Drugs . . . who's got banned, getting banned, 1st to be banned

[High Voltage]

It's going on, we all know it's going on

But

who's going to be the first one to be caught

Which sport or which country - no Russian weight lifters, so that's taken out some of the "bankers"

if we have to do a more positive - which sports are the least likely to be tarnished with performance enhancing aids (apart from the British cycling suit, rumoured to be worth 3 seconds on a pursuit race)

 

[butchersapron]

Greece have one already. Two maybe. Cypriot weightlifter and and unnamed Greek.

 

[butchersapron]

Irish boxer done even before that.

 

[High Voltage]

Really?? bloody hell

I'm no lover of the Olympics or commercial sports for that matter, but this really is shocking

Still, the Greeks get one gold at least then!

 

[Mr Retro]

Lizzie Armistead isn't banned but should be for 3 missed tests. Which incidentally British Cycling covered up for 2 weeks. Where is the British tough line on drugs in this incident? Total hypocrisy.

 

[Athos]

Lizzie Armistead isn't banned but should be for 3 missed tests. Which incidentally British Cycling covered up for 2 weeks. Where is the British tough line on drugs in this incident? Total hypocrisy.

Didn't the court rule that, effectively, she only missed two, since there was a procedural error with the third?

 

[Mr Retro]

Didn't the court rule that, effectively, she only missed two, since there was a procedural error with the third?

No, the court ruled the tester didn't make enough effort to contact her for the first. Which she contested after she was caught for the third time in 12 months. There was no procedural error and she should have received a ban.

 

[Athos]

No, the court ruled the tester didn't make enough effort to contact her for the first. Which she contested after she was caught for the third time in 12 months. There was no procedural error and she should have received a ban.

No, that's just for those nasty foreigners.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

What set of events do people think are the biggest PED freakshows? Other than weightlifting, obviously. Of the early events I'm leaning towards swimming.

 

[The Boy]

What set of events do people think are the biggest PED freakshows? Other than weightlifting, obviously. Of the early events I'm leaning towards swimming.

Swimming is a biggie.

For some reason I've always imagined shooting to be a hotbed of probably-not-very-effective pharmaceutical abuses.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Swimming is a biggie.

Yeah, quite a lot of it just doesn't pass the eye test. The combination of cartoon physiques and the routine breaking of world records that were set with the aid of high tech suits and / or state doping programmes makes it seem like something that's best enjoyed as a circus.

You are probably right about shooting two. Beta blockers and tranquilisers?

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Evidence grows of widespread doping among elite swimmers

Head of the World Swimming Coaches Association says that the likelihood of clean swimming at Rio is "zero" and that "everything that's wrong with Russian sport is wrong with swimming".

Meanwhile FINA managed to get itself ranked bottom of all Olympic sports federations, including FIFA, the UCI and the IAAF, for accountability and transparency. That's actually an impressive accomplishment. The actual Cosa Nostra would struggle to be more corrupt than some sports federations.

 

[Reiabuzz]

How many drug tests do you have to miss to be banned? I recall Rio Ferdinand got a pretty lengthy ban for missing one. Why was armistead allowed to compete?

 

[Reiabuzz]

I saw her tearful interview saying her life was basically ruined by all this. And er, whose fault is that?

 

[souljacker]

She claimed some undisclosed family issues for the third one I heard. I wouldn't want to judge someone without the full facts but it does seem dodgy.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

How many drug tests do you have to miss to be banned? I recall Rio Ferdinand got a pretty lengthy ban for missing one. Why was armistead allowed to compete?

Ferdinand was charged with a different anti-doping infringement.

He was contacted by a tester and asked to provide a sample and then ran away rather than giving it. That refusal constitutes a doping violation in any sport.

Armitstead was charged not with refusing to give a sample, but with not being where she was supposed to be under the "whereabouts" system used as an additional anti-doping mechanism in some sports. Cyclists, among others, have to tell the anti-doping authorities where they will be for one hour of every day so as to facilitate easier Out of Competition testing. Armitstead was charged with not being available for testing in that hour three times over a one year period. Footballers can't be charged with this as football doesn't have a whereabouts system at all.

Built into the whereabouts system is an understanding that once in a while someone will not be available where and when they said they would be because of human error, medical emergencies etc. That's why you have to rack up three whereabouts issues for it to amount to a doping violation. That's entirely different from refusing to give a sample after being contacted. Armitstead got off because the Court of Arbitration for Sports decided that the first of her three whereabouts issues was down to the testing official rather than her. No three strikes, no ban.

I was a bit amused by the football journalists on twitter - who should know better - implying that Ferdinand had been harshly treated. Ferdinand somehow got a reduced suspension even though his case was open and shut. And no footballer is subject to the whereabouts system in the first place precisely because nobody wants to catch doping footballers and tarnish the most valuable product in sports.

 

[ska invita]

Could someone summarise what happened in regards to letting Russian athletes compete? I saw that theres a blanket ban on all Russian para-olympians... but with the able-bodied athletes was it done on an individual by indiviudal basis, or were there some blanket bans (say by discipline) in there too?

 

[ska invita]

Once watched an interesting documentary about this - seems theres basically an arms race out there, whereby a handful of extremely highly paid 'doctors' come up with performance enhancing drugs that aren't yet on the banned list. It costs a bomb to get these drugs in, so its the richest countries that tend to use them. The documentary talked a lot about the USA. A situation not unlike the brewing up of 'legal highs' to get around banned substance laws

 

[Reiabuzz]

Ferdinand was charged with a different anti-doping infringement.

