The dog ate my homework...

[Lou Zealand]

Check these out:

 

Excuse 1: Alberto Contador

 

Sport: Cycling

 

Drug: Clenbuterol

 

Excuse: "The damned cow I ate was on drugs."

 

Dangerous animal, the cow. While marketing campaigns extol the virtues of beef, little do they tell us of the evils that lurk within the beast.

 

Contador, whose name had been associated with doping through Operation Puerta and whose sport had been at the apex of doping technology, blamed Spanish beef for his positive clenbuterol reading.

 

Despite an initial guilty verdict, Contador might just have got away with it...

 

Excuse 2: Tyler Hamilton

 

Sport: Cycling

 

Drug: Blood doping

 

Excuse: "An unborn twin brother resides within me."

 

Tyler Hamilton's doping excuse is by far the creepiest to make our rollcall.

 

After winning the time trial gold medal at the 2004 Olympics, Hamilton's blood tested positive for "mixed populations", or the presence of someone else's red blood cells. He was dropped from his pro team, but kept the gold because his "B" sample could not be verified.

 

His excuse is a doozy, and straight out of a David Cronenberg movie.

 

Doctors in white coats tell us that about 8 per cent of pregnancies start out as multiple births - in most cases the extra fetus is absorbed by the mother or the other fetus. Backing up Hamilton, professor David Housman said: "Cells can pass from one twin to another during the time that they shared a womb together."

 

So it's possible, the claim goes, that a "vanishing twin" could be the source of the extra genetic material found in Hamilton's blood.

 

"The truth of the matter is they can get there certainly from a fraternal twin who has a different genetic identity and bone marrow stem cells can persist for life. So that's the deal."

[Lou Zealand]

The original article, "Top 10 sporting drug excuses" can be found in its unedited form here:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=10717818

[intern]

Awesome. This is how it works when these okes are busted. They call in the finest legal minds, who, with their research assistants, examine every angle and every detail of the contraband substance which has mysteriously turned up in the bodily fluids of the athlete. That exhaustive research forms the basis for a brainstorm where plausible explanations of various types are hammered out and compared with any existing precedents. Where there are precedents (clen), Bob's your uncle. Where there aren't, well, then plausibility becomes the duty of the silver tongued silk...but they can overreach themselves (chimera).

The bottom line is that being a top pro these days means having the best doctors and a fine legal team.

Which kinda makes it tough for the rare honest bloke to make a living riding his bike.