Steroids use has become widespread in athletics when almost every sport seem to produce a player positive for performance enhancing drugs. After baseball, wrestling, cycling, football, now comes Justin Gatlin from track in field. Reports of his involvement with the banned substance is not anything new because he is serving his four year ban for testing positive for steroids. He is now preparing to continue on with his career next year after the ban is lifted.

Gatlin said that in 2006 he was tested positive without knowing that prior to the testing the cream that a masseuse had used on him contained steroids. Trevor Graham made this statement and this was corroborated by Gatlin.

From NY Daily News:

Gatlin has since adopted the argument, although he didn’t fight the penalty from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in August of that year. He faced a lifetime ban, thanks to a prior positive test at the University of Tennessee for amphetamines found in the Attention Deficit Disorder drug Adderall, so Gatlin jumped when USADA offered an eight-year ban with an option to appeal if he acknowledged the tests.

That ban was cut to four years by a USADA arbitration panel early last year, largely because of Gatlin’s claim that his positive test in college occurred because of medication he took for Attention Deficit Disorder. Gatlin added that he assisted the federal BALCO investigation in late 2006, secretly taping phone calls with Graham and testifying against his trainer in 2007.

“And I just turned around and did that stuff,” he says. “If I used steroids, you think I would do that?”

However, there are still those in the tracks that doubt his claims. Gatlin has to go back to the top and prove that he isn’t cheating once he is reinstated in 2010. But all of these will be happening under the watchful eye of USADA.

Tags: Justin Gatlin, steroids, track and field, Trevor Graham, USADA

Posted in Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, Steroids in Baseball, Steroids in Olympics, Steroids in Sports, steroid nation | No Comments/Questions

Cyclingnews reports that 2007 cyclo-cross silver medalist Jonathan Page may face suspension due to missed doping control.

Page failed to submit himself to doping testing on Nov. 29 at the fourth round or the UCI’s World Cup in Koksijde, Belgium. He said he was unaware he was selected to undergo doping control, saying he pulled out of the World Cup race after he suffered a crash on the third lap.

According to the 32-year-old rider, he received a letter on Dec. 19, informing him that he missed a doping control at the race. He now awaits a hearing from the United States Anti-Doping Agency which can suspend him for two years if he’s found guilty of doping infringement.

“I’m relying on a hearing from USADA and I can only hope that they listen to our story that is was nothing but a stupid mistake,” Page said to Cyclingnews.

Though no one is accusing him of using anabolic steroids, the UCI’s cyclo-cross coordinator Peter Van den Abeele confirmed to sport.be that Page didn’t show up for the post-race control in Koksijde. “When I talked with Page about this he was devastated and really upset,” UCI’s cyclocross Peter Van den Abeele said. “He was so upset by the news that he didn’t start in Zolder despite having the right to start in the race.”

“He can’t escape some sort of punishment but I’m certainly not the man to judge on that,” Van den Abeele added.

Page’s wife, Cori, blames herself for her husband’s predicament.

“I didn’t remember to go to the finish line to check for doping at the end of the race. I’m usually his backup and I failed,” said Cori. “Our second backup is a guy who is at most of the races helping another rider. He checks the control list, too, but on the days where there are chaperones no one worries because the riders will be picked up and escorted to the control. Koksijde was a race with chaperones.”

Page had a blood test done by his doctor as part of his regular checkup. The results indicated no EPO or other performance enhancing drugs.

Tags: Belgium, cycling, doping control, Jonathan Page, Koksijde, missed dope testing, UCI World Cup, USADA

Posted in Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, Steroids in Sports, steroid nation | No Comments/Questions

The reality is with us for a long time, but the acknowledgement comes just now.

Olympic officials finally admit the truth the Games may never be completely free from steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. Months leading up to the Summer Games in Beijing has netted dozens of athletes who tested positive for banned substance and/or violated testing protocols. And the fact that quite a few of those violators were possible gold winners rattles key sports leaders.

To keep up with the advancement in doping practices – emergence of new methods and drugs that elude screening – anti-doping officials adopt new testing policy for the coming years. It’s a paradigm shift for many anti-doping organizations as they adopt new procedures to respond to the newfangled problems in sports today.

Among these procedures is the so-called deterrent effect. Official will conduct frequent testing as well as scientific studies in designer drug detection. In Beijing Olympics, for example, WADA is expected to conduct 4,500 drug tests, the highest ever in the history of Olympics. Four years ago in Athens, WADA oversaw 3,500 tests and came up with 26 positive cases.

“I’ve said that we could expect between 30 and 40 positive cases [during the Games],” said International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge. “That is the extrapolation of the figures from Athens…If we have less, we must be extremely glad because that will mean that there has been a deterrent effect.

“Am I disappointed that there is still doping? Of course, I am. I hate doping. But we have to be realistic. It would be wrong to be Utopians. Doping is to sport what criminality is to society and there will always be criminality in society.”

Because of the stepped-up policy, the top five finishers in each event and two randomly chosen competitors will undergo a combination of blood tests and checks for the presence of synthetic EPO, an endurance-boosting hormone. Olympic organizers will also test for human growth hormone (HGH), the first they will do so. Further, scientists will also test for other key hormone levels and other signs that may indicate an athlete’s attempt to artificially enhance his or her performance.

Also as part of the new program, samples will be stored for eight years which will allow officials to conduct retests when scientists develop more efficient methods of detection.

