Nuxx:4e1b88f8$0$2934$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!goblin1!goblin.stu.neva.ru!feeds.phibee-telecom.net!dedekind.zen.co.uk!zen.net.uk!hamilton.zen.co.uk!reader02.news.zen.co.uk.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <4e1b88f8$0$2934$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: First positive drugs test in Le Tour 2011 Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:36:23 +0100 References:  Lines: 28 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; en-US; rv:1.9.2.18) Gecko/20110616 Thunderbird/3.1.11 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To:  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: Zen Internet NNTP-Posting-Host: 79eb7a83.news.zen.co.uk X-Trace: DXC=23lJ7YG;2d>g@]E`:gcVO0YjZGX^207P;` Russia's Alexandr Kolobnev has become the first rider to fail a doping > test during this year's Tour de France. > > The sport's governing body the UCI said the 30-year-old's urine sample > contained hydrochlorothiazide, a diuretic which is banned in > professional cycling.

Yes, it's well-known that needing to piss more often gives you an unfair advantage in cycling races. (Although maybe he did take this particular drug deliberately in the possibly correct belief that it would somehow help.)

What I find really stupid is that drugs like cannabis are included in doping tests. There is no way that smoking pot two nights earlier is going to enhance a cyclist's performance, though it could quite possibly make it worse. It's obviously only included because it's illegal, and IMV there's no good reason to test for it.

If they must discipline the cyclist for "bringing the sport into disrepute" by using an illegal substance (albeit one which shouldn't be illegal) then OK, although it's a bit "big brother" and if that's the only way they can find out about the weed usage then it obviously wasn't causing too many problems. But if they're going to go down that road then it should be a completely separate charge to cheating, and a far lesser one. It's not right that an athlete's honesty and integrity should be permanently called into question when they weren't cheating and were only relaxing in the same way as millions of other people do.