Olympic drug testing - are you sceptical?

I was just having a debate with someone and they said athletes who haven't been found guilty of cheating via tests haven't cheated.

To me that is ludicrous. I still believe an athlete could still be a cheat even if they've passed numerous tests.

My reasons for this. The WADA do not take part in every Olympic event so therefore not all athletes are tested prior to the Olympics in training.

This gives compounds, synthetic hormones such as HGH, etc time to leave the system whilst they still receive the gains from using those drugs.

In my opinion, as someone who lifts weights, I know this is the case because there are many builders who use drugs/hormones and cheat systems as well as in boxing.

Its one of the main reasons Mayweather wants Olympic Style + WADA testing if he were to fight Pacquiao. He wants Pacquiao tested before the fight in training to stop the use of boosters during training for bigger gains and he wants him tested before the fight, to stop quick explosive drugs being used which can be eradicated from the body in perspiration during a bout which means a test after it would show up clear.

Lets not forget these people pay thousands to have nutritionists/experts to cater to their every need.

HGH is the biggest one, it can only be detected up to 21 days after use and even that science is a bit iffy. If you load on this you can max out your gains easily enough and still clear every single test.

Its a shame the WADA are not compulsory used to randomly test every single athlete during training.

I am equally certain that many athletes who have used banned substances in the lead-up to the Games will attain their quest for medals and fame. The fact of the matter is that no matter how sophisticated the testing is, and how generously funded it is, some athletes will have avoided detection by either using substances with no reliable detection tests currently in place, by using substances sufficiently ahead of testing so as to avoid detection, or by being just plain lucky to not have been tested when using.

To me, people who take drug testing as 100% face value are very, very naive.

Interesting mate.

But how regularly are they tested? Surely they are not tested only before/after major tournaments, but random spot checks throughout the year as well.

I personally find it hard to believe that doping is still wide spread in professional, competitive sports.

Well technically he's right if you believe in innocent until proven guilty I guess.
I do agree though that I think it is more down to the failings of the testers than the cleanliness of the sport. It's a shame really because it does leave you questioning all athletes.

I was listening to talk sport the other day and they had one of the top UK female athletes on there (can't for the life of me remember who now!!) But she was saying that HGH was rife in the sport and she said it was untraceable within 24 hours.

Where there is financial gain to be made people will always try to cheat there way to it

I work within Medical science. We do testing for blood substances everyday, and even though our reasons are purely for the diagnostic benefit of the patient the whole process is very similar to Olympic testing. All our apparatus can easily be modified within hours to function as sports drug testing lab. So I feel I can offer a nice opinion on this.

The first problem is its completely irrational to think you can test everyone, there's simply too many. It would take several weeks and be so expensive it massively overrules any benefit you would gain.

As other people have also rightly said the substances that only last a short amount of time in the human body can also easily be dodged. Athletes can, and have, issued reasons why they can't come one day, be it via injury, family reasons or anything else. The only thing that can be done is demand they come in the next day, and by then its useless. You can't stand up and call the athlete a liar, as that will end you up in court before you know it.

And finally, and most importantly, is how quickly the list of banned substances changes. 20 or more new substances can be banned every year, and each one of them needs an effective method development stage to be able to analyse for efficiently. It then has to be tested again and again, then put through a tria period to analyse its success rate. This method can, and has, taken several years to complete satisfactorily. So what are you supposed to do if a new drug is banned two or three months before the games started? Implement an untested system that could call innocent athletes guilty, and vice versa?

Gp's have a similar problem. I can't remember the name right now but a cyclist got kicked off the Tour De France for failing a drug test, and it later emerged the drug in question was to treat a long standing medical condition of the cyclist, now discovered to accidentally improve cardiac performance. The cyclist didn't have a clue, neither did the GP who had prescribed it when it was perfectly legal. Then, it became a banned substance and the GP for whatever reason didn't realise and didn't make him aware.

So yeah, my conclusion is this - I don't feel there ever will be a 100% accurate drug testing system. Without testing every single athlete, every single day, with a machine that can instantly detect all bodily substances to 100% accuracy instantly. Cheats will always get through, but it's unavoidable.

If this was a problem it would seem that team GB' success would be the only team that needs to be questioned. No other country's results were deemed unexpected so it would seem that if cheating is rife it would appear to be evenly spread thus nullifying any supposed advantage. Why did our swimmers do so badly? Didn't they have access to the same performance enhancing products as the cyclists?

Judge dRed wrote:If this was a problem it would seem that team GB' success would be the only team that needs to be questioned. No other country's results were deemed unexpected so it would seem that if cheating is rife it would appear to be evenly spread thus nullifying any supposed advantage. Why did our swimmers do so badly? Didn't they have access to the same performance enhancing products as the cyclists?

Plenty of other countries had suspicious results. There's already been one gold medal revoked, and 'that' Chinese swimmer is still raising eyebrows.

I'm waiting for that Algerian 1500m gold medal winner to be stripped. His form come from nowhere apparently?!

Rhys wrote:Interesting mate.

But how regularly are they tested? Surely they are not tested only before/after major tournaments, but random spot checks throughout the year as well.

I personally find it hard to believe that doping is still wide spread in professional, competitive sports.

A random selection of athletes are tested during training in the build up to the Olympics but its not compulsory and its only a minimal amount.

Then during the Olympics most athletes, mainly the top athletes who take podium finishes plus a couple others will get urine sampled. Others will get blood tests taken but this very small amount in the grand scheme of things.

They get tested before and then after an event. However, there are drugs that come out of you during performance and there are drugs you can load on before the games which will only leave trace amounts in your system but as HGH is synthetic and very very similar to the natural growth hormone produced in the body its hard to verify if this trace amount is naturally occurring or synthetic. There is only a tiny difference and this takes a vast amount of testing and therefore, money.

The only HGH users who get caught in competition now are the idiots who fail to break their cycle on it before a scheduled test or those who get tested by WADA randomly and get caught before the games.

Testing during games isn't as effective as testing before the games when athletes load to max out.

Floyd Mayweather knows of all of this and he thinks Pacquiao is using a hormone to max out so he can exert for 12 rounds almost non stop. The problem is now a few drugs are well ahead of the testing and it'll always be the case. This is why samples are kept for 8 years and I've done some research and an athlete has only just been caught this year for cheating in Athens.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/aug/10/tyler-hamilton-athens-olympics-gold-doping

Lets just remember, if this guy hadn't admitted it within an 8 year time scale, he would have kept his medals and would have been fine. The IOC wouldn't have ever known he was doping.

Thats just one example of an athlete slipping the net.

I think for many they believe the system is perfect yet its definitely not and loads can cheat the system.