Andy Murray slams cycling for lack of skill and too many drugs… not like tennis

Another one jumping on the band waggon. Yeah Tennis is clean, have you seen the Williams brothers. What do you perceive as a lack of skill, take it you he has never descended down a mountain on a road bike or seen a bunch sprint. Over to you Cav mate, no skill just physical attributes. Think I have lost a little bit of respect for Mr Murray here.

Same article was in the independant as well. Not impressed in Murray and his sweeping statement. I wonder how many positives will turn up if tests were intensified in his sport? After all, there are some games that that go on for hours. Surely stimulants must be used to keep ones focus in those situations as weLl as the steroids mentioned for strength

If Andy Murray thinks there's no skill required let's see him get on a bike and see how competitive he is.

If he's fit enough to play a five hour tennis match he should be able to cope with five hours in the saddle.

Not a tennis fan, never will be. cycling requires a lot more stamina, strength and technique than tennis ever will. Words of a fool imo.

As Theincrediblebike says jumping on the band waggon, but which waggon? the I hate cycling one or the I can make a stupid comment on something I know very little about just like a footballer

Choke!

tennis ? Skill ?? ... like smash the ball as hard as
possible so the other player can't hit it whilst
making stupid grunting noises skill ????

Don't get hung up on it - he's probably right about the significance of skill in tennis vs cycling. What's the problem with that?

Cycling does require a lot of skill but at the top level (apart from some exceptional cases) bike handling skills tend to be fairly uniform. Therefore physical attributes and fitness tend to become the significant differentiators. In tennis it is not uncommon to see a very fit player beaten by a very skilled player - that won't tend to happen in endurance sports.

Put simply - tennis is a game and turns on skill, cycling is a sport and turns on physical ability. That doesn't make one better than the other, it just makes them different.

Roll on Scottish Independence, we won't have to say Murray is GB Tennis Player.
We can just call him chip on the shoulder, miserable, bad advert for Scotland Tennis Player.

Chin up though, after buying a Gold Medal and getting a grand slam because all the good players were having a day off your failure to get SPOTY is sealed again.

Oh yes, and stop trying to grow a beard, you can't!

And yet the reason always trotted out for the dominance of the top 3 tennis players is their superior stamina over the course of a 5 set Grand Slam. Why can't any other player work on their endurance the same way?

Another tennis player talking balls!!

I think it'd pretty widely accepted that tennis has a significant problem with drugs, and much like the UCI today, tennis' governing body may find their current actions to combat their doping issues will be perceived as complicity at best in years to come.
With that in mind, Murray's comments are either delivered with a mind numbing amount of blinkered ignorance, or there are darker forces/motivations at work here. Either way I find it worrying.
That said, he is right, tennis is more skill and less physical when compared to cycling. However it is still all physical skill. I mean by that, that it is a physical effort to hit a ball hard, to run and take a shot etc etc. What is key to this is that with physical effort comes fatigue. When learning a skill, what makes you better is repetition... The more you do it, the better you get.
With that in mind, anything that can help you train harder and longer will be just as useful to your competitive performance as any drugs used in cycling. So Murray is probably right, come match day, they'll mainly be clean, as all their doping takes place in training.

Has he read this?

Idiot!!!! Glass houses or what!

http://bikepure.org/2012/10/cycling-serves-an-ace-against-tennis/

What a complete tool he is!

+1 sponican. Getting cyclists worked up over nothing is like shooting fish in a barrell. It's embarrassing to see the same righteous indignation reaction every time.

I think there are a few too many reactionary comments here. But I do believe that professional sports around the globe have a problem with drugs. Tennis being no exception.

I had to laugh at the first comment about the 'Williams Brothers'. But more seriously, it struck me, in light of the tennis player being caught with Human Growth Hormone (HGH) that one of the side effects of its use is buckling of the teeth. Adult users are then forced to use braces to correct their teeth. I seem to remember both Williams sisters wearing them in their early careers. And didn't Andy Murray have them? It's not a sure sign, but it is rather strange that these dental problems were not fixed until adulthood.

The major problem is not cycling, but rather a lack of impetus by authorities to develop a serious anti-doping program that works. There is a lot to be sceptical about with Tennis, cycling and lots of other sports.

Oh dear, Mr Murray, yet more monotonic drivel from somebody who should, perhaps, let his tennis-playing speak for him instead of his mouth.
Operacion Puertool por favor

Actually, he's probably not that wrong in claiming many cyclists were using drugs in the 1990s. And he's not wrong in claiming tennis requires more individual skill than the Tour. I'd like to see him try a BMX race though as that needs speed and skill.

But I doubt tennis was that clean of drug use in the past. And I'm sure there are plenty of other sports with a murky past. Just think about a sport like rugby for instance, which requires huge physical strength. Do you really think all the players got their muscle from working out?

Cough...Nadal....cough....Operation Puerto..

I think Andy should take a tiny wee loook at the website tennishasasteroidproblem before he gets anymore stupid.

I don't see anything other than naivety in his comments and it is not worth getting worked up about it. In the end his point is correct though, that testing is not thorough enough in Tennis and other sports.

A (classic) pathetic example of a lack of skill in cycling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxXqQqAc2pA

I think Murray is mostly right, Tennis is a sport of skill, can you imagine two supremely fit blokes trying to play tennis together? It would be hilarious if they aren't regular tennis players.

Golf, same.

Tennis and Cycling are, surprise surprise, very different. One of them involves a ball,and hence tends to require ball skills. One of them involves a bike,and involves bike skills.

I don't doubt that Murray knows that, and was just trying to point out that stamina enhancing drugs will be more effective in cycling than in tennis. However, that doesn't mean that tennis doesn't have a drug problem.

So... Man who finally manages to win something in a silly game played with fluffy green balls, invented to keep the bored Victorian middle class occupied on their lawns and universally taken up by schoolgirls, slags off one of the few real sports there is.

Piss off, Murray.

Spot on Tony.

I don't understand the overreaction here either. We criticise athletes for keeping to the Omertà, then slate them when they actually voice an opinion. Yes, he makes some rather ignorant sweeping statements about cycling, but he recognises that tennis can do far more and wants an increase in out of competition testing.

No doubt other sports will face their own drug revelations in years to come, let's celebrate the fact that we are facing up to the issue and not sticking our heads in the sand like so many other sports (football, US sports etc etc etc).

Some people on these forums are far too precious about our sport. We are getting pelters left right and centre because there was/is a problem. Let's face it, if the UCI had their way we'd still be in the dark about some of these revelations from the USADA report. If we pretend that all is well now we'll be facing the next Festina/US Postal in another 10 years time.

It was the late eighties, early nineties when cycling's drug problem really took off, as reflected by written memoirs by Lauren Fignon etc, and common knowledge of the various scandals.

It was also, (IIRC) the late eighties, early nineties when tennis fundamentally changed due to the escalating muscular power developed by the players - anyone remember all the controversy over the women's grunting over every shot?

It wouldn't surprise me to find an omerta in many other sports, and I think tennis is a strong contender for this.