Doping in sport

For a man that "doesn't care about the olympics" he still seems to be tweeting a fair bit about it, bitter coont

The record she smashed was one of those set by the drugged up Chinese athletes in the late 90's. Says it all.

Rowing doping cases (globally) are for some, or various reasons, absolutely tiny. Either the sport isn't tested as much as other sports (and I have no idea whether it is or isn't, hiya there Tennis) , or for some or various reasons, it seems to be a cleaner sport than many others. 

The Cork boys didn't shatter any world records, and unlike some of their competitors, they couldn't even stand up immediately after the race, such was their great effort, the results of their physical exertions were there to see live on TV for all of us. 

To be honest, if it proved to be the case that only 6 athletes out of the entire Olympic Village weren't on drugs, I would reckon these 2 would account for a third of them. There isn't a single shred of evidence to say otherwise, no world record times, gradual improvement over a few years, talent flagged in advance (by the Independent 2 weeks ago, among others) , no record of training with known dopers, always been competitive to some degree in their careers so far, at a young enough age (for rowers) to be on an improvement curve. 

If you want to go with Kimmage's blunt analysis of suspected Olympic dopers, ie '' If you lie with dogs, you might catch fleas'', there simply aren't any fleas to be seen, unless someone can tell me different.

And other than boxing, and other than Carruth in 1992, that too relatively recent (and the laughably discredited swimming medals of Michelle Smith De Bruin) , we don't really win medals at anything much, we may not be noted for rowing olympic medals, but we have had several world championships/champions & european championships/champions in the sport, as well as a few close (4th place) finishes in previous olympics, it isn't as if the 2 lads are from a landlocked country with no water or lakes that only took up the sport 3 weeks ago either, you would only have to be aware of the career of RTE rowing analyst Neville Maxwell to know that. 

There are, like the womens 10,000 metres victor this evening, more than single red flags when it comes to suspected dopers, and the Cork lads don't even raise as much as a yellow one.