The A-Z of doping

Tyler Hamilton, one of Lance Armstrong's former lieutenants tells all in his Autobiographical book 'The Secret Race'. In this no holds barred account, Hamilton openly reveals the lengths that some cyclists will go to in order to win. I've decided to review 'The secret race' in an A-Z of doping format

A is for Armstrong. The Alpha male who acquired the help of the 'best' doctors in order to stay ahead of the game. Much of this book is focused on Armstrong's doping.

B is for Blood Bags or as Tyler Hamilton cunningly coded them BBs, used for blood transfusions. Riders like Hamilton would collect their own blood into bags and re-inject the blood back into their system, usually during the rest days of big races.

C is for Cortisone. The drug Armstrong tested positive for whilst winning the TDF in 1999. He, like many others, got away with it by producing a medical reason for needing the cortisone.

D is for Denial. Nearly every cyclist accused of doping has denied it, at least at first.

E is for Edgar, the code word used for the blood boosting super drug EPO.

F is for France, who commendably have much stricter controls on doping than other European countries like Spain

G is Glowing. Glowing refers to the time period after doping when a cyclist would test positive. Hamilton told of how is ex-wife Haven would cover for him and pretend he was out if a tester showed up whilst he was glowing.

Tyler Hamilton taking Gold at the 2004 Olympic Time trial

H is for Haematocrit. The percentage of red blood cells in your blood had to be as close to 50% if you were going to contest the Tour de France. Bjarne Riis apparently had a haematocrit level of 56% when he won the Tour in 1996.

I is Ingenuity. The cyclists who were doping had to think of ever more elaborate ways to use their doping products. The US Postal team reportedly staged a breakdown in order to administer EPO in the safety of their team bus.

J is for Jail. Spain's long-running Operation Puerto doping saga will finally reach the inside of a courtroom in January, nearly seven years after the case started. Sports Doctor Eufemiano faces the possibility of a prison sentence.

K is for Kimmage, the hard hitting anti-doping journalist who's spear-heading the fight against drugs in cycling. Paul Kimmage famous for feuding with Lance Armstrong; his views are uncompromising and his work is really worth reading.

L is for Lies. Dopers not only have to lie to the UCI but often to their friends, family and often even partners. This often causes them to feel very isolated

M is for Money. There is big money in cycling. Top riders can become millionaires so it is worth their while doping. Dr Fuentes, who reportedly treated top cyclists Ivan Basso, Tyler Hamilton, Jan Ullrich and Alberto Contador made tens of thousands of pounds off each of the cyclists he helped, demonstrating how lucrative it could be for the doctors also.

N is for No going back. Once a cyclist has doped he is committed. It's very unlikely that a rider will go clean after trying a doping product.

O is for Omerta. The secret world of doping is protected by the code of silence that exists within professional cycling.

P is for Paranoia. Dopers have to live in constant fear of having their whole world turned upside down at any moment.

Q is for Quiet. which descends whenever a doper gets caught out. Very rarely do you get any of the professionals commenting on dopers.

R is for reality. Tyler Hamilton paints a vivid picture of the quasi-reality of being a professional cyclist. A world where pushing your body beyond normal limits both in terms of training and weight loss becomes the norm.

S is syringes. Vitamin shots, cortisone, EPO and blood transfusions all relied on syringes, which are now banned at UCI races.

T is for Testosterone. Cyclists would often take testosterone to help with recovery. In 2006 Floyd Landis tested positive for testosterone after winning the Tour de France. According to Hamilton, testosterone doesn't make nearly as much difference as blood altering products.

U is for the UCI who contributed to the madness which was the 1990s and 2000s. They need to not be scared of the bad publicity associated with doping scandal. It is more important to out dopers than to save face.

Vaughters suffered from a bee sting in 2001

V is for Vaughters. Jonathan Vaughters famously quit the 2001 Tour de France after being prevented from taking a cortisone shot by his Credit Agricole team. He had not registered cortisone on his medical record before the race, so using it would have risked a positive test and a ban.

W is for winning. That natural human desire which makes it inevitable that there will always be those who will push the boundaries in order to win.

X is for eXplosive - This book is really fascinating and provides an extensive account of the doping in cycling.

Y is for yellow. The one race non-cycling fans focus on is the Tour de France. Winners of the Tour are naturally going to come under suspicion thanks to the race's history of doping.

