Belgium Competition Displays No Neck, Brains

I've never pretended to understand the mind of a professional bodybuilder.

All the best t-shirts would never come in my size, I could never air-guitar properly again without ripping one (or seven) of my pecs off and I'd always be slippery with grease, which wouldn't bother me so much as it would the people who sat in the same seat as me on the train.

So take my navigation through the 2009 Belgium Bodybuilding Championships with a grain of salt, will you? If you're low on salt, check out the AP Story.

Twenty nut-hugger-wearing iron-pumpers (probably grunting the Belgian equivalent of "dude" and "bro") waddled quickly out of the Arsenaal* Theater on Sunday after anti-doping officials paid a surprise visit to the infamously steroid-prone contest. How prone? Glad you asked. During last year's competition, the northern Belgium region found 22 of the 29 body builders' sample test positive with some form of performance enhancer, most showing excessive levels of anabolic steroids. That kind of prone.

*Are we all in agreement that the ARSEnaal Theater is the perfect venue name for a group like this.

So, it wasn't so much shocking as sad when the anti-doping officials arrived and witnessed the entire gaggle of muscle-men just grab their gear and run off as soon as they entered into the room. Nevermind shock, the best part of this ridiculous little story is how deadpan the anti-doping officials seem to be about it.

"The sport has a history of doping and this incident didn't do its reputation any good," anti-doping official Hans Cooman said.

Generally speaking, when a competition's competitors all flee the competition before competing, it usually means the gig is gonna get canceled. And while I'd love to tell you that some smart-assed pip-squeak from Brussels hopped onto the stage and flexed like 80s-era Hulk Hogan to grab the trophy (or whatever), it didn't happen. Nothing happened.

And it sounds like nothing will happen in he future because, nothing has happened in the past. Many of these competitions have taken place off-shore so as to avoid drug testing. Because of the testing laws in Brussels, the event had been moved across the Dutch border to Vlissingen for the weekend competition in hopes of dodging "the man."

This time around, the best Cooman can do is report the case to the Flemish disciplinary committee, which will rule on whether it can sanction competitors who refused to be tested.

Can someone be punished for not taking a test? And if you can punish them for agreeing to be tested, isn't it just a quick hop toward taking samples without a competitor's knowledge. Just sneak under them in the bathroom, they'll never know. When's the last time those goons were able to move their necks enough to look down?

And even more to the point, if everyone in the competition is cheating, is it still cheating? The playing field seems awfully even to me.