Guess what? The ATP just threw the book at Good Son Willy for being a doper (ugly details here), which suggests a number of things, the first of which is that Willy probably won that ride by cleaning up on the Argentine version of Jeopardy: “I’ll take ‘Pharmacology’ for five hundred!”
And who knows, maybe mom got the car because she’s a nurse with good connections to a few biochemists. In any event, it’s a good thing the other contestants on the game show weren’t Guillermo Coria, Mariano Puerta, or Juan Ignacio Chela, fellow members of the fastest growing segment of the Argentine population: male tennis players suspended for doping. Imagine the maneuvering then (“I’ll take ‘Ben Johnson’s Life’ for one thousand!”).
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve had it with these clowns. Get them the heck outta here. The Argentines appear to specialize in being really, really, really, nice guys who do really sleazy stuff—like take illegal drugs and cheat other more talented players out of their rightful places in the game.
Kind of makes Good Son Willy seem a bit compromised, no?
Oh sure, drugs won’t transform a Willy Cañas into a Wimbledon champ. But they can give you that critical edge over hundreds of other guys (it’s that close in the mosh-pit of the tour) who may never succeed in tennis because you, Willy boy, are a cheater.
And I’m sick of the excuses these guys repeatedly come up with. It’s pathetic. You listen to the Argentines and you’ve got nothing down BA way except the flu and fizzy cold tablets that—presto!—cause you to test positive for performance enhancing drugs! The excuses are all variations on “My dog ate my homework.” The only thing any dog appears to have eaten down Argentina’s way is the integrity of the dopers, and maybe the contents of a bottle labeled “masking agents.”
You know what? There must be some kind of bent doc or lab in Argentina. And it’s high time for the Argentine government to formally apologize to the sport of tennis for bringing it into disrepute. Oh sure, drug tests can be unreliable (see my posting on this subject on June 15th, accessible in the archives). But what are the chances that the testers screwed up, in the wake of all that went on with Greg Rusedski, new findings on nandrolone, and the ATP’s history with Argentine players? To bring a shaky case against Cañas at this time would violate every institutional goal and instinct of the highly PR-conscious ATP—and just imagine the hit its reputation would take among Latin players if it were found to be somehow persecuting Argentine players?
I can just see Puerta’s and Coria’s agents and lawyers telling him, “I know you just lost a zillion bucks, a chance to win the French Open, and your reputation is in the toilet forever with people who actually care about the integrity of sports. But isn’t the idea of a lawsuit a little extreme?”
Bottom line: These guys have consumed more illegal substances than Courtney Love and Scott Weiland combined, and they’ve created more bad press for Argentina than the pathetic performance of the nation’s armed forces in the Falklands Comed—er, War.
Sorry, Argies, all I can say is that you’re unbelievably lucky to be living in the Age of No Shame. Mariano Puerta said that when he came back from his doping suspension, everyone in the locker room was nice and friendly. That made him feel good.
Well good for you, Mariano. You live and work and presumably cheat and lie among a bunch of tolerant, all-forgiving, prosperous folks. You apparently have no trouble living with yourself, either. Let me see, that leaves only one group—the guys you climbed over to get near the top. The ones who will never get to play a French Open final, like you recently did, because they lost to cheaters like you and are now out of the game.
You disgust me. All of you.
[Ed. Note: On February 18, 2007, Guillermo Canas opened his claycourt season by winning in Costa do Sauipe, taking out Juan Carlos Ferrero in the final 7-6, 6-2. --S.]
