Thursday, July 17, 2008

SCREW THE DOPERS

After Solar left the tour due to a broken wrist, Ricardo Ricco quickly became my choice for the overall KOM winner. Having already won two stages in the tour and numerous big mountain climbs, Ricco was thrown out the tour today after being caught with a new strain of EPO.


Being in the sport/medicine, I am constantly bombarded by people asking about my options about drugs in sport and the controlled measures/enforcement measures taken to punish these cheaters. Here we go again:

First of all, doping is not exclusive to just cycling or track/field. Doping is a horrible travesty that is inflicting all sports. It seems more prominent in these endurance sports because these are the sports that are taking the necessary measures to find and punish the cheaters. I can somewhat sympathize to the riders. Imagine running a ultra-marathon all out for 24straight days regardless of how you feel or what the weather or terrain might contain. On top of that imagine that this is your job and if you do not perform you loose your livelihood. Now imagine that there is a way to easy the pain during the marathon or a way to make you feel better at the start line the next day. Or imagine that you are constantly getting beaten by the same guy each day by a measly 5seconds. Because of that 5seconds that guy makes 30grand more a year than you do. Would you not look for anyway to improve? People have to realize that these people are more competitive that most people can believe. They will do anything to find that five seconds or recover quicker or make the constant wear and tear of training 35+ hrs/week. I am not supporting the dopers or making claims that what they are doing is right but to some degree I can see the rational behind their doping measures.

The real victims here are the people that do not dope. The clean racers that are suffering day in day out to compete at the same level as the dopers. I feel for the organizers of the tour de france having taken extreme measures to ensure a clean race. It must by tremendously embarrassing for them now that they are having to excuse entire teams of cheaters.

So here it is, screw the dopers, the cheaters and those that pretend to race clean. There is no honor in what you do. You are a cheater. You have no soul. You are a pretender. You race against everything that racing stands for. How can you claim to be a professional? As someone that is attempting to race/train cleanly it must be embarrassing to you that we can still compete at the same level as you. There is no place for you in our sport. Get out and stay out! You a disgrace and discredit the sports which we love!


Screw you Ricco and your cleavly disigned, new strain of EPO+!

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