It's good to see that drug cheat fail miserably in Beijing. But that's enough about Christine Ohuruogu finishing stone dead last in the 400m...
I love to watch Maria Sharapova playing (obviously!).But she comes unstuck against Serena Williams I keep thinking...Williams should be playing the men.She's so huge,she must be on something!!!!!?
Good to watch, terrible to listen to. Should be disqualified for that racket (raquet?). Worst one is Azarenko, it is an other worldly noise she makes that has nothing to do with effort expended and happens after the effort. Cheats.
What gets me with the Williams brothers is the obvious gamesmanship of the noise they make: when either of them are 40-0 up you won't hear a peep out of them, but if they're trying to close out a game when 40-30 up they make so much noise when hitting the ball you think somebody's rottweiler got onto the court. Why do that when you can do this?
please log in to view this image And they say Gerrard has no loyalty to Liverpool. Looks like life in MLS isn't all it's cracked up to be, though.
I've got to weigh in on the cheating topics. My high school had lots of powerfully built black girls. There must have been 20 or more in the 5'10" 170 pound + plus range. There were about as many white kids as black, but 80-90 percent of the really big, strong girls were black. (As opposed to just a bit more than half of the strongest boys, interestingly.) While I'm generalizing from a very small sample, I'd say what's unusual about the Williams' sisters is not their size and strength, but that they were a couple of the relatively few non-white people in the US who got first class tennis coaching. Note also that Serena is certainly not all muscle. Steroid cheats tend to have better muscular definition than normal. Justin Gatlin, and his partner in steroid crime, Alex Rodriguez, really bug me. I would bet money they're still on fing steroids, quite aside from the fact they should be disqualified for cheating in the past. Investigators just found a lab that makes a steroid that passes all the drug tests--a month ago, maybe. Think Gatlin and Rodriguez took steroids because they were bored and it seemed like fun? Because if they did it for the reason everyone else does, which is to compete at a level they can't fairly reach, there is no way they should be better than ever clean--especially since they're relatively old. Finally, yeah, everyone who screams like a stuck pig when they play tennis should be docked a point, then a game, then a set, and then be DQd. There is absolutely no excuse for it. It is done entirely as gamesmanship. Unlike other forms of gamesmanship, however, it's an aural assault on spectators. (Caveat: it is natural to let out a big grunt every so often if you make a big effort. It's easy to distinguish these from the every single ball screams so many players make.)
Good discussion and agree with most of the points. The grunting by the tennis players does indeed seem nothing more than gamesmanship, and of course as with football we should call it like it is - cheating. Not sure about the Williams' being on anything though, they could easily just be making the most of their natural physique. The drugs cheats in athletics coming back and nearly winning is worse though. I think Gatlin had his *second* ban reduced - twice - why? Don't the authorities realise that this leads to us to question all the results, thus reducing the attainments of those who win fairly. There was also the drug labs that have been found like BalCo, which appears to have only had two customers including Chambers (who to his credit has since spoken out quite vocally about cheating). The other records seem to have been lost or destroyed, like those in the Spanish drug scandal of a few years back. It's almost as if the authorities aren't concerned with trying that hard to catch the cheats, or at least when they uncover something major they don't follow through properly.
There's plenty of smoke about the Williamses: when the WTA tried to introduce off-season testing in the late 90s, three players blocked the move - Venus, Serena, and Jennifer Capriati. It's not a coincidence that, at the time, those three (as well as Lindsay Davenport and Amelie Mauresmo) were the ones widely speculated to be on the juice. In Serena's case, it's even more obvious: she refused to take a drugs test for the 2004 Olympics before withdrawing through "injury", while it's also on record that she didn't give a sample for a single out-of-season drugs test in 2010 or 2011.
I didn't know that. Thanks for the information. I actually was ignorant of the extent of the steroid problem in tennis. I understand now the problem appears to be widespread, and, as you say, Serena has made herself conspicuous in this area. It reminds me of the situation in baseball, where the baseball powers decided the thing to do was test infrequently and in a way that was easy to dodge, so the sport could say there wasn't a steroid problem. This has since blown up in their face. It looks like we can expect the same with tennis.
In Tennis there is practically no off season. The men play till November and start again in December. There is plenty of out of competition testing, but reports I have read suggests it is uneven.
