Dopage du Jour

All the dope on the dopes who dope, allegedly

Thursday, August 21, 2008

The Olympic message: cheat

Well, maybe, maybe not. For every one caught in testing, how many are missed? We are led to believe that a "catch" is a sign that "the system works". However if we don't know who is getting away with it how can we claim success? All we can say for sure is that those who are caught face humiliation and varying degrees of punishment, depending upon the severity, any past infringements and the sport concerned. Fair? Maybe, maybe not?

Ukraine's Olympic heptathlon silver medallist Liudmyla Blonska has failed a drugs test, the IOC confirmed. The 30-year-old's A sample tested positive for a banned substance, but the IOC source said they were still awaiting the results of the B sample.Blonska's is the fifth drugs case of the Beijing Games. Spanish cyclist Maria Isabel Moreno tested positive for EPO, North Korean shooting medallist Kim-Jong-Su (betablockers), Vietnamese gymnast Do Thi Ngan Thuong (diuretic) while Greece's rarely seen 2004 Olympic 400 metres hurdles champion Fani Halkia, tested positive for steroids at a training camp.

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Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Panic stations, I've been tested!

Well this would be a difficult situation. You are selected for the Olympics and just don't want to let go of the dream. You have taken some EPO and know you'll get caught if the vampires actually test you, but you just haven't been tested lately - if at all. You expect attention will be on the favourites, not on little ol' you anyway. And then you get called to testing. Sometimes a doper just doesn't turn up, and gets in trouble anyway. And sometimes they get away with it. And sometimes they don't.

Moreno, better known as Maribel Moreno, had been entered for the women's road race and individual time trial and tested positive for the endurance-boosting EPO drug. IOC spokesperson Giselle Davies said Moreno was tested on July 31 and left the city on the same evening. The IOC officially took control of drugs testing on July 27.

Maribel appears to have panicked and broke down in tears after the testing - but before the result. I guess we can understand why. But do we blame her, or her supplier? Or the system?

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Wednesday, August 06, 2008

I'm not saying he's innocent, but...

Then again I am saying something like 'we can't be so certain about these things'. Read it and weep: In the case of Landis, who had no previous record of doping violations, the chances that the positive result could result from anything except cheating - a lab error, an abnormally high natural occurrence of testosterone - were dismissed as not credible. The problem, Mr Berry said, is that for the actual process used by doping labs there is no body of scientific data to show just how rare "false positives" or "false negatives" really are, and that such data is essential for interpreting lab results.

Introducing probabilities into drug testing is interesting and debatable, but I accept the basic premise - that a false positive (or negative) is always possible. Look at Ricco's statement that he took CERA and should have been caught multiple times, but wasn't. Hence we run multiple tests and develop (now, at least) a longitudinal profile of an athlete. So any 'aberrant' values will appear over time and can be tracked without jumping to conclusions over one single test on one sole sample. Even better (or complementary) is the idea for certain pre-identified markers to be identified or inserted into drugs as "tags" that can be easily identified.

So will Landis take this as more evidence for his side of the case, or has he simply agreed to disagree and move on? If he is innocent, what of the human cost here? Are we doing the right thing with these so-called drug "cheats" or are we making what could be unemotional technical points highly emotive and "charged" with guilt, suspicion and pain - and thus feeding the media monster instead of protecting the athletes?

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Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Giro hero Sella caught out

It doesn't take too much to get noticed by the wrong people. Win a few stages, especially in a dramatic way and you can make a real name for yourself. And get 'targeted' by the drug cops.

Winner of three stages and the climber's competition of the Giro d'Italia, Italian Emanuele Sella, has been found positive in an out-of-competition doping control issued by the International Cycling Union (UCI) on July 23, according to La Gazzetta dello Sport. The 27 year-old from Vicenza was found to have used the same third generation EPO – CERA (Continuous Erythropoietin Receptor Activator) – that Riccardo Riccò admitted to using in the Tour de France. 

Ricco, now Sella. It's certainly a good advert for CERA. It works. 

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Sunday, August 03, 2008

A fine Colombian catch

Quite a few names, little detail: The Colombian Cycling Federation announced Friday that six riders had returned positive doping controls during the Vuelta a Colombia in May. The federation did not specify the substances which caused the adverse analytical findings for Rafael Montiel, Juan Guillermo Castro, Camilo Gomez, Carlos Ospina Hernandez, Hernan Buenahora and Giovanni Barriga.

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Friday, August 01, 2008

Who do you believe?

 

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