Drugs Wrecking Sports Careers
Tennis starlet Martina Hingis and Eagles head coach Andy Reid may both be seeing the end of the line - and both because of drugs.
Reid has almost always managed to put a good product on the field. But after last season, and on the same day, 2 of his sons were arrested - and not on the first time. Now it seems both will spend more than a year in jail. And of course a publicity seeking judge was there to pile on
A judge who sentenced Philadelphia Eagles coach Andy Reid’s sons to jail on Thursday likened the coach’s home to “a drug emporium” and questioned whether his adult sons should live there.
“There isn’t any structure there that this court can depend upon,” Montgomery County Judge Steven O’Neill said before sentencing 22-year-old Britt Reid to up to 23 months in jail plus probation.
“I’m saying this is a family in crisis,” O’Neill said.
Then there’s the Swiss Miss. She dominated women’s tennis for a period in the late 90’s and had to retire early because of injuries to her leg. She started a comeback but it seems to have abruptly ended both on news of her retirement and of a positive test for cocaine.
Hingis then asked the reporter whether he thought she could get back close to the top. “Only if you are 100 percent committed, because the way things sound from you now, you already have one foot out the door and teenagers will blow right past you,” the reporter responded.
“That’s a problem,” she said. “Some days I just don’t know where the fire is.”
It’s very possible that, at that time, Hingis already knew that she had failed her drug test at Wimbledon, testing positive for cocaine.
On Thursday, the former No. 1 player announced her retirement, saying that “I have no desire to spend the next several years of my life reduced to fighting against the doping officials.” She added, “I’m now 27 years old, and realistically too old to play top class tennis.”
She also strenuously denied that she had used cocaine and said she had never taken drugs. “They say that cocaine increases self-confidence and creates a type of euphoria,” she said. “I don’t know. I only know that if I were to try to hit the ball while in any state of euphoria, it simply wouldn’t work. I would think that it would be impossible for anyone to maintain the coordination required to play top class tennis while under the influence of drugs. And I know one other thing — I would personally be terrified of taking drugs.”
Meanwhile - someone who isn’t terrified of taking drugs - Barry Bonds, it seems, may boycott the Hall of Fame over the whole asterisk on the 756 ball thing. Which is funny, because I’m pretty sure the Hall of Fame may boycott Barry Bonds for the exact same reason!
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