Salbutamol

So the sprinters are dopers too. I’m crushed. I was holding on to the thinking that the sprinters were relatively clean, but according to Velonews.com, I was wrong.

According to the news, Milram’s lead sprinter, Alessandro Petacchi, tested positive for Salbutamol during this year’s Giro d’Italia. Also according to the new, Salbutamol is a standard asthma treatment yet when you read the fine print, you learn it also increases anaerobic performance, which is what sprinting is all about, no?

Now, at the end of the day, I really don’t give a rat’s ass who has a needle in their ass and who doesn’t and while I realize this may seem contradictory considering my previous posts, believe me, it’s true. I’d care if I was racing against guys with needles in their asses, but that’s just not the case. (If an amateur feels the need to dope to try and win the local Category 5 race, whoever that person may be is in need of some serious psychiatric attention, let alone the drug concerns.) So since I’m not racing against these guys, I don’t know any of these guys, and I don’t make a living in the professional cycling industry, why do I even bother to bring it up?

For starters, I have to write about something, so why not this? Further, it simply seems so counter-intuitive to me that a sprinter, a guy who makes his living by going as fast as he can for twenty seconds, would need to take steroids. Aren’t most of the bunch sprints contested on mainly flat stages? I can see the climbers pumping themselves up with EPO, but the sprinters? It’s balls against the wall for six hundred feet, so why the needle in the ass? Swallowing a caffeine pill the size of a softball thirty minutes before the finish, that I could understand considering my own affinity for things like Red Bull and Monster Energy drink, (I can almost see Anne cringing at those words), but steroids? Give me a break.

So that’s it. The jig is up. The sprinters are doping just like the climbers. How sad.