Tennis & Doctors: If You Can't Beat Them....

I quite enjoy playing tennis. I have a racquet, a few balls, a pair of tennis shoes....a nice club with a few courts and lots of similar people of all ages having fun on them every day.

This is tennis at its basic level.

As it is such a beautiful sport, with the age of paid entertainment, somebody in the 60s had a cunning plan....and tennis turned pro

People who had a racquet, a few balls and a pair of tennis shoes started needing more...: a coach, an accountant, a PA, a PR, an agency, a masseur, a physio, a psychologist and most recently... a doctor!!!


Not just any doctor: a scientifically oriented doctor.

Why?

Because it's not enough to be healthy, have good hand to eye coordination and athletic body in order to win tournaments and earn lots of money any more.
Doctors have discovered that we can be "healthier", "more athletic", we can run faster, jump higher, be "better", and apparently there is no end and limit to what glorious science can do these days: for the right price, you can have horse's blood giving you the "edge", various chambers revitalising your tired body, chemicals doubling your muscle mass in no time, a professional athlete has become an experimental field and a tennis court where doctors play and have fun.

Doctors have now become celebrities: the notorious kind, though.

I have no particular interest either in them or their expertise, but even I now know of the two of them Dr Fuentes and Dr Morales.....

And while were all waiting with bated breath on the trial case to start involving the former, here's the latest on the other one:



"PARIS -- The owner of a leading tennis academy in Spain that trained some of the sport's stars says its players have stopped working with a doctor banned by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency for helping riders on Lance Armstrong's cycling team dope.

Pancho Alvarino told The Associated Press the relationship between his TenisVal academy and doctor Luis Garcia del Moral "started approximately14-15 years ago."

That overlaps with del Moral's work for the U.S. Postal Service cyclingteam. The USADA says del Moral helped to implement a "team-wide doping program" as a doctor for USPS from 1999-2003, when Armstrong won the first five of seven Tour de France titles that have been stripped from him for doping.

The USADA handed the doctor a lifetime sports ban in July. Del Moral criticized the agency's proceedings and said he never witnessed organized doping at USPS.

Replying by email to questions from the AP, Alvarino said "many of our players" consulted del Moral for preseason blood tests, strength tests
and for injuries. He said TenisVal used the information to tailor specific training programs for each player.

If there had been any indication that del Moral was doping academy players, "I would have denounced the doctor, as well as the player," Alvarino said.

He indicated the academy has now severed the link with del Moral. "After Armstrong's news, no player from TenisVal has (had) contact or
any kind of relationship with him," he wrote.

Players paid the doctor's clinic directly, Alvarino said, adding that TenisVal coaches always accompanied players on visits to del Moral.
TenisVal and del Moral's clinic are both in Valencia, on Spain's east coast.

"Dr. Del Moral has been always a very important personality in sports medicine in Valencia and he has worked with many sports people and
sports teams from many countries, as everybody knows," wrote Alvarino, aformer player, and captain of Spain's first Fed Cup-winning team, in 1991.

Sara Errani of Italy, the losing finalist in women's singles at the 2012 French Open, said in September that del Moral "was the best doctor
in Valencia for everything, so I have been working with him, of course."

Errani added she would no longer consult him because "his name is not (a) good name."

Former top-ranked woman Dinara Safina of Russia also consulted del Moral when she was at TenisVal. Russian website Sport Express last monthquoted Safina as saying del Moral "has the only real clinic in Valenciawhere athletes can undergo tests before the beginning of the season andat the end. And we underwent the tests in this clinic. We ran on the treadmill, they took blood samples from our ears, and so on."

"Del Moral gave us no advice whatsoever and did not handle our cases," Sport Express quoted Safina as saying. "I have nothing to be afraid of. I'm clean."

The manager of the International Tennis Federation's anti-doping program, Stuart Miller, said he investigated del Moral's work in tennis
in the wake of the USADA's ban.

The ITF "interviewed Sara Errani, among others," Miller told the AP. Citing confidentiality requirements, he wouldn't reveal details of the
investigation or say if the ITF determined whether del Moral helped players to dope.

"If there's a case where somebody has breached the rules, it will be publicly reported," Miller said. "So you can draw what conclusions you
like from that."

Del Moral has disputed the USADA's evidence against him.

In a statement posted last month on the website of the Valencia clinic where he works, he said: "During the years that I was with the medical team of U.S. Postal I never was witness to doping organized by the team,nor of course any that I (supposedly) facilitated or promoted."

"Beyond a doubt, I have not participated in any doping ring, nor has it been proven," the statement said.

In affidavits, former Armstrong teammates told the USADA that del Moraldrew up doping plans, injected them and supplied them with the banned blood-boosting hormone EPO as well as testosterone, human growth hormone and cortisone, and helped extract and re-infuse blood for banned performance-enhancing transfusions."

The moral of the story is: If you can't beat them DON'T join them. (pun intended)

noleisthebest wrote:.

Pancho Alvarino told The Associated Press the relationship between his TenisVal academy and doctor Luis Garcia del Moral "started approximately14-15 years ago."

That is a long time. I wonder TennisVal would have cut their ties off from Moral had LA not gone bust.
And what's all this examining tennis player's blood for and about!!!??? (Safina saying how they took some blood form her ear, and that she was "clean" )

IT woudl be great if the ITF had its own doctors like it has its own physio. If a player had teh need to see a more specialised doctor then those ITF Doctors should accompany the athletes in all their medical visits.

I am sure we coudl corrupt those ITF doctors but it might become a bit harder.

IT woudl be a simple and financially economical solution.