2019 Australian Open Quarterfinals: Nadal vs. Tiafoe

[britbox]

No, we don't. We know what he said, but he's a criminal and a liar. You're so willing to believe what you want to, and unwilling to be skeptical when there is reason to be. You're unwilling to think Roger could be culpable, even faced with reasons to at least scratch the head, but completely convinced about Rafa, even when faced with plenty of reasons why not. You are both naive and agenda-driven.

You can look beyond Fuentes.

https://www.independent.ie/sport/so...ople-might-not-like-the-answers-36943284.html

Even Spain's sports minister admitted they had a problem.

 

[Moxie]

You can look beyond Fuentes.

https://www.independent.ie/sport/so...ople-might-not-like-the-answers-36943284.html

Even Spain's sports minister admitted they had a problem.

That article seems to deal more in cliches and conspiracies than anything else, but I'll take the broken/Front route and watch the tennis for now, and respond with time, thanks.

 

[britbox]

That article seems to deal more in cliches and conspiracies than anything else, but I'll take the broken/Front route and watch the tennis for now, and respond with time, thanks.

Fact: The minister of sport admits a doping problem in Spain.
Fact: The judge in the Fuentes case told him not to name his non-cycling clients
Fact: The judge in the Fuentes case ordered the evidence to be destroyed (the blood bags)

A conspiracy theory to you sounds more like a major cover-up to me... but anyway, enjoy the tennis!

 

[Moxie]

Fact: The minister of sport admits a doping problem in Spain.
Fact: The judge in the Fuentes case told him not to name his non-cycling clients
Fact: The judge in the Fuentes case ordered the evidence to be destroyed (the blood bags)

A conspiracy theory to you sounds more like a major cover-up to me... but anyway, enjoy the tennis!

Don't assume how I'll read it. Give me time to read and respond, as I asked for.

 

[britbox]

Don't assume how I'll read it. Give me time to respond, as I asked for.

How you interpret a weather forecast doesn't mean it's not raining outside. Sure, respond whenever you like.

 

[Moxie]

How you interpret a weather forecast doesn't mean it's not raining outside. Sure, respond whenever you like.

Thanks for leaving the doors of discussion open. B-)

 

[Front242]

I'd never heard that quote before, so I went looking for it and didn't find it. If you have a link, I'd be interested. I've always found it surprising how willing you are to believe Fuentes. He also says that he did nothing but help his athletes whose blood was a bit too thin, which I would assume you'd say is a lie. What are the chances that other things he's said are lies and self-serving?

I'm not making this shit up about your beloved Spain. It's the truth.

https://sports.vice.com/en_ca/artic...beautiful-game-need-to-confront-an-ugly-truth

"I've worked with Spanish football teams from the first and second divisions that have improved their performance," Fuentes said in an interview with a Spanish radio station. "If I talk Spain would be stripped of the World Cup and European Championship."

There's a nice bit about PRP for you too and I've pointed this out multiples times over the years that it's no surprise Nadal's 2 best seasons (2010 and 2013) came after his PRP treatments.

"We have had some players come to us at Arsenal from other clubs around the world and their red blood cell count has been abnormally high," Arsene Wenger explained in 2004. "That kind of thing makes you wonder. There are clubs who dope their players without the players knowing. Their club might say that they were being injected with vitamins and their players would not necessarily know that it was something different."

Wenger might be referring to the use of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) – or blood-spinning as it is more commonly known – in football. The practice has not long been removed from WADA's banned list, making PRP technically legal, even when most spun blood has been supplemented with other substances and additives before it is re-injected back into the athlete's stream.

 

[Front242]

You can look beyond Fuentes.

https://www.independent.ie/sport/so...ople-might-not-like-the-answers-36943284.html

Even Spain's sports minister admitted they had a problem.

Cheers for that. Posted links over the years too that their prime minister is aware of it but as usual the delusional ones just ignored it. It wasn't even an offense to dope in Spain until 2006 lol. Laughable.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/o...ith-football-boxing-tennis-and-athletics.html

The first to be called to the stand, Fuentes detailed the procedures he administered to athletes but insisted they posed no risk to their health.

He and four others are accused of involvement in the widespread doping of professional cyclists but are charged with breaking public-health laws rather than incitement to doping, which was not a crime in Spain until late 2006.

^ One more time, truly laughable. And to the delusional ones in denial again, no, he wasn't lying about working with tennis players.

“I worked with cyclists but also footballers, boxers, tennis players and athletes".

