UK Anti-Doping has banned Shot-putter Carl Fletcher for four years after he was being convicted of trafficking anabolic steroids.

At Liverpool crown court, Fletcher was sentenced to nine months in prison for drug offences, including supplying 16 types of class C substances.

From Guardian.co.uk:

His offence involved the supply of a number of anabolic steroids, including testosterone, human growth hormone and Trenbolone, all of which are banned under the World Anti-Doping Agency code.

Fletcher, who was provisionally suspended from all competition on 8 November, is banned from participation in sport until 7 November 2015.

The UKAD chief executive, Andy Parkinson, said the case demonstrated the extent to which it was increasingly working with law enforcement agencies, in this case including Merseyside police and the Serious Organised Crime Agency.

“This case proves the invaluable role that law enforcement agencies have in the fight against doping in sport and demonstrates that our intelligence system is working effectively,” Parkinson said.

Tags: anabolic steroids, Carl Fletcher, doping in sport, human growth hormone, testosterone, trenbolone

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According to a major four-decade review by three of the World’s leading experts on doping in sport, scientists are doing their best to stop athletes using steroids or performance enhancing drugs, or undergoing genetic manipulation.

According to Professor Don Catlin, founder and former director of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accredited laboratory at the University of California, USA, and Executive Director of the Institute’s anti-doping research, one of the cardinal features of doping is that some athletes can test new drugs to improve performance.

From News-Medical.Net:

“Remarkable advances have been made over the last 40 years which have allowed sports authorities to identify and sanction athletes who have misused a wide range of drugs, most of which were developed to treat diseases” says Professor Ljungqvist. “More recently drugs have been produced and used to specifically enhance athletic performance and avoid detection.

“At the same time strict regulations have been developed to ensure that athletes with a proven clinical need can still receive the prescription drugs they need without fear of sanctions.”

“This major review by Professors Catlin, Ljungqvist and Fitch provides a concise description of the history of drug testing for the Olympic Games, with fascinating details on the evolution of laboratory equipment and analytical strategies” says Dr Thomas H Murray, President and CEO of The Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute based in New York.

“It identifies failings of the overall anti-doping system – most of them out of the laboratories control – and describes a number of challenges to be confronted.

“And it also shows us that there are five elements that are necessary for a successful anti-doping programme. These are: a strong commitment to – and sufficient funding for – research, a smart sampling strategy, adequate analytical capacity, a trustworthy adjudication process and a solid foundation of clear principles and transparent process.”

Catlin also said that it is necessary to develop tests before the news of a new drug or steroid abuse by athletes to improve performance is heard by them.

Tags: doping, doping in sport, genetic manipulation, Performance enhancing drugs, steroid

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Scottish cyclist David Millar, banned for two years in 2004 for using the blood booster erythropoietin, won the Commonwealth games gold in the men’s time trial.

Millar was given special dispensation to compete at these Games by the Scottish authorities since he was not eligible to ride for Britain at the Olympics.

From Guardian.co.uk:

Millar has become an outspoken critic of doping in sport and is a leading member of the athletes’ committee of the World Anti-Doping Agency. He said his win was “a little way to say thank you” to Commonwealth Games Scotland because “they believed in me and they’ve helped me through”.

Millar has competed in the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España this season, and took silver in the world time trial championships two weeks ago. He is that rare exception, though, an athlete who prizes the Commonwealth Games above almost everything else.

“It’s been a big goal all year,” Millar said, “probably the biggest actually – so to achieve it feels great. It’s the first chance I’ve ever had to ride for Scotland, so it was quite emotional on the podium. When you’re so focused on the event you forget why you do it, and why it’s so important to you. But when I was standing on the podium and the flag was going up, and the whole team was standing in front of me, singing Flower of Scotland, it hit home what it meant.”

Millar won in 47min 18.66sec, 54.82 seconds ahead of Alex Dowsett of England.

Tags: Commonwealth Games, David Millar, doping in sport, erythropoietin

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Jacques Rogge, the IOC president, recently told Reuters that IOC will be looking at ways for closing any legal loopholes after seven teammates of disgraced U.S. sprinter Marion Jones won an appeal allowing them to keep their medals from the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

The IOC wants to introduce stricter new rules to prevent athletes from keeping their medals when one of their teammates is found committing a doping offence.

From in.reuters.com:

Jones was stripped of the five medals she won at the 2000 Games when she confessed in 2007 to using steroids.

The IOC and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) also ordered Jones’s team mates in the 4×100 and 4×400 metres relays to hand back their medals.

But they refused and appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). The court upheld their appeal on Friday, saying there were no rules in place at the time of the Sydney Olympics that allowed entire teams to be disqualified.

U.S. IOC member Anita DeFrantz told Reuters she sympathised with innocent athletes who were punished for the wrongdoing of others.

“I detest doping in sport. Those who dope are cowards,” she wrote in an email to Reuters.

Rogge said the IOC respects the judgment but will study the consequences to see how it can improve its actions.

Tags: doping, doping in sport, Marion Jones, steroids

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Non-steroidal and tissue-selective anabolic agents such as Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators (SARMs) are being openly sold on the black market because of their performance enhancing characteristics, according to researchers from the German Sport University Cologne in Germany.

This finding emerged after detection of the drug candidate Andarine in a product sold via the Internet that highlighted that the availability of authentic SARMs.

