One down.......Positive tests!

[3a]

A blatant female American sprinter has been caught and stepped down from the American team. As much as I would like to say it's Pharmelita.....It's not.

It's El Moustachio, Debbie Dunn.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/br ... 1161.story
^Steroids!

At least she won't screw any of her team mates out of a gold medal by running in the olympics and then getting busted and stripping her compatriots of a medal.

In all honesty, if you were one of the US 4x1, would you even bother to run with Pharmelita knowing that you're going to be stripped in circa, 2 years time???!

Here's hoping she is but a domino in long run of obvious cheats biting the dust before the start of the games. There is hope!


pssssst: Dunne's coach was Steve Riddick (Jones, Montgomery, Zakari) who is currently in prison and apparently mailed her workouts to her! Presumably he didn't mail her the treoids??!

[Geoff]

I suspect we'll lose a few more before London. Just out of interest how many others are watching the Tour de France more closely this year because of Wiggins and the other Brits. Cycling must be the most damaged sport because of drugs scandals and even now we have Lance Armstrong charged with doping offences and his support staff banned from sport. Yet I watch it in the belief it is a lot cleaner than it used to be and am not put off by the drugs scandals.

Cleaning up our sport should not necessarily damage it and even if more athletes get caught I think more people believe it is mainly clean and they can believe in the performances. It makes it more enjoyable as well as benefitting us because it's a more level playing field.

The powers that be should have done something more back in the 80's and 90's and not covered it up loke FIFA and their bribery. Our sport is slowly recovering from the damage caused not just by athletes but also governing bodies.

Am I being naive?

[Flumpy]

You do now that Fazekas has been caught again as well. Banned for ife this time.

Now if only we can sort out a few female 1500m runners in the next couple of weeks all will be well.

In recent times the powers that be have done a great jb of taking down obvious cheats just before the Olympics so fingers crossed we'll have the same this time. Looking forward to good drug scandal. It's been a while.

[Guto Nyth Bran]

... and 3 more down from Nigeria.
http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/oly ... gs/120003/
Vivian Chukwuemeka (shot) - Former African and Commonwealth champion - 2nd time.
Regina George (400m) - Formerly of the USA - A 51.11 runner.
Lauretta Ozoh (100) - 11.11 African championship silver.
Fairly big names as well.

[iain]

I have to say I'm not surprised about Ozoh, her improvements this year have been monumental.

[taffy]

Test them all at heathrow whilst they are queing for 3 hours to get past passport control.

[3a]

You do now that Fazekas has been caught again as well. Banned for ife this time.

Now if only we can sort out a few female 1500m runners in the next couple of weeks all will be well.

In recent times the powers that be have done a great jb of taking down obvious cheats just before the Olympics so fingers crossed we'll have the same this time. Looking forward to good drug scandal. It's been a while.

I didn't know that! Wohooo

Any details? Links?

[3a]

Test them all at heathrow whilst they are queing for 3 hours to get past passport control.

Pee or blood? Either way the carpet's getting ruined!

[taffy]

lol. just get stambo on the way in.

[trevorp]

Any details? Links?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympi ... -test.html

Bit light on detail as yet.

[3a]

Any details? Links?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympi ... -test.html

Bit light on detail as yet.

Cheers for that

[mump boy]

All this 'we're doing more test than ever at OG' is total nonsense. They may get lucky and catch someone who's been stupid enough to mess up their cycle but we all know that no sensible athlete would ever get caught at a champs. It is out of comp testing in the winter and early season that needs to be increased not pr stunts at major championships.

[Kermit]

For the time being Mump, it will be interesting to see how effective biological passports will be

[gp72]

I am also interested in the biological passport to see if they will be effective or not.

I also muse about the idea of having an amateur athletics league with very little money in it....and a porfessional athletics league with unlimited money...one would be purely for 'normal biology' athletes and the other...well a more 'assisted biology' athletes. Then we might really see what the human being is able to do at it's limits.

I accept it probably would not work...just like bodybuilding ( no one is interested in the normal biology bodybuilders)

[mump boy]

For the time being Mump, it will be interesting to see how effective biological passports will be

It's how all the RUS were just caught, so fingers crossed

[3a]

One of the more obvious cheats who likes to avoid the circuit and turn up at Euro champs in time for a gold medal is a certian Turkish Hurdler.

According to this http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/spor/digersp ... 697010.asp

The Turkish Olympic Committee sent officials to the team camp about five weeks ago to test Yanit and the head coach of the national team did not allow her to give a sample. He made quite a scene too.

Article is in Turkish, but was sent info from a Turkish cyber pal.

[Flumpy]

I simply don't believe it.

How dare you sully the name of out great Turkish heroes!!!

[jjimbojames]

Surely that HAS to be followed up by the authorities

[trevorp]

Surely that HAS to be followed up by the authorities

One would hope so ... this one has been near the top of my hit-list for quite a while.

[sidelined]

Well, we could all try emailing WADA and asking them what they're doing about Yanit:

info@wada-ama.org or maybe media@wada-ama.org would be more effective.

