Which sport is the most corrupt?

[fire&skill]

Wrestling.

Yeah. This. I'm SURE a lot of it's rehearsed. It just all seems so staged.

 

[Taybha]

fishing. Anyone who does this "sport" is a wierdo

pah

 

[tonymgc]

Russian football suffers terribly from corruption, Everyone is on the take over there.

Was thinking about the Harrison Haye fight the other night & how that could've possibly been rigged.
Given they were 'friends' Harrison gets a nice pay day & a set up for his future career of pantos & reality tv shows.
Haye gets the third round knock out, Another title defence under his belt without being truly tested & becomes even more of a media darling for getting sot of the big joke

 

[Gritt23]

In defence of athletics I think the "drugs" that people fail tests as a result of are nowhere near as serious as the headline always suggests. Basically the list of banned substances is mindboggling, and athletes have to be incredibly vigilant to stay clean when you consider they always need to be at 100% of health (and fitness) to be competing at the very top, and yet they cannot take 99% of the remedies you or I would buy at Boots as a matter of course. I bet 50% of the Withdean crowd each week would fail an IAAF drugs test, but that wouldn't mean we'd get close to Usain Bolt.

We are not talking anabolic steroids that pump up a man into a massive ball of muscle these days, but the image of Ben Johnson still rules in our head. If we hear "failed drugs test" that tends to be what we are thinking.

The reality is Christina Ohuruogu was banned for not being where she said she would training 3 times. While even the substances that people try to "cheat" with offer questionable advantages as negligable as the sort of herbal suppliments you can get in Holland and Barrett. Dwain Chambers may well have paid a very high price for his suppliments, but he's recorded his lifetime best over 60m years AFTER the ban. So it looks to me like those suppliments had a minimal effect, if any. Certainly less of an effect than the determination to prove himself he has running through his veins since the ban.

I think athletics has done so much to clean it's sport up that it deserves a lot of credit for it. However, the fact they never caught Flo-Jo does leave a nasty stain as they cannot really scrub out her times, and that just reminds everyone of a by-gone time when anabolic steroids did have a major impact of performance.

 

[Stat Brother]

I totally agree with that Gritt, but it is only one and perhaps the naive side of the doping coin.
If you don't believe Alberto Contador (current, but for how long, winner of Le Tour), his doping goes as follows:- (My spelling will go to pieces but hang in there!)

- Load up on Clembutaroyl a synthetic drug to help remove fat and increase meat.
- Remove blood after some serious training.
- Centrafuge said blood to remove the Clem.
- Store blood bags for a few months.
- Infuse this 'clean' blood that's chock full for red blood cells back into body, when it's most needed (2nd rest day of Le Tour).

Not exactly a wrong purchase from Holland & Barrett.

And once again, I still have plenty of magic beans, for sale, for those of you who still believe it's just the cyclists that do this.

 

[KZNSeagull]

Are there any truely clean sports left?

Golf.

Players are still responsible for their own scores. Players often call penalty shots on themselves. Cannot think of any scandals involving performance enhancing drugs.

Cheats are usually hung, drawn and quartered behind the trolley shed. Well, they are kicked out and put on a black list anyway.

So I reckon Golf is pretty clean and it should remain that way as there are too many factors outside of a players control. Will be a sad day if it ever does get corrupted.

 

[Stat Brother]

Golf.

Players are still responsible for their own scores. Players often call penalty shots on themselves. Cannot think of any scandals involving performance enhancing drugs.

Cheats are usually hung, drawn and quartered behind the trolley shed. Well, they are kicked out and put on a black list anyway.

So I reckon Golf is pretty clean and it should remain that way as there are too many factors outside of a players control. Will be a sad day if it ever does get corrupted.

WRONG.
Golf doesn't/didn't check for drug taking, hence you know being able to think of any.
What checks, if any that are done now, are just the minimum requirement.

All that upper body strength needed to drive a green + holding you're nerve on a key putt, there'e plenty of drug taking in golf.

As I've said, if all sports are held to the same standard as cycling, there would be no other sport.

 

[KZNSeagull]

WRONG.
Golf doesn't/didn't check for drug taking, hence you know being able to think of any.
What checks, if any that are done now, are just the minimum requirement.

All that upper body strength needed to drive a green + holding you're nerve on a key putt, there'e plenty of drug taking in golf.

As I've said, if all sports are held to the same standard as cycling, there would be no other sport.

Why has it not been investigated then?

Hitting the ball a long way and straight is more a matter of technique than strength. And how is a drug going to help you read the break on said key putt?

