Espn.com posted this great article about how everyone in the US is laughing at the TdF and Cycling in general for all the doping that goes on, but then all the americans turn their heads the other way in sports such as football and baseball where it is well documented that doping goes on in larger degrees…check it out great article.
yeah i have never seen anyone make a fuss about doping in baseball at all
what
Sorry but the reaction to doping in baseball is nowhere near the reaction to it in cycling. I have always said if other sports tested as much and for as much as cycling people would be shocked how dirty every sport is.
If you measure in terms of “# of fans that are upset”
baseball wins
If you measure it in terms of “% of fans that think doping is a problem in the sport” it is probably a tie, at around like, 100%
Was there the same outrage? Was there the same swearing off of baseball? Was there the same amount of doping jokes made on news and sports broadcasts? I’ll give you a hint…no.
I gotta agree there, doping in cycling gets a lot more headlines than doping in football or baseball, who knows if basketball and hockey too…but its true the second that someone tests positive in Cycling it makes headlines all over the country faster than a Barry Bonds positive test would lol
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On the flip side, Shawne Merriman of the Chargers gets suspended for 4 games for steroids and is still allowed to compete in the Pro Bowl. In the same season.
We turn a blind eye to our national sports. Cycling is not one of our national sports. Sure, 4 HOF’ers had to go in front of Congress. What good did that do? Senator Mitchell is supposedly conducting an investigation, but virtually no one will talk to him. We sure are penalizing Barry Bonds right now. And of those first ballot HOF’ers, who would have been an HOF’er without steroids? Me no habla es english Sosa?
Here’s the deal, cycling is just further down the doping road, that’s all.
They have VERY long history of doping related incidents. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has collapsed and died as a result of using a PED while actually playing in any game much less in a Superbowl or World Series. That happened in the 1967 TDF. Doping in cyling goes back more than 100 years. US Sports are just now beginning to realize (or recognize) there might be an issue. Still the only sport dirtier than cylcing is bodybuilding. You can have a HOF career today without drugs in baseball, basketball and football. It’s becoming increasingly more likely you can no longer win the TDF without doping unless and until everyone stops.
I do believe cycling is further down the road to doping freedom than any sport, but the road was longer to begin with.
Point taken about the deaths, although you could point to pro wrestling here in the US for plenty of examples. But PED’s go back almost as long in “our” sports. How long have amphetamines (greenies) been MLB’s dirty little secret? I am not so sure that you can have a HOF career without PED’s in our sports. It is that pervasive. Hell, one of my best friends played football in the early 80’s for a bottom tier power conference team, and everyone was on them back then. Even in the power high schools. He grew up in Ohio and saw it everyday. Now, if in the late 70’s/early 80’s it had inflitrated high school football, it must have been common in the pros and colleges.
I will grant you that cycling is further down the doping road, because is it serious (I believe) about cleaning up the sport, whereas the rest of the major sports are still happy with the increased revenue doping is bringing them. Can you imagine if the NFL tested the winning team after every game, similar to what le Tour does? Here is a great piece about Merriman, from Chuck Klosterman’s ESPN the Mag article:
Shawne Merriman weighs 272 pounds. This is six pounds less than Anthony Muñoz, probably the most dominating left tackle of all time. Shawne Merriman also runs the 40-yard dash in 4.61 seconds. When Jerry Rice attended the NFL draft combine in 1985, he reportedly ran a 4.60; Rice would go on to gain more than 23,000 all-purpose yards while scoring 207 career touchdowns. You do not need Mel Kiper’s hard drive to deduce what these numbers mean: As an outside linebacker, Shawne Merriman is almost as big as the best offensive tackle who ever played and almost as fast as the best wide receiver who ever played. He is a rhinoceros who moves like a deer. Common sense suggests this combination should not be possible. It isn’t.
To state the blatantly obvious, that blind eye is diverted by dollar signs… NFL teams generate over $6 billion in revenues a year and US baseball teams over $5 billion (both according to Forbes). They also both have powerful players unions that have total control over what drug testing can be done. Hell, ASO earns a little more than half of what the New York Yankees alone earn in a year.
Yes, doping is probably worse in these sports than in cycling, but cycling is an easier target… if you’re looking to make a “statement” on doping, who are you going to mess with?
The more a sport is governed by private investors and not by international non profit federations, the more doping there will be!
Why?
The private entities are only interested in yes, money and a well working anti doping programm could only be bad publicity and create discredit their product! That, naturally in not very good for business!
So all american sports will be doping infested much more than the TdF.
By the way, that also goes for Ironman! I always recall that quote from a non american pro after the Kona 2004 race. (That was the race they first tested for EPO and caught Nina Kraft.)
He said:
“Never before had I seen the north american pros (who are “a little” more closely affiliated with the WTC than foreigners) that spent already at the half way mark of the bike near Hawi.”
I don’t know how to measure outrage. Lots of outrage about bonds and mcgwire yes,
Well, as Tibbs said not enough to get serious testing.
To the person who commented on players going before congress: That’s all about a show. If they were serious they would not have bothered with retired players and we would have seen Bonds arrested or banned from baseball already (if the Grand Jury testimony was correct).
Interesting, I played baseball at a B10 institution. I used the same facilities as the track and football teams. I lived with 2 defensive lineman that were both 270lbs plus. I shared a bathroom with them, ate meals with them, lifted with them, went to class with them, drank beer with them. I never saw either one of them put a performance enhancing drug into their body. Trust me when I say I am hiding deeper more embarassing secrets on them than some PED use. Were there guys on PEDs, yes? In fact a starting WR for the football team was busted junior year. He was dismissed from the team and guys banished him from everything else. These guys were busting their asses naturally and this WR tried to take the easy way out. I am not naive, I think people just “want” their to be a bigger drug problem than their actually is in US sports. Cycling is the worst and I deeply love the sport. Jerry Rice dominated in an era where steroid use truly was rampant in the NFL. I actually think it is cleaner today than it was in 1985.
Also, professional wrestling is not a sport, its pure entertainment.
Granted. But my point was we, as fans, turn a blind eye. Has interest in the NFL gone down as players have exploded in size and speed? Interest in baseball? College Football? Barry Bonds is a perfect example. Most fans outside SF loathe him, SF loves him. If he were traded to the Cubs and brought a pennant, Chicago would love him.
You state the reasons that the sports themselves oppose testing, and I fully agree with your points. But if the fans stopped watching and buying replica jerseys, that attitude would soon change. We have no one to blame but ourselves. We put these people on pedestals, we provide the $$ that makes it so lucrative to be a professional athlete, we buy up $150 Air Jordan shoes and Steelers hats and Vick jerseys. We sit on our fat butts and watch hours upon hours of football, and buy anything Tom Brady endorses, and watch sportswriter geeks argue each other on TV. When that stops, then you’ll have your solution. But that ain’t gonna happen, so why do we sit around and complain and point fingers, when we should be looking in the mirror.