We pick up once again with the DISHED awards for 2007. I could have gone on ad nauseum (parts 3,4 and more) such is the plethora of doping scandals, but restricted myself to what arguably are the remaining ‘best of the worst’ doping exploits for 2007 and sneak peek at what’s in store in 2008.

Backflip of the year award: Don Talbot clearly lost his marbles when he said it was all too hard and that drugs should be allowed in sport and was rightly pilloried and won few friends in Australia anyway. The once-loud critic of doping misdemeanors should apply for the head coaching job in China. He’d be among friends there at least!

Claytons investigation of the year award: Hands down to the Operation Puerta case. Almost two years on with supposedly 200 or so athletes involved but only a few cyclists having felt the wrath of anti-doping officials. Thousands of documents circulating in legal ‘no man's land’ because blood doping was not an ‘offence’ in Spain at the time. Hey, didn’t Spanish authorities know that blood transfusions were banned by the church back in the 17th century!

'Major league baseball's continual insistence that steroids are not a problem in the sport borders on the comical'


Sweeping it under the carpet award: Major league baseball's continual insistence that steroids are not a problem in the sport borders on the comical. All the hype surrounding Barry Bonds' record breaker home run drowned out any talk about drugs and cheating and did little to change public perception of steroids in sport generally. The fans voted with their feet. To them the home run record was far more important than Bonds being a drug cheat. It seems that even the sporting public prefers the whole issue of drugs in sport swept under the carpet.

I am on holiday award: Astana team cyclist Andrey Kashechkin claimed it was illegal or unconstitutional to be tested while on holiday and it infringed upon his human rights. In his mind it seems that testing positive should not count while on ‘leave’. Unlike synthetic drugs when blood is transfused, whether it's your: own or someone else’s the ‘foreign’ cells will hang around for up to 120 days. If he wins his case then pigs will fly and the so-called ‘men-in-black’ cycling team can unmask themselves.

Under the radar award: This was a no contest. Marion Jones' confessions about her drug taking regime belied the fact that she tested negative more than 160 times while taking drugs. She was obviously an expert in dodging positives, the tests themselves were woefully insensitive or something more sinister was at play. Compelling evidence that the system is ‘busted’ and begs the question, how many drug tests are really false negatives. How could any athlete fly under the radar for so long? For all their faults, even radar guns catch most of the speeding drivers most of the time (he says with gnashing of teeth).

Celebrity drug addict(s) of the year: Ben Cousins' and Andrew Johns' evasion of the three and two-strike illicit drug policies of the AFL and NRL respectively showed why these were no-brainer policies. Apart from glamorizing illicit drug use the ’message’ for kids was that if you become a professional athlete and take illicit drugs the law cannot touch you while you play your sport under your sports anti-doping policy. If you are caught while playing sport you are sent on all-expenses paid rehab ‘holiday’. If you are caught in the street you go to jail.

Celebrity drug bust award: Sly Stallone's ‘embarrassing’ interlude in Australia when caught with vials of growth hormone (GH) in his possession (in his luggage at least) claiming they were for personal medical use. At 61 years of age you are not going to be growing all that much and growth hormone ain’t gonna help either. All this bust did was confirm that celebrities as much as sports drug cheats are ‘sold’ on the idea of drugs to not only enhance performance but also to enhance image. For the spruikers of GH they could not have wished for a more high profile ‘poster boy’.

Wild goose chase award: Major league baseball's (MLB) grant of $500K to Don Catlin to develop a growth hormone test in urine rather than in blood samples. Even Don would know that growth hormone circulates in the blood and there is virtually none excreted in the urine. I have confidence in Don’s ability to come up with a test but in this case MLB may be purposely sending him on a wild goose chase, concocted by them to divert attention away from the continual steroid scandals and to give the impression that they are being pro-active about drugs in sport. It’s a close call though as to who has more credibility at the moment, MLB or Brittany Spears.

The wheels have fallen off award: A tie between Team Astana and T-Mobile cycling teams. Riders testing positive and team managers and doctors allegedly involved in prescribing and administering drugs and/or blood doping saw both teams crash and burn. The wheels may have fallen off due to their indiscretions but the track marks left behind have left many suspicious of the two ‘new generation’ teams. T-Mobile were so worried that they pulled the plug altogether.

The seven year itch award: The biological and blood profiling of athletes in a meaningful and constructive way was first proposed by Professor Mario Cazzola of Italy in 2001. Also researchers at the Australian Institute of Sport proposed a similar approach to the WADA in May of 2001 and were well on the way to bringing that project to a successful conclusion when the Australian government stepped in and banned their research altogether. With blood profiling set to begin in 2008 it’s a case of the ‘seven year itch’.

In all seriousness, the year has been like most others, full of scandal, surprises, witch-hunts and the like. Business as usual really. But one thing is set to change the ‘landscape’ next year and will no doubt force behavioural changes. Whether for good or bad is yet to be determined.

While blood profiling may not be the panacea to help rid sport of drugs it will make the cheating so much harder because the cheats won’t be able to hide the effects that most drugs have on markers in the blood. Also, blood profiling is a prelude to genetic profiling and pretty soon the cheats will not only have to worry about what is in their urine, but next year what is in their blood and in the not too distant future what is in their genes.

The noose is getting tighter and tighter but it's still going to be a tough road ahead for the testers. As history shows drug cheats are an inventive lot and I am sure they are already working on strategies to get around the blood tests. For that reason I believe that the first ever gene doping case will emerge next year because the cheats have traditionally been one step ahead of the testers and researchers.

When the Olympic Games closed in Athens in 2004, the symbolism of the DNA molecule could not have been more obvious. Watch out Beijing because gene doping is headed your way and all the Mass-Specs in the world will be no match for the gene therapy cheat. It will happen but will we know?