interesting story...



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/sports/1...tml?_r=1&hp

the reference here is of course too obvious to mention to this crowd....I wonder if "a new direction in sports science" paying attention...?

I guess that it is a good thing the Tour de France is still in France.

This was also of interest:

Although he said he prescribed human growth hormone to some patients in his general practice and had used it himself for 10 years, Dr. Galea, 50, said in an interview that he had never treated professional athletes with H.G.H.
...
Prescribing human growth hormone is legal in Canada but approved in the United States only for a few specific uses that do not include hastening recovery from surgery or injury.

Odd that this would be 'professional athletes' and not any athlete.

There may be a larger story there.

Dave.

There may indeed. To date, the only people out digging into PEDs are either sports writers, or the guys on the regional news desk who drew the stories on law enforcement busts of PED suppliers in the wake of raids and investigations on the law enforcement side. Sports writers have a built-in conflict of interest -- they need access to the athletes to be able to write the day-to-day stories, and they know darned well if they dig too deep or write too critically, or expose to much, or tell too much of the truth, they'll be screwed. As for the regional beat reporters, they write the story on the big bust and they're gone the next day or week, off to another story. They may manage to get a few headline names of "users" into the story, but the focus is on the dealers.

Ah, but now we have the bizarre confluence at the intersection of one Tiger Woods. Gossip rag reporters, meet PEDs. The gossip rag reporters (and camera-wielding paparazzi) are well-funded, are happy to stick on a story with a vengeance for more than a single day's news cycle, and have no need to pull their punches for fear of offending and losing access to the athletes.

So ... should the gossip rags decide the sex fiend angle on the Tiger story is getting stale, and should they decide to pick up the steroids/hGH/PEDs/doping angle in its place, look out. THAT would be something new and different, and IMO, a "larger" story.

Imagine if those kinds of rags found there to be a public appetite for "outing" high profile athletes as dopers. Imagine if the paparazzi got the scent of Lance Armstrong for real. Imagine if they were hiding in the bushes, camped out everywhere any one of the high profile cyclist-celebrities (one in particular comes to mind, lol) went. Think they wouldn't eventually wind up with a long-lens grainy photo of the blood bags and the dope docs? Think those rags couldn't drive serious circulation with a front page photo of a doping handoff and story about a secret life and a lie so large it would blow the minds of millions who follow cycling less seriously than most here?

No idea whether it will ever happen, but if it does, and it drives sales, they'll smell a sales driver. Gold medalists, world champions, soccer gods, cancer heroes, it'd be exactly the sort of salacious stuff that drive checkout lane sales.

If the snowball ever gets push-started downhill ...






Hilarious. I mean, that's almost as believable as "those PEDs were for my dog, not me".

Seriously. A doc who thinks a drug is so good he uses it on himself, but won't use it on his patients? If that were true, it'd be the first time in recorded history. So ridiculous I can't believe the guy actually said it. Exactly how clueless would you have to be to swallow that whopper whole?!!

OTOH, a major funder of gossip rag reporters is now the major funder of a new and prominent cycling team: http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/team-sky-a...tional-sponsors . I don't expect any cycling scandals will be exposed by Rupert Murdoch now, unless his teams of reporters are doing inside research for when he pulls the financial rug out of Team Sky.


Well, he's got that 28 year old wife to keep up with. And I'm sure it's part of his beauty regimen, along with the dyed hair and cosmetic surgery on his face, all signs of someone whose focus is on his patients' health and not his own vanity

Nice find. Well that would certainly put the UK gossip rags on different footing than the U.S. ones, none of whom have any ties to Murdoch (a couple of which have ownership that is politically diametrically opposed to Rupert and hates him).

As for the family of Brit pubs Murdoch's got hold of, while I'd agree, there's little chance they'd go off the reservation and undercut Sky's interest in their new cycling team, is it beyond the pale to think they might be used as tools to take down the new Sky team's arch-rivals with a well-timed "revelation" or two?

Given all the subterfuge and the competitiveness involved in this stuff, I'm surprised we don't see more instances of someone going off the reservation and secretly tipping off authorities to where to find their top competition doping, in order to take them out.

Don't see it happening. It's a cosa nostra mentality.

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother..." and all that.

I'm reading "The Death of Marco Pantani" by Matt Rendell. The pharmacological practices in the 90s are staggering, and it's hard to believe attitudes have since largely shifted against them.

The large <tectonic> shift is the escalation and greater use of blood doping and HGH et al.

Dave.

P.S. I like the tabloid angle. Borrowing from Groucho - Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage anti-doping does.

It was certainly a band of brothers when virtually all of them doped. But what happens IF -- and I'm just speculating, but what IF there are more and more guys riding clean. And they fight and gut themselves over and over, race after race, only to have victory snatched away by a rival team or mercenary they know is doped up.

At some point, maybe they're not such "brothers". Maybe at some point, the bitterness and the anger runs deep enough that someone decides to go "even the score". At some point, somebody decides doped vs. clean isn't it's own brand of justice, it's a wrong that has to be righted by whatever means necessary.