Z is for Zebra. Because it's black and white. Doping is wrong and more needs to be done to flush it out of cycling.

NFL 2012 Predictions

If you know nothing about the NFL I really would recommend it. There aren't many better ways to spend your Sunday evening, so pick a team and get involved. Basically there are 32 teams split into 2 conferences, the AFC and NFC (the American Football Conference and the National Football Conference) each with 4 divisions (North, East South & West) of 4 teams. That's 8 divisions in total. Each team plays 16 regular season games and the top 12 teams make it to the playoffs and have the chance to win the Super Bowl. 

Here's who I think will win each division. 

AFC American Football Conference

AFC East

AFC North

AFC EAST -New England Patriots. The NFL's yardstick team will be after homefield advantage again. I think the Jets will be competitive, with Miami and Buffalo battling for 3rd. 

AFC North - Baltimore Ravens. The Steelers have not made any exciting additions to their team. The Bengals could cause an upset. I don't expect much from the Browns.

AFC South - Houston Texans. Way too soon for Indy and I'm not buying the Jags or Titans. 

AFC West - Denver Broncos. Got to the playoffs with Tebow, Manning is an upgrade though this division will be tight. 

Wild Cards from - Raiders, Steelers, Bengals, Jets.

AFC South

AFC West

NFC - National Football Conference

NFC North

NFC East

NFC East - Dallas Cowboys. Giants will suffer a Superbowl hangover. The Redskins great start will prove a false dawn. I expect  inconsistency from the Eagles.

NFC North - Chicago Bears. They've got the defence to beat Green Bay and Detroit. Vikings should see a slight improvement.

NFC South Atlanta Falcons - the most solid all round team in the division. The Saints will miss Payton. Cam Newton needs help and the Bucs are transitioning.

NFC West San Francisco - No dramas. Too tough. Cardinals, Hawks and Rams will fight for second and a possible wildcard spot

Wild Cards Green Bay and one from NFC East. 

NFC South

NFC West

The beauty of the NFL is that its so hard to predict and there are always surprises along the way. I'm very likely to be completely wrong but it's here in print now so come and find me in February (the end of the season) .Here's to an exciting season.

It's Football, not Baseball but can it work?

If Liverpool fans expect big spending then they will be disappointed. John Henry's Moneyball approach to running a football club is here to stay. 

John Henry thinks that he can redefine football, only time will tell.

Most of us satisfy our managerial fantasies with the odd game of Football Manager or maybe owning a Sun Dream Team, but when you are a billionaire like John Henry you can afford some expensive toys, namely, the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool FC. Not surprisingly for a self made billionaire, John Henry is extremely ambitious and not scared of a challenge. Before he purchased the Boston Red Sox in 2002 they had not won a World Series since selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1919/1920. After implementing his new Baseball philosophy, with help from Bill James, they won their 6th World Championship in 2004, breaking an 86 year duck and their 7th title in 2007. 

Winning the Premiership with Liverpool is a bigger challenge due to the wealth of Manchester City, Chelsea and the relentless success of Manchester United. Like Baseball, football these days is an unfair game, with the the wealth and talent restricted to several top teams. Liverpool are no longer one of the big boys, and with none of the equalisers they have in American Sports, like the draft or a salary cap, Henry will have to come up with something pretty spectacular in order to take Liverpool back to the top.

John Henry believes in the Moneyball philosophy to sports management, which means he'll use statistics to look for value when buying and selling players. For those people who have not seen Moneyball, it is a book and film (starring Brad Pitt) about how one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland A's, managed to successfully compete against much richer teams like the Yankees. The key ideas that the A's used to win were a) buy low sell high, b) look for players who are underrated but useful and c) the numbers don't lie.

Whilst Liverpool has many similarities to the Boston Red Sox, football is a very much more open sport than Baseball, which has very few moving parts and lots of easily accessible statistics. Whether the 'Moneyball' philosophy can really succeed in football is the billion dollar question. We also don't know for sure whether Liverpool really is being run by number crunchers or whether Henry has reigned it in a little to appease the football fraternity on Merseyside. 

