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Tennis Volume 6


Calibandar

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I was watching the highlights of the Federer vs Djokovic semi final here and the thing that just kept cominbg up was, yes, Federer, you're still very very good, and you are still able to dominate guys from the baseline as well, but as 90% of these rallies show, that is *still* not your winning tactic against Djokovic, why aren't you at the net far far more, especially when you see how you win points against him when you do go to the net rather than be dragged into a long rally.

I don't get it, it alsmost seems sheer stubbornness on his part not to do it.

 

 

 

 

 

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New revelation made itself known to the tennis world last week.

 

An 18 year old American called Taylor Fritz surprised friend and foe by reaching the final of what is only his 3rd ATP tournament.

Beat a couple of midlevel guys on the way to the final with impressive play, and was ultimately beaten in a good final by the incredibly craft Kei Nishikori. Saw that final, he actually gave a very good account of himself but Nishikori couldn't be beaten, not in the final or in any of the previous rounds.

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Just looked up the tournament you mentioned, and it's in 250 series which makes it not top notch, but still good enough for a player so young to raise a few eyebrows by reaching the final.

On the other hand, the kid's played 3 tournaments, reached one 250 series final and is already #102. How is that possible? Just looked him up on ATP World Tour website and he has a total of 564 points and a few more than 3 tournaments played (and a couple of trophies). Seems promising enough and it will be interesting to see how well Fritz does in the future.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The only weird thing about this is that so few tennis players test positive for doping, or it would be if I had a high opinion of doping controls performed in tennis. Or football or basketball or pretty much any very high income professional sport.

Honestly, guys having 10+ hours of match time within 48 hours should be a huge red flag for everyone.

The only two guys I remember getting banned for doping in recent years are Čilić (got the ban overturned rather quickly) and Troicki (served about a year worth of suspension). What are the odds of two of them being the only ones doing it. And just to spice it all up, Čilić turned out to be wrongly accused and Troicki was suspended for not providing sample, not because he was caught doping.

 

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The only weird thing about this is that so few tennis players test positive for doping, or it would be if I had a high opinion of doping controls performed in tennis. Or football or basketball or pretty much any very high income professional sport.

Honestly, guys having 10+ hours of match time within 48 hours should be a huge red flag for everyone.

The only two guys I remember getting banned for doping in recent years are Čilić (got the ban overturned rather quickly) and Troicki (served about a year worth of suspension). What are the odds of two of them being the only ones doing it. And just to spice it all up, Čilić turned out to be wrongly accused and Troicki was suspended for not providing sample, not because he was caught doping.

 

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2 hours ago, baxus said:

The only two guys I remember getting banned for doping in recent years are Čilić (got the ban overturned rather quickly) and Troicki (served about a year worth of suspension). What are the odds of two of them being the only ones doing it. And just to spice it all up, Čilić turned out to be wrongly accused and Troicki was suspended for not providing sample, not because he was caught doping.

 

The one that I always remember is that guy who Rafa beat in the final of Roland Garros when he won it for the first time. The dude was relatively unknown and popped right after the tournament IIRC. 

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It's just that the whole fight against doping in most profitable sports is a joke.

Does anyone remember a football player who got caught? Maradona, Mutu and a few others got busted for cocaine use, Rio Ferdinand got suspended for test evasion and that's about it. I don't remember a single basketball player getting suspended either. As we've already said, tennis players' suspensions are too few and too far between for what we see them do on a regular basis.

The only sports that are actually going after doping and are not afraid to hunt down their stars are cycling and weight-lifting. And the worst thing is they are regarded as if they had more of a doping problem than those others.

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11 hours ago, baxus said:

 

The only two guys I remember getting banned for doping in recent years are Čilić (got the ban overturned rather quickly) and Troicki (served about a year worth of suspension). What are the odds of two of them being the only ones doing it. 

 

Maybe it's more prevalent in the Balkans.

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7 minutes ago, Calibandar said:

Maybe it's more prevalent in the Balkans.

Perhaps... But I didn't know that the likes of Justin Gatlin, Floyd Landis, Lance Armstrong, MLB, Festina, Dwain Chambers, Marion Jones, Barry Bonds, Maradona, Ben Johnson... are all from Balkans.

But even if we solely look at tennis and as baxus said, it has been proven that Cilic was wrongly accused and that Troicki wasn't even caught on doping, just that he failed to answer the call. So, no, it is not prevalent at Balkans and their, 30-50 professional players.

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1 hour ago, baxus said:

The only sports that are actually going after doping and are not afraid to hunt down their stars are cycling and weight-lifting. And the worst thing is they are regarded as if they had more of a doping problem than those others.

It's happening in MMA or to be more precise, the UFC. They partnered with USADA recently and implemented a pretty stringent random blood/urine testing program. Bunch of people caught already some pretty high profile. 

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21 minutes ago, Gears of the Beast said:

It's happening in MMA or to be more precise, the UFC. They partnered with USADA recently and implemented a pretty stringent random blood/urine testing program. Bunch of people caught already some pretty high profile. 

It's always good to hear that more sports are getting in on the action.

Either that, or allow everything and let sports be competitions between various kinds of doctors.

1 hour ago, Calibandar said:

Maybe it's more prevalent in the Balkans.

The thing with things prevalent in the Balkans is that they are more likely to diminish athletic performance than enhance it.

Fatty food, loads of meat, insane amounts of alcohol... Not really going to help you reach that top 10 spot, let alone #1.

1 minute ago, Leap said:

Would be disappointing to find out that a lot of tennis players are doping. Tennis as a sport always seemed more sportsmanlike than football, for example - so essentially I feel the same way about this as I did about the match fixing allegations. I doubt that it's that prevalent, but that's mostly because I'm in denial about my favourite sport being corrupt. Plus, after Tennis the sport I follow most is in fact cycling, so my doping-senses are not used to tingling. 

Tennis players are doping, have no doubt about that. It's just a matter of when certain substances will get on the banned list.

Sharapova has been using the same medicine for years now, it's just that it showed up on banned substance list this year and she "didn't read the whole list".

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13 minutes ago, Leap said:

The BBC article I read said that in her statement, she explained it by saying her drug was prescribed by a family doctor, and took a different name to the banned substance that the ITF warned her about. 

Guessing her doctor used the trade name and WADA used the chemical name. To show via a different example, if I type "ventolin" into the WADA list search, it comes up with nothing, but "salbutamol" gives a result. They're the same thing.

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To be honest, I'd say that two years would definitely be an overkill in this situation.

If she really used the same medicine for years now and has the proper medical documentation to back up such a claim, there is no reason not to reduce her suspension. Of course, if she continues using it then she should be punished more severely.

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I generally don't believe anyone who was caught red-handed, but there is something that irks me about this. I am nit forgiving when it comes to doping and I do think it is the worst type of behavior, but in this case, I believe Sharapowa and the way she came clean about what happened to her installs some confidence. 

On the other hand, as baxus said, the doping is a moving thing. What is acceptable today, probably won't be tomorrow and I know that keeping records of what is banned isn't as easy as one would think. Lastly as my grandma said about Djokovic "he isn't winning them by eating seeds". Medications are part of the sport and the line with ever-changing rules can be blurry.

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