Science making it tougher for athletes to cheat
By JIM KERNAGHAN -- London Free Press
Wadda day for WADA. It would be naive to suggest the anti-drug forces of sport are on the verge of eliminating cheaters but a couple of telling blows were landed yesterday to at least indicate the World Anti-Drug Agency (WADA) is on the right track.
You could call it a one-two Pounding as the work of WADA chief Dick Pound continued to score points when European 100-metres sprint champion Dwain Chambers of England was handed a two-year suspension from competition along with a stunning life sentence from the Olympic Games.
Along with it, UK Sport announced that, beginning in August, every British athlete who fails a drug test will have the offence and punishment posted on the Internet.
It's clearly getting tougher to cheat. All British athletes who have been found positive or even given a warning will get their names on UK Sport's website. Other countries and sports governing bodies are considering like action, with the threat to ban and identify not only athletes but their suppliers of performance-enhancing substances.
Pound, at one time a candidate for the International Olympic Committee presidency, saw Chambers' sentence as a resounding shot across the bow. The salvo met the threat of the latest in designer drugs, tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG, head on.
THG is the latest designer drug as far as is known. It's a steroid chemically modified to avoid detection.
"This is a particularly important decision because the disciplinary committee has now confirmed that THG is, in fact, a prohibited substance related to a steroid on the prohibited list," Pound said from Athens, site of this summer's Olympic Games. "THG is a steroid created specifically to enhance sports performance and allow competitors to cheat. Those who cheat and are caught will face the consequences."
The entire issue of drugs and sport is worthy of a spy thriller. As science improves methods of detecting banned performance-enhancers, the band of cheaters and their researchers uncover new ways of masking their use. It would seem the scientific detectives are gaining in the decades-old cat-and-mouse game.
Neither the pursuers or their prey, it appears, knows what the other has in its arsenal at the moment. At the same time, don't think for a moment those whose business it is to gain a competitive edge have stopped seeking one.
It's just getting more difficult.
Virtually all sporting bodies in the world except for North American professional sports are signatories to the WADA code of acceptance, which involves the rooting out and identification of cheaters.
"The pro leagues (football, baseball, hockey and basketball) are not yet but they are definitely paying attention to what is going on," WADA's Farnaz Khadem said from Montreal.
"I think when President Bush said in his address that pro sports should clean up their act, it had an effect. We have scheduled meetings with representatives of the professional leagues."
Helping place the drug issue on the front burner was the discovery of an alleged steroid distribution ring in California named the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative. Four persons have been indicted so far in a THG probe that has brought up such names as baseball slugger Barry Bonds, whose personal trainer was one of those charged.
Other unnamed major league ball players and National Football League players have been implicated, along with Olympic-level track stars. One, world sprint champ Kelli White, was among several track and field people who have tested positive "for a banned substance."
Federation Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA, adheres to the WADA code. A number of soccer players have been suspended, the most celebrated being Manchester United and England defender Rio Ferdinand, who was banned for eight months in January after failing to show up for a random drug test.
