Rule or no rule, to me it's not okay to lie. Not that I never do, but I don't like to lie and I rarely feel good about it. Whether we're talking PEDs or race tactics or business practices or personal relationships, any time someone feels the need to lie I suspect they're doing something they know is wrong.

Maybe I'd feel better about her if Sharapova had come out and said "yeah, it's a PED, but it wasn't banned for a long time so I found a shady doctor to prescribe it to me..."

I'm not blaming anyone, I do not judge anyone. I understand Pro athletes make money form sport and where money is involved, especially big money, rules will be stretched and broken.

It all started when I said: she is life long doper to describe her life long drug addiction. If one takes anything for 10 years it is addition: if you drink coca cola every day for 10 years you are coca cola addict, if you smoke every day for 10 years you are addicted to cigarettes. If you jerk off for 10 years every day, you have most likely sex addiction, and the list goes on.

I could add: life long athlete, but we were talking about drugs and drugs were the main topic not her training.

I do not believe in taking drugs for sport use, if you are injured yes, or when you are sick yes, but not to enhance your performance.

How did we arrive to blaming WADA for not implementing rules earlier? How about we blame her dog, or neighbor or Justin Bibber, or her diabetics, because it is so normal to take angina medication while having diabetics, everyone does it...Why anyone would actually take diabetics medication to cure diabetics?, ooo wait: those don't really improve cardiovascular system so they are not best choice for athletes...

The bigger BS they come out with, the quicker crowd believes in it.

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

She (and her team), like many before her, simply failed the IQ test, also known as "anti-doping control".

These are mostly dope tests, not doping tests.

I'm amazed they tested at all. It is tennis after all.

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http://www.cyclecoach.com
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This is very similar to Mark McGuire and other baseball players in the steroid era. Much of what they did wasn't illegal - remember McGuire and the jars of 'Andro' sitting openly in his locker?

Using a PED that is not explicitly illegal and saying your an honorable competitor just because there is no rule against it is a false argument

To extend it to the ridiculous, there is no rule against antigravity belts at the Boston Marathon. If I invented one and wore it under my t-shirt and won the race, I could claim I won without breaking any rules. McGuire made a similar argument...

Sharpova is dirty - maybe it will turn out that one of the side effects is a tendency to shriek during exertion..

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" I take my gear out of my car and put my bike together. Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafes. Non-racers. The emptiness of of their lives shocks me. "
(opening lines from Tim Krabbe's The Rider , 1978

For most people the line isn't quite so blurry and covered by the following statement by WADA:

Caffeine use is clearly ubiquitous so taking it does not result in an unfair advantage or violate the spirit of the sport. The same cannot be said about some obscure Eastern European drug not approved for use in the US.

So you agree with me then. The line is drawn by what is on WADA's banned list.

Not at all. WADA is always going to be behind and athletes should use the 3 guidelines I posted to determine whether a given substance should be taken.

Doping is a calculated, multi million $ professional business decision.

Part of that calculation is getting caught, and what "plan B" is if you do.

Sharapova's plan B is part of the calculation, where an admission like hers ("like didn't read the notice", "it's for an historical family condition") incurs the least repercussions. Pretty sure her physio team knew what they were doing. The drug is only supposed to be taken for 3 months, not 10 years.

Ok, so it's up to the athletes to determine what they should and shouldn't be allowed to take. Got it. And caffeine is ok, but "obscure Eastern European drug not on the US FDA's approved list" is not. And where's the line in between those two? Do you draw the line? Does each athlete draw their own line? Bottom line (pun intended), the only line to be drawn is what is or isn't on WADA's banned list.

And by the way, the three factors you quoted are what WADA uses to determine what should be banned, not what they suggest athletes use as their own subjective determination of what they can and can't take. Only you are trying to impose that responsibility on athletes.

So you (personally) would have used meldonium right up until the end of the year and felt good about yourself as you didn't technically violate the WADA banned list? Even knowing that it was on WADA's monitored list and that essentially a ban was pending? Really?

While using the PED, would you have been open with other athletes about using it? It's not the intended use for the drug, of course, and you're abusing it by taking it incorrectly, and it's not readily available to most people, but you would have been proud and open about your actions?

Now I agree with you. It's up to the athletes to decide what to take. If you do even a cursory read of WADA's guidelines it's not as gray as you are implying.

Further inf from WADA:
This doesn't apply to Sharapova's drug but it does cover items not yet on the list.

Is it unreasonable for athletes to just train at their sport and not look for unfair advantages provided by drugs?

