GATLIN

He cheated twice, got caught, was rehabilitated, another caused two deaths, got caught, was rehabilitated, hard to see the difference?

Angry wrote:

he served his banned and earned this win clean. fair play to him.

.....and that was probably said last time when he came back from his first ban....to be found out twice should be the end of the road for any sportsman.

When East Germany ruled the world...a country of 17 million dominating world athletics it was obvious something was going on....it just needed proving.....some of those performances are still beyond todays accepted record times and distances.....and now we have Russia doping up to their eye balls (state doping programmes)....the only way to stop it is no second chance.....found guilty of doping should mean the end of the road....whatever sport it is.

Lance Armstrong nearly killed cycling by himself.....seven Tour de France wins.... soured the dreams of millions of Tour followers and left them disillusioned....and now we have UK Tour winners.....but are they clean, we will always be wondering......years ago we had a great cyclist called Tommy Simpson (1967) who could really climb well.....collapsed on a climb during the Tour de France and died....he had been give a cocktail of drugs to help him with diarrhoea.....it shocked everyone.

Now we have Mo Farah having to defend himself because of the association he has with a dodgy American trainer.....is he clean, his amazing results will always have someone doubting that it can be done without enhancement from drugs......and then the worlds poster boy Usain Bolt......some will say you can't run 9.58 without help....plus his 200 world record as well, where does it end ?

The answer is quite easy really.....you have two sets of world records (separate races).....one for those that are proven clean....and another for anything goes druggies.....wow just imagine what some of the shot putters and weightlifters would look like.....you would have to wheel them in on a low loader....because they wouldn't be able to walk.....and they would all be dead by 30.....is that what we want ?

Angry wrote:

Graiser wrote:

Any sportsman should be banned sine die when found guilty using performance enhancing drugs, but rules are rules and until they're changed (if ever) cheats like Gatlin will still be around, the difference in his case was being found guilty twice, so after being given his second chance he's at it again, so right or wrong ?

his first ban was rescinded as the drug he tested positive for was in his medication for ADHD.

Indeed it was, but then we get into the Wiggins asthma/allergy triamcinolone situation and "therapeutic use exemptions", for otherwise banned steroids, which of course is what Putin rightly continually draws attention to. One of the cats is on steroids now, poor thing, because of her not too nice skin allergy and so she has now acquired the nickname Wiggo. She can jump 10 feet up trees now, yet she'd pass an IAAF blood test no sweat.

Some Corinthians would say a sport should be a test of human beings without any aids at all, but then what of expensive diets and coaches, what of pseudo jobs in the armed forces while really full time athletes. What about free access to hugely expensive American scientific sport universities ? surely these could all be considered "cheating" in comparison to other "pure" athletes who cannot access such facilities.  Cheating is endless. The rules of the game have been adhered to in Gatlin's case. It is up to associations to control those rules. What that means in practice sadly is what is good for viewing figures and advertising revenues. That's where the problem is these days, more so than the old Eastern bloc flag waving.  I see the BBC advert for the athletics last night was this final and that final, AND the 100m medal ceremony. Says it all. "Sport" fans would have been tuning in by their millions to see the last gasp episode of the Gatlin soap opera LOL.#loadsamoney  #boooooooooo

PatDunne wrote:

He cheated twice, got caught, was rehabilitated, another caused two deaths, got caught, was rehabilitated, hard to see the difference?

Nobody's justifying what McCormick did, as there isn't any, however using your analogy McCormick committed one offence and did his time, whether his sentence was sufficient is another debate but to our knowledge he hasn't committed another offence, Gatlin according to reports committed 2 offences, so he was given a second chance and once again by reports his first ban was reduced but surely after serving his first ban he should have been more cautious or maybe he thought "only a 12 month ban I can live with that" and took the risk.

Cheating in a race is not the same as causing deaths though.

PatDunne wrote:

Cheating in a race is not the same as causing deaths though.

We're not debating drink driving convictions, its about taking performance enhancing drugs to increase performance levels, commonly known as cheating

Graiser wrote:

PatDunne wrote:

Cheating in a race is not the same as causing deaths though.

We're not debating drink driving convictions, its about taking performance enhancing drugs to increase performance levels, commonly known as cheating

Graiser......save your breath.....cheating is the in-thing....just a bit of fun.....although Paula Radford aint to pleased that there was possibilities that her world marathon record might be erased so that we could start again with records starting from the clean era...whenever that started.

Can't the hand of dog be retrospectively erased from the record books zyphy? Cheating to gain an unfair advantage in sport has gone on since dinosaurs roamed the earth...it's just not cricket

Best not even mention Peter Swan at this juncture. Zippo will blow a gasket