Doping #36 - Juridische aanval op de whereabouts

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HEERENVEEN - De Nederlandse schaatsbond KNSB heeft de 13-jarige Dominique Lommers voorlopig verboden deel te nemen aan wedstrijden.

Die schorsing is haar opgelegd, omdat haar ouders nog geen schriftelijke toestemming hebben geven voor het meewerken aan de eventuele dopingcontroles.

Lommers werd eind vorige maand door de Dopingautoriteit verplicht om haar whereabouts op te geven. Ze moet voor elke dag een tijdstip en locatie doorgeven waarop ze beschikbaar is voor een dopingcontrole.

Uitzonderlijke maatregel

Het is een uitzonderlijke maatregel voor zo'n jonge schaatsster. De instantie voelde zich echter daartoe verplicht, mede omdat haar broer Wesley een schorsing van twee jaar boven het hoofd hangt nadat bij hem begin dit jaar een extreem hoge nandrolonwaarde werd gevonden.

''Ze doet dezelfde sport als haar broer, is ook heel goed en verkeert in dezelfde omgeving'', beargumenteerde Herman Ram van de Dopingautoriteit de maatregel eerder.

De KNSB benadrukt dat indien de ouders van Lommers hun medewerking verlenen de schorsing onmiddellijk wordt opgeheven.

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Op zaterdag 14 november 2009 20:22 schreef TargaFlorio het volgende:
Een aantal dagen geleden bij 1Vandaag een korte reportage over deze zaak gezien. Ik vind haar vader maar een enge vent. Het is natuurlijk maar een indruk die je via de TV krijgt maar het lijkt me wel iemand die alles doet voor succes, ook al is dat doping.

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Op zondag 15 november 2009 12:34 schreef ElYefe het volgende:

[..]

Die heb ik ook gezien en daarvan uitgaande met z'n vieze snorretje zie ik hem er idd voor in staat z'n kinderen rotzooi te geven..

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Sørensen episode exposes whereabouts difficulties

Saxo Bank Team says warning has nothing to do with doping

Chris Anker Sørensen's warning for missing a doping control “just shows how difficult the system is,” according to Saxo Bank Sport Director Kim Andersen.

Right after the Tour de France, Sørensen rode a race in Kjellerup. Family and friends surprised him with a party after the race, and after having a few beers, the rider decided to spend the night there, rather than at his parents' house, as planned. However, he had given his parents' address in his “whereabouts” filing, and Anti Doping Danmark showed up the following morning. Since Sørensen was not where he said he would be, he was given a warning.

Andersen said the team was not worried about it. “It was just unfortunate,” he told spn.dk. "It just shows how difficult the system is. You have to really be careful with it. I think that Chris tells it to show that it can be almost hopeless.

"Such a warning has nothing whatsoever to use drugs to do, and Chris is very aware of his whereabouts," he added.

The team accepts and respects the whereabouts rules, but find them difficult for the cyclists. "It is very confusing. You have no privacy as a cyclist. I think it is good that Chris stands up with the story to show how difficult it can be. It is almost impossible not to get a warning one time or another,“ according to Andersen.

bron: www.cyclingnews.com

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Op dinsdag 17 november 2009 12:07 schreef TheArt het volgende:

Zo zie je maar hoe snel je een dopingcontrole kan missen.

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Op dinsdag 17 november 2009 13:38 schreef APK het volgende:

[..]

Aan de andere kant denk ik dat hij de volgende keer toch wel even midden in de nacht met 20 bier achter zijn kiezen doorgeeft dat hij elders slaapt.

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Davide Rebellin moet zijn olympische zilveren medaille van Peking inleveren. Dat heeft het IOC dinsdag laten weten.

Rebellin eindigde tijdens de Spelen in de wegwedstrijd als tweede achter de Spanjaard Samuel Sanchez, maar in april werd bekend dat de Italiaan in Peking het verboden stimulerende middel cera had gebruikt.

Fabian Cancellara schuift nu wellicht door naar de tweede plaats en de Rus Aleksander Kolobnev krijgt dan alsnog brons. Rebellin moet tevens een premie van 75.000 euro terugbetalen aan het Italiaans olympische comité.

Bron: NOS

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Op dinsdag 17 november 2009 22:40 schreef Leatherface het volgende:

[Fabian Cancellara schuift nu wellicht door naar de tweede plaats en de Rus Aleksander Kolobnev krijgt dan alsnog brons. Rebellin moet tevens een premie van 75.000 euro terugbetalen aan het Italiaans olympische comité.]

Zoals verwacht dus

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Op woensdag 18 november 2009 00:01 schreef Bismarck het volgende:

[..]

Wellicht door? Welke ludieke maatregel heeft het IOC anders in petto? Geen zilveren medaille uitdelen?

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Atleet Ramzi moet olympisch goud inleveren

Uitgegeven: 18 november 2009 12:44
Laatst gewijzigd: 18 november 2009 13:11

LAUSANNE - De atleet Rashid Ramzi moet zijn gouden medaille, behaald tijdens de Olympische Spelen van 2008 in Peking, inleveren. Dat heeft een bron binnen het internationaal olympisch comité IOC woensdag gemeld.

