Scipio - I compete Masters Track and that doping link blew my mind! Maybe I’m naive. I can’t imagine any of the guys that I compete with doping. I’ve never understood cheating in sports. Especially golf cheats!
Most of us are a combination of Has been/Never was! It is interesting to me that you see few older world class athletes doing Masters. My theory is that there are only so many miles in your legs and that most of us Never Was’s stopped running after college and then picked it up again in our 50’s. Less wear and tear on our legs and knees.
“I would think many para-athletes have a need for drugs that are banned, and thus take other drugs to hide some. My daughter needed steroids when she was born and we all joked 'there goes her Olympic eligibility.”
I would test positive for sure. I take a beta blocker to control high blood pressure,and they along with many other legitimate therapeutic drugs are banned. The list of banned drugs is long and ever-growing.
Beta blockers are banned? There goes my eligibility even if I was able to get off steroids. (I’m sure at least a few of my other dozen + meds are on the block list, too…)
Wow, I’m on a beta blocker that keeps my heartbeat at reasonable levels instead of thumping wildly all the time. It’s pretty exhausting when your heart is always racing.
As I recall, beta blockers were first banned because Olympic rifle marksmen and maybe also archers were using them to slow their hearts to allow them to hold their weapons steadier when taking aim. Anything for an edge, however slight.
Most over-the-counter hay fever pills and cold remedies will get you banned too.
Let’s remember the role of network TV in replaying and replaying and replaying King’s finger wag and subsequent interview answer. TV seeks to create interest and controversy. We all know that reality show footage is edited to create maximum controversy. NBC Olympic prime time coverage is edited as one big reality show.
I loved that I had the luxury of closing my office door and watch gymnastics live streaming.
King’s finger wave was in response to the Russian swimmer’s “I am number one” finger wave after winning her preliminary hear (sorry if it’s been mentioned earlier, I have been off this thread for a bit and didn’t catch up too much). In combination with her comments, waving that finger was saying “not so fast” and “shame on you” at the same time.
I have no problem with her speaking out; it’s an affront to clean athletes who have to compete against cheating ones, especially when the cheating is sanctioned by the country in an orchestrated manner. It’s offensive to the whole idea of the Olympics and sports in general.
The following is from the World Anti-Doping Agency:
“THERAPEUTIC USE EXEMPTIONS-TUE APPLICATION PROCESS
Athletes may have illnesses or conditions that require them to take particular medications. If the medication an athlete is required to take to treat an illness or condition happens to fall under the Prohibited List, a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) may give that athlete the authorization to take the needed medicine.”
The following is from an article in the LA times about Efimova:
“Her appearance here is such a sham that even her former coach at the Trojan Swim Club — a USC-based postgraduate club swimming team — is calling foul.
“Should she be in the Olympics? If we are going to have clean sport — probably not,” Dave Salo, who also coaches USC’s swim team, said in an email. “Despite my 38-year protestation of any performance-enhancement supplementation of any kind, I’m afraid we might have lost that battle.”
Salo noted that Efimova, who lives in Marina del Rey, was suspended from the club after her most recent suspension, and added that he has no problem with other swimmers like King challenging her legitimacy.
“Unlike the protests in the ’70s when the ‘clean’ athletes were chided as whiners with silver medals, the ‘clean’ kids can be critical of the system with gold medals around their necks and maybe their voices will make a difference,” he said.”
At what point do we just give up on having a “clean” olympics or “clean” professional sports? I can’t help but think folks will create more substances down the road that will be harder to track and further hurdles. Keep up with it all and finding ways to screen for it seems like a losing proposition and is bound to create more controversies and scandals than we already have.
I don’t think the important issue @musicprnt is private sponsorship vs government sponsorship. This gets us into comparative politics and different nations simply fund athletes differently. The crucial issue to me is how prevalent such cheating is from country to country, over time.
