Please be polite! By Les Earnest
Originally published in
the April 1985 issue of Cyclops
USA
If the
newspaper reports distributed nationally on February 27 are accurate, National
Coach Eddie Borysewicz may not yet have gotten the message that the Board of Directors thought they communicated to him in January (see article below) Mr. B. is quoted as saying "Blood doping is a legal thing" and "To even ask the question I think is not polite."
Sports Digest
Mercury News Wire Services
Blood doping is legal and should be a personal matter left to the
individual athlete,
the coach of the
"Blood doping is a legal thing. When it's legal, why does the media make it a big problem?" asked Olympic team coach Edward Borysewicz, who also is national coaching director of the U.S. Cycling Federation.
Blood doping, also known as blood packing or blood boosting,
is a procedure in which an individual receives transfusions of his own or a relative's blood. The
technique is aimed
at increasing an athlete's red-blood-cell count and oxygen level, thereby increasing stamina.
Some doctors and members of the U.S. Olympic Committee have claimed that some cyclists received such transfusions before
their Olympic
events.
"It's legal; it's not illegal," Borysewicz said in
who's
getting the injections?
"To
even ask the question I think is not polite," he said. "That
is an invasion of privacy, and that is not polite, and it's illegal."