Doping!

Honestly who gives a bu**er these days? You hardly see people protesting in the streets about it. With so many other issues dominating our lives doping is fast becoming a ‘non-event’.

Sport has been engaged in a losing battle to bring the true ‘Olympic’ meaning to organised human performance ever since the Ancient games. Even with the resurrection of the Games in 1896 doping was still not officially recognised until 1938 when at the International Olympic Committee’s summit in Cairo the term 'doping' was entered into the ‘rule book’. This was despite doping being a problem since the very beginnings of sport and the fact that there was no way of detecting drugs in any case. It was not until the 1968 Mexico games that testing was introduced. The whole anti-doping thing was way behind the cheats from the very start. Has anything changed?

But the ‘horse had bolted’ well and truly by 1968. Stimulants had been used since the 1880s - steroids discovered in the 1930s came into use during the 1950s, and blood doping reared in the early 1970s but testing only began for blood boosters at the Sydney 2000 Games. And growth hormones, said to be used by every man and his dog since the early 1980s, is still not detected with any accuracy or confidence.

While doping has been recognised for some time efforts to make real progress against the scourge of drugs have been abysmal by any standards. The cheats have been able to outgun every move the testers have made although just lately the testers have been taking some of the ground back (eg. EPO and THG designer steroid tests). For all the rhetoric and vast amounts of cash invested in testing, catches have been remarkably few and the most famous bust was that of Ben Johnson during the 1988 Seoul games. But he was not the only one on the juice in that famous 100m sprint as six of the runners in the same race tested positive for one drug or another some time after. Its not ridiculous to think that they were on something at that time as well.

The standout failure in capturing cheats though is no contest when you consider that during East Germany’s reign of Olympic supremacy during the 1972 – 1988 Olympic era, not one East German athlete tested positive for any drug during those games. This was despite the ‘institutional and systematic’ doping of all of its athletes. A shocking indictment on the anti-doping system any way you look at it. But there was more to this than meets the eye and won’t be discussed further suffice to say that politics played a major role.

There is no dispute that the anti-doping effort has been ramped up since the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) came into being after the Sydney games but there is still a long way to go. At the last Olympic Games in Athens in 2004 more than 200 countries competed. Of these nations only about 25 actually have drug testing labs. In effect more than 85 per cent of the world is a ‘drug-testing’ free zone. An athlete is almost exclusively under ‘surveillance’ only when travelling to and competing in these 25 countries because that’s where most of the major events are held and where the testing labs are. I mean when was the last time a major sporting event was held in Ethiopia or Mongolia? And the chances of testing positive anyway are miniscule with only about two per cent of all tests returning an ‘adverse’ result.

For the other 175 or so nations doping is probably not even on the radar. They just don’t have the money and the know-how or the will to mount any meaningful fight against drugs. In many countries there is a perennial struggle to stave off famine, disease and poverty which are much more immediate concerns for the people. In any case why should they devote precious resources to weed out drug cheats who may bring recognition and wealth to themselves and their country no matter what it takes? It's survival of the fittest out there, isn’t it?

Okay, why the soft stance on athletes from the developing world? Western societies who want for little could be accused of setting an anti-doping agenda that is discriminatory, ineffective and counter-productive in the long run. Athletes from the rich nations have the know-how to beat the tests, indeed also have the know-how to beat the system. Athletes from poor nations have neither sports medicine technology nor nutritional strategies. The very low rate of positive tests in light of anecdotal widespread use signifies an ineffective system. And the whole situation is counter-productive because it drives doping further underground and in doing so only compounds itself because criminal elements then move in for their ‘take’.

The anti-doping system in some ways has perpetuated the problem, not solved it, however, there have been other more damning elements which have helped to ‘poison’ sport also. The influence of big business, politics, money and crime in reality has confined the anti-doping effort to nothing more than damage control.

Sport is now the domain of huge business corporations who demand excellence and winning performances. To highlight the obvious take for example the very recent move by a Middle Eastern consortium to buy out Liverpool Football Club for around $1.1bn. It’s a no-brainer that the new owners will demand a ‘return on investment’ which means winning. But at what cost to the players though? Will they need to take drugs just to stay on the field and more worrying, take even more drugs to play better to ‘guarantee’ success? How far are the athletes prepared to push themselves? To death perhaps, because many have in the past when the rewards were not as great as they are today.

Hand-in-hand with big business goes the media outlets ravenous appetite for super-human sporting performances in the name of ratings. It follows then that no winners means no sponsors which means no advertising revenue from the corporate sponsors for the media groups. It’s a vicious cycle.

Politics has perpetuated the charade by covering up doping scandals and thwarting anti-doping practices. The standout of course was the East German regime. But there are other notable examples. In a very alarming case, Italian anti-doping crusader Sandro Donati exposed an elaborate system of doping, corruption and cheating in Italian sport during the 1980s and 1990s. His detective work led to the publication of a book Worthless Champions only to see it disappear mysteriously from Italian bookshops one week after release. It was alleged that IAAF President at the time, Italian Primo Nebiolo was politically motived to remove the books because much of the corruption had involved Italian athletics.

And yours truly was also to sample the bitter taste of grubby politics when following the Sydney Games, myself and a team of researchers at the Australian Institute of Sport were banned from doing any research six months after the games. A year earlier the same bureaucrats were on my back to deliver a blood test for the blood booster EPO to prevent the games from becoming the EPOlympics. I am still shaking my head over this political ploy to ban researchers who were on the tails of the cheats like never before. Talk about the one that got away but that’s another story. To this day I remain frozen out of the area.

