Thanks.
First, let me correct myself. The article is in “Men’s Journal” Volume 17 #6. July 2008.
This has Jack Johnson on the cover…a great story in itself and wholly a lot more innocent in nature.
As far as KS doping…that was just a random comment I made and I don’t want to suggest that is the case. And you are probably right as far as your assessment/comparison of what would be appropriate (annabolic vs. endurance) substance tweaking for increased performance.
Although the pro surfing circuit provides surfers with challenges of its own, I doubt it has the demands that the cycling tours demand or even more so the frenetic jet lagged 110+ degrees on the court that professional tennis players are subjected to.
Personally I don’t even see how Sharapova, Fed, Rafa, Jokovich, Safin and all the rest can handle that kind of heat while playing at such an extreme and precise level! On the lines shots are the norm for winners and missing by three fingers is coonsidered way out.
We get to drift around in the water while searching for multiple line up points for take off. It’s quite a different dance.
Le Monde’s “MJ” article states there were 8 people in L.A.'s hospital room when he stated to doctors he had in fact taken EPO. Le Monde recorded a phone recording with an Armstrong associate from sponsor Oakley stated he had in fact stated that in the room. She later retracted that statement denying any such thing was said, and a court found Le Monde’s taped phone recording with her inadmissable.
Truth be told, only the people in that room will most likely ever know the truth.
Up until reading this article and had always taken the position that the French where expressing sour grapes over Lance’s consistent strong finishes as he had never, once tested positive for doping. Le Monde himself had one spectacular episode of performance that wowed everyone and it was stated that an injection had been administered directly before that incredible performance but that it was an iron supplement. Well maybe he pulled one over on everyone (too)?
With the recent rumblings of doping in every conceivable sport it is hard for some people to take a solid position. To you just open it up to allowing anything and everything or do you hope the testers can keep up with the chemists developing new ways to produce undetectable doping?
And it gets more complicated than that: did Triple Crown hopeful “Big Brown” lose
the final race because he had been taken off an acceptable drug (lasik I think). Or did he simply choose not to run his best? We may never know.
If you want to drive yourself completely bonkers, you can expand it from there to include pondering if the selective breeding of blacks led to a better slave and provided the foundation for Hitler to believe in a superior race.
But I’ll be the first to want to pull the reins back to how potentially simple surfing can be. In what other sport could you be virtually naked, without and equipment than what you were born with, swim out to the line up and ride a wave?!!
Now that is both simple and beautiful.
P.S.
I haven’t been to the spot you alluded to. It probably is just a ‘common truth’ like the analogy of body surfing.
A Bientot