Ramzi, winnaar van de 1500 meter en uitkomend voor Bahrein, werd in april betrapt op doping.

Bij Ramzi werden bij een hercontrole sporen van het verboden middel CERA gevonden.

Rebellin

Dinsdag werd al bekend dat het Italiaans olympisch comité CONI wielrenner Davide Rebellin heeft opgedragen zijn zilveren medaille van de wegwedstrijd in Peking in te leveren.

Ook Rebellin werd betrapt op het gebruik van epovariant CERA.

Kiprop

De Keniaan Asbel Kipruto Kiprop, in Peking tweede achter Ramzi, krijgt nu het goud. Zilver gaat naar de Nieuw-Zeelander Nicholas Wilis. De Fransman Mehdi Baala pakt alsnog een medaille, de bronzen.

Bron: ANP

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Rebellin promises a return to cycling

Italy's Davide Rebellin promises to return to racing despite being stripped of his Olympic silver medal Tuesday.

"Even if I am not believed and I will be blamed, I will return to race to show who Davide Rebellin is to everyone," Rebellin said in a statement given to La Gazzetta dello Sport.

He finished second in the men's road race August 9 at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, but test results released April 28 this year revealed he doped with blood booster EPO-CERA. The Italian anti-doping tribunal (TNA) has yet to issue a related suspension, but the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ordered Tuesday that he return his medal.

"We are stunned because the IOC has taken a step that gives little respect to the parties," Rebellin's lawyer Fausto Pavone said. "It waited to see our defence, then after six months and with reasoning we don't agree with, it took action."

Rebellin will appeal the IOC's decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), said Pavone. They have 21 days to present their case to the IOC.

The Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) met in Rome yesterday to discuss Rebellin's case.CONI is in charge of retrieving the medal from Rebellin and the ¤75,000 it awarded him.

Rebellin and German Stefan Schumacher are two of six athletes who tested positive for EPO at the Beijing Olympics. The IOC disqualified Schumacher, Bahrain's Rashid Ramzi (gold medallist in the 1500m in athletics), Greece's Athanasia Tsoumeleka (ninth in the 20km walking event) and Croatia's Vanja Perisic (sixth in round 1, heat 3 of 800m in athletics) yesterday.

However, it did not disqualify Dominican Republic's Yudelquis Maridalin Contreras (fifth in the 53kg weightlifting event) after counter-analysis failed to confirm the initial result.

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Op dinsdag 24 november 2009 11:05 schreef Heero87 het volgende:
Blijkbaar hebben nu ook negen spelers van het Belgische AA Gent twee whereabouts-streepjes achter zijn naam. Nog eentje en ze worden een jaar geschorst. .

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WHEREABOUTS-PANIEK BIJ AA GENT
­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­
De whereabouts blijven voor beroering
zorgen, nu ook in het voetbal. Zo zijn
liefst 9 spelers van AA Gent al 2 keer
niet in orde geweest met hun gegevens.

Clubs als Anderlecht, Genk en Club
Brugge hebben iemand in dienst om de
gegevens van alle spelers door te
sturen. Bij Gent moeten de spelers dat
zelf doen en vooral de buitenlanders
springen er minder nauwkeurig mee om.

Basisspelers Zlatan Ljubijankic en
Milos Maric zijn bij de spelers met
twee streepjes achter hun naam, weet
HLN. Als een sporter drie keer niet
in orde is, kan een schorsing volgen.

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"SPELERS MOETEN HET ZELF INVULLEN"
­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­
Gent-manager Michel Louwagie is niet
blij met de situatie. "Maar dit is de
verantwoordelijkheid van de spelers."

"Wij helpen bij het invullen als de
spelers daar om vragen", zegt Louwagie
aan HLN. "Sommigen maken daar gebruik
van, maar daar zijn ze dus vrij in. Het
invullen van de gegevens is hun eigen
verantwoordelijkheid. Individuele spor-
ters vullen dat toch ook allemaal in?"

"We zouden iemand een oogje in het zeil
kunnen laten houden. Maar is dat dan
een blijk van professionalisme of een
gebrek daaraan bij de spelers? Maar ik
denk wel dat iedereen nu wakker is."

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Spaans dopingnetwerk opgerold

In Spanje is dinsdagmiddag de Peruaanse arts Walter Viru Rodriguez gearresteerd. Viru is een ex-collega van de beruchte arts Eufemiano Fuentes en was in het verleden de teamarts van het wielerteam Kelme en wordt gezien als het belangrijkste persoon in het dopingnetwerk. Een speciale eenheid van de Spaanse politie (Guardia Civil) heeft tevens twaalf mensen gearresteerd
in de Spaanse provincies Barcelona, Valencia, Murcia en Granada. Onder de gearresteerden zouden twee apothekers zitten, waarbij de zoon van de arts Viru, diverse artsen en enkele sporters.

Het dopingnetwerk distribueerde onder andere EPO en groeihormonen. Er zijn ook gewapende invallen gedaan in woningen van atleten, apotheken en de praktijk van de Peruaanse arts Walter Viru. Er werden dopingproducten, documenten en computers in beslag genomen. Alle producten en documenten zullen later onderzocht worden om uit te vinden wie er betrokken zijn in dit grootse dopingnetwerk.

