Aphiwe Dyantyi banned for four years

[TRF_Olyy]

Aphiwe Dyantyi banned for four years

Troubled Springbok Aphiwe Dyantyi has been informed of his punishment for doping according to South African media.

www.google.com

That is a big big ban

 

[unrated]

The funny thing is, South Africa is doing rigorous testing, catches lots of people and then imposes heavy bans. But then all people see In the media is "Springbok gets doping ban" then they start jumping to conclusions that the country has a big doping culture. I have even seen online claims that most of the current Springbok squad Juices after they posted that squad shirtless photo in Japan. You don't do steroids at this level and get away with it.


So in a nutshell what I'm saying is that a country that does strict testing and announces these results to the media has to be carefull for the double edged sword as their very actions to portray to the public, players and themselves that they are taking action to keep the sport clean, creates a narrative that they are infested with the very problem that they boast about being harsh on, such as is the case with them trying to make a point with a four year ban for Dyanti. Then they composmise the image of the rest of the players.

Dyanti says he went to gym with a friend and he accepted the milkshake that his friend prepared for both of them, unbeknownst that there would be traces of Steroids in it. He apparently forgives his friend as he did not know what he was doing.
This is a complete bullshit excuse. Come one think of a better excuse Dyanti like you are steroid injected pork from the butchery or something .

 

[Yulia]

I have even seen online claims that most of the current Springbok squad Juices after they posted that squad shirtless photo in Japan. You don't do steroids at this level and get away with it.

Honestly, I also thought they are all on steroids when I saw this photo.
Difficult to believe men can look like that in a natural way.

But 4 years of ban.. that's too much I think. That's probably the end of his career

 

[BiggusLaddus]

Personally in contact sports I would apply a life ban for steroid use.

 

[ajwffc]

. Come one think of a better excuse Dyanti like you are steroid injected pork from the butchery or something .

The Tour De France defence

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

The funny thing is, South Africa is doing rigorous testing, catches lots of people and then imposes heavy bans. But then all people see In the media is "Springbok gets doping ban" then they start jumping to conclusions that the country has a big doping culture. I have even seen online claims that most of the current Springbok squad Juices after they posted that squad shirtless photo in Japan. You don't do steroids at this level and get away with it.


So in a nutshell what I'm saying is that a country that does strict testing and announces these results to the media has to be carefull for the double edged sword as their very actions to portray to the public, players and themselves that they are taking action to keep the sport clean, creates a narrative that they are infested with the very problem that they boast about being harsh on, such as is the case with them trying to make a point with a four year ban for Dyanti. Then they composmise the image of the rest of the players.

Dyanti says he went to gym with a friend and he accepted the milkshake that his friend prepared for both of them, unbeknownst that there would be traces of Steroids in it. He apparently forgives his friend as he did not know what he was doing.
This is a complete bullshit excuse. Come one think of a better excuse Dyanti like you are steroid injected pork from the butchery or something .

Sorry but that sounds a lot like Trumps "We have the most cases because we do the most testing" argument. You don't catch people for doping if they aren't doping.

 

[Kiwiwomble]

That's a pretty big ban, Its not like sprinters or the tour de france where there is a more direct line from strength to being the best, if you don't have the ball handling skills or rugby brain (positioning etc) then its all for naught

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Sorry but that sounds a lot like Trumps "We have the most cases because we do the most testing" argument. You don't catch people for doping if they aren't doping.

It's also not true, there were more than twice as many tests in England as in South Africa (837 tests w/ 8 violations vs 342 tests w/ 16 violations)

To paraphrase Chael Sonnen: These drug tests are an intelligence test more than a drugs test. Everyone's on something banned, it's just the testing protocol is average at best and it's easy to get around.

I remember in one of Brian Mujati's videos he said he turned up to training (after smoking weed all week), saw that the drugs testing people were there, so just left. No repercussions.

 

[unrated]

I said they do rigorous and strict testing did not say they do the most tests, as Ragerancher alluded with the Trump comparison.

Where did you get those testing stats ?

 

[unrated]

Sorry but that sounds a lot like Trumps "We have the most cases because we do the most testing" argument. You don't catch people for doping if they aren't doping.

You don't catch people for Doping if you aren't testing. There are those that will be doping. Some get through the cracks.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Where did you get those testing stats ?

Towards the bottom of this article

The schoolboy dopers taking steroids at 16 - BBC Sport

Doping in South African schoolboy rugby is casting a shadow over the whole sport. Salmon van Huyssteen's story is just one chapter.

www.google.com

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

You don't catch people for Doping if you aren't testing. There are those that will be doping. Some get through the cracks.

