Smasher08
Legend
Not even North Korea would be stupid or corrupt enough to confuse a placebo like Meldonium with a PED, but WADA is.
Not sure if anyone's heard about the Blue Jays' Chris Colabello, and his recent suspension for testing positive for a metabolite of Oral Turinabol -- a steroid from the 1960s -- and tbh this may better fit with one of the threads about Sharapova.
He's saying he has no idea how the metabolite got into his system, but his appeal failed because there's pretty much no other way. He's protesting his innocence, saying he would never do this to the game of baseball. And last year he was a Cinderalla story -- a career minor leaguer coming to the majors and batting over .300.
I'd love to believe him but unfortunately, he ought to bear the burden of proving himself morally innocent here. His career fits the pattern of steroid use -- he was never good enough until suddenly, in his early 30s, he's far better than the average major leaguer.
In hindsight, perhaps further scrutiny should have been paid to him last year after he sustained that stellar batting average for more than a month. Just like people should have looked more closely at Roger Clemens when he "suddenly" reversed his decline in his 30s and began to pitch in Cy Young winning form.
There's a material difference between someone suddenly rising in form and rankings in their teens and early twenties, and someone making those leaps in their late twenties or thirties -- especially after more than a year of decline.
In the case of the latter, in this post-Armstrong, post-BALCO, post-Biogenesys age, I think that people should be skeptical. More importantly, I think federations and leagues should be skeptical.
No personal physicians: only physicians involved with sports bodies. Disclosure of medical records, anonymised. And when an athlete tests positive or is caught cheating, let the physician face repercussions too.
I'm sure that even then there will be people who cheat the system, but it'll be much harder than it is now. And if it's much harder to start cheating, hopefully more and more athletes will never do it.