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July 12th 2009 @ 6:03am
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Pesky doping controls start to ’suck’ for Armstrong
Lance Armstrong admitted Saturday that constant anti-doping controls are starting to get on his nerves after being tested twice in one day.
The 37-year-old is third in the general classification after Friday’s 176.5km eighth stage from Andorra to Saint Girons as he bids to win an eighth yellow jersey after nearly four years in retirement.
Armstrong is [...]
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![The Sports Minister, Kate Ellis, who famously did not know the difference between rugby league and rugby union, is floating the proposition that successful athletes should pay back part of their expenses incurred training at the Austalian Institute of Sports and other similar institutions.
The Minister, in the great tradition of the Rudd Government’s penchant for [...] Spiro Zavos: Should successful athletes pay back their AIS costs?](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/should-successful-athlete-pay-back-th.jpg)
![Groundsmen around the world, please note: bowlers do exist. But the way you are preparing the pitches, they may become extinct. Ditto for Test cricket.
I realise you must be under instructions to prepare a pitch like a billiard table so that it lasts for five days and more spectators turn up to swell the organisers’ [...] Kersi Meher-Homji: There’s too many tall scores and small thinking](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/tall-scores-small-thinking-tendulkar-th.jpg)
![As a rugby league fan who has often been frustrated by the small-minded nature of many of the game’s club bosses and administrators in the past, I had to applaud the stance of Parramatta CEO Paul Osborne this week.
Osborne, spying a monster crowd for his team’s season opener against the well supported Dragons, has made [...] Steve Kaless: Eels’ Homebush gambit positive move for NRL](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/bulldogs-eels-th.jpg)
![The IOC was lambasted two months ago for its approval of golf as a future Olympic sport. It was, according to many, yet another decision that catered to the commercial worth of the Games, yet further eroded the core values of the Olympics. But in awarding Rio de Janeiro the 2016 Games, they should be [...] Adrian Musolino: The IOC made a brave, correct decision](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/ioc-brave-decision-brazil-th.jpg)
![“Hang on a minute,” comes the raw Scottish brogue of Gavin Hastings as he stops speaking for a moment to chastise a tradesman in the background. And then faintly, “Can’t you see I’m on the phone? OK, well just wait a few minutes and I’ll get my toolbelt on”.
He’s then back on the phone. [...] Andrew Logan: Gavin Hastings on rugby, fullbacks and the Wallabies](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Gavin-Hastings-rugby-wallabies-th.jpg)
![For the second consecutive weekend, a major motorsport event was halted due to freak storms. Both the Malaysian Formula 1 Grand Prix and the Qatar MotoGP couldn’t continue in the circumstances.
But as they were twilight and night races respectively, to better cater for television, there was no more room for manoeuvrability.
Motorsport has [...] Adrian Musolino: Catering for television can cost a sport dearly](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/catering-for-tv-cortese-th.jpg)
![First of all, let’s get something straight: FIFA’s apparent back flip on who can bid for the 2018 World Cup hosting rights has nothing to do with Australia and everything to do with Europe.
The world governing body aren’t just shafting Football Federation Australia, they are leaving everyone outside of the European power base in the [...] Davidde Corran: Time to get serious about our floundering World Cup bid](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/malaysian-fly-ointment-rudd-salisbury-mccallum-th.jpg)
![There are a lot of easy targets in the Sonny Bill Williams saga: the headstrong runaway who’s done the dirty on his mates, the conniving managers, and the aloof CEO hypocritically demanding support from an enemy that has been savagely plundered by his predecessors for over a hundred years.
All of them make great caricatures for [...] Garth Hamilton: David Gallop, it’s time to merge the codes](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/david-gallop-th.jpg)
![The Twenty20 Big Bash is going to take over the Australian summer, not because Twenty20 cricket is so great, but there is a void that needs to be filled.
The way it currently stands, there isn’t that much cricket played between November and February. So what there is, is horribly stretched out.
So much so that the [...] David Wiseman: Big Bash could be the saviour of Australian cricket](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/twenty20-can-be-fun-th.jpg)
![What to make of another tumultuous round of A-League action? There’ll be plenty of column inches devoted to dwindling attendance figures, while the thorny of issue of refereeing has once again hit the headlines.
It seems we can’t go long in the A-League without refereeing standards coming into question.
Last season’s Grand Final was marred by an [...] Mike Tuckerman: A-League referees are only human](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/a-league-referees-only-human-th.jpg)
![That was one of the most disappointing Socceroos performances in recent memory. Far from being a result we can take some comfort from (in that it’s getting Australia a step closer to South Africa 2010), it’s actually highlighted how dangerous the gambit of what I would call containment is becoming for our national team looking [...] Jesse Fink: Is South Africa 2010 a road to nowhere?](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/mark-bresciano-soccaroos-th.jpg)



