[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
[quote]KBCThird wrote:
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
His lie in deflecting suspicion of his steroid use by letting reports “find” a bottle of androstenedione in his locker and attributing his results to that was the start of the movement against prohormones.
I don’t feel sorry for him. It was snake-like of him to concoct this lie. I am not saying he was obligated to admit to using anabolic steroids – no one is obligated to confess to an illegal act – but that does not exonerate him from that particular deception.[/quote]
Lie? How is it a lie if he believed that it was helping? And if he didnt think it helped then why would he be taking it? Your fears of deception are overblown, and as you say, it’s not as if he coulda said “yeah, it helps, but not as much as the gh”[/quote]
If you think that, when suspected of anabolic steroid use for several reasons, concocting a scheme to make people believe that instead androstenedione was the cause, this does not constitutes a lie, you are entitled to your own opinion.
My definition of a lie is a willful effort to cause people to believe something that you know is not true. Your definition of course can be different.
And if you think that an anabolic steroid user adds things like androstenedione to his cycle, you really don’t know about that sort of thing (which is fine: it’s not as if everyone should be expected to.) Even if he were so stupid that he in fact did that, having it “discovered” in his locker still constituted a willful effort to cause people to believe a thing that was not true: that androstenedione was the cause of his large muscle mass gain, bloated face, and perhaps performance enhancement as well.
Many people did believe this and this was the start of the public turn against prohormones and remained a prime driving factor right up through the ban. No one could name a single example of prohormones contaminating the purity and sanctity of sports, except EVERYONE could name McGwire. But what they believed was not true, and McGwire had to have known it was not: that anabolic steroids were the explanation for those things.
But if you don’t want to call that lying, that’s your prerogative, of course.[/quote]
So your position is that he planted the andro bottle in his own locker, hoping the press would find it all so that he could say “that’s it, that’s why I got big, it was the andro, but I’ll stop using it now” … is that correct? If so, you’re even more cynical than I am, and I don’t mean that as an insult.
Maybe I underestimate people’s deception, or maybe you underestimate their stupidity, but to me, it just seems more likely that he had the andro bottle there because he was using it, and when it was seen, started mumbling, hemming and hawing and put everything on the andro. Occam’s razor, and all that.
As far as whether an experienced steroid user would add andro to his cycle, I have heard enough now to believe that andro does nothing (although I do have friends who SWORE that it helped), but the bottom line is this: you are absolutely right that I dont know as much about that sort of thing as you do. My only point though, would be that most athletes have a ‘kitchen sink’ mentality of “throw it in and lets see if it helps.” I realize there are gurus, but I’m just not sure that we are always dealing with a brain trust here.
As far as hastening the ban, I absolutely agree with you that the average schmuck had never heard of andro before mcgwire came along, and congress would’ve been fuddling over it for longer than they wound up doing before eventually banning a wide range of PH. That said, I do think that you’re letting your personal stake in this color your judgment, and I dont think that his actions were as malicious and pre-conceived as you seem to think they were. That said, I suppose there’s no way to be certain and we just have to agree to disagree.