I just can't believe why people are so down on Murray. I've always seen him as a reasonably articulate and pleasant guy who wears his heart on his sleeve. His post-match speech today shows the level of emotion and commitment he puts into every game, and he played his heart out today, only to be beaten by possibly the best tennis player of all time. Give the guy a break, for goodness' sake.
He has served his time! People have done far worse in sport and got away with it! The rules of athletics are very strict, probably much more severe than in other sports. One can but compare the bans served and Ferdinand and Chambers. Besides the guys who despise Chambers for his offence, can they honestly say they have never cheated - on a girlfriend, wife. We can cite a certain striker who played for Saints in the early 80s. I think that is far worse than what Chambers did!
I just feel sorry for guys that have missed out on their dream because drug cheats are allowed to compete.
personally, I can't see how taking drugs is anymore advantage than UK/American/German athletes having sports science and millions of pounds of backing at their disposal compared to athletes from smaller/poorer countries. Would make it a more even playing field if they legalised drugs/implants/growing a third leg/arm on athletes.
I think they should make a new Olympics, similar to the Paralympics, for people on PEDs. Imagine how cool it'd be to see a field of people who can do the 100m in 7 seconds or throw a shot put half a mile.
You look at the event that Chambers is competing in and drugs or no drugs he will have to race the 100m of a lifetime because the guys likely to compete in the final are all sub 10 seconds!! As I said it was some time ago. What he did was stupid. Which one of us hasn't done something stupid in our lives. He has served his ban, quite rightly, so let's move on.
Cheating on a wife or girlfriend just makes you a bad person. It doesn't mean you've broken the rules of your chosen sport. The issue with Chambers is that he cheated, and was involved in a chosen sport where the punishments are extremely severe. For cheating, that makes him a bad person as an athlete only. However, he has served his punishment, according to the updated rulings, and so he was eligible for selection. That's it. Society says we wipe the slate clean once people have served their punishments. Actually, I'm more interested in who the Saints striker from the early 1980s was and what he was supposed to have done..? Oh, look at that... it's raining. Blimey, that doesn't happen often..! After all, it's been wall-to-wall summer sunshine for the last 15 minutes..!
How about doing this after running for 25-26 minutes [last laps of a European Championships 10,000m race]. Stick around for the last lap. David Coleman commentating: [video=youtube;mwyA3sfEED4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwyA3sfEED4[/video] And yes, I remember watching this the first time round. EDIT: Watch it on Youtube as embedding has been disabled for this video. Fran, just click the Youtube label at the bottom right of this screen.
Comiserations to Murray. He is undoubtedly the best tennis player this country has produced in about 70 years, but there are three guys around at the moment who are better than him. Also, one of those is, IMO the greatest of all time, another might go down as the second best player ever and the third will probably be considered as one of the best ever. If Murray had been around in the late 80's, early 90's or early 2000's he may have won multiple slams. On drug cheats, all I can say is that if somebody wants to load themselves up with so many drugs that they can run 100 metres in 6 seconds, then i'd like to watch them do it. Plus it's strange what is counted as performance enhancing. E.g. Creatine, if used correctly, can allegedly take as much as a second off your 100 metre time, but is totally legal. Numerous painkillers are also allowable.
Murray has the misfortune of living in a time where 3 players are slightly better than him. Success is largely a matter of timing.
Not really slightly. Murray is very good but he's not nearly as good as the top three, there's quite a significant gap. After the first set, it looked like a man against a boy today.
