Tennis Has a Steroid Problem

Taking a close look at doping control in professional tennis. How stringent is it? We also look at other issues related to the integrity of the sport.

Pages

Home
Notable Quotes
Doping Statistics
Doping Cases

No posts.

Home

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

"...seditious site"

-Jon Wertheim, Sports Illustrated Journalist

From what I've seen of it, I actually think it gives a pretty decent articulation of the worst-case scenario. But it cherry-picks things to support its particular theory, and ignores things that don't fit.
-ESPN sportswriter, Kamakshi Tandon, expressing her opinion of this blog

"She kind of has, like, almost the game of a man. That's what it feels like."
-Jelena Jankovic describing Samantha Stosur's masculine approach to the game of tennis.

"I can't run home from dinner and get tested. "
-Serena Williams

"...So, as far as I’m concerned, everyone from Roger Federer on down to the most desperate journeyman is a potential doper..."

-Pete Bodo, Tennis Sportswriter, 2006

"Players can use short-acting steroids in combination with human growth hormone which will produce muscle mass and enormous power, and while they can stop just before a competition and test clean, they still get the performance benefit of the drugs" Former chief executive of the Australian Sports Drug Agency, John Mendoza, 2002, claiming that tennis was approaching a crisis.

"To say that tennis today is clean, you have to be living in a dream world."
Nicolas Escude, French Davis Cup player, 2002

[Former number 1, Marcelo] Rios thinks that the ATP protects Agassi of doping "I know that if nandrolone were found on Agassi, they would not disclose it. He is a very prominent, very popular player and if he were to fall, the world of tennis would fall with him." The Chilean remembered a case in Australia 2002 "where there was a control and Agassi disappeared, saying that they were going to kidnap his son..."

Also,

"Suspicion among the other players had long been rife that he [Agassi] may have used some substances to help him become one of the fittest and strongest guys around, although there was never any proof. There were some dubious circumstances, none more than his early-morning withdrawal from the defence of his title at the 2002 Australian Open, citing a wrist injury."

-Former Wimbledon champion, Pat Cash

"The ATP also suffers from a dilemma. Imagine if Federer or Nadal were caught doping. I probably would not suspend them, because they are too important. But where is the line?"
- Former Pro Andrei Medvedev

Pictures used on this noncommercial blog are for editorial purposes only, to allow for opinions regarding particular tennis players' use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. The photos are cropped and of lower resolution than the fine originals, but are never photoshopped or otherwise altered.

"A site created by Don Quixote followed by numerous Sancho Pansas fighting windmills...."
-From a commenter

If I'm guilty of drug taking then so are half of all the world's top tennis players
-Greg Rusedski

"It’s the perfect sport to take performance enhancing drugs, with the recovery, strengthening etc..."
-Pat Cash

"...in this steroid era we have lived in for the last decade or so, it has become wise for us in the media, to at least be wary of a player such as Nadal, who is so cut, so ripped, so buff for a tennis player, because we’ve never seen a good tennis player with that kind of physique."

Sports commentator Skip Bayless

"If I am in Moscow for example and one night I decide to go out to my friend's house why should I come back at eight o'clock in the morning to my house to be checked?"

-Svetlana Kuznetsova (who tested positive for pseudoephedrine at an exhibition tournament. This made the ATP CEO very angry... at the tournament officials for doing the test)

"I can definitely say the same thing [discussing Steffi Graf’s claim that she had played against at least one top player who used steroids]. Steroids can really make a difference, physically and mentally. I’d be really disappointed if I had been ranked No. 2 behind someone who took steroids."
-Chris Evert 1992

"Someone tried to get in the development, doing a drug test," [Venus] Williams said. "If I wasn't tested in the next two hours, I wouldn't be playing on tour. You know, there's always someone at the gates, trying to get in. Normally, I tell the gate, 'Tell them Venus moved to Siberia some months ago.' "

Drug testing regulations r beyond a joke haha amazing stuff

-Andy Murray tweets his opinion about drug testing.

"If I lose tomorrow, I'll go back to Mallorca and who will know where I am if I have no access to the Internet? Now, if they knock at my door in Mallorca, they're going to give me a warning. It's happened to Carlos [Moya] before. They sent him a warning and this is most unfair," he said.
- Rafael Nadal

... she had trouble with her password in the computerized system overseen by the World Anti-Doping Agency. She also said registered mail at her home could not be signed off on since she was traveling to WTA tournaments.
- Yanina Wickmayer explains (in a dog ate my homework kind of way) why she was unavailable for mandatory drug testing.

"I think it's a bit of an invasion. I just don't think they have any right to see what's going on inside your body, even if you're not doing anything.”

-Jennifer Capriati