He was contacted by a tester and asked to provide a sample and then ran away rather than giving it. That refusal constitutes a doping violation in any sport.

Armitstead was charged not with refusing to give a sample, but with not being where she was supposed to be under the "whereabouts" system used as an additional anti-doping mechanism in some sports. Cyclists, among others, have to tell the anti-doping authorities where they will be for one hour of every day so as to facilitate easier Out of Competition testing. Armitstead was charged with not being available for testing in that hour three times over a one year period. Footballers can't be charged with this as football doesn't have a whereabouts system at all.

Built into the whereabouts system is an understanding that once in a while someone will not be available where and when they said they would be because of human error, medical emergencies etc. That's why you have to rack up three whereabouts issues for it to amount to a doping violation. That's entirely different from refusing to give a sample after being contacted. Armitstead got off because the Court of Arbitration for Sports decided that the first of her three whereabouts issues was down to the testing official rather than her. No three strikes, no ban.

I was a bit amused by the football journalists on twitter - who should know better - implying that Ferdinand had been harshly treated. Ferdinand somehow got a reduced suspension even though his case was open and shut. And no footballer is subject to the whereabouts system in the first place precisely because nobody wants to catch doping footballers and tarnish the most valuable product in sports.

So she got off on a technicality. If I fucked up three times in my job that badly I'd be sacked. If this girl was Russian there'd be an uproar I'm sure. Rio wasn't harshly treated, he fucked up, he got banned, but how she is allowed to sit on the starting line of an Olympic race while her administrators are kicking off about Russia being allowed to compete is beyond me. And the waterworks on telly, please.

 

[The Boy]

So she got off on a technicality.

Only sort of. Strike two was a filing error (not a missed test, but counts as one for the purposes of the ABP). Strike three was - apparently - due to a family emergency.

The first is the one that was struck off as invalid, and CAS ruled that in this case the testers didn't do their job properly - they basically turned up at the hotel she had given as her location for that hour, asked reception what room she was in and, when they declined to say, they phoned her, got no answer so recorded it as a missed test and went home.

Phoning an athlete isn't a valid means of communication - for obvious reasons. Also, the athlete has to give there whereabouts for a one hour slot so the testers should have continued their efforts until that time slot was up - at the very least this would have been waiting in the lobby and waiting for her to come to breakfast. Iirc, they also didn't identify themselves to hotel staff as AD officials (though not certain).

Basically CAS ruled it as not a missed test as, in not following correct procedure, the testers didn't give her a fair chance to comply.

 

[The Boy]

I was a bit amused by the football journalists on twitter - who should know better - implying that Ferdinand had been harshly treated. Ferdinand somehow got a reduced suspension even though his case was open and shut. And no footballer is subject to the whereabouts system in the first place precisely because nobody wants to catch doping footballers and tarnish the most valuable product in sports.

See also their reaction to Sakho's positive - open an investigation into whether the substance should be on the banned list.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

So she got off on a technicality.

No she didn't. That one of the three "missed tests" was the fault of the authorities rather than her is a substantive defence not a technicality. I'm not particularly keen to be defending her, mind you, and racking up two more missed tests (or to be more precise one missed test and one failure to be where she was supposed to be that was found by audit) is a sign of at best extreme recklessness.

 

[wiskey]

I'm told that marijuana has been taken off the banned substance list, because clearly it's one drug that was never going to enhance sport lol.

Derv thinks there should be an enhanced Olympics, where as long as you are alive at the end you can take anything you like and use any equipment you like to assist you. It's an interesting idea.

 

[keybored]

I'm told that marijuana has been taken off the banned substance list, because clearly it's one drug that was never going to enhance sport lol.

Derv thinks there should be an enhanced Olympics, where as long as you are alive at the end you can take anything you like and use any equipment you like to assist you. It's an interesting idea.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Oh dear oh fucking dear.
Doping: Kenya sends coach home after posing as athlete for dope test

Kenyan coach poses as athlete for urine test.

 

[Sirena]

Derv thinks there should be an enhanced Olympics, where as long as you are alive at the end you can take anything you like and use any equipment you like to assist you. It's an interesting idea.

That sounds more like a typical crusty festival than a sporting event, though

 

[Sirena]

No she didn't. That one of the three "missed tests" was the fault of the authorities rather than her is a substantive defence not a technicality. I'm not particularly keen to be defending her, mind you, and racking up two more missed tests (or to be more precise one missed test and one failure to be where she was supposed to be that was found by audit) is a sign of at best extreme recklessness.

Yes. At the level she's at, it has to be an absolute priority.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

A Taiwanese weightlifter gets sent home because an "abnormal" test. She was a contender for Gold. Head of Polish weightlifting federation resigns after another athlete due to compete in Rio gets popped. A previously suspended Kazakh lifter sets a world record on way to a shock gold medal. Weightlifting is weightlifting.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

I'm in love with the Kenyan's explanation for their coach taking a drug test instead of their athlete. They are claiming that he had borrowed an athlete's pass so that he could get free food in the athlete's dining hall and then went along with the tester because he was afraid of getting in trouble.

 

[redsquirrel]

I'm in love with the Kenyan's explanation for their coach taking a drug test instead of their athlete. They are claiming that he had borrowed an athlete's pass so that he could get free food in the athlete's dining hall and then went along with the tester because he was afraid of getting in trouble.

TBH I'd almost be willing to let him off for that excuse