I cannot say what drugs, supplements or any other product I would chose to take if I was a professional athlete potentially earning millions of dollars - and nor likely can you. I know my starting point would be what is on WADA's banned list, which I think is reasonable. I would understand that my competitors are going to be looking for any marginal advantage over me, because in pro sports, just a 0.5% increase in performance can be the difference between huge success and obscurity. So sure, sit on your high horse and say "I would never take that drug" but until you are working your ass off every day trying to make a living as a pro athlete, you just don't know. You might be sure you wouldn't take this particular drug (I doubt I would too), but there could be other drugs that are FDA approved (if that matters to you) or supplements, that seem not to have harmful side effects, that may have an advantage to athletes, not yet on the WADA list, and that you, as a pro athlete version of yourself, would be tempted to take.

See? There you go again. What is an "unfair" advantage?

Hey I know..I have an idea. We could have a governing body that looks at drugs and supplements and then publishes a list of what athletes can and can't take. That way we all know what is fair and unfair. Wait... oh yes, we have that already.

I wasn't asking "if you were pro."

Thanks for pointing this out. You read my mind! Why would an athlete or manager not watch this list like a hawk, knowing that a change could end sponsorship and/or career?!

"only reason i see to believe that any of these people have genuine need for the drug is that if you they being dodgy you'd expect they would monitor the annual WADA list changes if they had half a brain (or a dodgy doctor with half a brain"

Well then it's easy to answer. No, I would not take that drug, nor any drug or supplement to enhance my athletic performance.

Well I would think it should be clear to anyone that taking a PED not available to everyone is unfair. Caffeine - not unfair. Obscure Latvian drug not available in the US - unfair. For other drugs not on the list their guidelines seem clear to me and hopefully most athletes.

whether that drug was on the list or not was somewhat immaterial to Sharapova. She knew it was wrong but had been getting away with it for so long assumed she could continue. I don't believe she wasn't informed that drug was banned, she just didn't think she'd get caught.

Altitude tents and chambers are forbidden in Italy, so obviously everyone using one is cheating since they are not available to all. Unfair. Brilliant!

The drug was legal. There was nothing to get away with. Hundreds of athletes were using the same thing in the European Games.

Legal in what countries? Certainly meldonium wasn't legally available in most countries.

By the way, the vast majority of athletes at the European Games who used this particular (WADA monitored and obviously soon-to-be-banned) drug failed to disclose that they were taking it. WHY WOULD THEY LIE?

Maybe even the failure to disclose drug and supplement use should become a punishable offence -- that way athletes won't lie about their methods and the governing bodies will have more accurate information to work with.

Well then she likely declared the use of it on her medical forms and will get off with a light suspension.

I think they should require a mandatory med degree for all athletes since they clearly need to be up on the names and statuses of all substances.

Or they could quit trying to cheat with "supplements" and off-label drug use.

Both of these quotes illustrate how people are completely misunderstanding what some of us are saying.
Who is saying that what Sharapova did was "honorable"? I know I didn't. Could you please provide quotes for those that did?


Stating (correctly) that Sharapova was not doping for 10 years does not constitute condoning the behavior, and certainly not saying that I would therefore have used meldonium or any other drug. It is an objective analysis of the facts. I personally would never have used meldonium, or any other prescription drug, for the sole purpose of improving my athletic performance. But I accept that what Sharapova did, did not constitute a doping violation....at least until January 1.

Similarly, I have defended Mark McQwire as not ahving violated any MLB doping rules. He technically didn't. That does not mean that I approve of his actions.

As I and Kay Serrar have both noted, the line is very clear......and that line is what WADA has on their prohibited substance list.

I still find it amazing that people are willing to accept altitude chambers but get completely bent out of shape about cases like this. I see very little difference between altitude chambers and EPO....both are artificial means to raise your hematocrit. But I accept that they are legal and I therefore do not think that people who use them are "cheating." But I personally would never use one.

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

I think we all understand the rules. I'm not concerned about that. (Though I do wish they would change to require more transparency from the athletes.) When athletes hide and lie about their methods I lose respect for them.

If Sharapova used an altitude tent or concentrated beet juice or espresso or whatever, I wouldn't mind at all. Nobody hides these methods, they are accepted. When Sharapova goes way out of her way to bring in drugs to abuse solely to try to enhance her performance? Then she makes up excuses for her actions? She should be ashamed.

You're fired up about the technicalities. Fine. I wish some of these athletes would show some sign of integrity.