I started thinking about doping when watching the Tour of California. There were so many high-level cyclists that have been associated with doping at that race. Floyd Landis, Tyler Hamilton, Ivan Basso, Francisco Mancebo, Oscar Sevilla, Jose Enrique Gutierrez, Lance Armstrong, Frank Schleck, and the list just continues. Some of those guys have admitted to doping, others have been suspended but have not admitted anything, while others are linked due to their involvement with others riders and/or team doctors. It's a pretty impressive list. I bet we could fill an impressive roster with those names, and have them compete against currently suspended dopers (Iban Mayo, Rasmussen, Vinokourov, Manuel Beltran, Riccardo Ricco, Stefan Schumacher, Bernhard Kohl, etc). Unbelievable. Cycling does have many many big names who have somehow managed to remain untarred, and I wish names like Hincapie, Cancellara, Voigt, Cavendish, Cadel Evans, Leipheimer got as much attention as someone like Floyd Landis.
(By the way, there are some more incredible doping cartoons that you can see at cartoonstock.com)
Cycling is trying to fix its problem for a long time. Way back in 1998, the Festina Affair occured when all the Festina team car was searched before the Tour started and enormous quantities of EPO, steroids, syringes, and other drugs were found. This lead to police raids of hotel rooms, other team's cars, etc. Eventually, 4 teams drop out of the 1998 Tour, and police and race organizers claim to have cleaned up cycling. 10 years later, the Tour is still busy kicking out cheating cyclists, and are we expecting 2009 to be any better?
I was impressed when I started hearing about how much Lance Armstrong has been tested. He claims that he has been tested over 20+ times since he announced his comeback to cycling. These 20+ tests would include USADA, in-race testing, and his own independent testing program (results posted on Livestrong.com). Ivan Basso also has done the same, as he posts all his training results and drug testing results on his own website. Interestingly, Lance and Ivan both seem to get their blood tested about once a month.
Cycling has used the biological passport to try and reduce rampant doping. And it seems to be working. The World Anti-Doping Agency claims that the biological passport has been acting as a deterrent to cheats. And perhaps it has. But skepticism will remain...
Included in that last article is a claim that athletics will start testing the biological passport this summer at the Berlin World Championships. And it's about time. The only sport that can rival the star power of dopers is athletics. The list of accused is full of world champions and Olympic medallists. From Flo-Jo, Carl Lewis, and Ben Johnson in the 1980's to Justin Gatlin, Tim Montgomery, and Marion Jones in the last few years (and those cheating Russians in 2008), track stars have been consistently implicated.
But wait, there is so much more. Dwain Chambers, the UK sprinter who was a rival of Maurice Greene and Tim Montgomery in the early 2000's, got caught using the steroid THG in 2003. He subsequently admitted that he used testosterone, EPO, HGH, stimulants, and thyroid hormones. He served a 2-year ban, and is now back running competitively but finding that he is having a tough time getting invited to big-name track meets. Next week he is publishing his tell-all book, and it is full of bombshells. He mentions that in 2002 he spent over $30,000 on 300+ drug cocktails, and passed 10 drug tests. He also mentions the "Duck & Dodge" technique, where an athlete who thinks he might fail a drug test will fill up his voicemail so testers can't notify him of an upcoming drug test. If an athlete isn't notified, he doesn't have to show up for the test. There are two book excerpts that were published this week that are just unbelievable. Read them here and here.
Is track really getting cleaner? First off, it's pretty interesting that the current blood test for HGH has been around since the 2004 Olympics. And how many cheats have they caught? Zero. Yep, no one has been caught. Back in 2006, MLB tried to work with a UCLA lab to develop a blood test for HGH. 3 years later, we're finally getting closer. A US company has announced that they are close to finalizing a urine test that can detect HGH use up to 2 weeks after last use. This is a breakthrough since the current blood test can only detect use in the previous 24-48 hours, and even WADA documents claimed that blood is the best matrix to detect HGH use since amounts in the urine are less than 1% than those in blood. But this new test could change all that, and cheaters/sprinters around the world will have to find a new way to get faster.
But can you find the cheaters if you don't test them? The IAAF posted their 2008 testing results (for out -of-competition tests) on their website, and the findings are laughable. Only 4 Canadians athletes were tested in 2008 (Jon Brown, Tyler Christopher, Priscilla Lopes-Schliep, and Gary Reed) and none of them were tested more than 3 times. I can think of several Canadian track & field athletes who made the Olympics and never even got tested once. Is this possible? Of the 697 athletes tested world-wide by the IAAF, only 17 athletes were tested 8+ times. And the entire US Track & Field team was only tested 121 times. Hmmm. I can see a few holes in this system.
Anyhow, all this talk about doping, anti-doping, and the like can only help close the gap between the cheaters and the authorities. But only time will tell if we can get closer to "pure" competition...
See you Friday
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