Volgens de diverse Spaanse media zijn er invallen gedaan bij de snelwandelaar Francisco Javier Fernández , paralympisch kampioen wielrennen Javier Otxoa (oud-Kelme renner) en wielrenner , Pedro Jose Vera Alcaraz (Contentpolis-AMPO) en wielrenster Christina Navarro. Todociclismo.com is de enige bron die ook de naam van Jose Vicente Garcia Acosta (Caisse d'Epargne) noemt.

De naam van Dr Viru Rodriguez werd voor het eerst genoemd in 2004 bij een dopinggeval bij de wielerploeg Kelme. De Spaanse wielrenner Jesus Manzano fungeerde als klokkenluider en beschuldigde de Peruaanse arts en dokter Eufemiano Fuentes van georganiseerde dopingpraktijken bij de wielerploeg Kelme. Zijn uitspraken waren destijds aanleiding voor de Guardia Civil om onderzoek te doen naar het handelen van sportarts Eufemiano Fuentes.

De operatie werd uitgevoerd in samenwerking met de Franse gendarmerie, omdat er ook Franse atleten bij betrokken zouden zijn. Het onderzoek zal nog enige tijd in beslag nemen en is in volle gang.

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LAUSANNE - Het internationaal sporttribunaal CAS heeft woensdag de schorsing van schaatsster Claudia Pechstein bevestigd. De vijfvoudig olympisch kampioene uit Duitsland werd eerder door de overkoepelende schaatsfederatie ISU voor twee jaar uitgesloten wegens verdachte bloedwaarden in haar biologisch paspoort.

Het is nu in principe uitgesloten dat Pechstein, nooit direct betrapt op doping, in februari deelneemt aan de Winterspelen van Vancouver.

Pechstein zei niet geheel verrast te zijn. ,,Ik had het wel een beetje zien aankomen. Daarom ben ik niet geschokt over de uitspraak. Wat me zeer teleurstelt is dat na de ISU ook het CAS fair play kennelijk niet hoog in het vaandel heeft staan. De manier waarop het oordeel tot stand is gekomen vind ik zeer omstreden.''

,,Men heeft mij zonder bewijs buitengesloten'', vervolgde Pechstein. ,,Ik ben gestraft op grond van indicaties, die zelfs in wetenschappelijke kring zeer omstreden zijn. Dat zal ik nooit kunnen begrijpen.'' De advocaat van Pechstein kondigde aan dat zijn cliënte nu zo snel mogelijk naar de Zwitserse burgerrechter stapt. (ANP)

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Op donderdag 26 november 2009 20:25 schreef Captain_Fabulous het volgende:
En wat verwachten dat julie uit het bericht van vnadaag komt dat er een dioping netwerk in oostenrijk is opgerold?
http://www.nu.nl/sport/21(...)t-dopingnetwerk.html

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Tim Montgomery: my fall into drugs, prison and beatings

The story behind the fall of Tim Montgomery, the former 100 metres world record-holder who now trains in a pair of tennis shoes on a concrete track in an Alabama prison, is revealed by The Times today.

Montgomery is serving two sentences, one for dealing heroin, and is due to remain in jail until January 6, 2016. “I cannot express how bad it is,” he said of his prison life. During time in other prisons, he said, he has feared for his life every day.

Montgomery broke the world 100 metres record on September 14, 2002, and simultaneously revealed his relationship with Marion Jones, the fastest woman of her generation.

The Times was granted unprecedented access inside the federal prison — coincidentally, in Montgomery — and, in his first newspaper interview since he started his sentence 18 months ago, Montgomery reveals how:

• Guiltlessly and willingly he started using performance-enhancing drugs.

• His covetous pursuit of Maurice Greene drove him to the illegal pharmacists.

• He and Jones were daredevil thrill-seekers, so unfazed by their use of steroids that they would keep them side by side next to the vegetables in the kitchen fridge.

• He slipped easily and willingly from taking drugs to selling them.

• In the 18 months he has spent in a number of different prisons around the United States, he has survived the knife crime, the gangs, the fights and the riots.

•He had to fight a paedophile to gain the respect of his fellow inmates.

Montgomery’s talent — his speed — has been his salvation in prison, he said, because it has inspired the respect of the stronger inmates, “the guys who work out”. Other inmates, attracted by his celebrity, have crossed him and, he said, caused him to fight for respect on the prison block. In an extraordinary comparison, he likens the fight for respect inside to the fight for respect on the track.

Montgomery is serving 46 months for cashing counterfeit cheques plus a further five years for the possession and distribution of heroin.

He says that his conscience was troubled as little by the heroin dealing as it was by being a drugs cheat.

So cool was his attitude that when he was shown videotape of Ben Johnson, the most notorious cheat in the history of athletics, he saw it as an advertisement rather than a warning sign. “I would give anything to be the world’s fastest man,” Montgomery said. “I wouldn’t let anything get in my way. But if I’m cold, Marion’s colder. Marion didn’t care about anything.”