 

[Moxie]

Cheers for that. Posted links over the years too that their prime minister is aware of it but as usual the delusional ones just ignored it. It wasn't even an offense to dope in Spain until 2006 lol. Laughable.
He and four others are accused of involvement in the widespread doping of professional cyclists but are charged with breaking public-health laws rather than incitement to doping, which was not a crime in Spain until late 2006.

You've gone back to laughing at Spain for sports doping not being a crime until 2006. You seem to have forgotten that I told you not along ago that that is around the same time as the US (which criminalized only steroids,) and that as of last March, there is still no criminalization of doping in the UK. So stop sneering at Spain for this in every thread where it's discussed, as if their not having anti-doping laws "meant" something.

 

[Moxie]

Fact: The minister of sport admits a doping problem in Spain.
Fact: The judge in the Fuentes case told him not to name his non-cycling clients
Fact: The judge in the Fuentes case ordered the evidence to be destroyed (the blood bags)

A conspiracy theory to you sounds more like a major cover-up to me... but anyway, enjoy the tennis!

I read your article. I do object that it puts right up front the Guignols sketch slagging Rafa, when the article is really about doping in football, above all. I won't say that Spain doesn't have a doping problem, when they say they do, but they have high-profile athletes, so they are going to be scrutinized. Did you look at what I posted as to where they fall on the WADA list? I wonder why you put up that article at all, really. Is it just because I say that it's wrong for some types to implicate Spain more than others, creating the impression that Spain is a top source of doping athletes, when WADA says otherwise? If it was so corrupt, why launch Operation Puerto in the first place? Why try Dr. Fuentes? The article goes down a list at the end, going for a where-there's-smoke-there's-fire implication. Clearly, there is some fire there. But many keep trying to say that the smoke wafts over onto Rafa, when the association is tenuous, at best. Yes, he's Spanish. Lots of other countries are worse, according to WADA, as far as things that we know and that have come out. US, France, Belgium, Russia, Australia? Your article cites Zidane talking to Halliday about where to get his blood doped, and France is high on the WADA list, and yet you're happy to see the French look down their noses at the Spanish, cast aspersions, and give that some credence. All of these other high listed countries have tennis players, yet no one constantly makes insinuating remarks about those players, even when American and Russian tennis players, for example have been caught. The clear answer is that the vested interest in Spain being especially egregious, around here, is to try to implicate Nadal, and that, by and large by Federer fans. It is just as clear why.

 

[Moxie]

This is a quote that an inmate alleges Fuentes said. Just to be clear. Not that it changes the general point since that was a shitshow and Spain should be ashamed from the way it handled it but you're better off looking for slightly more reliable sources

I see your previous post is pretty long so I'll get to it tomorrow.

I, for one, am still hoping you come back to this. Otherwise, it's just me in the wilderness, trying to combat these guys who say all kinds of crap and then just leave it hanging.

 

[Chris Koziarz]

The infamous Fuentes said "If I would talk, the Spanish football team would be stripped of the 2010 World Cup." That says all you need to know about Spain..

I'd never heard that quote before, so I went looking for it and didn't find it. If you have a link, I'd be interested. I've always found it surprising how willing you are to believe Fuentes. He also says that he did nothing but help his athletes whose blood was a bit too thin, which I would assume you'd say is a lie. What are the chances that other things he's said are lies and self-serving?

How could you've missed a quote in question, Moxie? It's reported on Fuentes wiki article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eufemiano_Fuentes
Original source comes from Belgium and is in French:
https://www.sudinfo.be/gps?path=sports/foot_international/2010-12-13/831186.shtml
I think you have no problem reading the original. Therein: "Cette phrase, il l'aurait dite à ses compagnons de cellule, selon le quotidien espagnol Marca"
You can search if Marca published anything in Spanish (which would be his original words) but I would not bother. The prison talk to a cellmate by a convicted criminal is as reliable as my yesterday's dreams. Likely he has invented the idea of stripping Spain of their cup to boost his ego and create publicity around him. No one picked up the plot except Sud Info.

 

[britbox]

I read your article. I do object that it puts right up front the Guignols sketch slagging Rafa, when the article is really about doping in football, above all. I won't say that Spain doesn't have a doping problem, when they say they do, but they have high-profile athletes, so they are going to be scrutinized. Did you look at what I posted as to where they fall on the WADA list? I wonder why you put up that article at all, really. Is it just because I say that it's wrong for some types to implicate Spain more than others, creating the impression that Spain is a top source of doping athletes, when WADA says otherwise? If it was so corrupt, why launch Operation Puerto in the first place? Why try Dr. Fuentes? The article goes down a list at the end, going for a where-there's-smoke-there's-fire implication. Clearly, there is some fire there. But many keep trying to say that the smoke wafts over onto Rafa, when the association is tenuous, at best. Yes, he's Spanish. Lots of other countries are worse, according to WADA, as far as things that we know and that have come out. US, France, Belgium, Russia, Australia? Your article cites Zidane talking to Halliday about where to get his blood doped, and France is high on the WADA list, and yet you're happy to see the French look down their noses at the Spanish, cast aspersions, and give that some credence. All of these other high listed countries have tennis players, yet no one constantly makes insinuating remarks about those players, even when American and Russian tennis players, for example have been caught. The clear answer is that the vested interest in Spain being especially egregious, around here, is to try to implicate Nadal, and that, by and large by Federer fans. It is just as clear why.

