Over the last few weeks the doping revelations have been coming fast and furious from the world of baseball.
But what exactly are the excuses that athletes use when they are caught with their hand in the EPO, HGH, or Steroid cookie jar?
Over at the blog BicycleSpokesmen.com they just came up with the "Top Ten Doping Excuses For Athletes."
The first couple include:
"1- I was planning on doping, but hadn’t done it yet. This excuse came from cyclist Ivan Basso. Circumstantial evidence from a Spanish police investigation called Operation Puerto indicated that Ivan may have doped.
He denied it. After some of Ivan’s blood was
found in the refrigerator of Madrid gynecologist involved in doping,
Ivan confessed that he was planning to blood dope but had not done
it yet. So he was banned from cycling for “attempted doping.”
2 - It wasn’t me, it was my twin.-
Cyclist Tyler Hamilton failed a test that indicated his blood showed a
“presence of a mixed red blood cell population” - an indication of a
homologous blood transfusion. In other words, the test indicated that
Hamilton had injected himself with someone’s else red blood cells to
increase the oxygen carrying capability of his blood. Hamilton claimed
he was innocent and that the test results were due to a vanishing
twin. A vanishing twin refers to a pregnancy that begins with multiple
fetuses, but then one or more of the fetuses are reabsorbed back into
the mother or the other fetuses. It turns out that the vanishing twin
thing is a scientific possibility (who knew?) and Hamilton’s unborn
bother (or sister) could have accounted for the genetic material that
caused Hamilton’s failed test."
You can read the rest of this very entertaining Top Ten List HERE.