The latest news is that his daily training is fuelled by hopes of a comeback in the London 2012 Olympics. His chances rest on a legal appeal that challenges the level of his sentencing. By the London Games, he will be 37.

In his tennis shoes, Montgomery is on a 10.3sec pace for the 100 metres. “Give me a pair of spikes and three months’ proper training and I could probably get down to 10 flat,” he said.

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Tim Montgomery: ‘I had the best job in the world – now I’m in prison clearing leaves’

Owen Slot goes behind bars to visit the former fastest man on the planet and hear about the greed and envy that cost him his liberty

For Tim Montgomery, formerly the fastest man in the world, today will start the same as every day. There are 47 inmates sleeping in his prison dormitory and he has a top bunk; he will be woken at 5am and he will have to make his bed in time to be in breakfast at 5.30. The bed has to be “military-style” perfect, the hospital corners at 45 degrees, the turnover “cuff” the length of the palm of a hand.

At 6.30am, he will start work; he is called a landscaper, which means that he will be sweeping leaves, and he will make 12 cents (about 7.5p) an hour for it. And it will be the same tomorrow and the next day, and if he serves his entire sentence, this routine may go unchecked until his release day, January 6, 2016.

That is a long time to live by your wits. Trust no other inmates, he says, “you never know what a man might do to you”. And avoid the TV room because it is over the TV that the fights break out. Never change the channel. Never.

When he was in another prison, a riot broke out because of the TV and when they had sent in the “Goon Squad” with their shields and Taser guns and order had been restored, they gave the inmates 21 days’ confinement to their cells.

Thoughts of outside sustain him. He mentions Paris and he does so with pride, as if it still belongs to him. The reference is September 14, 2002, the day he ran 100 metres in 9.78sec, a world record at the time, in the Grand Prix Final. That was also the day that Marion Jones celebrated with him on the track, when she kissed him in public and they let the world know who they were: the world’s fastest couple. “About as high as a man could go,” he says. “It seemed.”

They rose together and then they crashed together. And Montgomery’s landing was as an inmate with a number — 56836-083 — and two convictions on his record. The first for bank fraud, the depositing of counterfeit cheques worth $1.7 million (now about £1 million). And the second, for which he was charged when awaiting sentencing for the first, possession and distribution of heroin. And now it is in this Federal Prison Camp, in the city with which he shares a name, Montgomery, Alabama, that he is paying the penalty.

This interview is conducted in a prison meeting room; Montgomery is wearing an olive shirt and trousers and a belt with a shiny buckle, the standard uniform for receiving visitors.

And he talks for four hours about his athletic talents and how he wasted them, about how his envy of Maurice Greene drove him to take performance-enhancing drugs, about Jones, about how they fell so low that they landed in prison, and about the hell of prison life and how his recent marriage inside the prison may be his salvation. “I destroyed myself,” he says. “I’ve been trying to be a man all my life and now I’m in here treated like a kid.”

Here, he acknowledges, a minimum security prison where no one is serving more than ten years, is not as bad as others he has experienced. When he started his sentence a year ago, he never settled long, he was moved from prison to prison and stopped off at tough prisons, including Portsmouth, Virginia, and Oklahoma, places where “guys had shanks — home-made knives — and it seemed like someone was stabbed every day. And they put baby oil in water, microwaved it and poured it on other people.

“In one prison I probably saw 35 fights and I was involved in that riot. They thought I was the leader of the riot. They made us kneel against the wall for 90 minutes; one of the guards pushed his shield into my back twice and electric-shocked me and was shouting, ‘Are you the leader? We know you are running this block.’

“You can never relax in prison. I cannot tell you how bad it is. You have to join a gang for protection. You have to let it be known: ‘If you come at me, I’m going to give you all I’ve got, I’m willing to lay it all on the line for my respect.’ In a New York prison I was celled once with a paedophile and I had to beat him. It was against my morals; I believe everyone deserves a second chance. But if I didn’t, the other inmates would have thought I was soft.

“In prison, it is all about respect; the same as on the track. My gift — my speed — was my saviour. It won me respect from the guys who work out — and they’re normally the strong guys.”

How does a man fall so low? Montgomery does not blame his upbringing, but he concedes that he may have always been destined for this. He had “two of the best parents”, his father fought in Vietnam and brought back discipline and a moral code to their home in Gaffney, South Carolina. “I didn’t have to resort to the streets,” he says, but even as a teenager he was dealing crack cocaine. “I just had that urge of living on the edge. I’m a thrill-seeking kind of guy.”

Throughout this interview, I ask him about guilt, the state of his soul — did it not trouble him to cheat the athletics world, to take drugs, to push heroin? And his answer was consistent, honest and cold. “You ask me how I feel — and I have to dig deep to get to feelings,” he says. “Did I feel I was crossing the line when I was doping? No, not coming from the streets. It wasn’t even a second thought. I’m not going to sugar-coat it, there wasn’t even a second thought that I was cheating. It was all about getting one over the system and if I could, I would.

“That was what I learnt on the streets. But I tell you, if I’m cold, Marion’s even colder. Marion didn’t care about anything.”

