RE: Why Dick Pound Is The Most Dangerous Man In Sports

But you miss the point. If you are not on drugs or you have not taken a banned substance, you do not test positive, and unless you are genuinely ill, you do not have extreme chemical levels in your body.

Not a Doctor is a curse on these boards- he is the biggest doping apologist there is.

Dick Pound is an arrogant bastard who often makes misinformed/ignorant statements, but he makes some noise and draws attention to the issue. He refuses to accept the excuses from athletes that most people on here are very quick to embrace (and let's face it, most of the excuses are just that). We should just be grateful that he is head of WADA rather then Not a Doctor.

xbcha1

Who stands up for the innocent? Are you naive enough to believe that every positive test is a legit test? Everyone on this board believes their are hundreds of "false negative" tests (dopers that pass their drug test). If true, their has be a fair number of "false positive" tests (non-dopers testing positive). What happens to them?

Not everyone is lucky as Merlene Ottey (she failed her drug test in 1999 and was later acquitted when it was discovered the Swiss lab botched the test and tried to cover it up). That doesn't matter, most still believe she's a drug cheat. Her reputation has been impaired forever because of it.

If you tested positive by mistake, you feel this is a fair process?

My biggest concern is the railroading process of WADA. When your A-sample comes in positive, it is leaked to the press and your run out of the sport before you can even mount a defense.

And, for all you on an anti-doping crudsade, someday Pound is going to go too far and destroy WADA's reputation. When that happens, the credibility of WADA will be gone and it will have the effect of legalizing all PEDs as they will lack the ability to stricitly enforce their rules. If Landis can prove his test was a mistake (like Ottey), this could be the case. So, you should hope Pound shuts up before he ruins it.

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Regarding drug testing in general.

Yes, my belief is the doping is an arbriary line drawn in the sand. This line always moves back and forth. To equate it to a moral issue is not correct as moral issues are absolute, not relative. This is relative.

Paula Radcliffe, the poster child for anti-doping, sleeps in an alititude tent, runs a 100 miles a week and takes magnesium injections when it's hot outside.

Imagine what the British press would have thought of a woman training like this the day after Bannister broke the 4-minute mile (1953). Their would have been outrage and calls to make this kind of "torture" illegal. Leading scientist of the day would have been led by their version of Dick Pound to stop this kind of insanity.

In the 1920/1930s, training at all was consider improper. The idea was to show up and see what you were capable of doing "naturally". Larry Rawson on ESPN once showed the training schedule of the 1928 world record holder in the 5k (14:46 back then). He ran no more than 10 miles a week. It was not considered proper to do more than that.

Now its all perfectly legal and admired (maybe not the altitude tent part if Dick Pound has his way next month). Standards of what are acceptable move all the time. I think it's time to start thinking about the concept of PEDs and if they have a legit role in training. Right now this is taboo to even mention. My bet is 50 years from now, most of these PEDs will be legal.

If not abused (repeat, not abused), epo does the same thing as an altitude tent for a fraction of the cost. Years ago it was referred to as the poor man's altitude tent.

I understand that it has been abused and over-doses have cuased problems/deaths. So we need to ban it becuase all distance runners are idiots and need to be protected from themselves? Where do we stop? Should we ban Vitamin C? Protein drinks? Smart Water? Studies have showing overhydrating can be dangerous. Should WADA delare water a drug and regualate that too?

Where do we draw the line? Why draw it? If you want to WADA to get rid of drugs, why not have them pass rules on how many miles you can run a week? Track workouts, days off, diet, number of meets.

The AAU use to ban the taking money. When runners took money, they were consider dirty, like dopers today. Thankfully this is not longer the case. Yet another example of what was immoral to one generation is standard operating procedure for the next.

Why are drugs the exception?

Lastly, I beleive you have to follow the rules. Doping is illegal and you cannot do it. If you break the rules, you have to be punished. Period, not exceptions. That said, I don't have to like the rules and I do not. I'm arguing for change, not defying the rules.

I am all for

www.killdickpound.com

If it weren't illegal and immoral to kill a human being i would probably put him close to atop my list. I just hope one day that guy comes down to my city and I am lucky enough to run across his path...hes going to get a hell of a tackle and it will be well worth the battery charges.

It probably has something to do with his name...

Dick Pound is the man.

He tells it like it is and gets results. Does that make people unconfortable -yes.

Not a doctor. I'm a chemist. I believe I have enough of an understanding of the issue to know that the Floyd Landis's of the world are getting their due.

We agree on all the false negatives but please understand this. If there are false negatives that does not mean there are false postives.

Floyd was juiced to the gills. He got caught. His criticism of the tests are ludacris. He says the synthetic substance is simply a ratio of two naturally occuring things. Yeah a ratio of isotopes which the human body is incapable of making! Done, sold guilty.

Pound is the reason professional sports are recieving more crtiscism. He has made many powerful enemies in his effort to expose the rampant cheating. The owners of MLB, NHL, NBA, fear him. I love it.

Keep up the good work Dicky!

JCsdkfjhlas wrote:

We agree on all the false negatives but please understand this. If there are false negatives that does not mean there are false postives.

Keep up the good work Dicky!

...

Please explain why he passed his other 8 tests of both blood and urine?

You're a chemist you should know testosterone is not a "morning after pill." Its not something you just take once and you're all powerful and healed.

Please also explain your statement that there are false negatives but not false positives

I could not agree with you more. These are my exact same sediments. There are a lot of dirty athletes out there but I truly beleive there are some athletes who have been wrongly accused and I definitely believe the system is flawed. How can there be constant leaks regarding A samples?

And it is truly disgusting the head of WADA is openly stating that he doesn't believe in the system WADa has set up. Basically calling athletes guilty before the process has been carried out is very scary. A simple mistake or a dumb comment by WADA can ruin a career!

I have one answer to both questions. This has been discussed ad nauseum on other threads by the way.

Testosterone occurs naturally in your body. There is a natural ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone. When you take synthetic testosterone this is known to increase the ratio of Testosterone to epitestosterone not necessarily the absolute amount of testosterone.

Scientists have analyzed a wide spectrum of human beings. They have determined a mean and standard deviation for this ratio. To be safe they have placed the threshold of a postive drug test well beyond what is humanly possible. The only way to surpass this level is to be taking supplemtary testosterone i.e. doping.

So the only way to test positive is to be doping. That does not mean that you will get caught if you are doping. In fact you could double, triple, even quadruple the ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone in many cases and still fall below the cutoff that would raise suspition.

Only once the sample tested positive did they do the extemely expensive isotope ratio mass spec. analysis (measures the weights of individual atoms) to determine that there is testosterone in the urine sample which could not have been made by the human body. The molecule is identical in composition ie Carbon connected to carbons but the number of neutrons in the syntheic sample are different!

Conclusion: The evidence is overwhelming. The science is sound. The only way for Floyd to get off the hook is to get his lawyers to cause a circus, muddy the issue up, and divert attention from the actual tests.

I hope this answers to you why thershold testing can produce many false negatives and zero false positives.

Ok i happen to disagree with you on certain things because we know there are other outside causes that can affect your T/E ratio besides PEDs and I from what I have read I don't have full confidence in 1. the test and 2. the lab that performed the test.

But please answer how he passed the other 8 tests of both blood and urine. And something you stated is intereting so taking synthetic testosterone would only boost your T/E ratio??? not the absolute amount... how does that work?

As much as well all get sick of hearing from him, he gets results.... We are sick of Dick going on witch hunts in athletics but he has caught people... he aggitates the whole situation with his neverending media, but his goal to get the word out that there is a problem needs to be heard. Look at this site for example... half the news posted on here is about drug cheats... only the other half is actually about the sport that this site was created to promote... If Dick getting this problem to the media and helping in some way to clean up the sport, then let him do it...

