Kieren Fallon, the six-time champion jockey, reopened old wounds by saying that there is a drug abuse problem within horse racing and, more particularly, within the extensive racing community in Newmarket.

Fallon who returned in September from an 18-month ban for a second failed drug test recently appeared on the BBC’s Inside Sport programme.

From Guardian.co.uk:

“Newmarket has the highest rate [of drug use] for its population in any town in England,” he told the interviewer, Clare Balding. “I know there is [a drug problem in racing]. I don’t know what can be done. I’ve done something and I’m all right.”

Having served a six-month ban for testing positive for a metabolite of cocaine in 2006, Fallon said the stress of the race-fixing trial at the Old Bailey led him to fail another test the following year.

“Obviously when things aren’t going well … my life was spiralling out of control,” he said. “Every second week we’re having to take trips to England [from Ireland] to my barristers. We couldn’t see an end to it, we were no nearer after a year we couldn’t see an end to it and you get to the stage you don’t really care any more.”

Fallon is not the first to suggest that racing, and the town which is its heartbeat for more than half of the year, has such issues.

In 2005 the suicides of three stable staff linked to alcohol and drug abuse led to the establishment of the Newmarket Racing Partnership, funded in the main by the Racing Welfare charity.

The town’s racing chaplain, the Rev Graham Locking, said there is a drugs problem in Newmarket but that’s because we are no different to any other town.

Tags: cocaine, drug abuse, drug test, drug use, horse racing, Kieren Fallon

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Marat Safin, the former No1-ranked player, recently said that Andre Agassi should relinquish his titles back after confessing to testing positive to a banned substance during his career and lying about it to the ATP.

In his autobiography, Agassi admitted that he made use of crystal meth in 1997 and failed a drug test.

From Guardian.co.uk:

Safin, who will retire this month, said in an interview with France’s L’Equipe newspaper that Agassi should “give his titles, his money and his Grand Slam titles” back.

Agassi yesterday said in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper that it would be physically impossible to play tennis while high on crystal meth, adding that he never played the game while doped.

“No, I never did it in tournaments,” Agassi said. “I never did because it would have been a disaster. It’s hideous; it’s not the way you feel but what you’re incapable of. Your heart rate runs high enough as it is but to have that kind of heart rate and to tell yourself to calm down and hit a second serve is literally impossible.”

Agassi also claims that the result was thrown out by tennis’s governing body after he lied by saying he “unwittingly” took the substance.

Tags: Andre Agassi, crystal meth, drug test, Marat Safin

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The International Association of Athletics Federations has handed over a six-month drug ban to Shelly-Ann Fraser, the Olympic and world 100 meters champion.

The 23-year-old Jamaican failed to clear a drug test and tested positive for oxycodone at the Diamond League meeting in Shanghai in May. Fraser said that the result was because of medication she took for toothache.

From Guardian.co.uk:

Oxycodone is banned as a narcotic but is not considered performance enhancing or to be a masking agent. Fraser was the eighth Jamaican athlete to test positive in the space of a year.

Bruce James, president of her MVP Track and Field Club, said at the time: “She took pain medication after a dental procedure which is not a performance enhancement drug.

“We are withdrawing her from all competitions until we are able to have a hearing to determine what sanction will apply, or if she will be exonerated.

“The IAAF had advised us that the offending substance is oxycodone. Google it. It is not a performance-enhancing drug.”

The IAAF has now confirmed she will not be allowed to return to action until 7 January.

Tags: drug test, Oxycodone, performance enhancement drug

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The eight-time slam winner, Andre Agassi, recently confessed that he took crystal meth in 1997 when his career and private life were spiraling out of control. One of the most admired and respected names in the world of tennis suddenly shocked the world by disclosing this fact.

In his autobiography, Agassi admitted taking crystal meth in 1997 and had failed a drug test which today would undoubtedly have seen him banned for two years.

From Gurdian.co.uk:

And so Agassi played on, and the next year began to turn his career around, moving from outside the world’s top 100 into the top 10. The most shocking aspect of the revelation is that the ATP covered up the whole matter completely. But then the players half own the ATP, a factor that continues to worry those both within and outside the game. As with the nandrolone affair, and the more recent suggestions of match fixing, the ATP waits for the smoke to die down, and then hopes everything will be forgotten.

Quite why Agassi, a hugely rich man, should have chosen to reveal he failed a drug test is unclear. Obviously it will sell his book, though he hardly needs the money. Perhaps the story would have come out from another source; perhaps he merely wanted to absolve his conscience. Many may choose to be sympathetic, given the circumstances of his life at the time. For others it will both stain his reputation and further undermine the credibility of tennis, and its governing bodies, most notably the ATP.