[gp72]

Do you believe drug use(performance enhancing) among athletes is more widespread now than in the 70s and 80s or less so?

[djlovesyou]

I am also interested in the biological passport to see if they will be effective or not.

I'm not convinced most athletes will be blood tested enough to really provide valid data. It's not like distance runners are subject to OOC testing a couple of times a week like cycling. Most guys are barely blood tested OOC twice a year. At least those not from countries with their own trusted ADA.

[TheRealSub10]

GP72 - no drug use is a LOT less than it was in the past, however it's still as pretty much as dirty at the very top as it always was.

The biological passport can be used even if an athlete has only been tested once. However, it works best for multi-stage events like the Tour de France where athletes compete day after day for an extended period of time. In such scenarios drug use doesn't so much increase performance as prevent it from deteriorating and because athletes are tested almost daily it is easy to make comparisons. You can read about it and ways around the system on many cycling forums.

[ultragirl]

No one knows for sure just what the level of drug abuse is, corrupt scientists are ten years ahead of the testers, how many for example are using new HGHs which are in and out of the system within a day and are undetectable, expensive yes but available and very effective. It may be most athletes are on them, who knows?

[bevone]

I think the fact that Debbie Dunn (who doesnt really look like she is taking steroids - she has muscles but has a very good womanly figure unlike many with men's bodies and acne galore) and our own athletes such as Bernise Wilson (who did fit the amazonian woman stereotype having changed her physique markedly and performance but not to the same level as Dunn) are doing it at meets where they are going to be tested goes to show that they have some sort of strategy in place to pass the tests which somehow were flawed on one occasion. \lots of men and women sprinters have been caught over the past 4 years or so because they again are confident that they are going to get away with it and reading about Chambres being owed $280k by IAAF from meets fees for someone who has not won a global title/medal - inspires others. I read that indoor runner Jason Gardener had a £70k contract with adidas and he wasn't getting lanes for the top outdoor meets.

There is incentives from big money and someone is telling them or showing them that 90% of the time they can get away with it. Someone posted the BBC programme on line about the 1988 Olympic final were 6 of the 8 finalists were implicated in failed tests at one time or another. I was really shocked at Christie's response - making no explanation about his last offence where he served a ban saying he couldn't give a s**t - as far as he was concerned he was clean. For any this would be the end of their commercial and coaching career but he has seemed to get by untouched and uncontested. The Dubin enquiry in Canada after the Ben Johnson affair lifted the lid on the extent that everyone in the top Canadian group were cheating. Charlie Francis named names who he coached including the current UKA head of coaching. The top guys all admitted to it apart from hurdler Mark McCoy who trained with Colin JAckson for some time. The programme also had testimony from the UCLA drugs testing head who claimed that pre 1987 and 1988 nearly all of the US team were taking the same masking agent (probenecid, I think it was) and when Lewis was implicated, he said that he had taken stimulants that were now legal, but the head of testing said that the growth hormone taking was rife as was the fact that adults were getting their teeth fixed including the likes of Lewis (only raising suspicion and not sure fire evidence). The final and most damning evidence was that the head of testing still had all the sample and recently started retesting them under new more accurate procedures and then stopped after an overwhelming majority of the tests were failing and he then decided he didn't want to bring such a scandal to the sport and perhaps it was best to let resting dogs lie. We have subsequently discovered that the GDR was involved with a state sponsored drug programme so what will we know 30 years from now?

Is it harder than before - well people are still getting caught so they must have had a plan - nobody takes drugs and then blindly goes to a major and hope not to be tested - far too risky. My hope is that it is less but when you hear GB athletes are still using Victor COnte for supplements after the BALCO mess in the US you have to wonder about who is managing them and it appears they are still looking for that wonder drug that is legal! So have any lesson been learned? My heart thinks doping is far less prevalent then in the 80's but my mind tells me otherwise!

[ultragirl]

Excellent post bevone I shall be watching most carefully for greatly improved performances, I shall also be looking at unexpected and previously unseen great performances made over the last month as well and putting them together with even greater performances at the Olympics and coming up with drugs as the reason for it!!

East Germany and other nations have cheated for national status, I do hope the temptation to cheat to appear successful is
overcome by those with the responsibility for getting national success.

[3a]

http://www.supersport.com/athletics/int ... or_Fazekas

Fazekas removed from Hungarian team, but....he denies the charge and is "Still training for London" HA!

Didn't know Annus is his coach. The man who won gold in Athens only to be stripped for tampering with hist post comp test, said tampering turned out to be a condom of clean urine shoved up his, well, Annus. The lengths a druggie will go to!

[Guto Nyth Bran]

The dominoes keep tumbling.
Today it's Nordine Gezzar of France who's been caught for EPO.
4th in the European champs steeplechase.

[bevone]

I think a lot of athletes are worried - the know that we are not corrupt and after the BOA had to back down - you know the testers will be waiting for them. I hear blood tests are showing lots of abnormal findings and that they are on the verge of catching a host of top performers!

[djlovesyou]

Interesting that a number of the Kenyan team run home to Kenya as they didn't like training conditions in Bristol.

Of course, they can't be cheating though, can they?