Mike Markson has an interesting proposal for confronting the problem of anabolic steroids (and performance enhancing drugs) in baseball - “let them cheat.” His steroid comments were included in suggestions to make baseball more exciting.
I started thinking, if I was to come up with a baseball variant to try and take on MLB, what would it look like? Well, it would be baseball, but, I’d market it as a faster, more exciting version. I’d make the following rules changes to try and re-enforce the brand […]
The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has been conducting a formerly secret pilot program for longitudinal testing for anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. USADA recruited twelve U.S. athletes for voluntary participation in “Project Believe.” News of the anti-doping program was leaked when decathlon champion Brian Clay and runner Allyson Felix discussed it at a press conference possibly violating USADA’s code of secrecy on the program (”US sports stars try to dim doping fears with ‘Project Believe’,” April 17).
“I may get in trouble for talking about it but I want people to know I’m doing everything in my power to stay clean,” said Clay, who began having extra tests done before last month’s world indoor championships.
In spite of Clay’s concerns, it is unlikely that Clay or Felix will face any sanctions by USADA for revealing the existence of “Project Believe” prior to its official launch.
Disgraced former Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich is to pay out a million euro fine to end a fraud case which German prosecutors have been investigating, Focus news magazine reported on its Web site Saturday.
Prosecutors accused the 1997 Tour de France winner of taking performance-enhancing drugs, leading under German law to fraud charges against the 34-year-old on the basis he deceived the public, sponsors and his team.
The United States does not have laws that specifically criminalize doping in sports. However, the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 1990, passed as a direct result of doping scandals in sports, criminalizes the non-medical uses of anabolic-androgenic steroids. One of the primary objectives for the act has been to combat “cheating” in sports although it has been largely ineffective for this purpose. Instead, the federal government has had some recent success using perjury laws to prosecute athletes who use steroids. Maybe sports fraud prosecutions will join perjury as an additional way of making examples out of “immoral” athletes.
Cyclist Tammy Thomas has been convicted on three counts of making false statements (perjury) and one count of obstruction of justice. She was acquitted of two counts of perjury (”Cyclist convicted of perjury in BALCO case,” April 4).
Under federal sentencing guidelines, Thomas faces a sentence that likely would range from probation to about two or three years in federal prison for the perjury convictions.
Thomas was specifically accused of lying to the grand jury about using steroids and obtaining performance enhancing drugs from Illinois chemist Patrick Arnold, a key Balco figure who pleaded guilty to manufacturing designer steroids and providing them to elite athletes through the now-defunct Peninsula laboratory.
Tammy Thomas already received a lifetime ban from competitive cycling for doping violations several years. This effectively ended her career as a cyclist. The conviction for perjury in the government’s case against Thomas may have effectively ended the pursuit of a second career as an attorney (”Tammy Thomas found guilty of perjury,” April 4).
“I already had one career taken away from me,” she yelled. “Look me in the eye. You can’t do it.”
Thomas then turned to a prosecutor and shouted, “Look me in the eye …. You like to destroy people’s lives.”
 The government has succeeded in its unstated goal of making an example of an athlete using steroids. Is this justice served?
Slated for publication in September under the Skyhorse imprint, the book’s working title is “BALCO: The Straight Dope on Barry Bonds, Marion Jones and What We Can Do To Save Sports.” Conte, in conjunction with co-author Nathan Jendrick, promises to share “the dirt, the drugs, the doses, the names, dates and places, and a ‘prescription’ for a brighter future.”
He promises the “complete truth in its honest, unadulterated and raw form” and says he is “ready to tell the world everything.”
Many sponsors have pulled out of the sport of professional cycling which has been plagued by numerous steroid and doping scandals e.g. Phonak, iShares and T-Mobile. But the doping scandals have not deterred new sponsors from making large financial investments in cycling. Michael Ball, cycling enthusiast, head fashion designer and CEO of Rock and Republic has committed to a 5-year sponsorship of Rock Racing, a national professional cycling team; the team is also supported by Cadillac, Scott USA and Shimano. (HED withdrew because of doping controversy.) Read the rest of this entry »
The Humanplasma Lab in Vienna, Austria has been under investigation for allegations of performing illegal blood transfusions for athletes. No athletes were initially named until the German television station ARD linked 30 athletes as clients of Humanplasma Lab including Tour de France riders Michael Rasmussen (Denmark), Michael Boogerd (Netherlands), and Denis Menchov (Russia) as well as several other cyclists, biathletes and cross-country skiers, two-thirds of which were German athletes. Read the rest of this entry »