Scrutiny: Andy Schleck was tested three times in 12 hours in the Pyrenees (Photo: EPA)
The last month or so has been full of positive drug tests and doping concerns but rather encouragingly only one – the positive test of Russia’s Alexandr Kolobnev for hydrochloroothiazide during the first week of the Tour de France – has involved a cyclist, which rather bucks the public perception that only dastardly cyclists would ever get mixed up in the murky world of doping.
Where to start? The list is long and varied.
There is the promising British sprinter Bernice Wilson and her positive test for clenbuterol which was released last week, then there were no less than eight Indian athletes including three of their 4×400m gold medal relay winning team from the Commonwealth Games.
How we and Lord Coe all cheered them – Sini Jose, Juana Murmu and Tiana Mary Thomas – that night for their inspiring win but alas all tested positive for anabolic steroids ahead of the Asian Games.
Let’s not forget Sri Lanka’s Commonwealth Games gold medallist weightlifter Chinthana Vidanage who has tested positive for methylhexaneamine at the Asian Championships.
On the subject of methylhexaneamine American tennis player Robert Kendrick last week learned that he must serve a one year’s ban after testing positive for the substance at the French Open in May.
Then there are the four Brazilain swimmers headed by Cesar Cielo Filho and including Henrique Barbosa, Nicholas Santos and Vinicius Waked who appear to have escaped censure despite testing positive for the masking agent furosemide in May.
Indeed an unabashed Cielo promptly went and won two gold medals in Shanghai much to the consternation of his opponents.
Did I mention the five members of the North Korean team at the Women’s World Cup who tested positive for steroids?
Similarly it would be remiss of me not to highlight the Mexico international footballers and household names in their own country – Guillermo Ochoa, Francisco Rodriguez, Edgar Duenas, Antonio Naelson and Christian Bermudez – who all tested positive for clenbuterol ahead of the recent Concacaf Cup in the USA. Contaminated beef and chicken has been blamed.
Meanwhile in Queensland jockey Ric McMahon has been suspended for three months after testing positive for phentermine, a banned appetite
suppressant, an offence for which he has previous.
Wasn’t it good, by the way, to see Leshawn Merritt back at Stockholm last week running 44.74secs in the 400m after his 21 month ban for anabolic steroids, something which he puts down to the purchase of a sexual enhancement product.
Britain’s ‘Golden Oldie’ Dwain Chambers also looked in good nick at the British World Championship trials in Birmingham but space considerations prevent me from listing the full list of illegal performance enhancing drugs he ingested during his dark years.
And so on. None of the above is meant to be a points scoring exercise between the various sports who all have their problems and issue.
And as far as I am concerned there is always an assumption of innocence in the on-going cases until guilt is proven with a rigour that would satisfy a court of law.
With clenbuterol there is beyond all doubt an unsatisfactory grey area because it demonstrably nows exists in the food chains in some countries, not least China, Mexico and parts of Spain.
The Mexican footballers and Alberto Contador, who tested positive for clenbuterol at the Tour de France last year, have all cited contaminated meat in their defences. Can anybody out there, with any scientific certainty, say they are not right?
It does illustrate however how widespread the doping problem – and that term includes the innocent ingestion of banned products – is and how cycling is right to be suspicious of those who seem to single it out as the pariah of world sport.
Cycling in the last couple of years doesn’t need to be lectured by any sport. It is doing more to eradicate drugs than any other sport, which is why it has been so successful in identifying the cheats. The two are not unconnected.
What other sports operate the biological passport system? And what other sport would target such a marquee performer as Andy Schleck at the end the an arduous six hour mountain stage, as it did in the Pyrenees at the Tour de France last month, and subject him to three random tests in 12 hours?
One at the finish at the top of the mountain, one at the team meal that night when he had to carry his urine simple through the public restaurant and one at 5.50am the following morning.
Actually I will answer that last question. Jess Ennis no less had to wait behind for testing for hours at the trials on Sunday night and was woken at 6am the following morning in Sheffield by a random tester.
Somehow I find that extremely reassuring and encouraging. And although protesting at her interrupted sleep, Ennis took it on the chin.
Would such a stringent random testing policy be allowed in football’s Premier League, for example? Where some of the world’s richest sportsmen, who earn as much in a week as Schleck earns in a year, ply their trade under remarkably little scrutiny by the authorities.
We can only hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment