WooGoogle wrote:
I dunno if he took it or not, but why would one take steroids?
Wouldn't EPO result in better performance?

The assumption here is that the test catches everything.

There are testing statistics in the USADA annual report. From
http://www.usantidoping.org/files/ac...eport_2003.pdf
Page 36

Out of 6890 total tests only one came up positive for EPO. By that
I think one can conclude that either EPO doping is very, very rare
or that the test is ****. One or the other.

One would imagine that steriods are the most abused performance drug
but the testing does not support that. Out of those 6890 tests only
18 came up positive under 'Anabolic Agents'. Four of those were from
the Balco THG crowd, another 6 were Nandrolone-Oh-my-God-I-took-a-
contaminated-supplement positives. So again, the conclusion is
clearly that either no one is using or that the test is ****. Is the
reader an optimist or a pessimist? In the optimistic view the war
on drugs is all but won.

Frankly I think it was just blind chance that they caught Bergman.

With respect to Carney's views on the amount of testing that is done,
I think he is dead on. A friend in the triathlon arena tells me
that when would show up to a race with dope testing they would take
the top 5 plus *ten* randoms. Anthough that is from a larger base
of competitors than in a typical NRC event, it is still better
testing odds than top three plus one random.

To get an idea of just how seriously the US takes the issue of
maintaining a drug free Olympic movement one can just look at the
financial page. The entire top to bottom budget for the USADA is
$10.1 million including $4.3 million for testing. This is what
we spend to regulate the billion dollar industry that is US
Olympic athletics. A good comparision is Barry "The Juicer"
Bonds who signed a contract worth $90 after breaking baseball's
home run record.


Fuentes sounds like a real douchebag. The guy got popped which
means he was free to crank it up on anything he liked at
Superweek. What a classy way to leave the sport.

Bob Schwartz