Athletics Weekly

Closely followed by:

Kelli, sleeping sickness, White
Floyd, whiskey breath, Landis
Justin, muscle rub, Gatlin
And the bike crash twins, Kenteris and Thanou

Did the Astana team have a team chef at this year's TdF?

Problem is Borris, under WADA rules you are also A DRUGS CHEAT if you refuse a test .

The whole point of unannounced testing is that it should come as a surprise. If the testers have to turn up hours beforehand to conduct a health and safety assessment and sterilise the toilets, then it might just give the game away. On this occasion there may have been alternative facilities. But of...

Just to put the dirty toilets defence into perspective: A couple of years ago Belgian cyclist Kevin van Impe was targeted for an out of competition drugs test. The testers turned up at the local crematorium where van Impe was arranging the funeral of his baby son. Understandably upset, van Impe prot...

With pseudoephedrine back on the list, here are some products to avoid at your local chemist:

Decofed, Drixoral, Efidac, Genaphed, Pedia Relief, Simply Stuffy, Sudafed, Suphedrin, Triaminic.

Oh, and check your Ginseng too, eh Linford?

The IAAF has a right to ensure fair play and a duty to protect athletes’ welfare. From both perspectives it seems responsible to suspend an athlete with untreated AIS, as to allow her to compete could be unfair on her rivals and would be detrimental to her own health. Nullifying results, however, is...

The most difficult issue is deciding what constitutes an unfair advantage.
Is being born with an extra lump of chromosome any more unnatural or unfair than being born with unfeasible amounts of fast twitch fibres or lungs the size of Scotland?

Even among the 'normal' population there is a wide variation in testosterone levels.
WADA knows this and has therefore set its limit at four times the normal average (it used to be six times).

Shireen Bailey never failed a gender test.
She just forgot the certificate to prove she'd passed one.

In the past whenever somebody tested positive and then came up with a ludicrous excuse, the cry was always: 'if only someone would just admit it for once, confess everything and name names'. Now Chamber has done just that, he faces far more opprobrium than if he'd just denied it and kept his head do...

They are re-testing for CERA, which is a third generation EPO. So, you would expect it to be used by endurance athletes (although both Marion Jones and Dwayne Chambers used EPO, so who knows). However, the idea that CERA was undetectable was quashed three weeks before the Olympics began when Ricco t...

It’s funny how things pan out. Ten years ago, the new performance director of British Cycling Peter Keen made the very controversial decision to disinvest in men’s road cycling. His reasoning was that the pro-road scene was too competitive, too riddled with drugs and that a drug scandal involving a ...

RUN!!!!!
The pedants are revolting

The UK's flakiest athlete + discredited coach + soon-to-be-sacked performance director.

Never going to work was it?

Swap a psychologist for a psychiatrist?
The mind boggles.

Somehow I doubt whether Chambers is a legal genius. His lawyers may be being clever, but that is what they are paid for. Unfortunately, this is how all high profile doping cases end up - in the courts. So, if your anti-doping regulations cannot stand up to legal challenge then they really are not wo...

Tim Don was only banned for three months after missing three tests.
But he still had to appeal against his BOA ban.

UKA's support of Ohuruguo was not unprecedented.
They also supported Myerscough's appeal against his BOA ban.

The life ban is the sporting equivalent of the death penalty, with similar arguments on both sides. On the one hand it is seen as the ultimate deterrent and just punishment for a heinous crime. On the other it is seen as no deterrent at all and hugely unjust on the innocent. So who would you ban for...

The anti-drug rhetoric emerging from UKA is commendable. But it’s worth remembering that at the time when Dwain Chambers was actually taking his drugs, the attitude of the athletics establishment was very different to its current fundamentalist zeal. Back then returning drug cheats didn’t get treate...

Makes you wonder whether the letter in September was meant to be a warning:
'Don't even think of coming back to athletics.'
Seems to have had the opposite effect.

Let's hope they have his 'n her fridges in the Myerscough household.

This whole saga has been about the impotent posturing of UKA. British Athletics likes to pretend to the world that it is 'tough on drugs'. That is going to be a hard stance to maintain if we end up with not one but two world champions both returning from drug bans. Lynn Davies claims "UK Athlet...

The rush to vilify Chambers misses the point. Individual dopers are a symptom not the cause of the drugs culture that seems to exist in certain parts of the sport. Get rid of one and very soon another with pop up in his place. This can only happen due to the long-standing complacency and inertia amo...

That sounds like a sensible system. Unfortunately, if it was not the system that was in place at the time, then you cannot apply it retrospectively. If De Vos really wants to get tough on drugs then, rather than waging potentially expensive legal battles with a 30-year-old has-been who has nothing t...

But Chambers is also a pre-De Vos case. His ban ended in 2006 and he competed in the Europeans that year. Now it appears he is to be punished twice. Once for taking PEDs and once for having the temerity to be embarrassingly honest about it. This all smacks of bad PR. Make a big noise about a high pr...

De Vos says he would find it unpalatable to welcome back a 'self-confessed' cheat like Chambers. So, the message is clear. Come up with a dodgy excuse like Christine 'ooh I forgot' Ohurugu, Janine 'my drink was spiked' Whitlock or Mark 'passive smoking' Lewis Francis and the door stays open. But act...

No
The random tests are on urine samples.
The effects of EPO will show up for several weeks, but can only be observed using a series of blood tests.
This is why the system should be changed to regular blood monitoring.

EPO clears the system in 48 hours.
GH within 24 hours