The attitude that Montgomery took to taking drugs was the same he took to pushing them. It was only, he says, in a cell in Portsmouth, where he saw another man hugging the rim of a basin, vomiting, sweating and shaking violently that he understood exactly what sort of a business he had been in.

“I had been dealing drugs as a kid, so it just seemed routine,” he says. “Not until that day in Portsmouth did I have a guilt.”

He has now, he says, been the recipient of a long, hard lesson. To his way of thinking, his crimes had been merely an extension of “my mischievous games as a child”.

“If only I could have got this lesson earlier,” he says. “All I had to do was wake up and train. I had the best job in the world and now I’m in prison clearing leaves.”

It was when he believed that Maurice Greene had been buying from the same dealer that Montgomery knew for sure that he would have a chance of getting level. Greene has always denied taking performance-enhancing drugs but his success, the wealth it brought him, his demeanour and his “clowning” sowed a dark covetousness into the psyche of his rival and it was this, more than anything, that led Montgomery to exchange the life of a frustrated B-list sprinter for a bent one who was, briefly, on top of the world.

As a teenager, Montgomery was a phenomenal talent; he was always very slight, a smooth mover, not a power runner. At the age of 19, in 1994, he broke the world junior 100 metres record; the record failed to stand because the track was discovered to be 3.7 centimetres short. Nevertheless, he was one to watch.

In 1996, aged 21, he made the United States sprint relay team for the Atlanta Olympics and Greene, who is five months older, did not. The year after, though, Greene won gold in the World Championships in Athens and Montgomery took bronze. It would be another five years before he was ahead again.

“Maurice got in my head real bad,” he says. “I wanted everything that he had. The meet organisers and the shoe companies, they said, ‘If you can’t beat these guys — Greene and Ato Boldon — we can’t pay you like them.

“It was bad enough without him lining up and flexing his muscles the way he did and flicking his tongue. It was embarrassing the way he was out there clowning the other athletes. Our races weren’t about the times we ran; for me it was personal. All I wanted was the person.”

It was after the 1999 World Championships in Seville that Montgomery decided to get him. He talks about “selling my soul”. “I would give anything to be the world’s fastest,” he says. “I wouldn’t let anything get in my way.”

The decision he made, therefore, was to leave his coach, Steve Riddick, and join Trevor Graham. Graham was successful, he had got Jones consistently beating the world; Montgomery did not know if they were doping, but he suspected they were and was prepared to join them.

The crucial conversation took place at Graham’s house one evening. Graham started telling him about power, about how he was too slight; he was so blatant he started showing Montgomery a video of Ben Johnson to demonstrate his point. “He was saying to me, ‘There’s no telling what you can do when you’re using steroids,’ ” Montgomery says.

It is at this point that most reasonable people would stop to think and to examine their conscience — because this was the moment when Montgomery crossed the line. But, as he explains, conscience did not enter the equation. “I was thinking, ‘This is the green light,’ ” he says. “All I wanted was the big Nike contract, the commercials, I wanted to be the star.”

His next stop was over the Mexico border to follow up on the introduction to Angel Heredia, whom Graham used as the supplier of performance-enhancing drugs to his athletes.

Montgomery claims that he was shown paperwork showing Heredia’s various clients and he asserts that one of the names he saw was Greene.

This allegation has been aired before, by Heredia, although Greene has denied that he ever used drugs. When evidence was published last year of a bank transaction and blood analysis in Greene’s name, Greene said that he disapproved of doping and that everything he bought from Heredia was destined for others in his training group, not himself.

But Montgomery’s attitude, on meeting Heredia, was that he had finally arrived. Was he concerned about getting caught? “No,” he says. “Being suspended for two years didn’t cross my mind. Other people weren’t getting caught. Angel’s father told me, ‘It clears your system in 12 days; all you have to do is hide for 12 days.’

“So for 12 days, we would turn the lights on at the track, train at night and stay in hotels in the day. When I lived with Marion, I got cameras put on the gates so if a tester came, I’d know not to answer the door.”

Real improvement, though, did not come for another year, until the advent of Project World Record. By now, Graham had switched suppliers and was working with Victor Conte, the founder of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (Balco) in Burlingame, California. Project World Record was designed specifically to turn Montgomery into the world’s fastest man and it was born in a Balco meeting room with none other than Charlie Francis, the former coach of Ben Johnson, as a specialist consultant.

Once again, this did not trigger Montgomery’s concern but, instead, his ambition. “I knew I was getting the edge,” he says. “I knew we were beating the system. But the system had been beating me. Charlie said to me, ‘Tim, you have the ability to be the world record-holder.’ I don’t think there’s a person in sprinting smarter than Charlie Francis.”

Sure enough, Francis was right. In 2001, Greene just stayed ahead of Montgomery and in 2002, Montgomery finally reeled him in, beating him comprehensively in a grand prix in Brussels. Montgomery says: “Maurice came up to me after that and said, ‘You’re there, huh?’ And I said, ‘It was only a matter of time.’ But after I got fast, Maurice ducked a lot of races. You could see the mojo had changed. You can see in an athlete when you’ve got ’em, when you’ve taken the fight out of them.”