Yes but claiming that having more doping cases caught is evidence of superior doping testing rather than more widespread doping use is identical to what Trump was claiming. South Africa's image of having a doping problem is nothing to do with serious testing, it's to do with lots of doping. If there wasn't a doping problem, you wouldn't have these cases to find.

Unless you wish to somehow claim that all the other nations have inferior doping tests to SA, which itself it a pretty dubious claim, you have to therefore accept the greater prevalence of doping cases is down to a greater prevalence of doping.

 

[RedruthRFC]

I said they do rigorous and strict testing did not say they do the most tests, as Ragerancher alluded with the Trump comparison.

Where did you get those testing stats ?

How do you make the kind of assertion that you did without comparing apples to apples? Without comparing the number of test perforrmed per registered player / professional player how can your defence be valid?

 

[TRF_stormer2010]

From what I gather of the pressure boys are under in our schools to perform I can fully understand how a doping 'culture' can develop as it goes hand in hand with the pressure-to-perform culture. I very much doubt though that it extends all the way up. The players don't need it and the potential downside is to big so the risk-reward ratio tips towards staying clean as a clearly superior option.

The only people high up I can potentially see doping are young fringe players hoping to make the cut into say a CC u21 side or- as in Dyantyi's case- a player who wants to recover from injury in time for a RWC. Steriods would help with the rate of recovery and Dyantyi was touch and go there. My suspiscion is that he probably knew what he was doing. Very sad as he was in red hot form prior to injury. Very talented player who wouldn't need to dope though. I feel in rugby the margins aren't so fine and clear cut as in say Olympic sprinting events where shaving off 0.1 seconds is huge.

I feel pity to an extent as I can imagine myself being in his shoes and the pressure he was under to get fit in time. Also, 4 years is big especially for a wing but it does send a message which is the whole point of the exercise I suppose. He was still young enough to accept missing Japan and work towards France. Its not likely that Mapimpi would still be in contention come 2023. His likely rivals for a starting wing spot would likely have been Kolbe and Nkosi.

 

[Cruz_del_Sur]

I understand the rationale. Thing is, given the average span of a player's career this is catastrophic. A bit too harsh in my book.

 

[Leonormous Boozer]

I think there's a serious amount of naivety when it comes to doping in rugby and sport in general. I'm about to throw out a few extreme opinions but I'm certain I'm far closer to the mark than the following quotes from @unrated and @TRF_stormer2010:

"The players don't need it and the potential downside is to big so the risk-reward ratio tips towards staying clean as a clearly superior option."

"You don't do steroids at this level and get away with it."

Firstly, the recovery times in rugby are absolutely insane, some Irish players are after playing 6 internationals in 7 weeks and having their best performance in the last 40 mins with a training and gym workload on top, they'll be able to go again next week for their provinces. I don't believe for a second any combination of food and legal supplements* can prepare a natural human body for that.

I'd also look at the steroid culture in the top levels of the amateur game, do we really think that roids are so ineffective that none of these guys earn a pro contract off the back of this when there have been controlled studies proving that you gain more muscle with the same diet and no exercise while on steroids than someone on a solid gym program without them? Not for a second, there's going to be a few genetic freaks athletes for sure but they'll be few and far between.

I think it's fairly blatant too when you look at the physical condition of guys from when the sport went pro to now. Sports science hasn't come that far and you get bigger and more powerful guys in amateur club ranks now fairly regularly than you had at international level in the first three world cups.

Let's be realistic here, these guys earn a living off their bodies' capabilities, there has been so many examples of sportsmen doping to ridiculous extents and getting away with it for years and years and as @TRF_Olyy alluded to testing is ****. (850 tests in English pro rugby over the course of a year is testing about 80% of their players once) Everyone is doping guys.

*Literally nothing bar creatine and, to a far smaller extent, leucine work at all. BCAAs, glutamine etc... are all just taken by pros to make you think they're going the extra mile with their supplementing as a disguise.

P.S, none of this post is an attack on any nation's rugby, I reckon SA like "dirtier" and more obvious stuff for various reasons I think are obvious and not worth discussing. It's more an attempt to make it clear that what pro rugby players can do isn't natural. Whether it's right or wrong isn't something that I'm that interested in.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

I think it's fairly blatant too when you look at the physical condition of guys from when the sport went pro to now.

The old cliche of
Big, Lean, Clean: Pick two.

19st props with abs putting in 80mins of a cardio. Nah.