I for one encourage a more cerebral way to think about football. Football tends to be run on conventional wisdom, hunches and gut feelings which often amount to little more than guesswork and listening to popular opinion. Clubs like Arsenal prove that it is possible to compete with the big boys and turn a profit and I think that more teams should be run properly and responsibly. John Henry's biggest challenge will be to a) find a manager willing to work under financial constraints and b) to convince the football mad, yet knowledgeable Liverpool fans to accept his intellectual approach to running their beloved club.

Below is a a copy of the letter which John Henry addressed to the Liverpool Supporters. It hints at some of the Moneyball ideas that I mentioned, which I have highlighted for you. It actually reads pretty well and for Liverpool fans they will be pleased, and I believe that this is genuine, that the owners say they aren't in it for profit. Ultimately I believe that John Henry is a sports fan who could help change the way football club's are managed in this country. Watch this space. 

John W Henry's open letter to Liverpool Supporters.

I am as disappointed as anyone connected with Liverpool Football Club that we were unable to add further to our strike force in this summer transfer window, but that was not through any lack of desire or effort on the part of all of those involved. They pushed hard in the final days of the transfer window on a number of forward targets and it is unfortunate that on this occasion we were unable to conclude acceptable deals to bring those targets in.

But a summer window which brought in three young, but significantly talented starters in Joe Allen, Nuri Sahin and Fabio Borini as well as two exciting young potential stars of the future - Samed Yesil and Oussama Assaidi - could hardly be deemed a failure as we build for the future.

Nor should anyone minimise the importance of keeping our best players during this window. We successfully retained Daniel Agger, Martin Skrtel and Luis Suarez. We greatly appreciate their faith and belief in the club. And we successfully negotiated new, long-term contracts with Luis and with Martin.

No one should doubt our commitment to the club. In Brendan Rodgers we have a talented young manager and we have valued highly his judgement about the make-up of the squad. This is a work in progress. It will take time for Brendan to instill his philosophy into the squad and build exactly what he needs for the long term.

The transfer policy was not about cutting costs. It was - and will be in the future - about getting maximum value for what is spent so that we can build quality and depth. We are avowed proponents of UEFA's Financial Fair Play agenda that was this week reiterated by Mr Platini - something we heartily applaud. We must comply with Financial Fair Play guidelines that ensure spending is tied to income. We have been successful in improving the commercial side of the club and the monies generated going forward will give us greater spending power in the coming years.

We are still in the process of reversing the errors of previous regimes. It will not happen overnight. It has been compounded by our own mistakes in a difficult first two years of ownership. It has been a harsh education, but make no mistake, the club is healthier today than when we took over.

Spending is not merely about buying talent. Our ambitions do not lie in cementing a mid-table place with expensive, short-term quick fixes that will only contribute for a couple of years. Our emphasis will be on developing our own players using the skills of an increasingly impressive coaching team. Much thought and investment already have gone into developing a self-sustaining pool of youngsters imbued in the club's traditions.

That ethos is to win. We will invest to succeed. But we will not mortgage the future with risky spending.

After almost two years at Anfield, we are close to having the system we need in place. The transfer window may not have been perfect but we are not just looking at the next 16 weeks until we can buy again: we are looking at the next 16 years and beyond. These are the first steps in restoring one of the world's great clubs to its proper status.

It will not be easy, it will not be perfect, but there is a clear vision at work.

We will build and grow from within, buy prudently and cleverly and never again waste resources on inflated transfer fees and unrealistic wages. We have no fear of spending and competing with the very best but we will not overpay for players.

We will never place this club in the precarious position that we found it in when we took over at Anfield. This club should never again run up debts that threaten its existence.

Most of all, we want to win. That ambition drives every decision. It is the Liverpool way. We can and will generate the revenues to achieve that aim. There will be short-term setbacks from time to time, but we believe we have the right people in place to bring more glory to Anfield.

Finally, I can say with authority that our ownership is not about profit. Contrary to popular opinion, owners rarely get involved in sports in order to generate cash. They generally get involved with a club in order to compete and work for the benefit of their club. It's often difficult. In our case we work every day in order to generate revenues to improve the club. We have only one driving ambition at Liverpool and that is the quest to win the Premier League playing the kind of football our supporters want to see. That will only occur if we do absolutely the right things to build the club in a way that makes sense for supporters, for us and for those who will follow us. We will deliver what every long-term supporter of Liverpool Football Club aches for.