Ok, some disclosure - my interest/curiosity in sports doping existed a long time before Rafa... I followed cycling closely for many years, so rest assured that has nothing to do with being a "Fed fan"... I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if all of the top players are taking stuff. What I did like about Federer however, was his suggestion of keeping samples for 10 years for retrospective testing and his career-long support of testing procedures when others have complained. That doesn't mean he isn't doping but I find it slightly less likely.....

You might want to believe that Spain's relationship with sports doping is no different than anywhere else... purely on the basis of athletes testing positive, you're not far wrong... but outside of that, I don't agree.

Spain was a hub for doping in cycling. Many of the top cyclists lived in Spain to avoid the criminality issue of France and Italy. The top doping doctors were generally Spanish and Italian when it came to cycling. If a cyclist or team worked with any of these guys, it was obvious they were doping... the company they kept spoke volumes. A lot of these cyclists never tested positive by the way... few of the top guys did... but as we know that didn't mean much.

So we had legendary doping doctors like Conconi, Ferrari (Italian) and disciples like Fuentes, del Moral and others (Spain).

As we are increasingly aware... some of these "doctors" ended up getting into other sports including tennis and football.

 

[Moxie]

Ok, some disclosure - my interest/curiosity in sports doping existed a long time before Rafa... I followed cycling closely for many years, so rest assured that has nothing to do with being a "Fed fan"... I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if all of the top players are taking stuff. What I did like about Federer however, was his suggestion of keeping samples for 10 years for retrospective testing and his career-long support of testing procedures when others have complained. That doesn't mean he isn't doping but I find it slightly less likely.....

You might want to believe that Spain's relationship with sports doping is no different than anywhere else... purely on the basis of athletes testing positive, you're not far wrong... but outside of that, I don't agree.

Spain was a hub for doping in cycling. Many of the top cyclists lived in Spain to avoid the criminality issue of France and Italy. The top doping doctors were generally Spanish and Italian when it came to cycling. If a cyclist or team worked with any of these guys, it was obvious they were doping... the company they kept spoke volumes. A lot of these cyclists never tested positive by the way... few of the top guys did... but as we know that didn't mean much.

So we had legendary doping doctors like Conconi, Ferrari (Italian) and disciples like Fuentes, del Moral and others (Spain).

As we are increasingly aware... some of these "doctors" ended up getting into other sports including tennis and football.

It's long been obvious that you have a fascination with the doping. It seems to get you more excited than tennis. A couple of things don't make sense above: Cyclists went to Spanish doctors to avoid the criminality issues in France and Italy, but then you say the doping doctors are Spanish and Italian. Not quite clear. But I do understand your point, if Spain was a place for other athletes to come to see doping doctors, which tells us that athletes who get doped could be from anywhere. Means nothing that the doctors happened to be IN Spain. My objection is to Spanish athletes getting singled out, by association. Another irritation is that so much is made of the jokes and sneering from the French at the Spanish athletes, when it looks like the French have such a worse record, and yet people take all those French comments to heart. Aren't you basically saying that French athletes came to Spain to dope? Or, as in your article, to Switzerland? Is that about Spain or Switzerland, more than the French athletes? You're saying that Spain has had dodgy doctors that service the world. That doesn't paint Spanish athletes.

Also, now the laws have changed in Spain, so that must change something, if that's why people avoid France and Italy, according to you. Anyway, you understand my basic objections: firstly that Front and Darth say the same erroneous/spurious things over and over again. I provide counter-point, even evidence to the contrary, then they bail on the conversation whenever they have no answer, but then start again later with the same shit. The next time Front says "Spain didn't even have laws against doping until 2006, LOL" I hope you're there to help me to remind him that same is true of US and that UK doesn't even now. I can't keep googling the same stuff for him over and over. Basically, they play a cheaters game here. I debate them, even trying to take it to a separate thread, so as not to derail other ones. They bail out every time I make points they can't combat, and then just go back to making slurs on all regular threads. When I go back to my Sisyphean task of trying to show them again where they're wrong, you, for one, could at least help me remind them that some of these points have been made before, given that it's a topic that you're interested in. I know why everyone stays away when we get into the weeds on this, but I don't think you have the same excuse.