They certainly did in 2002: http://articles.latimes.com/2002/jul/03/sports/sp-wimbnotes03 Even now, the drug testing in tennis is a complete farce - in 2012, there was the grand total of 63 out-of-competition blood tests, but what's more ludicrous is just how uneven drugs testing is, such as... —Some players now in the Top 50, like Ernests Gulbis, Tommy Robredo, Vasek Pospisil, Eugenie Bouchard, and Madison Keys, were not in the Top 50 last year and did not receive an out-of-competition test. —Most players who were inside the Top 50 in 2013 received an out-of-competition at least once, though a few did not, including Jankovic, Marcos Baghdatis, Vavara Lepchenko, and Su-Wei Hsieh. —Wayne Odesnik, also outside the Top 50 but who has previously served a suspension for trying to import HGH, received 1-3 tests out of competition and none in competition. —Players from some nations seemed to be tested more than others. Three Chinese players who finished in the Top 55 the previous year—Li Na, Peng Shuai, and Zheng Jie—were tested seven or more times both for in- and out-of-competition tests. Zhang Shuai, who finished No. 52, was tested 4-6 times in competition and not tested out of competition. —Italians Sara Errani, Roberta Vinci, Francesca Schiavone, and Andreas Seppi all received seven or more out-of-competition tests; Flavia Pennetta had 1-3 such tests while Fabio Fognini had none, but he was tested seven or more times in competition. Errani was once associated with Dr. Luis del Moral, who has been banned for doping activity in cycling, but denies working with him for that purpose. —Among the Czechs, Tomas Berdych, Petra Kvitova, and Lucie Safarova all had seven or more in- and out-of-competition tests. —Top Spanish and French players also frequently received seven or more out-of-competition tests. Nadal, David Ferrer, Nicolas Almagro, Feliciano Lopez, Carla Suarez Navarro, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Richard Gasquet, Gilles Simon, and Alize Cornet all received seven or more out-of-competition tests, with Gael Monfils and Pablo Andujar received 4-6 such tests. —Some breakout players like Milos Raonic and Jerzy Janowicz also had seven or more tests both in and out of competition. John Isner also received seven or more in- and out-of-competition tests, on top of the six he received from USADA through the third quarter of last year.
Thanks everyone - very glad people are so well informed and happy to hear this information which is new to me. My thoughts for today however is about loaning players to other teams *in the same league*. Yes I know we have benefited from this in the past, but this does not make it right. The system is set up for potential (if not current) abuse by the super rich teams collecting players that they can't possibly play, almost so a competitor doesn't pick them up. Having then collected enough players for 2 or 3 teams, they then loan them out with the effective result being that they are indeed playing more than 11 players at a time for each round of matches. Sure they are technically playing for other teams, but since they can't (and obviously shouldn't) play against their parent club the effect is not too much different from being a kind of agent for their parent team. How many players have Chelski got at other clubs? Last season is was some ludicrous amount, but this season aren't there 2 or 3 in the PL? Wondering therefore what you chaps think about this process? EDIT: Helpfully the BBC have published Chelski's loan players at the moment. It's an unbelievable 28... yes 28!!!! And to answer my question it's 4 playing in the PL. THAT IS SURELY WRONG? BBC comment: Lucas Piazon's loan move to Reading takes the number of Chelsea players plying their trade elsewhere to a whopping 28. For now. Victor Moses's potential move to West Ham could increase the number before the day is out. If you're interested, the loan list (via transfermarkt) in full is, deep breath,: Mohamed Salah (Roma), Juan Cuadrado (Juventus), Marko Marin (Trabzonspor), Marko van Ginkel (Stoke), Patrick Bamford (Crystal Palace), Nathaniel Chalobah (Napoli) Lucas Piazon (Reading), Jordan Houghton (Gillingham), Christian Atsu (Bournemouth), Wallace (Carpi), Danilo Pantic, Nathan, Dominic Solanke, Lewis Baker, Isaiah Brown (all Vitesse Arnhem), Nathan Ake (Watford), Mario Pasalic (Monaco), Alex Davey (Peterborough), Jeremie Boga (Rennes), Todd Kane (NEC), Tomas Kalas (Middlesbrough), Ulises Davila (Vitoria Setubal), Cristian Cueves and Victorien Angban (both Sint Truiden), Andreas Christensen (Borussia Mochengladbach), Cristian Manea (Mouscron), Kenneth Omeruo (Kasimpasa), Matej Delac (FK Sarajevo). EDIT 2: Chelski now have Moses at West Ham as well.
