Valverde & OP

Aquamarinos

Looks like he gets of the hook....

http://eurosport.yahoo.com/12042008...uest-blood.html

TheDarkLord

The determination of the Spanish authorities to kill the investigation into OP is admirable. How can we ever hope to have a clean sport when there are such big differences over the way different nations deal with the problem?

Crankyfeet

It's not just Valverde's blood that they are covering up IMO. Handing over a blood bag would set an uncomfortable precedent for them. Of course it stinks for justice.

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italiano

Floyd Landis sorry he not Spanish

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Powerful Pete

It is to protect the Spanish football teams involved.

Man, we Italians suspend our TdF hopeful for the full two years and a number of other riders, and these guys spend years figuring out how not to bag the bad guy who everyone knows is guilty...

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RdBiker

I'm with you here - I think it's very very unfair that some guys are given bans and others implicated in the same affair are not. It does look quite suspicous that they won't give the blood bags to CAS - but I think there's nothing they can do about it.
I guess spanish teams like Real Madrid and Barcelona have such things going on that they are willing to threat and bribe people to keep them hidden. I heard some rumours about italian teams (Juventus atleast) having quite odd health programs too...

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Powerful Pete

Yes. The deal in Italy is that you can go after dopers in 'minor' sports. You. Cannot. Touch. Football. Even the media fall in step - whenever a Juventus or other big name player is implicated, they must be protected and resulted 'non-negative' in a test result.

Not exactly the same treatment the cyclists get.

They even have the movies (they were on youtube a while ago) of Cannavaro being injected by the Juventus team doctor joking and saying ' what are you pumping us up with today doc? '. Then again, he moved to Real, so no surprise there (yes, I am an AS Roma fan!).

How is it in Finland with your ice hockey and cross country skiing superstars?

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RdBiker

Well we have a joke about ice hockey players who go to the NHL that during their two seasons they suddenly get 5cm taller and 20kg heavier At least the weight part is true.
The skiers on the other hand are slowly getting back to the world elite (probably) mostly due to EPO. The 2001 Lahti incident (all top skiers failed tests for hemohes ) shook the ranks of our skiers quite badly and we haven't had any Olympic/Worlds medals in seven years on the mens side. But the skiers are getting higher and higher each year and I think in a few years they have a shot at the top-three in major events.
The story on the women's side is totally different. One of the skiers banned in 2001, Virpi Kuitunen has dominated for the past two years. I'm 110% sure she uses something or then the whole skiing field has suddenly stopped doping in 5 years. She won her first gold medal in 2001, got banned for two years and is suddenly after hard training dominating the races. It's actually funny hearing people say how she's a great skier and the Norweigeans (may have something to do with the fact that in Lahti 2001 the Noweigean team was said to have informed the Finnish team that they didn't test for Hemohes and that's why no one else got busted except us) are a bunch of cheaters.

So basically all the pros cheat in skiing and ice hockey too.

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TheDarkLord

What is really sad is that cycling gets a bad rap with doping, while other sports get away scot-free in spite of them having as much if not more of a problem with dopers. So in football, are the cover-ups purely national, or is it secretly (or openly) condoned by organizations like FIFA?

Aquamarinos

You don't have to look deep to see how many young football players have died suddenly during the last couple of years... The numbers are shocking.
Yet no one cares.

Make your own conclusions.

FIFA is UCI x 100000...

Powerful Pete

FIFA and football have a LOT more money and interests. It is apparent to me that at least the Italian and Spanish Federations are more than willing to cover things up, and I doubt that FIFA is snooping around and trying to uncover doping scandals.

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Anticyclone

I did a quick google search and didnt come up with much at all. Is this specific to one country or am i just poor at searching?

I wonder if english team's dominance in europe since the OP scandal whereas before then it seemed to be spanish team's dominance, has just been down to money or if there are, ahem, other reasons.

One of the things that gets me about football though is how you can cheat and get very little punishment. If someone dives in a cup final and wins a penalty that wins the match then they have gained the winning advantage by cheating. How does this compare with doping? Surely that is one of the main reasons to dope. The punishments dont compare anyway. 2 year ban (for example) for drugs versus a yellow card for diving if it was seen at the time by the ref (oooh, scary, i beat Jan Ullrich wishes the drug testers had just wagged their finger and told him he may have to miss a race if he did it again). One defence for diving is that everyone does it and it is part of the game but then that is what some say about doping. I suppose that diving is less hazardous for your health and is more open though

Crankyfeet

I think diving is one of the worst aspects of soccer/football. It can totaly ruin a game. And the lack of effective consequences means that players are diving all the time. I think that if a player is deemed to have dived during a game... or with post-match video evidence... he should be dealt a severe penalty. It shouldn't be condoned as part of the game. A successful dive resulting in a free-kick, or worse, a penalty, can sometimes determine the result of a game. It's BS. And makes the game appear as a pantomime to the casual observer.

Apologies to the OP for getting off-track.

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Aquamarinos

Just try googling soccer player deaths.

I've read many, many young football players dying on the court or after the training/match, in sleep etc.
Puerta is the latest excaple, played for Sevilla, collapsed on the court during match, died 3 days later of a heart failure.
Big clubs have doctors, they do health checks for their players, how is it possible that a player with a heart failure goes unnoticed? And so many of them?

The judges decision not to release any blood bags in Valverdes case speaks volumes. Some major cover up going on...