Quote Originally Posted by itix View Post
You can also think of it like this...

Here is a slightly fat and very stressed team manager of a global Motorsport team who does one round of the Belgian championship for fun every year (and usually stuff it into a tree).

Did he
A) take blood pressure lowering pills to perform like a rally super human in order to steal the Belgian championship crown by winning one round

Or
B) take pills to lower his blood pressure from his weight and very particular stress inducing job and did the event to forget for a while that he has 100 000+ pairs of eyes judging his performance every day.

In my opinion the sensible thing to do would be to give him a friendly reminder that those pills are not allowed in the championship... but the actual measure was very very harsh in my opinion.
This is all nice in theory - but like BleAivano says when it comes to anti-doping you can't have one rule for one guy and a rule for another. You set bad precedents for people who are trying to break the rules. At the end of the day you are responsible for what goes in your body. End of story. For a guy who is not in regular competition it's reasonable Matton wouldn't know that he needed a TUE for that sort of medication. He's held his hands up. The suspended penalty reflects all that. How is it harsh? He's not banned from competing. A good lesson for everyone.