Most golfers will tell you that they play better when they are nervous. Are they taking drugs to artificially become nervous or reduce their nerves? How can that be controlled over the 5 to 6 hours it takes to play a round of golf? Are they popping pills all the way around the course?

 

[Gritt23]

Stat Brother - wow, haven't read that before, that's quite a shocker.

Look, I'm not saying people don't do obscene things to their body to try and give them that crucial bit extra, but I will continue to defend athletics, which does appear to have gone a lot further than most sports, with the "out of competition" testing being incredibly stringent. Athletes can't plan their doping around using products in training, but being "clean" for major events.

I don't know for sure, but I would doubt that cycling has the same level of testing outside of the events, in fact, I doubt any sport does. It just seems a real shame to me that the trail-blazer out there as far as tackling the problem, still gets as bad a public image as it does. Just shows, when a high profile scandal hits, it's very hard to shake that off.

 

[Pantani]

Stat Brother - wow, haven't read that before, that's quite a shocker.

Look, I'm not saying people don't do obscene things to their body to try and give them that crucial bit extra, but I will continue to defend athletics, which does appear to have gone a lot further than most sports, with the "out of competition" testing being incredibly stringent. Athletes can't plan their doping around using products in training, but being "clean" for major events.

I don't know for sure, but I would doubt that cycling has the same level of testing outside of the events, in fact, I doubt any sport does. It just seems a real shame to me that the trail-blazer out there as far as tackling the problem, still gets as bad a public image as it does. Just shows, when a high profile scandal hits, it's very hard to shake that off.

Cyclists do get tested outside of events, and it is effectively a year round sport anyway sso they get tested a lot. Michael Rasmussen was banned a few Tours back forf missing out of competition testing.

Cyclist all have a biological passport. The blood levels and all sorts of other measurements are known. If they deviate from these at all, then they are liable to be investigated and banned. The level of testing in cycling far out weighs those in other sports, athletics is the closest to cycling in terms of a testing regime but not as stringent or as regular.

 

[Gritt23]

Pantani - oh right, that's interesting, and I'm pleased they are tackling it, because like Athletics, the public perception is dreadful, and they do need to be seen to be cleaning it up.

So, going back to Stat Brothers post then, if there is regular "out of competition" testing, is someone "loading up on Clembutaroyl", which I presumed they were doing in training, just taking a massive risk then, or is this combined with a range of masking agents, which they are banking on being one step ahead of the masking agents that are being tested for?

 

[Pantani]

Pantani - oh right, that's interesting, and I'm pleased they are tackling it, because like Athletics, the public perception is dreadful, and they do need to be seen to be cleaning it up.

So, going back to Stat Brothers post then, if there is regular "out of competition" testing, is someone "loading up on Clembutaroyl", which I presumed they were doing in training, just taking a massive risk then, or is this combined with a range of masking agents, which they are banking on being one step ahead of the masking agents that are being tested for?

On the second point I am not entirely sure how they get away with it. I suspect the cheats are nearly always one step ahead of the testers. Out of competition testing is probably avoidable to some extent in cycling. In that when they are training they are not in a fixed position like an athlete is (ie at the running track) allowing for time to swap the blood. I am really not sure how they do it. I'll be back on this thread tomorrow though as I find this discussion interesting but I am off to Woking now.

Oh yes and before anyone else says it I am more than aware of the irony of someone with my avatar discussing drugs cheats.

 

[Gritt23]

Going back to Athletics as I know the stories a bit more clearly than I do in cycling ... the other thing that makes it difficult of course is for the authorities to agree on what is accepted as "natural" and what isn't.

Diane Modahl, was a brilliant middle distance runner, who failed a drugs test when her testosterone levels came up too high. She fought and fought her case, desperate to clear her name, despite the legal actions costing her a fortune that neither her nor the BAF had. For what it's worth, I always believed her defence, and she was eventually cleared, but sadly too late for her to resurrect her career.

But the thing that always stuck with me, is how do we decide what level of testosterone in a woman shows that she must have taken something to get that high. If we are talking the best, the fastest, the strongest, the most pwerful in the World at any one time, or perhaps even EVER, then how can you compare their physics to the rest of the World? Surely, we are bound to be talking about something exceptional in that person, they must be exceptional in some way to do what they do, so in some cases, maybe that is an exceptionally high level of testosterone for a woman*.