It is believed that the Association of Tennis Professionals, the governing body of the men’s professional sport, avoided a major embarrassment and a serious blow to the sport’s integrity by taking no action against the eight-time champion.

Tags: Andre Agassi, crystal meth, drug test

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Italian rider Danilo Di Luca is free to return to competition after a sports tribunal reduced his ban of two years for failing to clear a drug test by nine months and a week.

Di Luca denied reports he had implicated fellow riders while cooperating with prosecutors.

From Ansa.it:

Di Luca, who tested positive for the blood-booster EPO-CERA having come second in the world’s second top stage race, was given the reduction for cooperating with Padua prosecutors investigating an alleged doping ring. ”I’m happy because, even though the season is practically over, I can finally go back to doing my job and find myself a team,” the 34-year-old, who was sacked by LPR Brakes last year, told reporters.

The 2007 Giro winner, who served a three-month suspension in 2007 for having links to a doctor at the centre of a doping scandal, said he aims to quickly re-establish himself as one of the sport’s top riders: ”Now I just have to make up for the time I’ve been away.

I’ve trained throughout this last year and a half. Now I want to find a team and be competitive in the races I like, the classics and the Giro d’Italia.

Luca also said that Italy’s anti-doping prosecutor Ettore Torri was wrong when he recently said that ‘everyone dopes’ in cycling.

Tags: cycling, Danilo Di Luca, doping, drug test, EPO-CERA

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First there was Roger Clemens who was charged with doping. Then there was Barry Bonds who was charged with doping and lying, and was probably taken by surprise when his supposedly destroyed urine sample resurfaced and yielded positive results. And now there is Alex Rodriguez, the baseball superstar who is now under public judgment because the documents that listed supposedly confidential test results in 2003 were found along with his positive steroid test. You think that the rest of the 104 listed positive should be the only ones scared. Apparently, that is not the case. Even those that tested negative back then could be subject to some re-analyzing. Remember Bonds testing negative at first then positive after a few years? The feds might be considering the same in this case.

From Daily News:

Even those who tested negative could be subject to re-testing as a result of the Players’ Association‘s failure to destroy the spreadsheet with the names of those who tested positive.

There are believed to be 525 negative urine samples in the hands of the government in addition to the 104 positive samples.

After the testing process was completed in 2003, union officials had the right to destroy the documents that connected names to actual urine samples. Sources close to the union defend its inaction, saying it would have been improper to destroy urine samples and test documents because they were potential evidence in the ongoing BALCO probe.

The laboratory that did the tests should have destroyed the samples whether positive or negative. It didn’t though and now we have 525 urine samples to analyze with more modern tests. That could mean over a hundred more Barry Bonds.

Tags: 2003, Alex Rodriguez, BALCO, Barry Bonds, drug test, Major League Baseball, steroids, urine samples

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Kirk Radomski has been bumping into a lot of disputes lately, just after his book, “Bases Loaded”, had been available for preview. First there was this 2-time “correction” by George Mitchell, and now, Major League Baseball officials are not happy with what they’ve read.

Radomski wrote that players were summoned in order to tell them that they had positive results during tests for steroid use. According to the steroid dealer, one player approached him and told him that the commissioner’s office wanted him to drop by for that reason. The main problem with this is that testing during those times were introduced on an anonymous basis and that it would imply that the baseball officials had been trying to limit the number of athletes who would have positive results the next season by warning them early.

Rob Mandred, one of the drug test’s officials, tried to clarify the mistakes on the passage.

From The New York Times:

In a telephone interview Wednesday, Rob Manfred, baseball’s top drug-testing official, said that the passage in Radomski’s book was “categorically incorrect.”

“By no means were we involved in that process; any suggestion that we were involved is untrue,” he said.

What actually occurred in 2004, when anabolic steroids testing began in earnest, is murky. In his report on baseball and performance-enhancing drugs, George J. Mitchell said that at least one player was told in 2004 by the players union that he tested positive in 2003 and that he would be tested again in the coming weeks. Mitchell said other players who tested positive in 2003 might have received similar warnings from the union. He did not cite any attempts by the commissioner’s office to tell players about positive tests or warn them about coming tests.

Interestingly, there is some misinformation written on Radomski’s book. One of these is that he mentioned that Roger Clemens and Jose Canseco even if they had played together several times. Another is an incident with Dwight Gooden testing positive for cocaine use during the wrong year.

Tags: Bases Loaded, drug test, Kirk Radomski, Major League Baseball, Mitchell Report, Performance enhancing drugs, steroids

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