Another swimmer bites the dust. She says its from her ovarian disease . . . . . pay no attention to the synthetic qualities of testosterone that was reported to be found in her sample. Don't know if I'd want to arm "wrastle" this woman.
grg51.typepad.com/.../swimmer-gusmoa-.html
"Brazilian swimmer Rebeca Gusmoa suspended for steroids
She won 2 Pan Am Games gold medals, plus a silver and a bronze. She looks like the Incredible Hulk. And, she used synthetic testosterone. Check out her photos; which is the off-cycle?
Summing governing body FINA announced the doping suspensions of Brazil's Rebeca Gusmao. The International Herald carries the story."
Dead on there Rob...and I 100 % support any tool that can help them curb/stop this cancer within all of sports. The folks at FINA, USA Swimming, WADA, and USADA may be pushing a fifty ton snow ball up hill, but at least they are in there pushing and attempting to make it clean. They have my respect and my suport.
*** Pound is a bloody hero in my book! For years and years he was the only guy who had the brass to tell it like it really was/is. In doing so he's been maligned, insulted, bashed, threatened and castigated by the cheaters. Years ago Marion Jones called him anti American, only to confess to her drug cheating years later.
Sports is in serious debt to *** Pound and the brass he brought to keeping sports drug free. He will be missed.
Rob,
Of course everyone supports the members of these anti drug organizations and the work they perform. That's like saying you love apple pie and America. This is not the issue. The issue is these organizations are grossly underfunded and testing for agents that are usually several years behind the curve. Fact is the amount of cheating and "supplement" abuse in swimming and other sports is getting worse over the last decade. WADA, FINA and USADA need more help. Your actions are to be applauded, but I see little hope for catching the users until we seriously dump substantially more money and support into testing for leading edge drugs to nail the cheats. Just because their appears to be a "very few athletes" getting caught as a percentage of the entire base, does not mean this represents the number of cheaters actually out there, or that we are doing a good job catching them. There are too many examples of cheaters that passed these organization's testing procedures over and over time and again before getting caught.
We all support WADA, USADA and FINA, the dedicated people as yourself who want to make a difference. We all want these organizations to succeed, but don't white wash their problems by saying they aren't catching 100% of the violations. They're not even close to that number according to Victor Conte. These organizations have a very steep uphill climb to get on top of an already bad situation in American sports.
John Smith
Reading Frank's articles is appears the IOC has some very, very deep pockets (I had no idea they were that deep). Perhaps they can become the leader in stopping drug use in sports with the huge amounts of money at their disposal.
"Pound's first deal brought in $325 million for worldwide TV rights to the 1988 Calgary winter games. For the 2008 summer games in Beijing, the last deal that Pound worked on, the IOC is projecting a revenue windfall of $1.7 billion."
Bonds was indicted for lying to the grand jury in December, 2003. What the heck took them so long for the indictment? It would have been nice if they had done this before he broke Hank Aaron's career HR mark.
Yep....thats what I was thinking. Being a longtime Atlanta girl, I idolize Hank Aaron. I had a photo of him hitting his 715 th homerun (to break Babe Ruth's record) on my wall when I was a little girl. My dad knew one of the photographers that were on the field that day. I still have that picture! I remember watching it on TV and jumping up and down and screaming with my family when he hit it. He is a fine, softspoken gentleman. Its a shame that a liar and possible cheater broke his record.
Jayhawk,
Living in Denver the past 7 years I can tell you there is some advantage to coming down to sea level for your important competitions. While it offers some aerobic relief (particularly on pushoffs underwater) the effects are certainly less than permanent and in my opinion less effective for short races. I find that by the end of a 4 day meet my body is already adjusting to sea level and the benefits less effective.
I could not imagine this sort of subtle altitude training "advantage" as being anywhere near as effective or as significant as taking EPO or another oxygen level boosting agent.
John Smith
