Monday, May 18, 2009

So much for honesty and integrity in sports . . .


A news report suggests that the sport of bodybuilding is rather less 'clean' and 'honest' than the image it tries to project. Most of us have suspected this for years, of course, but it's nice to have confirmation of a sort.

The Belgian bodybuilding championship has been canceled after doping officials showed up and all the competitors fled.

A doping official says bodybuilders just grabbed their gear and ran off when he came into the room.

"I have never seen anything like it and hope never to see anything like it again," doping official Hans Cooman said Monday.

Twenty bodybuilders were entered in the weekend competition.

Cooman says the sport has a history of doping "and this incident didn't do its reputation any good."

During testing of bodybuilding events last year, doping authorities of northern Belgium's Flanders region found that three-quarters of the competitors tested positive.


Would anybody like to bet on a different result at the US bodybuilding championships?

* Listens to the deafening silence . . . *

I thought not . . .

Peter

1 comment:

LabRat said...

This is an open secret in the US bodybuilding community. All you need to do is look at the difference between competitors in "natural" contests (which are tested) and all others (which are not) to see this.

In any internet forum or other gathering place for bodybuilding, either discussion of steroids is flat banned and moderated ruthlessly, or it's one of the most active subjects- not controversy over it, how to do it. There are even some that argue its illegality does more harm than good and we should just openly embrace it so that drugs can be better regulated and people can get better information.

It also says a great deal about the motivations for this "sport" that steroids are nearly a nonissue in weight sports where strength rather than aesthetics is the issue, except at the Olympic level where every tiny advantage counts. Juicing will give you big muscles- not strong ones.