So good
me and you both, brotha
Hmmmmm
Djokovic’s wife looks like she’s on a John Mulaney style Bender right now
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A little bit of good news, bad news for this thread I’m afraid (2017):
Of the 24 professional sports that the SBJ and Magna looked at, all but women’s tennis has seen the average age of viewers increase. On the other hand, the only sports with an average age higher than baseball’s are Nascar (58), men’s tennis (61), horse racing (63), figure skating (63) and any form of golf (63 to 64).
Goddamn that was a huge string of great shots from Novak
He is dialed in. Looks like a mortal lock.
I’m rooting for a positive Covid test Sunday morning.
Gotta feel bad for Zverev. Getting to that point over and over and not getting home has to be such a mindfuck
Least unpredictable early break ever
Fun match
Love the new line technology
God I hate this tool. He’s so fucking good and it absolutely enrages me. A+ pro wrestling style villain, lol people cheering for him
Novak’s always been an asshole. I remember when he hired a publicist to change his image and for a time would impersonate other tennis players for laughs. Kinda won people over for a bit before telling the publicist to fuck off and went back to being himself
For anyone who thinks tennis is probably clean or that No PoSiTiVe TeStS means anything, this is one of the better articles on how it really works. It’s dated now at five years but there isn’t a ton of good public information or investigative journalism on this. Very little public discussion because we rarely hear from non-shills that know how cutting-edge sports doping works.
Some key points:
In-competition testing is a joke. Only complete morons would fail that to the degree that I’d think a positive test is likely a false positive. Out-of-competition testing is what matters. Tennis loves to cite total test numbers but has (had?) one of the worst in:out ratios in sports. The people who know what’s up laugh at them:
Such a practice is why testing at events, long a staple of tennis’ anti-doping program, is mocked by experts as the equivalent of administering an IQ test. Unannounced, out-of-competition testing is much preferred.
A confirmed supplier of performance-enhancing substances told Outside the Lines about providing PEDs to 12-15 current and former pro male tennis players. The supplier said the tennis anti-doping program has been “Mickey Mouse” and “antiquated” for years, adding: “Their testing was lackadaisical … doing something [only] to appease.”
Unannounced OOC testing is more expensive, more inconvenient, and includes the possibility of athletes evading by playing the victim card:
What does cutting-edge doping look like?
Former players and trainers told Outside the Lines the advantages sought and gained by players are not from PEDs such as steroids but enhancers used for match endurance, recovery and injury repair. Players get the edge by micro-dosing EPO, HGH, synthetic testosterone as well using an assortment of designer peptides, which stimulate the body to increase the natural production of certain substances.
The way they write this is weird because synthetic testosterone is a steroid. “People told us players are not likely to use steroids but instead would use steroids.” That’s the level of discourse on this topic. More on testing for synthetics:
Dr. Margaret Goodman, president of the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association, which provides drug testing in boxing and mixed martial arts, said her group runs complete panels on every professional boxer it tests to the tune of $1,300 per sample analysis.
“For them not to include EPO and IRMS on every collection is a travesty,” Goodman said. “I understand the argument that it’s too expensive, but you can’t have an anti-doping program act as a deterrent without implementing the appropriate testing panels.”
At the time of this article the ITF testing budget was only $4M and they were complaining about the additional costs of testing all samples for the stuff that actually matters using the correct assays. This is probably all futile anyway because it seems like maybe you’d never be able to catch micro-dosing or anything with a short half-life that doesn’t leave a biochemical trail?
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Here’s an article showing what micro-dosing EPO to evade the Athlete Passport detection system looks like. This guy (a cyclist) actually did this as an experiment to see what would happen. It’s pretty wild. He ordered the EPO online from some sketch Chinese source and found someone with access to the Passport software who agreed to anonymously process his samples.
Getting stronger as matches go deep every time is the sign of something. Maybe it’s a unique natural physiology. Sadly the more we learn the more likely it seems it comes in a pill or needle.
Wait, people thought tennis was clean?
lol people
It definitely extends beyond just Novax. The top 10/100 men and women are getting older at an increasing rate and nobody really knows why. People have theorized that the richer players can afford top medical and training but I don’t see how that could offset the increased physical demands of modern tennis.
The age surge roughly equates to the time by which practically everyone on tour was using poly strings. The reason I think that’s odd is because those strings have made the game extremely physical. Tennis is basically all baseline grinders now and the points are grueling compared to even the style that was played in the late 90s. I can’t imagine there are any positive effects of poly that might offset the increased physical demand they bring but maybe I am wrong.
Graph is from Jeff Sackmann’s blog Tennis Abstract:
That’s what happens when literally every woman in the top 100 is a 20th ranked player
Lfg!
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