 

[britbox]

It's long been obvious that you have a fascination with the doping. It seems to get you more excited than tennis. A couple of things don't make sense above: Cyclists went to Spanish doctors to avoid the criminality issues in France and Italy, but then you say the doping doctors are Spanish and Italian. Not quite clear. But I do understand your point, if Spain was a place for other athletes to come to see doping doctors, which tells us that athletes who get doped could be from anywhere. Means nothing that the doctors happened to be IN Spain. My objection is to Spanish athletes getting singled out, by association. Another irritation is that so much is made of the jokes and sneering from the French at the Spanish athletes, when it looks like the French have such a worse record, and yet people take all those French comments to heart. Aren't you basically saying that French athletes came to Spain to dope? Or, as in your article, to Switzerland? Is that about Spain or Switzerland, more than the French athletes? You're saying that Spain has had dodgy doctors that service the world. That doesn't paint Spanish athletes.

Also, now the laws have changed in Spain, so that must change something, if that's why people avoid France and Italy, according to you. Anyway, you understand my basic objections: firstly that Front and Darth say the same erroneous/spurious things over and over again. I provide counter-point, even evidence to the contrary, then they bail on the conversation whenever they have no answer, but then start again later with the same shit. The next time Front says "Spain didn't even have laws against doping until 2006, LOL" I hope you're there to help me to remind him that same is true of US and that UK doesn't even now. I can't keep googling the same stuff for him over and over. Basically, they play a cheaters game here. I debate them, even trying to take it to a separate thread, so as not to derail other ones. They bail out every time I make points they can't combat, and then just go back to making slurs on all regular threads. When I go back to my Sisyphean task of trying to show them again where they're wrong, you, for one, could at least help me remind them that some of these points have been made before, given that it's a topic that you're interested in. I know why everyone stays away when we get into the weeds on this, but I don't think you have the same excuse.

Absolutely right on the athletes - there was a broad spectrum of nationalities visiting these doping doctors... and if you research it closely, then you'll find a tree of doping doctors.

But some might say you protest too much at the Spanish association... I mean Front for instance, has been calling out Errani, Safina and Ferrer for years regarding their connection to the Valencia Academy and Del Moral... how many of these are Spanish? One out of three.

However, I'll give you some more history on Fuentes... yes, he has worked with a rainbow of nationalities, but he's also worked with the Spanish Olympic team and top football clubs.

Fuentes worked with Spanish Olympic team before the 1992 Olympics. I'm not sure if you know this or not. His own wife was an Olympic athlete who failed a drug test. The Spanish got rid of him shortly before the Olympics because of his reputation.

His wife (Cristina Perez) competed in those games, and was on record after the Operacion Peurto raids saying "I know what happened at Barcelona '92 and I'm a Pandora's Box that, if opened one day, could bring down sport"

The Spanish team won 13 golds. A pretty good return considering they had won 4 golds in the previous 92 years.

Fuentes moved from track and field into cycling and then later into football and by his own admission worked with tennis players.

Now, I'll ask you this with regard to Operacion Puerto...

Why would a judge tell Fuentes specifically not to name his non-cycling clients? Particularly when he offered to name them?
Why would a judge order the evidence (the blood bags) to be destroyed?

All of this information is factual, not hearsay (apart from Perez's comment).

Do you think there might be a hint of a huge national scandal on the horizon?

 

[britbox]

By the way Moxie, this is very incestuous... the 1996 Spanish Olympic Cycling Team had no other than Luis García del Moral as their "physician/doctor" (yes, the same guy who was at the Valencia Academy mentioned by Front on numerous occasions). del Moral would later testify that he hired Michele Ferrari and paid for ban drugs.

Small world eh? You might recall that Ferrari was Lance Armstrong's personal physician, a disciple of Francesco Conconi.

Both del Moral and Ferrari would of course be later banned from sport for life.

Cycling eh? All these fricken doctors and sports scientists... horrible mix.

 

[Moxie]

Absolutely right on the athletes - there was a broad spectrum of nationalities visiting these doping doctors... and if you research it closely, then you'll find a tree of doping doctors.

But some might say you protest too much at the Spanish association... I mean Front for instance, has been calling out Errani, Safina and Ferrer for years regarding their connection to the Valencia Academy and Del Moral... how many of these are Spanish? One out of three.

