Doping at the Olympics - Non-cycling Division

Equestrianism is a fan-tastic sport for scandal. Seriously. Not just the racing. What actually happens in show jumping makes Dick Francis seem tame and Jackie Collins seem like she lacks imagination (Jackie Collins does lack imagination, but you know what I mean).

Though it’s being denied that the drug found was being used in this fashion, it apparently can be used as a form of chemical rapping. Rapping, for those not in the know, is where, in training, you whack a horse’s shins with a stick so that it gets to know the pain of hitting a fence and so avoids hitting fences. Chemical rapping works by rubbing a lotion onto the horse’s shins so that when it hits a fence, it’ll hurt even more. What a way to train a horse.

And then of course there’s Cian O’Connor four years ago and the mysterious case of his disappearing B sample (it was being delivered to a lab in Newmarket and someone went up to the van delivering it, claimed to be from the lab, signed for and was never seen again). Or the case of Susanna Bordone, whose sample managed to disappear from within a lab. How the Spanish couldn’t make Iban Mayo’s B-sample disappear on its world tour is beyond me.

If cycling ever does clean its act up and I feel wistful for doping scandals, the gee-gees are where I’m turning my attention.

the post-race testing job you don’t want to get.

work for horses too.

it’s actually legal in racing to use ’roids, apparently, and there was a bit of a hub-bub about it at the time of the kentucky derby.

It’s a well known fact that doping only occurs in cycling. Trying to claim otherwise is just malicious.