of cheese.>>

Read the sequence. "Goose Stepper" said "Ma did not get caught." I then posted evidence that he did indeed.

[Guest]

Re: Excuses Athletes Make

i also heard a rumour that the track was short...and that the chinese government of the time would not let people into China to measure it. not sure of the validity of this though

[Guest]

Re: Excuses Athletes Make

researcher is incorrect, those athletes who were not sent to Sydney by the Chinese because of "irregularities" did not fail any doping test, nor were they ever suspended from competition, nor where they being coach by Ma Junren at the time.

[Guest]

Re: Excuses Athletes Make

compare the men's performances from the 1993 meet...they were very unremarkable...the men's 10 was not much faster than the women's...