Money, the root of all evil many would argue, has profoundly shifted the boundaries in sport. Doping rules were first implemented at a time when sport was largely for amateurs with little monetary rewards. With the proliferation of sport globally and the accompanying huge even obscene financial rewards, the imperative for athletes to stay on the field and to win has been even further exaggerated. With some athletes earning as much as you or I do in our lifetimes in a few weeks or even less there is a huge imbalance and really does say that the masses regard sport as so important that they are prepared to pay anything for it.

With huge pay packets athletes have inadvertently created a sub-culture which thinks that if you don’t win you need a better doctor or better drugs. A cashed-up athlete is nowadays able (and willing) to pay through the nose for a doctor who can help them perform better through ‘nutritional’ advice and etc (ala Dr Ferrari of Italy and Lance Armstrong) and to get better and more expensive high-tech drugs (allegedly ala Dr Ferrari and Lance Armstrong).

And of course, like bees to a honey pot where there is money to be made the criminals are on the trail. Drug busts like the Festina and Balco scandals among a plethora of raids serve to highlight that criminal elements have deeply infiltrated sport, ‘mafiosa’ style and all. This is perhaps best exemplified by Sandro Donati’s investigations. At a recent WADA conference, Sandro concluded that of the $12bn in sales of EPO globally each year, only about $2bn worth of EPO could be accounted for use in the medical field. If only one in every six doses of EPO was finding its way to patients in need then where was the rest of it going. Sandro did not mince words and suggested that organised criminal elements were cornering the vast majority of EPO for the black market which ultimately ended up in the veins of the cheats.

In parallel with the globalisation and commercialisation of sport it appears that the moral arguments against doping are being largely eroded away. A shift in this thinking is evident in surveys such as one posted recently in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph newspaper which asked: ‘Should recreational drugs be legalised?’ A stunning 55 per cent of respondents agrred it should. This points to a tolerance and relaxation of moral attitudes towards drugs generally. It would not be unreasonable then to infer that the same 55 per cent would not have a problem with drugs in sport either.

At the Sydney Games, out of almost 3000 athletes tested, some 80 per cent of them admitted to taking at least one ‘legal’ drug or supplement. Over 500 admitted to taking more than five. It is clear that the ‘medicalisation’ of human performance, at least at the Olympics, means that sport could not, ironically, exist without drugs whether they are ‘legal’ or not.

Should we despair and throw our hands up in the air and say it’s just too hard?

No. We should never give up.

The recent ‘gung-ho’ approach by Dick Pound, president of the WADA and ground-breaking research efforts by the likes of Don Catlin (USA – THG designer steroid test), Mike Ashenden (Australia – blood transfusion test) and Jacques de Ceaurriz and Francoise Lasne (France – EPO test) would all be in vain, not too mention a good deal of money down the toilet if we gave up now. Don Catlin however, did make a telling statement a while ago when he said that the battle against drugs in sport will be lost forever unless the athletes themselves take control, but he also said why would they want too anyway?

The anti-doping crusade is one characterised by an almost fruitless, thankless and rewardless task. There is no argument that the rewards are greater on the ‘other side’ and it is a testament to the likes of Sandro Donati, Dick Pound, Don, Mike, Jacques and Francoise that they are still fighting the good fight. Without these few individuals it is frightening to think where would be today. At least now more cheats are being caught than ever before in fact more than 70 blood doping cheats alone have been caught since the Sydney games. This is more than all the cheats caught for all drugs at all the Olympic Games prior to Sydney. The IOC was asleep at the wheel it appears and there are still many within the sports community who remain silent on the issue and silent more so by their inaction. Go the WADA!

And like a bolt out of the blue my own personal views on doping were confronted recently in the most unexpected and bizarre fashion. In writing Blood Sports – the inside dope on drugs in sport, unbeknown to me at the time I discussed the cases of many convicted drug cheats. One of those cheats was Italian cyclist Dario Frigo, winner of many short stage races and multiple stage winner of the Giro, in fact he was on the verge of victory in the 2001 Giro when he was pulled from the event on the penultimate stage after drugs were found in his hotel room. He and wife Susanna was caught in possession of drugs including EPO on more than one occasion. In a stunning revelation it turns out that Dario is a blood relative of mine, a cousin in fact.

This has been profoundly disappointing and the knowledge that there is a drug cheat in the ‘familigia’ does no sit too comfortably with me. At least I can’t be accused of hiding skeletons in the closet.

So what’s my position now in light of this jaw-dropping news? Well it’s still the same, there should never be a drug free-for-all in sport.

But drugs in sport may be moot one day anyway because of the potential for gene therapy and bio-technology to enhance human performance without drugs. In a positive and pre-emptive move though, the WADA have banned genetic therapies, for now. But will genetic therapies be regarded as doping in the future because they are not drugs in the strictest sense. If every human has the right to enhancement through either genetic therapy or bio-technology then why should athletes not also be allowed to be enhanced without drugs?

If we thought that doping with drugs was a problem then what will be made of doping without drugs.

When I think of all the potential problems that lie ahead for sport it makes me think, should I just go to the ‘other’ side? The other side of the river that is and go fishing!

Drug-free sport will never be here – and it if was, there would be no need for an anti-doping system at all would there?

Robin Parisotto is a former Australian Institute of Sport researcher and author of Blood Sports – the inside dope on drugs in sport.

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