Another innocent athlete accused
Okay, in text the title doesn’t come off with the sarcasm I am heard in my head as I typed it. I am referring to this:
http://www.velonews.com/news/fea/11252.0.html
Another athlete, accused of doping, claims she never took anything. Listen, sometimes people in any type of discplinary proceeding, whether at work, school, criminal, licensing board, ect do accept plea bargains when they haven’t done anything wrong. Once you are accused of something, you have to weigh the risks of losing versus the offer in front of you. So, even innocent people are forced into plea bargains. I am just sick of every athlete telling me they are innocent.
I guess that is status quo. Reagan knew nothing about Iran-Contra. Clinton didn’t inhale or have sex with that woman. Bush jr. really thought there were WMD’s. Deny enough and people eventually will believe you.
Aren’t we lucky that all the athletes that have tested positive are innocent? What are the odds? After all, it is normal for a guy that is 6′6″ and 310 lbs to be able to bench 500 lbs and move from one side of the offensive line to the other in like half a second. It is normal for a baseball player to enter the league weighing like 190 and leave weighing like 230 with 40 lbs more muscle mass. It is normal for a sprinter to have the upper body mass of a NFL cornerback. After all, they need those chest, back and arm muscles to do that 100, 200 meter dash.
I hate to say I believe this, most athletes, in any sport that pays a signficant amount of money, is on some type of performance enhancing substance. Heck… if I had the money I probably would take HGH. After all, by all reports it makes your feel 20 years younger and has great health benefits, on top of athletic improvement. It is a banned substance though… fortunately for athletes there is no easy test to detect it.
I do believe there is a sliding scale. The less money an athlete can make in a sport, the less likely they are on something. At least that is my opinion. Money corrupts. Baseball, football, and even cycling has enough money for the top athletes to consider doping a necessary “evil”.
I believe that Carl Lewis, and the more I read Greg LeMond, marked the end of an era. Those are the last champions I will look at and believe they were not doping. Everyone else, I will always wonder.