Originally Posted by
BengeBoy
If you've been following the sickening developments in the world of doping, you may have seen that Italian pro Riccardo Ricco nearly killed himself this week by botching a transfusion of his own blood ("blood doping"). Since he's been caught before, and promised to clean up, lots of folks are jumping on Ricco for being an unrepentant doper.
Fair enough, I guess.
But today Mark Cavendish piles on, and says that he hopes Ricco goes to prison, and, more specifically, "I really do hope he becomes someone's ***** in prison."
(exact quote here):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/oth...n-scandal.html
So, I may be a bit of touch with current slang, but I would read this to mean that he hopes that Ricco is ***** in prison. In any other walk of life -- really, even any another sport -- Cavendish would be castigated for making such a statement.
But from what I see via various searches tonight, most people are laughing at Cavendish, or even applauding him for speaking his mind.
I just can't imagine any other situation where that kind of sentiment would be accepted. Can you imagine anyone saying that about a female athlete?
I don't know what's worse -- the rampant, continuous string of doping scandals in the sport, or the fact that apparently to fellow athletes and the cycling press it's OK to use that kind of language about another athlete.
Seems like a completely broken sport if you ask me.
I don't know what your problem is. Assuming Cavendish is clean, he is expressing the frustration of all his clean colleauges who are trying to get the sport on track as far as doping is concerned, that someone who has been caught before continues to let the cause down.
Cavendish's language might seem to you to be too strong, and maybe you are taking it way too literally. But sometimes it's the only way for the message to get through to some people.
Trust me on this... people with an excuse for a brain often only understand the most basic of language skills, and that often includes a lot of this sort of expression.
By the way, far from being a broken sport, I think road cycling is going from strength to strength, with tours now being held in countries with top-line riders that would have never hosted such events a decade ago. We've had the privilege here of the world road racing champs and the Tour Down Under in the past six months... and it's all been great fun.