Sport is made for betting

The North Korean women's football team has been kicked out of the next World Cup (2015) and all the qualifying events after five players tested positive for steroids at the recent women's World Cup in Germany. The team doctor, Jong Ae Nam, who claimed that she had used a "Chinese remedy" based on musk deer glands to aid players who had been struck by lightning, was handed a six-year ban from the game as the five players all tested positive for steroids. It really is la-la land over there....

Lots going on, but very short of time lately, here's a quick look at what has been going on... Sportingbet are keen to be acquired by Ladbrokes, but the 'Magic Sign' are nervous about SB's activity in Turkey , one of the strongest regions of their business. If Sportingbet are serious about the sale going through, looks like they will have to sell that part of the company. The Betfair share price keeps on tumbling , not even the internal buyback scheme can stop the price sliding, sliding away... The Gold Coast Turf Club is targetting night racing as a way to move themselves up the ladder of Australian racing. Sounds like a positive move, the weather's great up there but when they run their feature Magic Millions Day in January when it is approaching 40C, that's ridiculous. The racecourse does need a serious upgrade to its facilities if they want to become a bigger club, getting into the Friday night rotation of meetings would probably serve them better tha...

Unfortunately it always seems that the positive tests don't seem to come out until AFTER their careers are finished. In the 80s it was still a Cold War thing and positive tests were swept under the carpet. It has only been the last 20 years that American athletes, the really good American athletes not just lower-ranked scapegoats, have started being busted for steroid abuse (or other banned substances). Yet the hysteria and suspicion still lies with the 'unknown' or the evil enemy, namely Russia or China. Former US Champion Clay banned for doping violations (Reuters) - Former U.S. 200 meters champion Ramon Clay has been suspended for two years for using steroids and other banned substances from 2000-04, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) said Friday. So in recent years from the US, we've had Marion Jones, Justin Gatlin, Antonio Pettigrew, C.J. Hunter, Tim Montgomery, Kelli White, Jerome Young.... For a full list of doping cases in athletics, visit Wikipedia ...

Sad news over the weekend with shamed British rugby league star Terry Newton taking his own life. Newton was serving a two-year ban for using human growth hormone, HGH. Only last month another high-profile athlete, American track star Antonio Pettigrew, took his own life after being exposed as having used HGH, despite it being back in his prime between 1997 and 2001. High-profile cyclist Marco Pantani took his own life in 2004 after years of allegations and suspensions over blood doping. Then there's the long list of professional athletes in a variety of sports, including wrestlers, cyclists and former Soviet bloc athletes who have been so screwed up by years of steroid abuse they've either taken their own lives or their hearts have seized. And of course, there's the famous case of Florence Griffith-Joyner who was never caught failing a dope test, but that was the era when USA Track and Field swept everything under the carpet, and Flo-Jo did wear ridiculous amounts of m...

Shame it wasn't one of their leading female competitors, at least I can post a gratuitous photo then. Russian cross country skier Nicholas Pankratov has been busted by Swiss customs officials for possessing intravenous equipment and 22 capsules of the drug actovegin, derived from calf blood. Actovegin is not on the WADA banned list, but has been in doping authorities' spotlight for several years. The original article can be found here in Norwegian, use Google Chrome to translate it. Sergei Korolev, who is head of Russia's winter sports federations, told RIA Novosti that Pankratov's possession of actovegin with the equipment for blood transfusion is a cause for sanctions unless he can prove that he has a legitimate reason to use it. News agency reports that Pankratovs case will be handled by the International Ski Federation (FIS') anti-doping panel. - He may be excluded for two years. If he can prove that there were health reasons to use the drug, he may g...