WADA Doping Hack Story is Blowing Up

And tennis prose credibility goes down the drain…repeating innuendo is repeating innuendo. It isn’t fact no matter how much speculation is repeated.

Some time back we talked nadal and based it on his size, his muscle mass for a young guy. But he’s clean. Did we ever go back and say hey he’s clean? No. We kept speculating. But we’re wrong.

This is no wink and pass along thing. And it’s quickly becoming a non story. Because unless proven otherwise, that’s what it is. A non story.

I agree with Andrew. It is just speculation and innuendo unless backed up by hard facts. And it is important to do some real digging to find out those facts. Scoop says only 4 athletes were targeted but on Sept. 14 alone the records of 25 athletes were disclosed, including tennis player Bethanie Mattek-Sands.

And what is the motivation of the hackers? It appears they are Russian and if that is so, is their main purpose to discredit WADA at a time the organization has come down hard on Russian athletes and the Russian sports system? If people jump quickly to conclusions about the medical exemptions they are playing right into the hackers’ hands.

By all means we should have a serious discussion about WADA, have a look at their procedures, ask for more transparency. But I think we need to be very careful about what we say about individual athletes without delving carefully into all aspects of this story.

If fans were not aware of the existence of TUEs before this they were not paying attention. It was hardly a secret that players could apply for these exemptions.

As far as not accepting that top players could cheat, I think that cheating does occur. If nothing else the Sharapova situation showed that. There have been incidents that made me wonder about certain players but I certainly did not have enough information to speculate publicly that they were doping. And I would want much better “proof” than that a player was balding or that he had adult acne – that is just plain silly. Are we supposed to think that the huge numbers of men who are balding in their 20s or who have adult acne are doping?

We shouldn’t “group” athletes together – Armstrong ISNT Sharapova – sheesh, Sharapova is “clean” when compared with Armstrong! One is doping of egregious, epic proportions; the other is something Sharapova knew about and screwed up on and paid the price for, and something her handlers certainly knew or should have known.

If we group everything together heck, please toss Kozlov into the WADA allegations as well. Why not Djokovic. Hail, let’s go ahead and accuse Wawrinka – acne and all because, well, he’s coached by Magnus Norman and swedes are big and tall and they don’t get that way by eating wheaties…

Again, we have to be serious about this. Tennis-Prose gets followers because when Scoop, Dan, others talk about things they get specific and nitty gritty and are pretty careful not to lump everything together. Generally I think it’s fair and that’s why I enjoy it.

However, when the site veers into reckless, harmful speculation we do a real disservice TO THE SPORT! Not to the authorities, not to the players, but to the game itself. I think everyone on here loves the sport, the game, some aspect of it. But when it’s all about dragging players down the gutter even though they have no reason to be there – innocent until proven guilty – then we discredit the SITE, THE SPORT, EACH OTHER. In pursuit of our own wild ideas about things?

Why. Who go to that place that sucks. Why try to disparage players with nothing in order to exonerate other players who actually need to do right by the sport. Why convict anyone here on the site on the basis of zero concrete information.

No, we don’t know what happens. What we know is that whoever released the information seemed to hedge their bets that no few would actually read the disclosure & read through what the drugs actually do, and that folks would speculate away – recklessly. They probably hoped that people would make wild links between a million percent confirmed drug cheats & athletes who followed the rules – and use the glare of the former to tarnish the innocent latter.
And they were right, mission accomplished. Minds jumping to conclusions, facts be darned.

It’s in the best interest of everyone to follow a simple principle. Innocent until proven otherwise. I think we’re at the innocent and proven innocent stage for everyone named this week. Maybe next week they’ll aim at hockey stars, who knows. Or Canadians.

Watch out Milos. You’re next 🙂

@Andrew: The published files are definatly true. Wada confirmed it – do u need another proof? Names, their doses and TUE are confirmed! There are no doubts at all!

Why aren’t we talking jmdp victory today? Isn’t Argentina up two zip the story on murraymania, former big four member as of the us open QF?

Some people think the tooth fairy exists.

It looks like Argentina will win over GB. Wish I could have seen the Delpo vs. Andy match. It sounds amazing. And if there were any doubts at all about Delpo being back they are now erased. Can’t wait to see him play in the coming months.

I did see parts of the second rubber, and of course those 2 guys were evenly matched. But was impressed with Pella – did not know anything about him.

As a Canadian I was relieved that Canada won both matches. On paper it was the favourite over Chile even without Raonic and an injured Nestor, but with DC the unexpected often happens. If Nestor had been able to play it would have been his 50th DC tie.

And Andy was missing his grandfather’s funeral to play this DC tie. But that does show his commitment to DC, so it is sad he did not win. But good for Delpo.

