Odesnik Busted for HGH; Roddick Not Happy

News broke just a few days ago that American Wayne Odesnik, who reached a career-high ranking of 77 last Spring, was busted for his attempt to bring human growth hormone (HGH) into Australia at the beginning of the year. Odesnik has pleaded guilty and faces a two-year ban from the sport after officials discovered eight vials of the substance, each one containing six milligrams, in his baggage at the year's first slam. Odesnik has already been fined $7,000 by a Brisbane court.

Andy Roddick is one player who is particularly angry about the situation.

"If he pled guilty, there’s nothing worse than that. I’m normally the one to give people the benefit of the doubt. If that’s the case, what we read today, that’s just plain cheating and they should throw him out of tennis," the world number 8 said at the Sony Ericsson Open "There’s just no room for it. I was shocked. We don’t need stories like that. I know that’s the minority. If that’s the case, I have zero sympathy.”

Other Americans such as Sam Querrey and James Blake have also commented. Querrey said,"Hopefully he'll learn his lesson… It's pretty easy to not cheat. I don't know why some guys do." Blake added, "If I didn't get there (to the finals of tournaments), I wasn't going to do anything to my body first of all to be unfair to the other players, unfair to the sport that I love and possibly to do harm to my body in the future.''

“HGH is the one in every sport where I hope they come up with a test and I hope they start just slamming guys,” said Roddick. “I hope when they do come up with a test for it they don’t tell anybody and they just implement it and start picking people off…. We don’t need that stigma. I take a lot of pride in what we have to do on a daily basis and how responsible we have to be for one jackass to ruin it for the rest of us.”

Such a shame so many people try to take the "easy" way out, despite the obvious consequences.