Two weeks after the Brussels meeting, Montgomery ran his 9.78sec in Paris. It was as fast as he would ever get, the height from which he began his long descent.

Two points about Montgomery that accentuate how much talent he had and how much he abused it. One: his world record may have been wiped but he insists he did it clean. The drugs that Conte gave him, he says, gave him terrible stomach cramps so he quit them and, in 2002, started taking clean nutritional supplements instead. Yet he realises few would believe him. “I know my word is like lunchmeat, you can take it or leave it,” he says. Two: because he was more interested in the rewards of winning than winning itself, he will never know quite where his natural talent might have taken him.

“I had all the natural elements to achieve what I wanted, as long as I put in 100 per cent,” he says. “But I never did. Because I wanted to be the person in the nightclub, partying, getting by in life.”

But his life started to crumple after Balco was raided in September 2003. A year later, he was fighting a doping charge and needed to fund growing legal fees. “I had been living beyond my means from the track world anyway,” he says. “I needed money and the only way I knew how to make money was drugs.” In other words, he used one crime to fund his defence against another.

Most of the others in this cast fell to earth, too. Jones served six months in prison last year for perjuring herself on the doping and the cheque fraud cases; Conte did four months in prison and four on house arrest; and Graham has just completed a year’s sentence of home confinement.

Greene, meanwhile, has a tattoo on his right bicep that reads GOAT — as in Greatest Of All Time — and trades on his success. He is still an ambassador for adidas and has done the rounds of the TV reality shows. The IAAF, the world athletics federation, confirmed yesterday that it was not aware of any investigation into any alleged connection to doping.

Montgomery, meanwhile, continues to pay the price. He is sustained by the support of Jamalee, the mother of one of his four children, and the woman he once left in order to move in with Jones. On October 5, he and Jamalee were married in the prison chapel. She was allowed to stay for 30 minutes after the service.

One thing he detests is his inability to be a parent. “When your kids come to see you, how can you tell them to be good when you are here in prison?” he says. So he can contribute in some small way, he is considering having Jamalee put his medals on eBay.

He says he has learnt his lesson and he would like his story to be a warning to others. There can be few, though, who have so willingly taken a sledgehammer to their talent, and so willingly pursued their own destruction.

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Unabashed Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones kept drugs in fridge

Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones, at one time the world’s fastest couple, were so relaxed about their use of performance-enhancing drugs that, according to Montgomery, they kept their drugs in the fridge “next to the vegetables”. And Montgomery tended to keep his syringes “under a pile of clothes”.

From his prison in Alabama, where he is due to spend the next six years, Montgomery told the story of their extraordinarily elite union: he, the world record-holder, and she, the fastest woman of her generation, a union that coolly thrived on pharmaceutical deception. The way Montgomery tells it: “An athlete can be so consumed by being great. And we were too similar, we both wanted to achieve at any cost and you can’t have two people like that together.”

Their characters were also twinned in that they registered not a flicker of remorse about the illegal means with which they conquered their sport. “We did discuss doping,” he says. “But we just discussed the fact that we thought everyone was doing it.”

Jones, he says, was a character “like no one else I’ve ever met”, he suggests that he never really loved her and he says that he simply wishes that he could see their son again.

It all began in 1999 when Montgomery joined the training group coached by Trevor Graham in Raleigh, North Carolina, and in which Jones was the central figure. “With Trevor, the workouts were so hard, I didn’t think they were humanly possible,” he says. “But I’ve never seen anyone putting in as much as Marion did. When she trains, she really trains. And she was the prima donna; it was all about her. Before we got together, Marion and I never spoke at practice. Never.”

It was not until the European track season in 2002 that the getting together took place. “I talked to Marion on a flight to Rome for at least eight hours,” Montgomery says. “Two hours later we were alone in a hotel room together. Two weeks after that we were crowned the world’s fastest couple. And six months after that she was pregnant.”

The relationship clearly moved on too quickly for Montgomery. He concedes that he got a kick from being considered the royal couple of the sport. “It’s not often that Oprah [Winfrey] comes knocking,” he says. “I did get carried away with it.”

And the money was good. And so, he says: “I told myself I could learn to love her. When I took her home for Christmas, everyone was like, ‘Wow, you are so lucky!’ But I was doing it for the public, not for me.”

Clearly, there were good times. “Marion and me — we were like buddies,” he says. “It’s hard to find a woman where you’re watching the football together, then playing basketball against each other, air hockey, you name it, we’d fish together and compete to see who caught the most fish.

“She’s a very exciting person. She’d try anything. When we went to Hawaii, we jumped from a plane and paraglided from a volcano. If you challenged her to drive 200mph, she’d do it.”

He also found her an unusual personality. She had a dark, depressive side to her nature. “She talked about taking her life on numerous occasions,” he says. “What you see is not what you get with Marion. I thought Marion was the toughest person in the world, but she hurts very easily. She’s soft, she’d just never show it in public. And Marion didn’t cook. Marion didn’t do anything that a man would want a wife to do. I used to tease her. I told her, ‘You need a woman, what man’s going to put up with you?’ I was the one who cooked. I cooked a great Thanksgiving dinner.”

