Doping

Thanks Dov.

Not a skill I've developed. You should see me with a pair of those ribbon things though.

diving, half-pipe, gymnastics

Not sports

Ice dance, rhythmic gymnastics, dressage

Not sports

Darts

You might not like it, but it's definitely a sport, unless you're going to take an even narrower view than I do and exclude games which are a test of physical skill rather than physical strength.

i once head a brilliant phone in on talk sport where someone tried to explain what a sport was and wasn't. he ruled out most sports - cycling, running were hobbies, tennis was a parlour game and so on. went on for about half an hour. I think the only sports were football and rugby mainly as you couldn't play them on your own.

the only sports were football and rugby mainly as you couldn't play them on your own

YouTube is thick with clips of people playing football on their own. I admit, the amount of rugby you can play by yourself is severely limited

i once heard a brilliant phone in on talk sport

Things no-one has said ever.

Trufax, he said:

i once head a brilliant phone in on talk sport

I always liked the comment; one plays football or rugby, but one does not play cycling, it's no game.

Zwift/BC have been a bit daft, there are plenty of templates for esport competitions, they aren't exactly forging into untrodden territory. StarCraft, CounterStrike etc all have level playing fields regarding virtual equipment. It's currently the equivalent of a Magic tournament, without bans on overly powerful cards.

Strikes me as a hangover from the more amateur Zwift competitions.

Salazar is so innocent Nike shut the Oregon Project

https://www.flotrack.org/articles/6572771-nike-shuts-down-nike-oregon-project

A declaration of innocence ^

I can’t see any athletes being charged in relation to NOP. The reason being that to charge athletes after the coach has been banned could set a scenario where athletes would claim innocence as the victims. Challenging the individual responsibility position, which has always seemed fragile to me.
I’d imagine therefor that they’d have revisited these athletes samples.

Given the testosterone experiments sound like working out microdosing I’m not inclined to believe the athletes too much.

Farah isn’t really helping his case much. Press conference spent half of the time refusing to acknowledge Salazar was found guilty then saying he was “one of the worlds most tested athletes” (where have we heard that before) and that the media are only asking him about Salazar because they’re racist. He invoked Raheem Stirling and Lewis Hamilton (who I would agree have been treated badly by the press because of their race) but I don’t think that their cases apply for Farah at the mo.

They do indeed. In gel form, seems very plausible that it could be applied without the athlete knowing contents. Much like Salazar’s defence that they had been spiked. Conformity and obedience is pretty easily gained. Again I suspect this has been the case with Team Sky.

Farah doesn’t strike me as the most intelligent, but there isn’t much he can really say that will please the public at this point.

I’ve long suspected his performances aren’t legitimate which was only reinforced by people I’ve met in more informed circles.

So is the current assumption that he doped unwitting athletes for his own gain instead of finding morally bankrupt athletes who willingly dope? Not that it’s implausible, just find the shift interesting.

That’s my opinion. I’ve thought it for a while. Given how many people really top athletes have around them. Often the people above them have as much at stake and have been relatively immune, with athletes often jettisoned on a failed test.

Talking to a couple of runners last weekend when the orion project was failing . They have this unwavering belief that mo farah/paula are genuine . The cycling cynic in me sees it differently .

The majority of people used to be like that with Lance Armstrong though. "He's been at death's door with cancer, he won't cheat now" and the like. Wearing those fucking yellow bands.

At a macro level Farah was a middling athlete, went and worked with a doping coach and became the best in the world. It's hard to refute.

If it looks like a duck, walks like and duck and quacks like a duck.

True

And right at this moment, Kipchoge runs a sub-2 marathon. Maybe Nike should have postponed it

Wasn't Nike's call to make this time, Big Ratcliffe's calling the shots. Besides, that would have been seen as an admission.

Nike showed with Armstrong that they really dgaf so long as they're bringing in the billz and getting to make moody adverts talking about being badasses for being on the bike in a bit of drizzle of a Tuesday. They've made so many millions of Oregon Project they will quite happily bulldoze it, reset and resume with another sport in another state or country. Farah will retire with his millions, Radcliffe will get some cosy spot with the the Olympic committee, wash, rince repeat.

Much like coe 🖕🏿