Doping in Professional Sport

[capriccioso 2,545]

With the Olympics upcoming, I feel it is a good time to bring up this issue. I was reading an interesting thread on a cycling forum and some very valid points were raised on how easy it would be to dope in sports where the doping control procedures aren't that stringent. In football, particularly, I believe it is quite easy to dope. Tests are infrequent and can be skipped (Rio Ferdinand), and beyond that, the type of drugs used in football would seek to aid weight loss and recovery, rather than improving performance. Diuretics are used most often in many sports, as they mask the presence of other drugs by increasing the amount of times a person would need to pass water in a day. In football a diuretic would be great at concealing nandrolones. EPO is another superdrug, a 4 week course of being administered that drug can allow a fit person to maintain 80% of maximum output (lets say a midfielder running 14 km per 90 minutes is his maximum output) for 54% longer. That would translate into being able to run 7km a half for nearly 2 whole games, giving a midfielder a huge athletic advantage.

Many high profile, household football names, including Diego Maradona, Romario, Frank de Boer, Marco Boriello, Paddy Kenny, Stan Lazaridis, Edgar Davids, Christophe Dugarry, Fernando Couto, Jaap Stam, Quim and Josep Guardiola have been caught out taking performance enhancing drugs. What is most concerning is that many footballers, including Guardiola, Couto, Stam, de Boer and Davids, have been caught using nandrolone, a substance that assists in muscle growth, red cell production and bone density, thus, either bulking up or recovering from injury can be made far easier. Several studies have been undertaken in this field, one of these (link) has some rather alarming conclusions:

Many players use supplements, although almost one in five players does so without seeking qualified professional advice from anyone within the club. Blood tests are rarely used to monitor the health of players. One third of players had not been tested for drugs within the preceding two years, and 60% felt that they were unlikely to be tested in the next year.

And then there's Juventus 1994-98, whose doctor was sentenced to 22 months in prison for administering EPO to the players, a very real example that systematic, team-wide doping does exist in professional football:

http://www.guardian....ewsstory.sport4

Some sports, such as cycling, have taken the right step forward in dealing with this issue with frequent drug testing but others like football lag far behind. Tennis is another example. Rafael Nadal recently withdrew from the Olympics, citing a dodgy knee, but its more likely he withdrew as he would not be offered the protection that the ITF offers him in the Olympic Games, where drug tests are administered by WADA. While that may sound conspiratorial, consider this:

The UCI (cycling's governing body) administered 13,745 drug tests in 2012. In 2009, the ITF (tennis' governing body) administered 2126.

Here is a brief history of doping in sport up until the year 2003:

http://www.cbc.ca/sp...ries/top10.html

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And here is a graph showing the difference a drug like EPO can make to physical performance:

The green bar represents an individual's performance after undergoing a 4 week course of EPO.

[capriccioso 2,545]

Lol.

The documents, in Dr Fuentes' handwriting, allegedly detail the preparation plans for the two clubs for the 2005-2006 seasons. The plan showed that the main objective of FC Barcelona was the Champions League in May, which it won, as well as having the players peak for the World Cup.

The training programs include circles and 'IG' symbols that correspond to preparation or rest periods. These are the same symbols used by Dr Fuentes in his plans for the Liberty Seguros riders, according to Le Monde. The Spanish Guardia Civil believe that these symbols correspond to anabolic steroids (circle) and Insulin Growth Factor - IGF-1 (IG).

Other symbols are used in the team plans, including a rounded 'e', and a circle with a dot in it. These are supposed to correspond to blood transfusions and the administration of EPO. Some individual players had tailored programs, in case they were injured or tired.

[Porthos 35]

Lance Armstrong now toast

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-24/armstrong-likely-to-be-stripped-of-tour-titles/4220530

Greatest drug cheat world sport has ever seen in history

[Tricky 301]

I know recreational drugs are used in professional sport (I've witnessed it - rugby), but I don't believe doping is endemic in football or rugby.

Do you really think something like this could have been hidden? Not a chance, agents, doctors or Pros who had fallen on hard times would have blown the lid on it a long time ago. Tabloids would have had a field day.

Call me naive, but the popularity of football in this country (uk) means any such scandal is rewarded with six figure pay puts by the press.

Having said that do I believe ppl in football dope? Most definitely, does it make them a better player? Not necessarily.

It's different from wnsiramce sports such as cycling. It's a team game. One man.... Does not make a team!!'

[capriccioso 2,545]

I know recreational drugs are used in professional sport (I've witnessed it - rugby), but I don't believe doping is endemic in football or rugby.