And yet Jones was also utterly ruthless in pursuit of her ambition. “She could make herself cry for the cameras,” he says. “Her best work was when she passed a lie detector test.”

Neither morality nor her partner would stand in her way. When federal agents started to investigate the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (Balco), which had supplied their drugs, according to Montgomery, Jones started looking out for herself rather than them together. On oath in court, they told conflicting stories. The investigators thus found it possible to sow between them a mistrust that would split them apart and ultimately incriminate them.

Last year, Jones served six months in prison for perjury. The year previously, she had married Obadele Thompson, another sprinter, with whom she has had another child.

Montgomery says that their relationship is so torn that he has not seen their son for three years. “I wrote to Marion from prison,” he says. “I said, ‘I know we’ve been through a lot of things, I know we’ve both done wrong things. And I wish you the best. But I can’t figure out why I can’t see my son.’ She never wrote back.”

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WADA WIL ZWAARDERE STRAF VOOR BELGEN
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Het Wereldantidopingagentschap WADA vindt de straf voor Yanina Wickmayer en Xavier Malisse te mild. Het WADA stapt naar het Internationaal Sporttribunaal.

Wickmayer en Malisse werden door het Vlaams Dopingtribunaal 1 jaar geschorst omdat ze slordig zijn geweest met hun whereabouts. "We beschikken niet over alle elementen en zijn dus niet zeker dat één jaar genoeg is", zegt het WADA.

"We willen weten of er elementen zijn om hen maar 1 jaar te geven en niet de normale 2. We nemen vrijdag contact op met de Vlaamse autoriteiten om ervoor te zorgen dat we op één lijn zitten."

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Het Spaanse gerecht geeft de bloedzakjes uit het laboratorium van dopingdokter Eufemiano Fuentes niet vrij. Dat heeft een rechtbank in Madrid beslist.

Het Wereldantidopingagentschap WADA, de wereldwielerbond UCI en de Spaanse bond hadden daarom gevraagd, maar krijgen nul op het rekest, nu ook in beroep.

Dat wil zeggen dat het gerecht de inbeslaggenomen zakjes niet ter beschikking stelt van de sportbonden. Daardoor kunnen die bonden dan weer geen schorsingen uitspreken tegen wielrenners die betrokken zouden zijn geweest in Operacion Puerto, de dopingzaak rond Eufemiano Fuentes (foto).

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Op vrijdag 11 december 2009 15:31 schreef Beregd het volgende:

[..]

Spanjaarden

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Op vrijdag 11 december 2009 15:38 schreef Beregd het volgende:
Ik heb het volledig bericht erbij geplaatst. Doping is sowieso meer een sportzaak dan een strafrechterlijke zaak. Ik kan me geen enkel argument voorstellen tegen de bekendmaking buiten het bewust willen beschermen van de dopinggebruikers..

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Le Monde: "Verboden kits gevonden bij Astana"

Tijdens de afgelopen Ronde van Frankrijk zijn in het medische materiaal van Astana bloedtransfusiekits gevonden. Dat schrijft de Franse krant Le Monde.

Tijdens de afgelopen Ronde van Frankrijk zijn in het medische materiaal van Astana bloedtransfusiekits gevonden. Dat schrijft de Franse krant Le Monde.

Volgens Le Monde zijn bij Astana geen dopingproducten gevonden, maar wel bloeddrukremmers in beslag genomen. De krant baseert zich op een informant die nauw bij het onderzoek betrokken zou zijn.

Een analyse heeft zeven verschillende genetische profielen opgeleverd. De renners kunnen pas geïdentificeerd worden als de wielerbond UCI de bloedprofielen uit hun biopaspoort doorspeelt aan het gerecht.

De Kazakse ploeg Astana domineerde de afgelopen Tour. Kopman Alberto Contador stak de eindzege op zak en Lance Armstrong werd derde. Ook het ploegenklassement won Astana.

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Op woensdag 23 december 2009 22:14 schreef Joost-mag-het-weten het volgende:

[..]

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Op woensdag 23 december 2009 22:49 schreef wimderon het volgende:

[..]

Sabotage van Bruyneel natuurlijk, zeven renners, dus iedereen op Armstrong en Leipo na geïdentificeerd.

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Bruyneel maakt zich geen zorgen over dopingbeschuldigingen

Volgens de Franse krant Le Monde zijn er tijdens de Tour 2009 bloedtransfusiekits gevonden in het medische materiaal van wielerploeg Astana.
Halfweg oktober meldde L'Equipe al dat het parket van Parijs een vooronderzoek had geopend omdat er bij Astana verdachte injectiespuiten waren gevonden. Die zaten in de afvalkist voor medisch materiaal die elk team ter beschikking krijgt van de organisatoren.

Astana reageerde toen verrast: 'Het is het eerste dat we horen dat er een onderzoek is. Wij hebben echter niets te verbergen en kijken met vertrouwen uit naar de resultaten van de analyses van het Parijse lab.'

