Dick Pound Needs His Urine Tested
November 25, 2005
On Thursday Dick Pound, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) proclaimed that as much as one third of NHL players were taking performance enhancing drugs and that the NHL’s drug policy “looks as though they found an early copy of the baseball policy on the floor somewhere”. To this I tell him to get a clue and do the math.
For starters, if 1/3 of NHL players are juicing up, it must be the bottom third. NHL players have participated in the last several Winter Olympics and were subject to the same drug tests as every other Olympic athlete. To date I have not heard of a single NHL player failing these tests and the players who are participating are the best in the league.
Now for the math. It is obvious from his statements that Dick Pound is not very smart so I’ll try to keep it simple. He ripped on the current NHL drug policy which calls for 20 game suspension for the first offense, 60 for the second and lifetime ban for the 3rd. The drug policy introduced before the last baseball season called for 10 games for the first offense, 30 for the second, 60 for the third and a year for the fourth. The latest baseball policy calls for suspension of 50 games for the first offense, 100 for the second, and a lifetime ban for the third. It is obvious that the NHL policy was much stricter than baseball’s first attempt and at first glance the latest baseball policy seems stricter than the NHL, but here comes the math.
First time offense for the NHL is 20 games or 23.8% of the season. Baseball is 50 games or 30.8% of the season. Baseball is a bit stricter here.
Second offense is 60 games in the NHL or 73.1 % of the season. Baseball is 100 games or 61.7% of the season. Now the NHL is stricter.
Third offense is lifetime ban for both leagues. Seems pretty obvious that the NHL took a strict stance on drug testing from the get go. The WADA code calls for a 2 year suspension for a first offense, but what Pound fails to realize is that this is a professional league. These players earn a paycheck for what they do. A 2 year suspension to an average player is basically the same as a lifetime ban.
If Mr Pound feels that the NHL suspensions need to be longer or that the frequency of testing needs to increase then fine, meet with Bettman and the NHLPA and work on it. Making such obviously false and petty statements to the public serves no one except his own ego.
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Someone please tell me this is not a real name…. Dick Pound needs his urine tested???? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD… Some parents should be shot based on the names of their children…. I guess the headline could have been worse like Harry Colon (actual football player -see for proof http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Lions)needs orifice checked….