Do you really think something like this could have been hidden? Not a chance, agents, doctors or Pros who had fallen on hard times would have blown the lid on it a long time ago. Tabloids would have had a field day.

Call me naive, but the popularity of football in this country (uk) means any such scandal is rewarded with six figure pay puts by the press.

Having said that do I believe ppl in football dope? Most definitely, does it make them a better player? Not necessarily.

It's different from wnsiramce sports such as cycling. It's a team game. One man.... Does not make a team!!'

Cycling is a team sport.

[Tricky 301]

I realize that, but not in the same way that football is, a team wins the PL not an individual (and yes there are team awards but they carry less weight than the individual awards). Besides to dope successfully you would have to include the entire 25 man squad. Even if you did they would be fitter, stronger, faster.... But not necessarily better footballers.

I realize cycling isn't purely about endurance, tactics play an important part. But raw skill is i integral to football (Jan Molby / Gazza), it's not purely about the physical condition of the athlete.

[capriccioso 2,545]

But having greater physical ability in football would be immense. Fatigue has a huge impact on performance, we don't have to look any further than our own Mata for an example. If you can have a lot of players feeling much fitter than the opposition in the last 20 or so minutes of the game, they'll find it much easier to play at their best. Especially when you go into extra time, fitness is crucial. It's much harder to do even the basics like complete a 20 yard pass or tuck away a chance if you're worn out from 110 minutes of running around. Of course the advantage isn't the same as in endurance sports like athletics or cycling, no matter how much dope you give to Heskey he's not going to turn into Messi, but it can still be the difference between winning and losing.

The only sports I can think of where doping would have next to no impact on performance would be motorsport and cricket. Motorsport doesn't really require huge amounts of physical strength, and cricket, even in recent years, has been filled with vastly unfit/overweight players that were still world class, such as half the Indian cricket team, and Shane Warne.

[capriccioso 2,545]

I know I got a lot of grief for suggesting that Wiggins was doping, much of it was "You're only saying these things because he's British, if he were Australian, you'd keep your mouth shut". I believe that Australia was the most doped up nation in the world around the Sydney 2000 Olympics. In an effort to dispel that notion, read the following.

Australian sport is (was at least in 2000- I'm not entirely sure if that's still the case, we're certainly no longer world-leaders in doping) a cesspit of corruption and drugs. The government are in on it as well, they fund the Australian Institute of Sport which was a decade or so ago the most dope-friendly sporting academy in the world. The sport-obsessed culture of Australia lends to easy manipulation by the government. Sporting success = placated populace, and they (used to) pull out all the stops to ensure we succeeded at events like the Olympics. Before the 2008 Olympics though, that started to change. Sporting institutes worldwide started poaching Aussie coaches, sports scientists and doctors from the AIS. Primarily this was done by Germany, Spain, the UK and China. And China aside every other country that took on Aussie dope doctors has massively improved, while Australian competitiveness in international sport (and the AIS' rolling production line of talent) has dramatically slumped because we haven't replaced those doctors with new ones. Dope doctors are very rare, valuable commodities and they are tough to replace.

The ASADA is a joke. I feel for them, they're trying to do the best job they can but if word ever gets out about a national hero- lets say, for arguments sake, Cadel Evans (though I believe he has cleaned up his act since 2001 when he first swapped over from mountain biking to road cycling), the government will instantly suppress it, as by supporting the ASADA they will be labelled unpatriotic as the millions of morons that live here will not believe a word against their Australian sporting heroes; lose votes and popularity and the leaders responsible, particularly the Minister for Sport will have their political careers ended.

My point about the massive political fall out isn't rubbish. This one time I went on an Australian cycling forum, where everybody was going off at Alberto Contador because he was found guilty of using clenbutorol (because Cadel Evans finished 2nd to Alberto Contador in the 2007 Tour de France and everyone felt that it was Evans' win and Contador had robbed him of it). I suggested that Evans too, was doping like a madman early on in his career and he was certainly not a saint himself. I had racist shit thrown at me for that (went along the lines of "Fuck off home and don't talk shit about our athletes you Indian dog"), and perma banned within about 3 hours of that post. That should show you the Neanderthal like nature of Australian sport fans- they are unwilling to believe one bad word about our athletes, and if the government comes out and admits/permits the ASADA to expose our myriad of doped up performances around the 2000-2008 years it will be political suicide.

Furthering the argument that the only people who get caught out for doping in Australia are nobodies that won't get the general public up in arms, take a look at the list of those currently banned from competition by the ASADA:

http://www.asada.gov.au/rules_and_violations/sanctions.html