Tough new anti-doping controls will be in effect at this year’s Roland Garros.
From Le Monde (click here for the original, my translation):
“This year, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, like all players who compete at Roland Garros (May 24 to Sunday June 7) will not only be subject to traditional anti-doping controls by the International Tennis Federation (ITF), but also those carried out by the very effective French Agency for the fight against doping (AFLD).
Under a new World Anti-Doping Code, which allows an organization to implement national anti-doping tests in addition to those organized by a federation for a major competition, the president of the AFLD, Pierre Bordry, asked his counterpart at the ITF for the right to make additional checks during the fortnight in Paris. The ITF agreed. “The AFLD will conduct random and targeted checks at Roland-Garros,” Pierre Bordry confirms. “The tests will be organized according to the information we have and the evidence available from the ITF.“
Before the 2008 Tour de France, the AFLD received a “tip” from the Italian Olympic Committee – that riders were using CERA, the new generation of the (blood boosting drug) EPO – to find this substance in the urine of several cyclists. Does the AFLD have a similar clue before Roland Garros?
“Does the AFLD have a similar clue before Roland Garros?” Now that’s the million dollar question. It will be interesting to see how this story develops – are certain players really being targeted or is this just extra sensitivity brought on by l’affaire Gasquet?
The last time the AFLD tested at Roland Garros was in 2006. For the past two years the ITF has tested, exclusively, and used a Swedish sampling company and labs in Montreal (the same labs that recently found cocaine in Gasquet’s urine.) No one has tested positive for drugs at Roland Garros since Mariano Puerta, after making it to the final in 2005.
The AFLD is hard core – it’s famously the thorn in Lance Armstrong’s side (click here.) If I were a tennis pro, I’d be terrified to eat a hot dog or a bag of Fritos right now. Who the heck knows what’s in those things, anyway? Stick to organics, guys.
“It was only this much.” Gasquet photo by Reuters via Ouest-France
Tags: AFLD, French Open, gasquet, ITF, Lance Armstrong, Mariano Puerta, Roland Garros, tennis
RELATED ARTICLES ON GOTOTENNIS |
Loading ...
So…let’s talk about the Majorca elephant in the room.
I mean I have hear the rumors, just rumors I am told.
What have you heard?
Maybe I’m naive, but how would doping help tennis players anyway? It seems more a matter of nerve, footwork, and smarts rather than stamina and speed. Obviously, the last two categories help, but they don’t help you with court sense and keeping the ball inside the lines.
Dear Naive-
Nerve, footwork and smarts require equal parts stamina and speed. You need both to win a tournament. You could have great tennis skills like Mardy Fish or Taylor Dent but you know those guys are carrying way too much weight to strategize a game plan that would survive over a long tournament. The other side is Djoko and Mandy. They both have worked on conditioning to improve their all court game and you can see it paid dividends to both. A little juice goes a long way in recovering between matches.
I’d say it would be ALL about stamina, speed, and power. cyclists, Olympic runners, baseball players, or any athlete for that matter. Its all the same reason/goal.
Cyclists do blood-doping. It helps with their long endurance. Basically getting pumped up with extra blood into their system just before a race. Crazy huh.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_doping
Thanks for the explanation! I guess my tennis playing is on such a primitive level, I don’t worry about speed and stamina. I’m still working on getting the ball over the net! : )
So, do you think doping is a big problem in professional tennis?
Ha! Liz, you an I should play sometime, I think we’re at about the same level
I DON’T think doping is a big problem in pro tennis – as opposed to sports like baseball and cycling. Obviously the “draconian” WADA (World Anti-doping Agency) strictures that the ITF’s signed onto are a big help. As a fan, I am VERY proud of how clean our sport is – and give my baseball-loving friends all kinds of grief for the insane amount of doping that goes on (precisely because such strict testing procedures aren’t in place.)
And as much as doping can give you an advantage in tennis (see Mariano Puerta) I don’t think it gives you a big enough advantage to make it worth the risk. Liz, I’ve hear many pros say the same things your did – that tennis is way too mental a game to benefit that much from doping. Otherwise, we’d see more of it.
In terms of specific players (or elephants), I really prefer not to throw out any names. Innocent until proven guilty, I say, and “doper” is a serious slur. Maybe I’m naive, but I do think that the guys at the top are clean. That said, it will be really interesting to see how this story develops.
Agreed. Tennis is about constant offense/defense strategy.
It will be interesting to hear what the players think.
I will shuffle the elephant out the door.
Haha, TGiT! You and your elephant are free to have a party, here, I just personally don’t like to speculate
(And I do think that Rafa is clean as a whistle, anyway.)
I also think Nadal is clean. Spain has not had a good history with the juice.
If a tennis player ever thought of using performance enhancing drugs, it would have to be at Rolland Garros: 5 sets on the terre battu could drive anyone to artificial help! Nadal and Djokovic used 4 hours for 3 sets. (Of course, about one hour was bouncing the ball before the serve.)
Like everyone else here, I don’t think Nadal has used steroids, despite all those muscles. He is just a weight-lifting fanatic.
My hope (and expectation) is that everyone is clean — certainly all the top players. The bigger risk is that there will be a false positive and some poor guy will have to spend a year of his life trying to clear himself.
I agree that the top players are clean. My thought is that the ones who are the most tempted are the mid-tier players who don’t make the big money and who are looking a way to rise above their talent level.
Reading the article freakyfritters linked to was enlightening. It seems that all the athletes that have tested positive have an innocent explanation for the test results, ala Gasquet and the tampered wine glass. My favorite was the cyclist Tyler Hamilton, who explained why he had another person’s DNA in his sample by saying he had a “vanishing twin.”