Things got pretty heated last Tour between Garmin and Columbia. What IF -- and it's obviously a big IF -- what IF one of those teams was mostly clean and the other was juiced? Will the guys who are clean continue to eat a sh*t sandwich from the dopers, and smile and sing "Kumbaya, kumbaya, I'll never slide the UCI anonymous info to rat you out today, because you might be my teammate tomorrow?" Or is it possible they say to themselves "I'm going to ride for this clean team, and that doped up chump who nips me at the line and steals the race from me on the basis of dope not talent would never, ever be signed onto our clean team, so what am I worried about -- screw him, he steals the next race from me there's going to be an anonymous dime dropped to the UCI. Besides, if it's anonymous, how's he going to find out anyway. Hell with him, he gets what he earned on the basis of his own choices."

Let's hope this becomes the case. I would gladly buy a copy of Murdoch's Sun to read all about it.

Back to Dr. Galea and his clients: I don't follow other sports as closely as cycling, but maybe others here do. Is there as much outrage against doping from fans in other sports as there is amongst cycling fans? Will the Galea incident spark heated discussions in other sports forums? All I pick up on is that other women think maybe they can look like Dara Torres if they go to the gym more:



But to me, that body suggests Better Swimming Through Chemistry

Are you suggesting that Gilette can easily find a new pitch-man post Tiger?

Dave.

I think sports stars are afraid Gillette will offer them a contract

http://www.fanhouse.com/2009/12/07/move-ov...te-hex-is-real/

Which in turn cites articles that make this observation

You can imagine the panic at his management company IMG as their carefully-crafted image of him crumpled like the Escalade he wrapped round a tree

For those seeking further humor and hubris, IMG was founded by Mark McCormack. 'The Most Powerful Man in Sports' is also famous as the author of 'What they don't teach you at Harvard Business School'.

Looks like you no longer have to read his book to find out and ace that exam

it turns out that Tiger is just like thousands of other sports stars before him who think fame and fortune give them a right to do what they want... and to hell with the missus's feelings and humiliation.

Hmm.... interesting course work.

Then again, perhaps Tiger's wife is now benefitting from McCormack's other book, The Terrible Truth about Lawyers, as she seeks

expeditious settlement of contracts, divorces, real estate closings and other fee-bearing legal necessities

Nothing like a self-help book.

Dave.

The best headline was in the NYPost:

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Hydrant"

Interesting paragraph from this (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/sports/1...=2&emc=eta1) story:

Dr. Galea has developed a reputation among elite athletes for accelerating recovery after surgery or for helping them avoid surgery altogether by using a blood-spinning technique known as platelet-rich plasma therapy, as well as other pioneering procedures, on knees, elbows and Achilles’ tendons.

It's not blood-doping, it's "platelet-rich plasma therapy" ...

Thanks for the link. Ian Austen is a long time cycling reporter, so it's good to know our interest is probably being considered.

However I think the PRP comment is a red herring. This guy deserves to be watched closely, but the theory of injecting a teaspoon of cells into joints, while unproven, is not really anything about blood doping. I think a red flag, while we're trotting out metaphors, is the fact he's pushing the envelope of legality with hgh and actovegin. At least Lim is still talking thermo-regulation, diet and training analysis. That's either better screening or it's honest performance improvement.

You're right, of course ... sorry I wasn't clear in my post: I was just thinking this new therapy would offer people like Ivan Basso a new semi-plausible excuse when their blood is discovered in some doctor's refrigerator.

Except that it's neither "theory," nor "unproven". I've observed the results firsthand in two different medical practices, and the impact on healing times is incredible. I have joint surgery ahead that's a matter of when not if, and I'll absolutely have PRP post-op.

As for whether it's "blood doping," you can argue semantics, but it's a method of artificially enhancing the ability of cells to regenerate and muscle fibers to heal after the micro-tearing that results from every intense effort as a matter of course. And the pathway, in part, is artificially elevating blood oxygenation. You can split hairs, but it's all part of the same universe.

I'm only quoting the other medical authorities who said it needed more research.

As for PRP being blood doping, which was what AE was suggesting, I don't think you mean it's in the same cateory for oxygen vector doping as blood doping, do you? I would think it's more similar to cortisone shots in joints, vs the ban on cortisone systemically.

In yet another sign of how far his star has fallen, the media is starting to put one-and-one together

Meanwhile, a Toronto doctor with ties to Woods has been charged with selling an unapproved drug that can be considered performance-enhancing.

Anthony Galea, 51, was charged Wednesday with selling Actovegin, a drug extracted from calf's blood, which is illegal for sale in Canada and is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency if used intravenously.

Investigators also allege Galea illegally imported and smuggled drugs into Canada. They said these drugs, which are not approved by Health Canada, were administered to patients.

Separately, in another connection to cycling from this story, Nike stands by their scandal-ridden man

Phil Knight, owner and co-founder of the US firm, shrugged off Woods' fall from grace with the understated words on Monday.

Speaking to Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Journal, Knight said: “I think he’s been really great. ...

Yes, it is potentially in bad taste, but what should we expect next? Multi-colored bracelets for fathers who have lost custody of their kids after messy divorces?

Dave.

The medical world is starting to have doubts about Galea's cash cow platelet injections too:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/health/1...html?ref=health