You can’t blame people for finding the idea of a 90-year-old doper irresistibly absurd (seriously, who’s not gonna click on that headline?), but what’s even more absurd is bothering to test a 90-year-old athlete in the first place. Cycling: It’s the sport so dirty even the nonagenarians cheat. Not only did he suffer the indignity of forfeiting his titles, but through no fault of his own, he reaffirmed the average person’s view of the sport as just one degree removed from professional wrestling. So it’s no surprise that when a 90-year-old masters cyclist tested positive for an anabolic agent-after winning a race in which he was the only entrant-and lost both a national title and a world record, the story spread faster than norovirus in a preschool.Īs it turned out, the real story was that this guy is a serious badass and the positive result was almost certainly due to the double helping of liver to which he decadently treated himself after setting the world record for a 90-year-old in the 500-meter time trial.Ĭonsequently, USADA let him off with a public warning, but the damage was done. Katie Compton can win her 15th stars-and-stripes jersey and the average schlub won’t read a word about it, but when Femke Van den Driessche gets busted with a motor in her bike, it’s everywhere from ESPN to the New York Times. When it comes to sports, most cycling-related news stories don’t resonate beyond the insular world of people who wear Lycra-and when they do, they usually involve outrageous tales of cheating.
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