During drug testing at bodybuilding events last year, Belgian doping authorities found that three-quarters of the competitors were using banned drugs. It's safe to say that the number was even higher at this year's Belgian bodybuilding championship.
All 20 of the entrants fled the venue when doping inspectors showed up at the event, forcing organizers to cancel the event and send home some 300 muscle-loving spectators without seeing a single man flex his biceps.
"I have never seen anything like it and hope never to see anything like it again," doping official Hans Cooman said Monday.
There's no word if Cooman was referring to obvious drug cheats escaping exposure, or the sight of 20 spray tanned freaks sprinting while wearing nothing but pastel thongs. We'll assume the latter.
The most surprising thing about this story is that anyone bothers to drug test bodybuilders in the first place. Unless you're just doing it to make sure that the testing equipment works when you use it for actual sports, what's gained, exactly, by learning that guys who look like the fellas on the upper right may not have gotten their physiques by eating raw eggs and hard work alone?
According to the blog 24 Oranges, many of these competitions wind up taking place off-shore so they can avoid drug testing. It's scary that people are that dead-set on watching people make muscles that such steps are taken to ensure that they continue to happen in the face of such scrutiny.
It's doubly scary to think that a barge full of jacked bodybuilders hungry for their 'roid fix (and still wearing those pastel thongs, of course) may be pulling into a port near you sometime soon. A band of Somali pirates seems more pleasant.
U.S. & World
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City and is a contributor to FanHouse.com and ProFootballTalk.com in addition to his duties for NBCNewYork.com.
