Beck was out for 2 years because of a drugs ban. What i find strange is that everyone is going mad at Dwain Chambers and organisers say they won't let him race, yet Karol Beck has been receiving wild cards from tournaments...

EDIT- Too slow again!

-- Edited by CBV at 12:23, 2008-02-26

I think the reason Dwain Chambers has got such a hammering is:

a) he's British
b) he's very arrogant (no doubt that's partly what made him such a good 100m runner even before he started taking drugs)
c) he apparently lied to lots of the top GB athletes who originally came out in support of him, then made them look stupid when he admitted what he'd done
d) he once went on record as saying you can't win gold medals without taking drugs (which people like Kelly Holmes, Colin Jackson, Jonathan Edwards, etc, not surprisingly took exception to!)

Maybe the tournament director of the Czech tournament that gave him a WC thought he should be given the benefit of the doubt (you can read the evidence and decide for yourself here http://www.itftennis.com/shared/medialibrary/pdf/original/IO_18801_original.PDF)  ) or perhaps it was a cynical (and no doubt successfu) attempt to get the press and public interested in the tournament.

-- Edited by steven at 12:34, 2008-02-26

ah, the board chnaged

i guess beck won something like 64 64 :(

I know, I just wonder sometimes if virtually the only ones who get caught in tennis are the ones who do it by accident, i.e. aren't taking drugs deliberately to enhance performance, since anyone doing it deliberately probably knows how to mask the effects.

Many of the cases that come before the ITF seem to involve people taking medicines provided by their doctors and nobody realising that they contained a prohibited substance and that they needed to apply for a TUE - there's one particularly sad case at http://www.itftennis.com/shared/medialibrary/pdf/original/IO_23945_original.PDF

Although tennis is a sport where things drugs could clearly have a big effect (strength, stamina, etc - though I guess steroid use to increase strength might also decrease accuracy), I don't think there's much drug-taking going on - possibly because most of them are playing 30 weeks a year and there isn't a long off-season, which I think is when the track athletes and cyclists tend to do most of their doping.

Was Gagarin a deliberate reference to the Yuri who was the first man in space?

only other person i know called Yuri :)

steven wrote:

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Probably a good sign that he didn't wipe Schukin off the court like he did Santoro last week!

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yeah, yuri defainly had chances, was a break up in the 2nd and in the 1st camr from a break nehind to level and even had a chance to go a break up.

i wonder if any of Nath's friends were watching, might give us an idea.

 

-- Edited by Count Zero at 13:03, 2008-02-26