Sex, pigeons and vengeful massage therapists

[muriel_volestrangler]

What's that, you say? Clickbait? No, it's a list of bad excuses for failing drug tests:

In 1998, after testing positive for high levels of testosterone, the American sprinter Dennis Mitchell blamed the result on alcohol (five beers) and sex (four times the previous night). It was his wife’s birthday, he said. ‘The lady deserved a treat.’ After failing three drugs tests in 2009 and 2010, the Olympic gold medallist LaShawn Merritt attributed the result to a ‘product I used for personal reasons’: the penis-enhancement drug ExtenZe. The Belgian cyclist Björn Leukemans, suspended for doping in 2008, claimed that high levels of testosterone appeared in his urine because drug testers interrupted him having sex with his wife. Anti-doping officials said that no amount of sex could explain the levels of synthetic testosterone in his blood.

If it isn’t sex, it’s food. The Dutch cyclist Adri van der Poel tested positive for a banned substance in 1983. He blamed the racing pigeons his father-in-law had put in a pie. The Czech tennis player Petr Korda tested positive for steroids in 1998. He said he had eaten veal injected with steroids. According to investigators, he would have had to have eaten 40 calves a day for 20 years to account for the steroids in his system. Alberto Contador, testing positive for clenbuterol during the 2010 Tour de France, said he’d eaten steak tainted with the substance. He’d felt ‘morally obliged’ to eat it, because a friend had brought the meat all the way from Spain.

Others have resorted to the classic defence ‘it wasn’t me’. The sprinter Justin Gatlin said that a ‘vengeful massage therapist’ had spread steroid cream on him after a race in 2006. The Olympic gold medallist Ben Johnson said that someone had spiked his energy drink with stanozolol (he later admitted to doping). After testing positive for cocaine in 1999, the Cuban high jumper Javier Sotomayor said someone had set him up to make Cuba look bad; Fidel Castro backed him up, accusing the ‘Cuban-American mafia’. (Sotomayor failed another drugs test in 2001.)

http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/08/08/nikita-lalwani/sex-pigeons-and-vengeful-massage-therapists/

[mythology]

1. Anything to avoid responsibility

Cheaters should face lengthy bans.