A juicy steak is to blame for a failed dope test during the Tour de France, according to Alberto Contador.
A juicy steak is to blame for a failed dope test during the Tour de France, according to Alberto Contador.

It wasn't me, it was the steak



Steak, an entity known to do nothing more than sit obediently upon a plate and wait for the cutlery, suddenly has joined a vivid line of culprits.

It cannot even defend itself because it is, by definition, dead. Yet now that Alberto Contador, the Tour de France champion, has blamed an uncommonly juicy steak for his positive doping test during the Tour he just won in July, steak finds itself in the busy fray vying for prominence among athletes' doping excuses in a doping era.

Steak does have a close precedent in its more controversial cousin, veal. Petr Korda, the 1998 Australian Open tennis champion, blamed a positive test on his fondness for veal, as if veal did not have enough problems.

Then some studious people noted that Korda would have had to consume herds upon herds of veal for decades upon decades to match the level he had attained. Veal, it would seem, outflanks steak for absurdity.

Poor old steak also takes a trumping next to spaghetti bolognese, the miscreant flagged - successfully - by the English bobsledder Lenny Paul.

When you picture Paul's plate, you are picturing pretty much a smidgen of spaghetti and a stunning heap of bolognese. That picture alone means the dreaded bolognese clearly outpaces both steak and veal.

The Bolognese With A Hint Of Spaghetti, in fact, runs roughshod among the foodstuffs athletes have pegged as perps. For ludicrousness it clearly defeats the sarsaparilla-and-ginseng energy drink accused by Ben Johnson, the deltoid-rich Canadian sprinter from Seoul in 1988.

It routs poor, helpless flaxseed oil, the wrongdoer that came up in the courtroom in the case of Barry Bonds, the American baseball slugger. It steams over the allegedly tainted vitamin B-12 injection of Rafael Palmeiro, the American baseball impostor.

Yet it yields at last in the mighty presence of the whisky cited as a testosterone-booster by the disgraced American cyclist Floyd Landis, who went to the loonily cynical extent of autographing a bottle of the spirit and auctioning it off at a subsequent Tour of California.

Whisky wins in the accused-foods category which continues to conduct a popularity contest against the wayward-relative category.

In explaining how he secured his drugs, Alex Rodriguez, the American baseball supernova, went with the unnamed-cousin storyline, no doubt hoping to gain empathy as most of us do have unnamed cousins.

Gilberto Simoni, the Italian cyclist, according to multiple sources, succeeded in arguing the furtive horror of lozenges his aunt brought back from Peru. Everyone loves a subversive-aunt and Peruvian-lozenge stories, making this doubly impressive.

Wives have turned up with varying degrees of innocence as in the case of Roger Clemens, the American baseball pitcher, (trainer supplied human growth hormone to wife but, somehow, not husband).

Shane Warne, the great Australian cricketer, according to the Daily Telegraph and other newspapers, in 2003 noted a well-meaning mum who provided pills to reduce facial puffiness. Still, no relative or best friend approaches the loopy majesty of whisky, so long regarded as a performance dis-enhancer before its heyday with Landis.

Whisky streams unmitigatedly into all-around medal contention, and only there does it ebb.

It finds furious contention from the genre of discotheque-blaming, which includes tennis player Richard Gasquet, who argued - successfully - that his positive test for an illegal recreational drug sprang from kissing a nightclub waitress, and cycling's Jan Ullrich, who indicted two pills he ingested in a nightclub, as we all know the wisdom of finely tuned athletes ingesting pills in a disco.

Whisky eventual fails when up against the genre of massage-therapist-blaming as in the cases of Justin Gatlin, the American sprinter, and the Lance Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France champion. Here massage therapists are supposed to make life more palatable, and either through intent (Gatlin) or indifference (Armstrong) they're out there committing sabotage.

It's enough to make you lose hope, but it's not enough to get the bronze medal. That goes to Romario, the Brazilian Lothario and football impresario. He had reached age 41 in 2007, enabling him to seize a stirring chance to blame a positive test upon his hair-loss medication. Surely many wept out of familiarity, but it's unfamiliarity that snared the silver.

That's because until Dieter Baumann, the German runner, the world with all its troubles still had not awakened to the singular horror of toothpaste-spiking such as engulfed poor Baumann.

And still more edifyingly, surely most of humanity had not pondered even the possibility of what befell Tyler Hamilton, the American cyclist.

Hamilton's brave acknowledgement of the possibility of a "vanishing twin" from his days in the womb explained to all doubters how alien blood could have found its way into Hamilton's vessels. It proved so exotic that it proved golden, no easy feat in one preposterous era.

cculpepper@thenational.ae

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COMPANY PROFILE

Company: Bidzi

● Started: 2024

● Founders: Akshay Dosaj and Asif Rashid

● Based: Dubai, UAE

● Industry: M&A

● Funding size: Bootstrapped

● No of employees: Nine

Checks continue

A High Court judge issued an interim order on Friday suspending a decision by Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots to direct a stop to Brexit agri-food checks at Northern Ireland ports.