Nadien werd het stil rond de zaak, maar Le Monde weet nu van een informant dat dat vertrouwen onterecht zou zijn. Het gevonden materiaal zou dienen voor bloedtransfusies en die zijn in alle gevallen verboden door het WADA.

Echte dopingproducten zijn er niet gevonden, maar wel bloeddrukremmers. Die zijn niet verboden, maar kunnen gebruikt worden bij een hoge bloeddruk, veroorzaakt door een bloedtransfusie of inname van EPO, schrijft de Franse krant.

Johan Bruyneel, Astana-manager tijdens die Tour, maakt zich echter geen zorgen. 'Ik heb een zwaar déjàvu-gevoel. Eigenlijk heb ik er geen reactie op. Het was in het verleden nooit anders. Dit is de zoveelste keer dat de Franse media zulke feiten omhoog gooien. We kunnen ons er onmogelijk tegen verdedigen en we gaan er ook onze slaap niet voor laten.'

De Kazachse wielerploeg domineerde de voorbije Tour met eindwinst voor Alberto Contador en een derde plaats voor Lance Armstrong.

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Op woensdag 23 december 2009 22:49 schreef wimderon het volgende:

[..]

Sabotage van Bruyneel natuurlijk, zeven renners, dus iedereen op Armstrong en Leipo na geïdentificeerd.

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Twee Russische langlaufsters zijn geschorst

do 24/12/2009 - 19:01 De Russische skiloopsters Joelia Tsjepalova en Natalia Matvejeva zijn geschorst tot 2011. Ze werden in januari 2009 op epo betrapt.

Tsjepalova (32) verzamelde drie olympische titels.Toen vorige zomer het nieuws over haar positieve test bekend werd, kondigde ze het einde van haar carrière aan.

Daarna werd ze weer strijdvaardig en schreef ze een brief aan IOC-voorzitter Jacques Rogge om haar onschuld uit te roepen. Ze overweegt een procedure bij het TAS.

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Zirbel test positief
Nummer 4 van het WK tijdrijden Tom Zirbel is op non-actief gezet nadat hij bij een controle tijdens het Amerikaans kampioenschap tijdrijden op 29 augustus 2009 positief testte op het hormoon DHEA.

De Amerikaan maakte het nieuws maandag zelf bekend. De nummer vier van het WK tijdrijden dit jaar ontkent dat hij bewust doping nam.

"Ik heb nooit bewust DHEA ingenomen. Van zo'n zaken heb ik geen flauw benul. Ik hoorde voor het eerst van DHEA nadat mijn A-staal positief bleek", reageerde Zirbel op de site cyclingnews.com.

De Amerikaan vraagt een tegenexpertise aan. Als ook het B-staal positief blijkt, dan kan hij twee jaar geschorst worden. DHEA, voluit dehydroepiandrosterone, is een anti-verouderingshormoon.

In het Zwitserse Mendrisio strandde Zirbel dit jaar op 17 seconden van de derde plaats op het WK tijdrijden. Zijn knappe prestatie leek hem een transfer naar Garmin op te leveren, maar dat gaat nu niet door.

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Dopingzondaar Davide Rebellin zegt dat hij onschuld kan bewijzen.

De op doping betrapte Italiaanse wielrenner Davide Rebellin, die zijn zilveren olympische medaille moest inleveren door een positieve dopingtest, zegt dat hij zijn onschuld kan bewijzen.
‘Met mijn advocaten heb ik te veel mysteries ontdekt in het verhaal’, aldus Rebellin. Hij heeft een beroepsprocedure bij het Internationale sporttribunaal TAS in Lausanne.

‘Ik heb nooit CERA genomen. Een van de anomalieën is dat er zeven stalen aan mij zijn toegewezen, terwijl ik maar drie dopingtests heb ondergaan.’

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18-jarige dopingzondaar wordt jongste wielerprof

De pas 18-jarige Italiaan Eugenio Bani wordt in 2010 de jongste profrenner van het peloton. Hij onderschreef een verbintenis bij wielerteam Amore & Vita. Opmerkelijk is dat Bani momenteel een dopingschorsing van 21 maanden uitzit omdat in zijn urine sporen van het zwangerschapshormoon HcG (Human chorionic gonadotrophin) zijn gevonden. De straf geldt wel alleen op Italiaans grondgebied zodat hij buiten de Laars wel mag fietsen.

Volgens Ivano Fanini, manager van Amore & Vita, haalde hij de renner bij zijn team om diens dopingzaak kenbaar te maken bij het grote publiek. 'Deze renner is een groot onrecht aangedaan. Hij is het slachtoffer van een corrupt systeem dat het wielrennen, zeker in Italië, vandaag in zijn greep heeft', zegt Fanini op cyclingnews.com.

'De federatie voorziet geen controles in de jeugdreeksen zodat tussenpersonen alle vrijheid hebben om jongeren doping te geven. Dit is wat gebeurd is in deze zaak. Het is ondenkbaar dat hij zich op eigen houtje gedopeerd heeft. Een 18-jarige kan zonder hulp niet aan HcG raken. Deze jongen was een speelbal in de handen van mensen met veel meer ervaring in de wielrennerij', besluit de sportieve baas van Amore & Vita.