From Sciencedaily.com:

In 2008, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) prohibited the use of SARMs in sports due to their potential for misuse. WADA closely cooperates with pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies, as well as medicine agencies and drug evaluation bodies on the issue of therapeutics being misused in sports. WADA’s preventive approach was validated with the recent finding of a commercially available, non-approved arylpropionamide-derived SARM termed Andarine. This product, declared as green tea extracts and face moisturizer to pass customs, was available on the Internet at a discount price of $100 USD.

To prove that SARMs lacking clinical approval are distributed and potentially misused in sports, Mario Thevis, Ph.D., and colleagues, analyzed the advertised substance using state-of-the-art mass spectrometric approaches with high resolution/high accuracy (tandem) mass spectrometry. “One unit (30 mL) was purchased online and delivered in a box labeled to contain face moisturizer and green tea extract. The sealed bottle did not declare any content and no further documents accompanied package,” said Dr. Thevis.

Mario Thevis, Ph.D., and colleagues, said that SARMs that come with considerable anabolic properties are readily available without sufficient research on their undesirable effects. This issue was recently addressed at the Conference of Parties to the International Convention against Doping in Sport, held October 26-28, 2009 at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) headquarters in Paris.

Tags: anabolic, Andarine, doping in sport, SARMs, Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators

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According to a major four-decade review by three of the World’s leading experts on doping in sport, scientists are trying their level best to stop steroid or drug-taking athletes to use performance enhancing drugs or undergo genetic manipulation.

According to Professor Don Catlin, Founder and former Director of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accredited laboratory at the University of California, USA, and CEO of the Anti-Doping Research Institute, one of the cardinal features of doping is that some athletes may experiment with new substances to enhance performance.

From News-Medical.Net:

“Remarkable advances have been made over the last 40 years which have allowed sports authorities to identify and sanction athletes who have misused a wide range of drugs, most of which were developed to treat diseases” says Professor Ljungqvist. “More recently drugs have been produced and used to specifically enhance athletic performance and avoid detection.

“At the same time strict regulations have been developed to ensure that athletes with a proven clinical need can still receive the prescription drugs they need without fear of sanctions.”

“This major review by Professors Catlin, Ljungqvist and Fitch provides a concise description of the history of drug testing for the Olympic Games, with fascinating details on the evolution of laboratory equipment and analytical strategies” says Dr Thomas H Murray, President and CEO of The Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute based in New York.

“It identifies failings of the overall anti-doping system – most of them out of the laboratories control – and describes a number of challenges to be confronted.

“And it also shows us that there are five elements that are necessary for a successful anti-doping programme. These are: a strong commitment to – and sufficient funding for – research, a smart sampling strategy, adequate analytical capacity, a trustworthy adjudication process and a solid foundation of clear principles and transparent process.”

Catlin further said that there is need to develop tests before news of a new drug or steroid misused by athletes for enhancing performance is heard by them.

Tags: doping, doping in sport, genetic manipulation, Performance enhancing drugs, steroid

Posted in buy steroids, Steroid Cycles, steroid nation, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, Steroids in Olympics, Steroids in Sports

One Times Online article labeled International Olympic president Jacques Rogge as a “deluded individual” when Rogge expressed his displeasure of Usain Bolt’s celebration of his victory at Beijing. Usain earned Rogge’s rebuke when the Jamaican sprinter failed to shake hands with his co-competitors after his impressive win at the 100 meters.

However, Rogge’s recent interview with the BBC’s Inside Sport, as related by AFP, portrayed a very pragmatic man. The IOC president said those who aspire for a 100 percent drug-free Olympics were out of touch with reality. He added cheating will always be part of human nature.

“I think one has to be realistic,” Rogge said.

“Drug-free sport in general is Utopia. It will be naive to believe that no-one will take drugs.

“There are about 400 million people practicing sport on this globe, there are not 400 million saints on earth.

“Cheating is embedded in human nature and doping is to sport what criminality is to society.

“You will always need cops and judges and prisons and jails and rules and regulations.”

IOC is planning to catch more users of anabolic steroids and other performance enhancers as it’s currently implementing re-testing of the samples taken at the Beijing Olympics. The IOC head “expects further positive doping cases to emerge from these” up to 2016 Games.

Rogge said all the samples they obtained from Beijing – more than 5,000 screenings, including nearly 1,000 blood samples – will be available for retroactive testing. The blood samples will be screened for new generation performance-enhancing drugs CERA and insulin. And if new testing techniques will emerge between now and 2016, the same samples will go through re-testing.

“We are keeping the samples for eight years and we are going to re-test them,” said Rogge.

“And ultimately the judgment on the Beijing Games will be given in eight years’ time, because each time a new scientific test is coming up we are going to re-test.”

Rogge assumed the IOC position on July 2001, replacing Juan Antonio Samaranch. Rogge has his share of criticisms and the most recent of these were his disapproval of Bolt’s behavior (mentioned above) and his statement regarding Greek athletes. He allegedly stated that “Greece won the gold medal in doping” because of a spate of failed dope tests of Greek athletes.

Tags: anabolic steroids, BBC, Beijing Olympics, CERA, doping in sport, Greek athletes, insulin, International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, performance boosters, steroids, Usain Bolt

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