Sign In »
Register Now!
Help
Quote
"When I still milled around on the courts with my racket, we weren't ridiculous, far from it, against our spanish friends. Same on the soccer fields, the basket halls or on the roads of the Tour de France. Today they are running faster than us, are much more stronger and only leave us the bread crumbs. Compared to us, it's simple, we look like dwarves. Did we miss something?
One question keeps coming back to me : how can a nation dominate virtually overnight the sport in such a way ? Did they discover some avant-garde techniques or training facilities that nobody before them had imagined? I have searched and didn't find any documented evidence of such innovations, even if I can understand one doesn't want to be imitated when having stumbled onto such a secret. But, between us, it's hard for me to believe in such a hypothesis. Today, sports are a bit like Astérix at the olympic games : if you don't have the magic potion, it's hard to win. And here it looks like, just like Obélix, they fell right down in the potion pot. Lucky guys.
However, in the last years they may have abused a bit of it, considering the avalanche of positive tests. No sooner than last week did I read that a player of the European champion basket team, in september, had a problem with an "anormal" testosterone value. The Spanish federation quickly declared that it was a "normal" anormal rate. Lucky guys. Had it happened in France, I'm convinced the matter would have turned out very differently. Let's take the case of Jeannie Longo. During twenty years, she was an idol. But as soon as there was a small incident regarding doping, she was assassinated. It's typical French schizophrenia.
We want champions, we admire foreign champions, et we have no mercy as soon as one gets caught. Remember Virenque "à l'insu de son plein gré". We sacrificated him, we had our victim, the others are still there. Lucky guys.
But do you know what they talk about at the sports bar (I know that well, I'm often around there)? Those who win are those who can slip out of the net, those who are quicker than the controllers and use the non-detectable drugs. Of course, it's very honorable for us to have put in place the "suivi longitudinal", a strict system to follow our athletes. But they are not treated the same as the majority of theirs opponents in the other countries.
In Spain, the Fuentes case, the biggest scandal in the history of the sport, did "pschitt" (nothing, a private French joke). The majority of the Spanish customers of the good doctors were let go. Maybe because, over there, sport is so important its heroes are more protected. But why are we rolling out then the red carpet for Contador at the Tour de France, after he tested positive (oh right, that was the meat....) ? let's stop with hypocrisy. Of course you have to apply "innocent until proven guilty", but nobody is fooled. The best attitude would be to accept doping. Let everyone have his magic potion."
a lot of good and undeniable points from noah. their have been two major doping rings bust in spain in recent years (operations puerto and galgo) with the end result being no prosecutions handed out or bans issued by the spanish authorities. the only conclusion you can draw is that sports doping receives government backing in spain.
there has been some good responses to this. rafa, uncle toni and david ferrer were aghast and drug cheat pep guardiola was mortally offended. none of them discussed the lack of response to operation puerto in their statements.
has yannick hit the nail on the head? is there another reason for spain's sudden world domination of tennis, cycling and football?
This post has been edited by T_S_A_R: 23 November 2011 - 15:14
Back to top