Dyantyi is being made an example of to make it look like they're on top of it/rugby is a clean sport.
His only crime is being dumb enough to get caught - I don't buy his excuse of drinking his mates protein shake (that he'd loaded with SARMS - as if mixing them into your shake is what you do...). Most likely he was doing training away from the rugby environment, and was naive enough to think there's no difference between special supplements provided by sports scientists and whatever he can buy from get-big-get-ripped-get-huge.net.org

P.S, none of this post is an attack on any nation's rugby

This,
I'm not singling SA out in any way shape or form, every country is at it.
It's easy to point at the teenagers failing tests but that's because SA test the Craven Week players (I think?) whereas elsewhere you're not tested until you're in a pro environment - and kids are gonna be more naive about it than pros are.

 

[ncurd]

I'm going to throw this out there sports science has grown that far and people are doping. We know testing in some areas is ******** but we also know in other sports its highly prevalent but people are also somehow getting away with.

The answer is simple they are getting away with it because they are doing it legally. No different to how teams get around salary caps and what not they find the loopholes in what substances are allowed and make sure they exploit it. Its just quiet stuff like TUE's, how many athletes claim to have asthma? (FFS I was a chronic as kid no way you could compete at anything). Massive conspiracies like Lance Armstrong and Russia eventually get found out so whilst prevalent it way more about rule bending than outright breaking. The guy who get caught tend to be those who feel they need even more advantage than the practices they are already doing.

 

[TRF_heineken]

Sorry I'm late to this party, had a rough December...

I just want to point out a few things here.

Dyanti was tested when he arrived at the Springbok training camp ahead of the RC. And that test was positive. It wasn't that the entire springbok team arrived at the camp, didn't get tested, went to the doctor and all of them got their Vitamin S booster shot and all tested negative except Dyanti.

the 3 drugs that he tested positive for, are all drugs that come in Pill form or can be ingested orally. And I'm wondering whether or not he took it voluntarily... But that's a discussion for another day.

But I find it very strange why we as a country are being singled out. Is it just because of that article that tested the kids at the Craven Week? A schoolboy tournament that hosts the best of the best from the country based on their region. How many other countries have a big tournament like that? and do they do testing at such events?

And the other guy that has made the rounds was Chilliboy Ralepelle. But I want to point out, the last time he tested positive was when he was playing in France.

I also want to bring up a hypothetical here. I that the last 3 players who tested positive for steroids were Ralepelle, Hadebe and Dyanti. All 3 of them are black south africans. And my thinking here, is that there was so much pressure on them to be top players and make it in the Springbok squad, that they tried to take a shortcut and got caught. So the hypothetical question here is, would these guys have even dabbled with these substances, if there wasn't any talk of quota/transformation, and is this perhaps one of the traps the players might fall into, to try and beat a flawed system?

I think we should be very careful to generalise here and talk about a doping culture in a certain country for a certain team. Since 1997, there has only been 10 senior professional South African rugby players that tested positive for banned substances which includes Johan Ackerman, Johan Goosen, Cobus Visagie and Ashley Johnson who played for the Boks.

Out of the total amount of professional rugby players we have and had since 1997, the percentage of players using banned substances, are probably less than 1%. So I think we are actually pretty clean when it comes to our players and the sport.

 

[RedruthRFC]

I don't find it at all strange that South Africa has been singled out. The Craven Week story was widely reported, the fact that other contries don't have a comparable tournament doesn't negate the impact of this story on the reputation of South African rugby. On top of this, there have been a lot of high profile players, including Springboks testing positive for PEDs and South Africa are widely regarded as having no shortage of big, strong players. At very least this it seems easy to understand why this would create a confirmation bias. I would want to compare like for like statistics before concluding that South Africa's problem is any worse than any other nation's, but it seems clear that there is a problem.

On what basis do you believe that Dyanti took the three PEDs in question against his will / without his knowledge? Contaminated supplements seems to be the standard defence in these situations. AFAIK the burden of proof lies with the accused. Given that he tested positive for three different substances and would have had easy access to medical professionals to approve any supplement he took, this seems unlikely to hold water. Given that the effects are not instantly apparent like being slipped a Mickey, it's hard to see that he could argue that someone gave it to him without his knowledge. What other defence is there? Fingers crossed for a state / union / province sponsored doping scandal to keep me entertained through lockdown!

Ralepelle, Hadebe and Dyanti aren't the last three to test positive. There were 8 positive tests in 2019, hence the insane delay in Dyanti's hearing. Using this as an argument against quotas seems to really be clutching at straws to me.

Purely perception based, but if you think that the SARU or any other union is "pretty clean", I have some magic beans and Live Strong bands that you may be interested in buying.