I started rooting for GB but after Argentina has had so many disappointments over the years guess that this is their time.

Agree on Davis Cup pressure – that’s why Del Potro crumbled against Feliciano Lopez in 2008 Davis Cup finals. It was supposed to be Nalbandian’s triumph, taking Davis Cup and beating spain on the home turf. All the better this tie eight years later against the UK is in Scotland, where Murray feels the pressure, and Edmund just doesn’t show up. Funny because the British have been praised for making lemonade out of lemons – having Murray and no one else and using a rotation of passionate though lower ranked players to reach this round of the promised land, and when they finally have a capable #2 they both lose, at home in Scotland no less!

Another shocker of a result to me at least, Lucas Pouille, brilliant as he was against Nadal, loses and Gasquet wins his match EASILY against Coric. Knowing how Davis CUp works I think we can expect a better performance on the back end of the tie if Coric gets a match. As much as I put the young kid down he can summon his best game and he’s done it in Davis Cup before so he can do it again. I like France for this tie.

With Dan – Escobedo. Yeah I think he’s doing a good job. I like his game, though he did get beat in a competitive 2nd round US OPen match by Edmund. He competes well and for the least spoken about US player of his peers he’s showing some grit out there and puts up real results. I personally think he’s right there with them, needs some better movement.

As for Novikov, yeah I didn’t have a problem with his game – nice ground strokes, a lot of power, big serve with pretty good placement. Just lazy feet and not the best movement. He looked slow (he’s lunge for balls rather than taking an extra step) and for a guy who is more or less in shape he looked like he could benefit from a physio to add more of a physical dimension and stamina to his game. Lots of power, but just lazy on the footwork. So he’d hit an awful lot long.

In the tradition of tp as a site interested in tennis writing, I liked these two sentances from Tignor at Tennis dot com.

On the us open womens champ
“The moral of her story isn’t that you can change your game or your mindset at 28. It’s that you can find a way to win with the game you knew you had all along”.

and, on the mens champ
“The Big Four is dead. Long live the Big Five!”

Andrew –

Not keen on Tignor as a writer – too many statements of the obvious IMO.

I liked Bodo when he was younger – his first book was good, although he buddied up to players a trifle too much. That was his MO.

But we all have different tastes…..and I think it must be hard to write about sport these days and be truly original.

Catherine, I’m just glad there are some writers who do a good job of recap and are willing to rethink matches and players in real time. I’m sure everyone has different favorites, and Tignor isn’t for everyone. I like si Wertheim, I liked the older stuff from Bodo, who I think used to follow his instincts a little more and have more freedom on what to write about, now if it isn’t a hot topic he doesn’t seem to have that leeway, one reason why they espn and the lead tennis dot com writers seem to miss some stories that are evolving and are about to happen. They used to seem to have more writers at tournaments. If I were them id ask them to try to get a piece on other players or parts of the game, or a feature on say Maziri, etc, who gets little print.
I’ll agree with Hartt here on the British tennis writing.

Escobedo\Tiaf a heck it a score line, Escobedo wins 7\6 in third, gets McGee who took out Denis N. 6)3 in third.

D Brown in a challenger final.

GIANNESSI who qualied for us open is in a challenger final.

And McHale gets a real wta final in japan. She really was hitting well when I saw her, wiping stosur out in practice. Funny in an article on Kerber the coach said the goal was too get Kerber to play tournaments like she plays in practice, where she turns up the heat. She played too cautiously in matches rather than blend bigger hitting with her bread and butter safe in the margins game.

Can Edmund beat jmdp? 2 a piece in Scotland.
And Cilic beats France, puts Croatia up 2)1 in dubs then seals win quickly over gasquet.
The Davis cup finals will be either Ciic&co with Coric playing hero right! Or either Argentina or UK . Unless Edmund plays out of this world…

Andrew, yes Denis Shapovalov has had a few good wins. As stated in the article he won 3 Futures tourneys in the first months of this season. He and Felix Auger-Aliassime had won the boys’ doubles at the USO last year and of course Denis won the Wimby junior title this year.

I did not see his match against Kyrgios but did not put a lot of stock in that win. Apparently Nick was in one of his “I don’t care if I play” moods. But Denis still had to keep his nerve on a big stage in front of a home crowd.

Right now am watching the dead rubber that Denis is playing against Chilean player Garin. Denis won the 1st set and they are on serve in the 2nd. What has impressed me about Denis is his serve – it is a real weapon for such a young player who is just 6′ and 155 lbs. Presumably Denis will still grow and the serve will get even better.

As you say, he seems to have a mature attitude and he is showing a lot of composure in this match. One of the Tennis Canada guys, poached from the French system a few years ago, compares Shapovalov to Laconte, high praise indeed!

Denis is now up a break and will serve for the match. 🙂