[Leica] Fakes, now doping

[leica at screengang.com (Didier Ludwig)]

Adam

You are right in most of your points, but you forgot a few things. For 
instance, the list of the available drugs is 10x longer than the list of the 
officially prohibited drugs - and one is guilty only if both A- and B-tests 
from a officially listed drug are positive. In that unequal race, the doping 
controllers are always one or two steps too late. It's like 5 cops running 
behind 50 crooks. And the crooks have sportscars.

Then you talk about steroids: that's only a part of the game, today. They 
use genetical doping, human growth hormones, blood transfers and many other 
high tech stuff which is much harder to prove than classical steroids. 

I don't believe that doping would not help much for male swimmers. Most 
steroids would make an impact on the body flexibility, that's true, but 
there are other meds to counter that effect. And third meds to camouflage 
all the others. And other drugs enhance the endurance or the oxygen uptake 
capacity, for instance, something which might help to boost records even 
more than a deeper pool.

I agree that men are more difficult to "juice up" as women, where 
testosteron doping makes the bigger effect. I remember a famous statement of 
a german democratic republic's women swimming coach, who, after being asked, 
why his successful lady swimmers have such deep voices, answered: "They 
shall swim, not sing". But that was in the 70ies and meanwhile testosteron 
doping is easier to prove.

With putting doubts on the doping agencies' methods one can not take the 
doubts away from suspected athletes. It is quite understandable that the 
doping agencies, mainly WADA, do not publish their methods and procedures, 
otherwise it would be even easier to cheat. Because for the suspected 
sportsmen, "doped" means "caught with an officially listed drug", not 
"doped". It is also understandable that they do not work too closely with 
the sport associations, as some of them, certainly not all, have often been 
in the doping grey zone in the past, by protecting their own athletes. 
Especially the UCI cycling federation, who was (or still is) more interested 
in keeping it's business running than making it clean.

When it's about sports and doping in general, I just don't cherish too many 
illusions anymore, but this is without any offending intentions. As for the 
swimmers, "in dubio pro reo", I admit I might have been wrong :-)

Didier





>Speaking from intense experience as a national championship USA
>Swimming official I take offense at Didier's claim that all or even
>most swimmers are "juiced" (use performance enhancing drugs.)
>
>While it may be impossible to prove they do not, US athletes, and
>elite athletes from other nations, are tested during their training at
>unannounced intervals to look for performance enhancing drugs.
>
>It's possible there are some with better chemists than others and that
>some slip through the screening process. But FINA (the world governing
>body for swimming) and USA Swimming (the USA national governing body
>for swimming) take protection of its athletes very seriously.
>
>You will note that one swimmer was removed from the US swimming team
>when one of three urine samples was found to contain metabolites for a
>performance enhancing drug. We do look and we look really hard.
>
>Unfortunately for the athletes we don't know how accurate the drug
>testing really is. There is no science being done to determine the
>number of false positives and false negatives for these tests. The
>science isn't being done because the testing agencies won't release
>the details of their procedures -- details they say would make it
>easier for dopers to hide their use.
>
>It's a sad situation and one that is murky. But to declare that the
>swimmers at the Olympics are juiced is offensive and, I suspect,
>wrong.
>
>The records are falling for many reasons: (1) it's a fabulous
>facility. Pool designers have known for years that depth is important
>so China made a pool 33% deeper than normal. (2) the athletes are
>training longer into adulthood because they can actually make some
>money doing swimming through product endorsements. Older more mature
>swimmers can carry more muscle tissue and can get beyond adolesence
>and train harder and longer and maintain the discipline required to
>make good use of it. (3) suit technology is better.
>
>While this meet is very fast  you only have to look at the USA
>Swimming Olympic Trials and the number of world records established
>there, that the athletes were ready to swim fast. That their training
>ends a quadrennium of effort (since everyone points toward the Olympic
>Games) and results in amazingly fast swims, even when not fully
>tapered as they are this week, shouldn't be a surprise to anyone
>familiar with the sport.
>
>Yes, people will cheat when they can and when the stakes are so very
>high. But we're doing our very best to make that impossible.
>
>One last important issue: male swimmers are difficult to dope. The
>traditional methods: steroids of one form or another, reduce the
>flexibility of male swimmers' bodies. Flexibility is very important as
>you can see from watching the underwater shots. Even in the bad ol'
>days the men escaped doping because it was counter-productive. Every
>swimming coach knows this. It's the women who are under the most
>pressure to dope because if you can make a woman 10% male in terms of
>her ability to carry muscle tissue then she's going to have an
>enormous advantage. Plus women are already much more flexible than men
>so a small loss is acceptable because the power increase outweighs it.
>
>Adam Bridge