I just can't imagine being an athlete saying, "yeah, let's use performance enhancing drugs and blood dope." To me, that is akin to saying, "I do not trust my training." "I am not willing to push myself to the limits." "I don't have the fortitude to bring myself to the level that I need to be to win."
I would never had done that. When I was on the Rowing team, I would do ALL of the extra workouts available, talk to the coaches after practice to see what I could do better, push myself to the extreme in the weight room. I always pushed myself to the maximum of my body's ability, and would never feel that I could be better, via drugs or otherwise, because I drove myself to be the best I could be.
**Maybe this is why I ripped my shoulder literally off of my torso at the end of my Rowing career... Four shoulder reconstructions later...**
The people that I personally know that are great athletes have one thing in common, they are driven beyond a question of a doubt, and they push themselves to the extreme. BUT, when i was cycling every single day and racing, and riding with guys that knew people that were on the National Team etc... They said that EVERYONE was blood-doping. They said, if you didn't you would not be competitive at that level. It was the baseline. It's hard for me to wrap my head around the whole situation. I mean "blood-doping" IS using materials naturally present in your body to enhance performance. The whole goal of it is to increase the number of Red Blood Cells in your body to enhance oxygen carrying capacity etc to the muscles to increase endurance and VO2 Max (not to get too technical).
Part of me thinks the whole cycling community needs to be analyzed. It reminds of baseball in 1998 and the home-run chase between McGuire and Sosa. Barry Bonds breaking records like crazy on Steroids.
I love to see what the human body can do, BUT if everyone in a sporting community is doing something to enhance themselves, which is a total pussy move, they all need to get cracked down on. Like eradicate the whole professional cycling community and start over, testing everyone before every race and using jail time as a deterrent. That will suck, and be so expensive and endorsements and celebrity are at stake and no one is going to want to do this. So it looks like it will go on. Athletes that want to cheat WILL do it. and that sucks. and I have no respect for them.
In my sporting careers there was a pattern. I would push myself as hard as possible until i destroyed some part of my body and require surgery, and then go back after recovery in a recreational role. It might not be SMART, but I sure as hell wrung out every ounce of performance out of my body unaided by any substance. So I'm awesome and Lance Armstrong sucks. :-)
In another sense, I don't like to see ONLY Lance Armstrong get raked over the coals. He is the most visible and probably the only cyclist that anyone in America knows, but what is he really going to say in the Oprah interview? "Oh yeah, I blood doped and so DID EVERYONE ELSE." No.
So he'll take the blame, and be hated by a lot of people and lose his endorsements, but he'll still have his celebrity status and go jogging with Matthew McConaughey. And then after a couple years, no one will remember and he'll be able to do anything he wants,
just like this girl (click here).
No comments:
Post a Comment