There's a reason they perform an A and B sample. It's because there is the potential for occasional false positives. There's also a reason WADA has created a rigorous process before banning an athlete. Simply put, banning an innocent person represents a greater injustice than cheating itself. Truthfully, I believe Floyd and Gatlin are both probably guilty but let the justice system run its course before sentencing them. Furthermore the head of WADA is obligated to buy into the process he has helped create. Pound is a self serving idiot. He may bring media attention to drug use in sports but he also creates flaws and distrust in the system. Regardless of your opinion on Lance's potential prior drug use, you have to admit that Dick Pound and WADA's mishanding of the "epo" accussations last year, only increased public scepticism in the drug testing process. Pound sensationalized but ultimately Lance came out on top. The independent review declared the process a sham and the French lab will never be trusted by many. Now Landis tests positive at the same lab and half the world distrusts the results. WADA loses credibility every time Dick Pound opens his mouth and that is not good for sports - Period.

Extremely well said. Thanks.

And just so people know the testing procedures at the tour....

All riders are tested 48 hours before the race starts so that everyone starts "clean"

Then each day, 10 riders will be tested (6 i believe at random), including the stage winner and the top three riders in the standings.

So Flyod won stage 17 and failed the test however he did not fail the test the next day???? Remember he was in the top three after the 18th stage and thus was tested.

if dick pound had a job where he could possibly be held accountable he would have been fired the second this stupid op-ed hit the presses.

any legitimate prosecutor-type person would never write something like this. it is truly sad that our athletics governance system allows people like him to obtain and retain important jobs. he is definitely not alone in his incompetence; he just likes to display it publicly more frequently.

More Letsrun.com jingoistic American whiners.

Dick Pound has gone after drug cheats all over the world in all sports with a determination and zeal never seen in any of his predecessors in the governing bodies of any of the world's major sporting bodies.

He has, almost single handedly, brought sports doping and the pursuit of the cheats, into the collective conscience of everyone interested in sports. For years we all thought it was just a small minority of dirty cheating eastern Europeans and Commie Chinese who were cheating. The ugly and hard to swallow truth is that our own home grown American sports heroes were just as if not dirtier than anything coming out of East Germany. Dick Pound is calling the American spade a spade and we don't like it....especially since he's a dirty foreigner.

Its becoming glaringly obvious that there has been a systematic and widesread doping program among the vast majority of US sprinters for at least the last two decades. Personally, I don't think there has been a clean US sprinting medal since Mexico in 1968.

And we arrogant distance runners should be careful because our relative lack of success in world competition does not in any way shape or form indicate any level of innocence. Our elite athletes stand to profit a lot more from international glory than runners from any other nation. Nike would just love to have a 1500m American gold medalist. That man could write his own paycheck every month. It would be naieve in the extreme to think that those kind of tempations and aspirations have not and are not leading to cheating among US distance runners. Always follow the money, its the easiest trail to find the cheats.

Wejo and the Letsrun.com peanut gallery love to hate Dick Pound because he has not bought into the US sporting hero crapola. Pound knows who the cheats are. He has seen more unpublished test results and more analytical date on suspected cheats than the whole of Letsrun.com will in their collective lifetimes. Pound knows who is cheating and he is rightfully frustrated that the cheats, particularly the US cheats, have the financial and scientific wherewithall to stay 2 steps ahead of the testers. Its only when they do something desparate or stupid a la Landis that they get caught.

Wejo has gone on high profile public Jihads against a few runners on this site and has allowed others to do the same if the athlete in question does not pass his own personal smell test. This is exactly the behavior he criticizes Dick Pound for. Hauling suspected cheats over the coals without irrefutable proof. The difference being that Pound has called out athletes that Wejo and the American public have a soft spot for....one US cyclist springs immediately to mind....make that two US cyclists, I almost forgot about Tyler Hamilton.

I say BRAVO Dick Pound, keep up the good work and get rid of ALL the cheats, the American ones too. You have my support....and thankyou for busting Irish cheats Lombard and Hendricken and sending a clear message to the next generation of Irish runners.

where did you read he was tested the next day?

Not that it makes a difference.

Did you not read the rest of the post???

The drug testing policy is that the stage winner and the top 3 riders overall at the end of the stage along with 6 others (i presume randomly) are tested at the end of the stage.

So we know landis won stage 17 and thus he was tested (failed) now after stage 18 landis was still in 3rd place overall and thus was tested again (did not fail)