Mr Justice Colton said he was making the temporary direction until a judicial review of the minister's unilateral action this week to order a halt to port checks that are required under the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Civil servants have yet to implement the instruction, pending legal clarity on their obligations, and checks are continuing.

Tree of Hell

Starring: Raed Zeno, Hadi Awada, Dr Mohammad Abdalla

Director: Raed Zeno

Rating: 4/5

The alternatives

• Founded in 2014, Telr is a payment aggregator and gateway with an office in Silicon Oasis. It’s e-commerce entry plan costs Dh349 monthly (plus VAT). QR codes direct customers to an online payment page and merchants can generate payments through messaging apps.

• Business Bay’s Pallapay claims 40,000-plus active merchants who can invoice customers and receive payment by card. Fees range from 1.99 per cent plus Dh1 per transaction depending on payment method and location, such as online or via UAE mobile.

• Tap started in May 2013 in Kuwait, allowing Middle East businesses to bill, accept, receive and make payments online “easier, faster and smoother” via goSell and goCollect. It supports more than 10,000 merchants. Monthly fees range from US$65-100, plus card charges of 2.75-3.75 per cent and Dh1.2 per sale.

2checkout’s “all-in-one payment gateway and merchant account” accepts payments in 200-plus markets for 2.4-3.9 per cent, plus a Dh1.2-Dh1.8 currency conversion charge. The US provider processes online shop and mobile transactions and has 17,000-plus active digital commerce users.

• PayPal is probably the best-known online goods payment method - usually used for eBay purchases -  but can be used to receive funds, providing everyone’s signed up. Costs from 2.9 per cent plus Dh1.2 per transaction.

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Expert advice

“Join in with a group like Cycle Safe Dubai or TrainYAS, where you’ll meet like-minded people and always have support on hand.”

Stewart Howison, co-founder of Cycle Safe Dubai and owner of Revolution Cycles

“When you sweat a lot, you lose a lot of salt and other electrolytes from your body. If your electrolytes drop enough, you will be at risk of cramping. To prevent salt deficiency, simply add an electrolyte mix to your water.”

Cornelia Gloor, head of RAK Hospital’s Rehabilitation and Physiotherapy Centre 

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can ride as fast or as far during the summer as you do in cooler weather. The heat will make you expend more energy to maintain a speed that might normally be comfortable, so pace yourself when riding during the hotter parts of the day.”

Chandrashekar Nandi, physiotherapist at Burjeel Hospital in Dubai
 

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Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha

Starring: Ajay Devgn, Tabu, Shantanu Maheshwari, Jimmy Shergill, Saiee Manjrekar

Director: Neeraj Pandey

Rating: 2.5/5

Moral education needed in a 'rapidly changing world'

Moral education lessons for young people is needed in a rapidly changing world, the head of the programme said.

Alanood Al Kaabi, head of programmes at the Education Affairs Office of the Crown Price Court - Abu Dhabi, said: "The Crown Price Court is fully behind this initiative and have already seen the curriculum succeed in empowering young people and providing them with the necessary tools to succeed in building the future of the nation at all levels.

"Moral education touches on every aspect and subject that children engage in.

"It is not just limited to science or maths but it is involved in all subjects and it is helping children to adapt to integral moral practises.

"The moral education programme has been designed to develop children holistically in a world being rapidly transformed by technology and globalisation."

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yallacompare profile

Date of launch: 2014

Founder: Jon Richards, founder and chief executive; Samer Chebab, co-founder and chief operating officer, and Jonathan Rawlings, co-founder and chief financial officer

Based: Media City, Dubai 

Sector: Financial services

Size: 120 employees

Investors: 2014: $500,000 in a seed round led by Mulverhill Associates; 2015: $3m in Series A funding led by STC Ventures (managed by Iris Capital), Wamda and Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority; 2019: $8m in Series B funding with the same investors as Series A along with Precinct Partners, Saned and Argo Ventures (the VC arm of multinational insurer Argo Group)

COMPANY%20PROFILE
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Almnssa
Started: August 2020
Founder: Areej Selmi
Based: Gaza
Sectors: Internet, e-commerce
Investments: Grants/private funding
Jigra
Director: Vasan Bala
Starring: Alia Bhatt, Vedang Raina, Manoj Pahwa, Harsh Singh
Rated: 3.5/5
Our legal consultant

Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais

Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants

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Joker: Folie a Deux

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson

Director: Todd Phillips 

Rating: 2/5

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Napoleon
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Name: Brendalle Belaza

From: Crossing Rubber, Philippines

Arrived in the UAE: 2007

Favourite place in Abu Dhabi: NYUAD campus

Favourite photography style: Street photography

Favourite book: Harry Potter

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Thank You for Banking with Us

Director: Laila Abbas

Starring: Yasmine Al Massri, Clara Khoury, Kamel El Basha, Ashraf Barhoum

Rating: 4/5


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