For someone to run a marathon at an average speed that I couldn't even contemplate maintaining for 1 mile, then they must be freaks of nature to some extent. Yet, drug testing for something naturally produced in the body involves us trying to set a bar of what is acceptable to believe can possibly be a natural level. But put that into the realms of something we understand, the times produced by these athletes, and Bolt has produced times in the 100m behind what I would have thought was possible, naturally or otherwise.

It's a tough old game drug-testing, but going back full circle to what this thread was about, I wouldn't say sports like Athletics and Cycling are anywhere near the most corrupt because they do so much to clean their sports up. I would say football is far more corrupt, from the lack of testing, to the ridiculous arguments (Rio!) if someone does miss a test, to illicit payments through teh transfer system, and that's even before I get to FIFA.


*that wasn't the basis on which Modahl was cleared. She was cleared because the lab left her sample sat on the bench in heated conditions for days before they ran the test, hence the sample could not be trusted to be accurate.

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

Curling and Lawn Bowls would be pretty above board.

 

[Stat Brother]

Why has it not been investigated then?

Hitting the ball a long way and straight is more a matter of technique than strength. And how is a drug going to help you read the break on said key putt?

Most golfers will tell you that they play better when they are nervous. Are they taking drugs to artificially become nervous or reduce their nerves? How can that be controlled over the 5 to 6 hours it takes to play a round of golf? Are they popping pills all the way around the course?

Sorry fellas I lit the fuse then wandered off for a while!!.
To my knowledge, the latest buzz word, is 'micro-dosing'.
Getting the levels up a tiny bit at a time, so it's almost undetectable, below the set threshold.

Contador got found out with 0.000005% of Clem in his system, 400 times UNDER the limit.
But it's a totally synthetic drug, but more damming was when they started to look, they then also found trace elements of the plastic from which blood bag, are made.

I will find the stat's later (assuming some nice person doesn't do it for me, first) regarding the amount of testing, in golf.
Plus last years USPGA players refusing to do testing.

I believe strength and stamina are as important in golf as most other sports, as well a blocking 'the yips', for those putts.
With the amount of money involved why wouldn't they use whatever they can to be great.

 

[Leekbrookgull]

Stat,interesting call by you cycling and i would agree with you on road cycling. However i would be surprised if the likes of Sir Chris Hoy were on drugs.

 

[jcdenton08]

I've often ranted on how the public are either too trusting or choose to turn a blind eye to the corruption across all levels of professional football.

There have been huge scandals in Italy and Germany in recent years, bribed referees (not least Robert Hoyzer).. is it so unthinkable that, say, Mark Clattenberg is as easily bought? Why is the Premier League and even down at League One exempt from fixing?

Think about the amount of dodgy decisions that occur... look at Sheffield Wednesday away this season - some very, very dubious decisions. Even the Bournemouth game on Sky - though I doubt the bookies and crooks choose televised games to swindle.

I reckon football is as crooked and fixed as boxing and horse racing.

 

[Stat Brother]

Stat,interesting call by you cycling and i would agree with you on road cycling. However i would be surprised if the likes of Sir Chris Hoy were on drugs.

Deffo, but if you're not and never will be better than Hoy, with an unscrupulous assoc behind you, why not!.

The gauling thing about road cycling has yet again be highlighted by an interview I've just read, with new World Champion Thor Hushovd.
When 18 he turned pro with Credit Agricole, because his coach told him they were a 'clean' team.
So a Norwegian coach knows who's clean but NEVER points the finger at the teams Thor should never join.
The whole 'code of silence' attitude stinks.

 

[Tricky Dicky]

All sport is riddled with drugs, and if you don't believe that to be true, Tricky, I've got some magic beans for sale.
Yes, cycling has always been at the forefront of drug taking, and therefore has to be at the cutting edge of testing.
If every sportsman was tested like a pro cyclist is, there would be no professional sport.

I don't doubt there is drugs in a lot of sports, but the extent of it I am jut a bit sceptical. One problem with the testing, of course, is that it's reactive - the deliberate cheeters find new ways and means, then and only then the authorities can react. They are, and can only ever be, one step behind.

 

[Stat Brother]

Golf only started testing in 2008, after Gary Player, stated he knew of players who doped.

The argument that KZN puts across has come up a lot while searching golf/drugs.
But there is a lot conjecture and inuendo.
Performance Enhancing Drugs in Golf

As yet I've not found the actual numbers of tests carried out on golfers, but I did note Padraig Harrington has been tested only once.
Compare that to Le Tour, where the top 3 of each stage are tested, along with 2-10 other random cyclists, as well as the leaders of all the 4 individual competitions, every day.

It's easy to NOT find performance drugs, if you don't look for them.