Saturday, July 19, 2008

..I repeat my former question:

Why is NTNU indirectly sponsoring Tour De france? The rampant drug use appears to be worse than ever, considering the semi-serious attempts at improving the pharmaceutical situation from last year.

What they need to do is to go Israeli on the clubs - if a TDf rider is caught with EPO or worse, then the entire club is permanently prohibited from participating in TDf. That should provide some financial incentive to level the playing field with respect to doping.

5 comments:

Anders said...

You're not the only one asking that question...

But, do you really think that the drug (ab)use is "worse than ever"? Come on...

On a side note: The anti-dope-whatever agency issued a statement before the tour that they did not have the right analytical methods to identify the latest version of EPO doping.It seems that this was a just a bait, and it seems it is this test the cyclers has been tested positive on. If that is correct, thumbs up for the anti-dop team!

Wilhelm said...

But, do you really think that the drug (ab)use is "worse than ever"? Come on...

Considering that a significant number of athletes have been caught with half of Glaxo-Smithkline in their blood streams the year after they had serious talks about shutting the event down due to doping and taking some semi-serious measures, yeah.

As you know, one of the very few "sports" I care about is based almost entirely on drugs at the professional levels, but the main problem there is that there is no money to provide a financial incentive for the organization(s) to clean itself up. Bodybuilding almost made it into the olympics, but due to the obvious transgressions of a) the "female" side of it and the fact that they had a streak of pros either flat out dying on/backstage (Andreas Munzer, Mohamed Benaziza) or collapsing/convulsing onstage necessitating immediate medical attention (Paul Dillett, Milos Sarcev, Greg Kovacs), the powers that be just said plain no.

Bodybuilding has approximately zero commercial appeal, and no realistic ways to impose economic sanctions. TDf however, has for some mysterious reasons tons and tons of viewers and thus corporate sponsors, making such sanctions possible.

Wilhelm said...

...and remember the GQ deadline for round 8 tonight, Chief

Anders said...

...and remember the GQ deadline for round 8 tonight, Chief

Right back at ya', cheif...
:-)

Wilhelm said...

...Sorry, Chief; been busy with manual labor and trying to build a new front porch/stairs.

..answers have been posted now, dawg