Doping in other sports?

Following the recent doping scandal post that I wrote about Lance Armstrong I thought long and hard about other sports and wondered if there was doping in those sports too. Cycling is synonymous with doping, you always hear stories of cyclists being banned for doping etc. and it’s understandable as cycling is a grueling sport and the cyclists put their bodies through weeks of mountains and extreme conditions. I mean riding in excess of 150 to 200km a day for 3 weeks is insane and the do it all the time, it’s no wonder they resort to doping. Is this an excuse? Not at all, even though cycling is extremely taxing on the body, there is no excuse for doping under any circumstance. This leads me to my first question, is there doping happening in other sports. Well we know that doping also occurs in swimming, running and certain athletic events. But what about the main stream sports like soccer, rugby and cricket? The 2003 ICC Cricket World cup could be an indication that there might be, news came in that Shane Warne Australia’s prolific leg spinner pulled out of the World Cup as he tested positive to a banned substance and was banned from cricket for twelve months, he of course denied it and said he had no idea what he was taking. This may have been the case but as with so many athletes who are caught always deny that they were doping. My focus falls to rugby, players are getting bigger and bigger, recently watching the u20 junior world champs and just looking at how big they were, 19 years old and weighing 120 kilos and it’s not just one or two guys its most of them and they don’t look 19, they look like old men with beards. This seems a little strange to me, but of course I’m not accusing anyone of anything, I’m just saying it’s a little shifty. I’ve always heard stories of top SA schools forcing their rugby players to take steroids and always just thought it was talk until I was speaking to friends who told me that a friend of theirs who was at a top school was forced to take steroids and refused and is now at a different school. This disturbed me highly that coaches and staff were doing this to their players and it just reinforces the win at all costs mentality that people have adopted. These are however just stories that I’ve heard, I don’t claim them as truth but where there’s smoke there’s usually fire.