However, I'll give you some more history on Fuentes... yes, he has worked with a rainbow of nationalities, but he's also worked with the Spanish Olympic team and top football clubs.

Fuentes worked with Spanish Olympic team before the 1992 Olympics. I'm not sure if you know this or not. His own wife was an Olympic athlete who failed a drug test. The Spanish got rid of him shortly before the Olympics because of his reputation.

His wife (Cristina Perez) competed in those games, and was on record after the Operacion Peurto raids saying "I know what happened at Barcelona '92 and I'm a Pandora's Box that, if opened one day, could bring down sport"

The Spanish team won 13 golds. A pretty good return considering they had won 4 golds in the previous 92 years.

Fuentes moved from track and field into cycling and then later into football and by his own admission worked with tennis players.

Now, I'll ask you this with regard to Operacion Puerto...

Why would a judge tell Fuentes specifically not to name his non-cycling clients? Particularly when he offered to name them?
Why would a judge order the evidence (the blood bags) to be destroyed?

All of this information is factual, not hearsay (apart from Perez's comment).

Do you think there might be a hint of a huge national scandal on the horizon?

TBH, I don't take the deep dive into these things that you guys like to, so I didn't know all this history. But some might say that you and the other two also emphasize Spain's drug history a bit more than is strictly necessary. You mention Errani and Safina, who hale from countries that come off overall worse in terms of positively tested athletes. And if Safina, why not Safin? He's also Russian, and trained in Valencia for long enough to speak very fluent Spanish. (I say that with full awareness that we were both big fans.) There must be a few other countries you could tell similar stories about. Like Russia, if there were more transparency. I say again, I think the insistence on continually pointing to dirty doctors in Spain...and these are pretty old stories, for the most part...is agenda-driven on the part of Front and Darth. You just seemed to want to disabuse me personally as to Spain. But you make a clear point that dirty athletes will travel to find doctors they can work with, so it doesn't necessarily speak to Spanish athletes, or the one they're trying to point fingers at, in particular. If you're pointing to the Spanish athletic federations, then there's actually another argument against Nadal in particular doping: he declined to go the the Federation as a teenager, but to keep training at home with his uncle.

And then there's Darth again, over on a troll thread, claiming that Nadal is a juicer. I counter his arguments and theories. He goes silent when he runs out of any decent argument and can't counter back, then just carries on where he left off with the slander. It's exasperating, as well as being a filthy cheat on debate.

 

[britbox]

Listen, doping has been prevalent in sports since the beginning of time... there are no two ways about it. I've raised points in other threads that there is an asthma epidemic in the British Olympic team... (treating asthma is a fallback argument for the detection of various substances/cloaking agents).

Taking any illegal substances is cheating but blood doping particularly can be a real game changer. Now, unfortunately, practitioners in Italy and Spain were pioneers in this field. Sure, there were plenty of different nationalities using the services of these doctors, but it was skewed to toward a disproportionate number of Italian and Spanish sports stars. The difference between Spain and Italy? The Italians made a far more serious effort to clean things up rather than brush things under the table.

On the old cycling forums, there was much sniggering and rolling of eyes about licensed doping controllers working in the sport as doctors. One was actually Angel Ruiz-Cotorro who worked with the spanish olympic teams and was also a doctor for the Catalan Cycling Federation. That's Rafa Nadal's personal doctor if you didn't know.

 

[Front242]

^ The writing is on the wall, bitches haha.

 

[Moxie]

Listen, doping has been prevalent in sports since the beginning of time... there are no two ways about it. I've raised points in other threads that there is an asthma epidemic in the British Olympic team... (treating asthma is a fallback argument for the detection of various substances/cloaking agents).

Taking any illegal substances is cheating but blood doping particularly can be a real game changer. Now, unfortunately, practitioners in Italy and Spain were pioneers in this field. Sure, there were plenty of different nationalities using the services of these doctors, but it was skewed to toward a disproportionate number of Italian and Spanish sports stars. The difference between Spain and Italy? The Italians made a far more serious effort to clean things up rather than brush things under the table.

On the old cycling forums, there was much sniggering and rolling of eyes about licensed doping controllers working in the sport as doctors. One was actually Angel Ruiz-Cotorro who worked with the spanish olympic teams and was also a doctor for the Catalan Cycling Federation. That's Rafa Nadal's personal doctor if you didn't know.

If Italy was trying so hard, how come they come so high on the WADA list I provided? What about France? (Never mind Russia.) And what about Safin? It seems clear that you are intent on hammering on Spain, and also as clear why. You can drop your pretense at neutrality, then. "I'm interested as a hobby." You'd be interested in other countries, too, then, I'd think.