Team Sky

JonH · All-time great

Team Sky

Oakland2002 · All-time great

Sport is crammed full of amazingly successful asthmatics indeed most of them have asthma so bad they need TUEs for inhaled steroids. Bradleys is compounded by hay fever so badly that he needs some form of systemic steroids in this case one that reduces body mass and increases power. It would be fairly straight forward for him to demonstrate this indeed down to the specific pollens he is allergic to. He should be able to provide evidence of this from his GP, he should have records of it in letters from consultations etc.. if not as the parliamentary select committee suggest one would be naive not to consider ethical abuse of the TUE concept.

Disappearing or non existent medical records are one thing but there is nothing to stop him presenting himself to an expert in allergy and or one in respiratory medicine of the Guardians choice for testing. Such severe seasonal allergic rhinitis does exist my sister was so ill on the day of her chemistry o level she couldnt sit it and had to be kept in isolation medicated and sat the exam in the afternoon, when it is that bad it doesnt generally go away.

I lost any appetite for following cycling during Lance Armstrongs successes if something is too good to be true (how can you improve your physiological performance after systemic chemotherapy for testicular cancer?) then generally its fraudulent. I was reinvigorated by the remarkable conversion of an elite track cyclist by a clean team lead by the head of the remarkably successful British track cycling team, surely they must be clean because they are British and keep telling us they are. Although knawing away in the rational part of my brain was the old adage on repeat... If its too good to be true then generally.......

-- Edited by Oakland2002 on Wednesday 7th of March 2018 04:54:44 AM

JonH · All-time great

A friend of mine is a keen amateur cyclist. He has a friend who went to train at a UK university big on its sports programme in the south West. He was stunned that all those on the athletes programme where being treated for apparently debilitating asthmatic problems. It was almost like the route to success was having asthma. He left the programme soon after - he wasn't asthmatic himself and didn't feel he needed the treatment offered. Anecdotal of course

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Yes. I have a lot to do with students and have heard similar stories.

Conversely, I know that last year, in one of the important unis for Law, 80% of their students seemingly were dyslexic. (And so get extra time for their exams).

Just seems odd, doesn't it, that top level athletes all have asthma when the one thing that would probably not fit with being a top level athlete is having breathing problems. And top level potential lawyers all have dyslexia when the one thing that you would think does not fit with being a top level lawyer is having reading/writing/written word processing problems.

Strange really.....

JonH · All-time great

Coup Droit wrote:
Yes. I have a lot to do with students and have heard similar stories.

Conversely, I know that last year, in one of the important unis for Law, 80% of their students seemingly were dyslexic. (And so get extra time for their exams).

Just seems odd, doesn't it, that top level athletes all have asthma when the one thing that would probably not fit with being a top level athlete is having breathing problems. And top level potential lawyers all have dyslexia when the one thing that you would think does not fit with being a top level lawyer is having reading/writing/written word processing problems.

Strange really.....

Indeed - my wife is an exam invigilator at a local secondary school. Keeping in mind this is a CoE Faith school, so assume a very middle class intake (chasing all those church attendance entry points etc). At the GCSE exams and A levels, the number of students that have extra time for this or that , or built in breaks for the other , pretty much half the examined students seem to have applied for some dispensation for extra time or other (and got it).

No one says it is illegal, it is pushing the boundaries, at the edge of ethics and probably all of this is ultimately about where marginal gains slip over the ethical boundary into doing something wrong.

In the case of Froome, his double dose of Sambutamol at the Vuelta was probably where Sky momentarily lost control and definitively crossed the boundary. Wiggins jiffy bag was his similar boundary crossing line. Once you get caught out , the whole house starts to fall down.

Oakland2002 · All-time great

This week was a bizarre day for sport, we should really all be celebrating the life of the guy who as chairman of the British sports council introduced testing for steroids in athletics in the U.K. an achievement he consider as good as anything he achieved on the track.

RIP Sir Roger Bannister