Report Rebukes Danish Rider Riis About Drugs

Did you know there’s drug taking in sports by people attempting to gain advantage by artificially boosting their performance using various illegal substances? You didn’t? Well then Welcome to Earth.

I’m growing increasingly bored of drug abuse in sport. I was brought up to believe drugs should be treated nicely and saved for those blissful moments of pleasure and relaxation that bring rays of sunshine into our cloud strewn lives, not squandered on what is, essentially, work. Drugs never make work better, and even if by some miracle they make it more tolerable, you’re still at work and frankly have just wasted a buzz you could have enjoyed far more after work was done.

Dane Denies Doping

• Report slams Bjarne Riis
• Hamburger and Jaksche on dope?
• Cycling still rife with drugs

The popular perception of drugs is, of course, changing, but the media won’t and don’t accept that just because more and more people have a more and more liberal attitude to them that they’re not as dreadfully harmful as their headlines have been screaming for years. The tabloids lament in huge headlines at the death of a party-going kid who took ecstasy, danced for 12 hours and then dropped dead but don’t mention it was because he didn’t drink any water to replace his sweated out fluids.

The media, who believe you me consume just as many drugs as the rest of us, are hypocritical and disingenuous on the subject, throwing up their hand and clutching at their pearl necklaces in absolute horror that anyone could ever partake in such an illegal practice as enjoying recreational drugs, and it doesn’t take an Einstein to gamble that news coverage of drugs is unlikely to change any time soon, the bias and sensationalism here to stay regardless of society having moved on.

In sports there are the usual periodic scandals that crop up. Football players in the US are caught using steroids, snowboarders are snagged with THC in their bloodstream (Marijuana is a performance enhancer? Since when???) and there is always someone caught out at the Olympics with some of the more famous still remembered today for having cheated at the pinnacle of sports in full view of everyone. Remember Ben Johnson?

Are Cyclists All On Drugs?

What irritates me is that for all the allegations, investigations and subsequent bans the problem doesn’t go away. It is simply part of competition, and some competitions more than others. British Athletics at the moment has its eyes on Mo Farah the double Olympic gold medalist after his coach Alberto Salazar was accused of running a doping program. Is he guilty? I suspect not, but the press are out to get him regardless. After all, he’s a successful black athlete, they have to find SOME way of destroying his reputation, don’t they?

Take the world of cycling. When Lance Armstrong was revealed to be a cheat, a liar and on more drugs than Rush Limbaugh at a Colombian orgy, you’d think that he had transformed into Satan himself. He’d ruined the sport, betrayed his country, and besmirched the reputation of all the other hard working cyclists who never took drugs to assist in their performance or ability to cycle several hundred miles a day every day for a couple of weeks. Er…..

And there’s the problem. The fact is that I’m suspicious of anyone who puts that much physical effort into something day in day out in a hugely competitive sport and then claims they don’t do all they can to win. My suspicion is that those people in international cycling who have not been caught taking drugs are simply those on drugs not yet being tested for, and that people who wager on cycling at ComeOn! Sportsbook or similar sites that facilitate internet betting in Denmark, should be backing the biggest druggie.

Doping Report Implicates Riis

Former Tour de France winner and the manager of Team CSC Bjarne Riis is the latest in the cycling world to be held up as being the one bad egg in a basket that stinks to high heaven. Both the Danish Anti-Doping Authority and National Olympic Committee have released a report that details not that Riis himself was on drugs, but that members of his team were, that he knew it, and that he did nothing about it.

“Management, with Bjarne Riis in overall charge,” said Michael Ash director of the Danish Anti-Doping Authority, “has at a minimum had knowledge of doping within the team, but failed to intervene. It is completely unacceptable.” Which is the sort of thing he’s paid to say. Of course what he fails to mention is that with the statute of limitations standing at 10 years, none of the allegations made are actionable anyway.

Cycling it would seem is a sport of sacrifice, and every now and then, to allay the suspicions of just about everyone that riders are all on something to keep them going, they bring out a victim to nail to the headlines and vilify in public, using whatever official body they can find to assist them in this preposterous insistence that it is just one or two bad apples who are ruining the reputation of an otherwise spotless sport. It’s actually quite insulting to our intelligence.

If you’re Danish gambling laws of common sense would dictate that there is no way to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he knew his riders Hamburger (no, not making that up) and Jaksche were doping (allegations he denies) and so the entire case against him would disappear, especially given the ancient nature of the charges, think again. This is now a piece of press fodder and as the cycling world looks to the July 4th start of the Tour de France, don’t expect it to be far from the sporting headlines over the next few weeks.