A Kiwi cyclist has admitted to using pain pills to aid his performance

 

 

A Kiwi cyclist has admitted to using pain pills to aid his performance - and says he knows other riders who are doing the same.

Dunedin road rider and winner of this year's Tour de Lakes, Alex McGregor, told the Sunday Star-Times he has been influenced towards the practice by a sport scientist - who also works for national body Bike New Zealand.
Last night New Zealand sport's anti-doping boss, Graeme Steel, expressed concern, saying: "Athletes begin on the road to doping by doing things that are technically permitted, but really are on the verge of unethical behaviour."
McGregor, 23, confirmed that over the past two years he has taken over-the-counter painkillers before and during races to intentionally dull the effects of fatigue.
McGregor says he will continue to experiment with the practice despite suspecting it interferes with medication prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Full article here:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/other-sports/8801359/Top-cyclist-tells-how-painkillers-give-him-edge

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Gary:
Young, classy cyclists are a dime a dozen, you can feed them any kind of rubbish, be it caffeine, ibuprofen, carbo shots, or Gatorade and they will perform well.  But how many of these talented young men and women are still around competing at 30 years of age?  Very few indeed.  Who cares?  Nobody.  There's an endless supply to replace the ones who fall by the wayside.

Of course nobody cares because there is the "culture of youth".  The ailing 30 year old is quickly discarded and forgotten with all attention and resources redirected at the next up-and-coming 18-something champion-to-be.  So the repetitious cycle goes, if you'll excuse the pun.

I hope the Otago University Faculty of Physical Education is not forgetting the lofty ideals of its origins.  When I was a student there, under the tutelage of the founding father of the faculty, Professor Philip Smithells, what we studied was consistent with the ideals of the ancient Greek educators and philosophers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, with regards to the well-rounded, educated, physically active citizen, "healthy mind - healthy body".  

 

Here we have a story involving an academic who may be one of the faculty staff, either directly or indirectly, encouraging the use of drugs by healthy young men and in a manner that comes very close to being unethical in sport.  Just a few weeks ago I was dismayed to learn that the faculty is advocating, in its lectures to students, the wonders of stomach reduction surgery for weight loss.  This just does not fit with what I understand physical education to be.  It also demonstrates an ignorance of the long term health consequences of stomach reduction surgery:  Short term gains - yes!  But serious health problems develop and overwhelm the person after the initial euphoria of the "honey-moon period".  Sure, this statement may not stack up with the research but that is because of the absurdity of early study cut-off dates, such as after only two or five years. In my experience the situation generally changes for the worst as the years pass because the underlying causes of the obesity have not been fully addressed.  

 

A grounded physical education programme addresses the underlying issues of ill health and inactivity and is not blinded by the cult of the "quick-fix".

About this website 

The advice in these articles is given freely without promise or obligation. Its all about giving you and your family the tools and information to take control of your health and fitness.

An update on my personal journey back to health fitness

My 30's and 40's were characterised by chronic fatigue and stress, as is the case for so many of us who are trapped in the rat race of paying the mortgage, feeding the family and getting ahead in business and careers.

The usual response to stress and fatigue is to go join a gym, run or cycle and further beat up body and mind!  I was no exception.

By the time I was 50 I was physically and mentally burned to the bone.  Running was a painful shuffle, cycling was not much better.  My enthusiasm for work was gone and there were disturbing goings-on with my health:  Blood pressure was up and down like a yo-yo, cholesterol was creeping ominously upwards and my skin was breaking out in raw patches of precancerous solar kerastoses.  I was unhappy about this state of affairs to say the least.

The last ten years have been a fascinating journey of discovery as I have sought to reverse these detrimental change.  I have had stunning success.  But it has taken every day of the last 10 years to turn the ship around.

Sarah Ulmer Retires due to injury - now how predictable was that?

"Olympic champion and New Zealand sporting great Sarah Ulmer has announced her retirement from cycling.
New Zealand's first and only Olympic Games cycling gold medallist has been battling a perplexing sciatic nerve injury in her leg since it forced her out of last year's Melbourne Commonwealth Games.
A recent visit to a surgeon convinced the 31-year-old it was time to end the most frustrating period of her glittering career.
She will be remembered for her golden year in 2004 when she set a world record in winning the women's 3000m individual pursuit at the world championships in Australia.
Several months later she bettered the record in claiming gold at the Athens Olympics.
After a year's break from the sport, she switched to road cycling and was consistently impressive there before injury struck.
"I've been toying with retirement for longer than I actually expected," Ulmer told 3 News today.
"It's been a pretty frustrating year from the cycling side of things. I've been in and out of doctors and medical specialist and MRI machines.
"The crunch with the actual decision was a trip to a surgeon in Christchurch who didn't give me a greater than 50 percent chance that he could improve me."

TV3 News article and video

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Gary Moller comments:

The retirement of Sarah Ulmer comes as no surprise. When I stood by the finish line as she blitzed the field of the International Womens' Tout of Wellington, organised by George Sandoval, just weeks before the last Commonwealth Games, I commented to a cycling mate, Paul, that she had just blown her chances at the Games. Not too many months earlier, I had attended a cycling coaching conference at which she was the honoured guest. It was during that conference that she revealed some of her training secrets (and flaws - one being her poor diet and the other being the misunderstanding of the importance of recovery). That she was heading for burnout was pretty obvious. I had seen the signs before: for example; when an athlete gives to the demands of exhausting advertiser photo shoots, luncheons and dinners, exhaustion is the inevitable consequence and so this was to be for Ulmer. The signs were there: Stress, weight loss and chronic injury.

Am I speaking a load if rubbish? Read these articles and judge for yourself.

An athlete in a sport like cycling or running can be one only - athlete or business person - never both. One or the other. So; does the athlete make money or win medals? It is difficult, if not impossible to make both happen concurrently in a sport like cycling.

20 years ago there was no such thing as the sports scientist and the personal trainer in New Zealand outside of a few academics. Sports conditioning of new Zealand's best was the domain of the coach who had been there and done that themselves. Now we have the sports scientist who has inserted their expertise between the coach and the athlete. Few have been there and done that, having learned their trade via the text book and the ivory tower of academia. We have gone downhill ever since, with just a few exceptions.

Most sporting injuries of a non-violent derivation are to do with coaching, diet and lifestyle. they are not medical issues - even if there is a physical sign like a protruding lumbar disc. Seldom will medical interventions like drugs and surgery bring about a lasting "cure" as has been so well illustrated by Ulmer.

Lorraine's autobiography "On the Wings of Mercury" illustrates so well how much winning once and winning again and again has to do with the ivory from the neck up.