certainly when i was in highschool, all the hockey players i knew would take lots of non-drowsy cold medication before every game (pseudoephedrine, basically). curiously, not a thing with other sports, but in hockey it was just standard practice.

---

____________________________________
https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

I disagree. Try leveraging your skills at minute 85 of a soccer match.

On a side note, when I was a kid and over time was introduced, it was pathetic. Players cramping, some just standing still, etc. Now they run as fast in the 120th minute as they do in the 1st. Plus all this strange sudden deaths from players that had never been heard of...

What a great thread. Definitely not a waste of time and/or bandwidth

---

the world's still turning? >>>>>>> the world's still turning

For the case of soccer I would add on to that the need for players to recover for games twice a week for most of the year for those at the top level when you count league, domestic cups European cups and then national team.

Why have we not had anyone caught? With competition so high and players/staff moving from club to club then club to country why hasn't there been any whistleblowing?

Wouldn't a manager/backroom staff notice if a player was juicing?

Maybe theres a chance this is going on at a lower level, at the top I can't see it.

Assuming you aren't be sarcastic, I'll respond by saying *of course* management and staff know about it. It gets results. Management and backroom staff want result as much as the players want results. In some places, they might even be helping with it. They're all part of it.

Sorry if this sounds obnoxious, but duh.

---

http://www.jt10000.com/

That’s why the question isn’t who’s most doped sport- they all are. The question should be why are some sports more aggressive with doping controls and others “meh” about it. That’s the more important decision.

---

Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Certain drugs (HGH) actually improve your eye sight. Read about it. Interesting.

Yes, couldn't possibly happen under such a wholesome, absolutely not corrupt organisation like FIFA.....


Funnily enough found a newspaper article about apparent failed drugs test before the 2017 CL final. The doctor just forgot he was taking a banned substance...https://www.goal.com/...f4zpvyg13tcsd4akshvb

i also think, when we have the argument that 'skills sports don't benefit from doping' argument, it's useful to break doping into 2 categories: performance and recovery. (not mutually exclusive, i know.)

even if you're a 'skill sport' athlete, doping can't make you more skilled per se. but:
-it will help you get through long days of training. (hell, dwayne chambers was taking EPO to train as a 100 meter runner, because it meant he had more energy in hour 4 of his training sessions.)
-it will help you bounce back quicker after long/tough matches
-it will help you to heal faster from injury (particularly when big contracts are on the line!)
-it will, as mentioned above, help some accessory issues that might improve skill. the effect of HGH on eyesight is a good example - ask ted williams if good eyesight is helpful to baseball players!

so again, just because you're a skill athlete, doesn't mean that doping can't be hugely helpful. i'd say it's equally helpful to a pure athletism athlete, just in a different way.

---

____________________________________
https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

So if managment and backroom staff all know about this, is it just certain players they're helping juice or there whole team of 40 plus players?

What happens when the players play for there international teams? Are all the coaching staff in on this too?

It's worth noting just how much power the players have in the Big 4 American leagues too. The NHLPA has been a bit of a road block when it comes to testing Growth Hormone. The other issue is that, during CBA negotiations, neither players nor owners are interested in expanding drug testing.

The result? The NHL CBA that is so bad when it comes to drug testing that the league can only perform 60 tests on a player pool of 700+ during the off season.

it becomes a sort of micro-economics problem: if more or less everyone is doping, and everyone knows it, there's very, very little incentive for any one person to speak up about it (and lots of reasons not to). the omerta is powerful.

---

____________________________________
https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

So that is thousands of players, former players and coaches, doctors, back room staff all keeping this quiet from a media and public that has this sport under a microscope?

i'm not sure i follow your line here.

are you arguing that doping is not going on, because we don't hear the athletes/coaches ratting each other out? remember lance armstrong? a few riders and staffers tried to level allegations, and a handful of journalists did too. those largely got destroyed or ignored for a long time.

walk it out in practice: you play for a team where you see people doping. you get traded to a new team. you know that a few members of your current team also dope. do you try to step up and blow the whistle on your old team? what would that accomplish? it's your word against theirs, and your current teammates would come under the microscope. plus, unless you have a really great 'plan B,' it makes little sense for you to torpedo your career. i could go on.

really, i think the incentives to be a whistleblower in sport are pretty small, and the disincentives are huge.

---

____________________________________
https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

You can't possibly compare what went on in cycling with Lance's team to Football (soccer)

Football is thousands of times the size of cycling as a sport, with thousands of more people involved in a cover up?

As a brit in Europe the perception of US sports being dirty is widespread. Which are dirtiest?
Soccer is very dirty but most meds are provided by the teams. So players would pass a poligraph if questioned. Cocaine is very popular off the field.
Rugby has lots of steroids from top to bottom. I think rugby has some the only GH positives.

Endurance sports. Dirty is different drugs and more personal.

Pretty certain that Rugby cases take up the highest share of UKAD's cases annually. There was a thread on another forum documenting some of the football stuff, some of it is pretty shocking, with drinks spiked with it by doctors etc.

Jeebus, dude. It was not "Lance's team." It was every team going back to the beginning of the sport, roughly a century and a half. Tygart did a real disservice to the sport when blamed a few individuals instead of telling the truth, that doping is a systemic problem, it is standard practice, and everyone who is even peripherally involved knows it. Cycling was humming along fine until it put a moron in charge.

"even if you're a 'skill sport' athlete, doping can't make you more skilled

-it will, as mentioned above, help some accessory issues that might improve skill. "


Not sure what you are getting at, but seems you are arguing with yourself here?? Of course drugs helps skills, skills are the basis for all sports. And just because you use some form of implement in your sport, like a bat, ball, stick, gun, ski, or whatever, there are drugs that make you more skilled in using those, and in many ways...

I agree with most of what you said. Worth emphasising though that skill degrades with fatigue, so certain PEDs that may help reduce it will ensure that your skill level is higher at the end of a game than it otherwise would be

Dev you left off boxing.

The Joshua Ruiz fight was supposed to be Joshua and Miller who failed a drugs test 3 times.

I'm sure there have been a lot more failures either covered up or brushed over going back years.

Football is probably the biggest culprit but like the UCI years ago they dont want to deal with the adverse publicity, loss of sponsors etc from drug scandals.

NHL may even be worse than NFL but is small beer in money terms. Do the NBA even test ? They never seem to have any failures.

I imagine the other big culprits are tennis, WWF and MMA.