Archives for August 2nd, 2007

Mojca Mavec and Jolanda Čeplak at the finish line.

Last week was a bad week to be a blonde celebrity in Slovenia. Two popular blondinkas — the world-class athlete Jolanda Čeplak and the beloved media personality Mojca Mavec — fell from grace. Both of them stood accused of being cheaters.

Čeplak: as the BBC reported, she tested positive for erythropoietin (EPO) and faces the possibility of missing the Beijing Olympics. Because Jolanda is a world-record-holding, Olympic-medal-wearing, all-around-ass-kicking athlete and pride of the nation, this is a deeply demoralizing prospect.

Mavec: as Dnevnik reported, she tested positive for plagiarism and has now lost her plum job as columnist for the magazine Ona. And after some hand-wringing, Marko Crnkovič also asked her to step down as a “house blogger” for Blogos.

What do the two have in common? Besides being beloved, both of them are being punished for crimes that are widespread enough to be normal. Does anyone really think that professional athletes are “clean”? Was anyone surprised by all the doped up Tour de France cyclists. I’m reminded of the words of five-time Tour winner Jacques Anquetil, who said:

“You’d have to be an imbecile or a hypocrite to imagine that a professional cyclist who rides 235 days a year can hold himself together without stimulants.”

That was back in 1967, where cyclists had a much smaller range of “enhancement methods” to choose from. Back then it was more or less amphetamines. Today steroids, testosterone, and EPO are all on the menu. (Speaking of which, if you want to read an absolutely incredible article about what that stuff does to you, read this: Drug Test - A Cautionary Tale. It’s about an amateur cyclist who decides to see how doping affects his performance. It’s also one of the most interesting articles I’ve ever seen on the innertubes.)

As for Mavec and the media in Slovenia: Without getting too much into it, let me just say that I agree with the many commenters at Dnevnik who wrote “She’s not the only one” or variations thereof. I mean, I know that plagiarism is a cardinal sin and that even if a lot of people are doing it doesn’t make it okay. But still… Mojca’s infractions are essentially a pimple on a body that is riddled with cancer. There are so many much more serious malfunctions going on in the Slovenian media that it just seems absurd to worry about this.

With that said, it’s still disappointing news for both of them and bad news for Slovenia.