Since many countries were not involved in the boycotted games of 1980 and 1984, I started counting in Seoul, comparing the US with Russia and China. As of today, Russia has 26 proven cases, 16 for the US, and 3 for China. I expect the numbers to change soon since another bunch were caught on re-tests, and a lot of countries are implicated:
The following is from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency:
"Anti-doping is moving rapidly toward a more forensic approach to protect clean sport through analytical and non-analytical investigations. The Athlete Biological Passport is a scientific tool to examine relevant indirect biomarkers of doping which further allows those that aim to level the playing field with the ability to detect and deter doping through state-of-the art and complementary methods – as an analogy, we are working to create a video of an athlete’s biochemistry rather than merely looking at a snapshot in time.” – USADA Science Director Matthew Fedoruk Ph.D
The principle behind the Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) is the monitoring of selected biological parameters over time that may indirectly reveal effects of doping on the body. This approach allows anti-doping organizations to generate individual, longitudinal profiles for each athlete and to look for any fluctuations that may indicate the use of performance-enhancing drugs or methods. The longitudinal profile for each athlete is generated based on statistical tools that utilize data from an athlete’s previous samples to predict the likely individual limits or reference range for future samples. If any data from a sample falls outside of the athlete’s reference range, this abnormal value may be an indication of doping or a pathological condition. This data can also be used to conduct targeted, conventional anti-doping tests on athletes with abnormal profiles. ABP data can also be used as corroborating evidence of doping during an anti-doping rule violation case.
What are the variables that are monitored in the Athlete Biological Passport?
Initially, only the hematological biomarkers had been validated by WADA for the ABP. Hematological biomarkers that are measured and can be used for blood profiling include hemoglobin, hematocrit, red blood cell count, reticulocyte number, reticulocyte percentage, mean corpuscular volume, mean corpuscular hemoglobin, mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration and OFF-score. In 2013, the WADA Athlete Biological Passport Guidelines introduced a second module, the Steroidal Module, which became operational on January 1, 2014. The Steroidal Module tests an athlete’s urine sample to observe unique steroidal variables, therefore making it a useful technique in spotting athlete abuse of Anabolic Androgenic Steroids. The urinary steroid profile consists of the urinary concentrations of Testosterone, Epitestosterone, Androsterone, Etiocholanolone, 5a-androstane-3a,17β-diol and 5β-androstane-3a,17β-diol, together with the specific gravity of the urine sample. The model used by the ABP replaces the ‘population reference’ approach with an ‘intra-individual’ approach, which allows for a more refined evaluation.
Can the ABP replace traditional anti-doping testing?
Drug testing in sports relies on various strategies that include the direct testing of athletes for the presence of performance enhancing agents as well as the evidence gathered through the non-analytical or indirect approach. While the approach of detection of prohibited substances or their metabolites in an athlete’s blood or urine sample is an effective approach, it has its limitations. With the onset of new or modified substances or designer drugs being misused by athletes, anti-doping agencies seek new detection strategies to combat these emerging threats. Thus, the Athlete Biological Passport provides a complementary and more sophisticated strategy to traditional analytical testing in an effort to scientifically gather evidence of possible doping in sport. The ABP is one tool in a kit of intelligent anti-doping practices meant to deter and detect the use of prohibited substances in sport."
Ben Johnson ruined it for me. After that I got very cynical and just assume there are dopers who get caught and dopers who haven’t gotten caught. Bolt? How can anyone be that good without performance enhancers? How can one small country produce so many top sprinters without performance enhancers? (Told you I was cynical). When my boys were in high school there were rumors that some football players were using steroids. Some sure looked like it, and behaved like it too, but who knows? I know it is a problem in high school sports.
Masters? I did read about a masters athlete who was taking treatments for “Low-T”. I understand this has gotten really popular lately with ageing men! They do some drug testing at the national meet and he was flagged for excessive testosterone levels. I think he opted to stop competing in track because he didn’t like the symptoms he experienced before taking the testosterone meds. There was no therapeutic exemption offered in his case.
Oh, and does this “Olympics” thread turn to the paralympics? Or do we start a new thread? I attended (and volunteered) at the trials here in Charlotte, so I was able to meet some of the athletes. Really looking forward to watching some of the events and athletes, especially Tatyana McFadden (competing in 7 events!)
@Swimkidsdad Do you have the link about Salo from the LA Times? I can’t find it. I believe he has also made previous statements that Efimova should not be demonized? She was in his program (possibly for years), and now he is backing away from her and his coaching of international swimmers ? I just don’t know what to make of some of this and I admittedly have no experience with elite swimming.
I read (on SwimSwam) an interview with Salo a few weeks ago, in which he seemed more sympathetic to her. In it, he said many swimmers take ‘nutritional supplements’, and he discouraged it because he felt they don’t need it. I envisioned sort of a shoulder shrug in reading the article…as if it was out of his hands.