John Fahey, head of WADA, is glad with other countries’ efforts to dissuade athletes from using performance-enhancing drugs. “…they (countries) have embarked upon a systematic testing regime in the months leading up to departure of their teams for Beijing. . . . I hope that in two weeks’ time, when we walk away from here, we’ve seen results that have made a significant step in the way back to confidence and integrity in sport.”

USADA testing program – will athletes come out clean?

Prior to the Beijing Olympics, the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has recently adopted a pilot testing program with the goal of ideally getting rid of use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in sports. The program has involved twelve American athletes who are preeminent in their respective sport discipline. The volunteer athletes include champion US sprinter Tyson Gay, record-setting swimming superstars Michael Phelps and Dara Torres; and Allyson Felix, two-time 200 meter world champion.

The USADA program has required a two-week period of blood and urine testing to determine a body chemistry baseline. After the baseline has been set, the volunteers have undergone unannounced blood and urine tests. Travis Tygart, chief executive officer of USADA, considered the program as the most advanced and comprehensive in the world.

Gay volunteered to the program to help clean the image of his sport. There had been doping scandals that now and then pop in mainstream media that involve high-profile track stars. Marion Jones, who is currently serving a six-month prison term, comes quickly to mind when talking about doping in athletics.

“I definitely understand people questioning people running fast because we’ve had several track athletes busted for steroids in the past,” Gay said. “I get tested whenever they want to test me. If it’s six vials of blood one week, then again the next week, that’s just the price I have to go through to make sure everything is OK.”

Tygart is also optimistic about the program’s end result.

“The general climate in sports today creates an unfair environment where athletes, whether setting world records or competing at an older age, are all of a sudden accused of doing it by performance-enhancing drugs,” Tygart said. “We want to do everything possible to take away that stigma for the clean athletes. We want to give athletes a testing platform that we all can have comfort in knowing they’re actually clean. That’s a dream of ours.”

Archaic and high-tech doping

According to a Boston Globe article, sports officials now have to contend with both low-tech methods (urine swapping) and revolutionary means (gene doping) to outsmart testing protocol.

The seven Russian track-and-field athletes caught days before the Games are accused of tampering with urine samples. DNA taken from the urine did not match DNA taken from the athletes, prompting one Olympics official to call it a case of “systematic doping.” Whether that proves true or not, urine tampering is a prime example of back-to-the-future cheating by athletes. Using someone else’s urine to pass drug tests was first done roughly 40 years ago.

As athletes try to evade new drug tests, future doping scandals appear likely to involve either low-tech methods from the past or frighteningly advanced science.

Gene doping is on the horizon for the 2012 London Olympics, though its short- and long-term effects are still largely unknown. To alter themselves on a cellular level, athletes inject synthetic genes designed to either promote muscle growth or increase endurance. Since the synthetic genes blend easily with the athlete’s DNA, it is impossible to detect gene doping without multiple muscle biopsies, which is not exactly practical when officials are already performing 4,500 tests during the Olympics.

“There is an expertise that makes us more effective than we ever were before,” said Fahey, the WADA chief. “That doesn’t mean to say that there aren’t cheats out there still, or that there might always be cheats out there.”

Gene doping, Fahey said, “May become something that enters the lexicon of doping in the days ahead, and we want to be there to pick it up and deal with it at an earlier stage. Much of what we do is about public health. At this point, we’re thinking about the world’s elite athletes. But to the point that this or any of those other drugs are taken, there is a risk to the health, sometimes the lives, of those who are doping.”

Unfortunately, that is not a strong enough deterrent for some athletes seeking gold. If athletes are willing to risk their lives by using steroids or gene doping, it is easy to see why measures taken by sports leaders can only lessen, not eliminate, cheating.

Tags: doping, enhancing drugs, EPO, gene doping, human growth hormone, olympics, performance, steroids, Tyson Gay, USADA, WADA

Posted in Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, Steroids in Olympics, Steroids in Sports, steroid nation | No Comments/Questions

I shouldn’t have made that phone call – must be what keeps repeating on Trevor Graham’s head for weeks now.

The former elite sprint coach is on trial for lying to government authorities in 2004 when he said he didn’t know Angel ‘Memo’ Heredia beyond that one phone conversation he had with the confessed steroid dealer. Heredia is now the prosecution’s ace witness against Graham.

It was Graham who blew the whistle on BALCO, a company headquartered in Burlingame, California, which has steamrolled the investigation of one of the biggest steroid scandal in the U.S. It all began when Graham made an anonymous phone call to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in June 2003. He divulged juicy details on doping activity of quite a number of athletes, and two things immediately caught USADA’s attention. First, that athletes were using a steroid that could pass detection. Second, the name Victor Conte. Conte was the founder and owner of BALCO, a sports medicine and nutritional supplement company. Conte also has ties with several professional sports organizations and popular athletes. Graham said Conte was the source of the undetectable steroid.

It was also Graham who brought a syringe with traces of the designer steroid, which was known as The Clear by its users. The Clear was later identified by investigators as tetrahydrogestrinone or THG. Subsequently, search and seizure were conducted by federal agents that uncovered the massive use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs by American and European athletes from diverse competitive sports. MLB players Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi; cyclist Tammy Thomas; track and field stars Tim Montgomery, Marion Jones, and Kelli White; NFL’s Barrett Robbins, Chris Cooper, and Dana Stubblefield were just some of the those implicated in said steroid scandal.

Several of the personalities involved have already served their sentence, including Conte and BALCO’s chemist Patrick Arnold. It was Arnold who developed The Clear. Meanwhile, other personalities like Marion Jones are currently on federal institutions because of BALCO-related crimes.

Tags: Angel Heredia, BALCO, Barry Bonds, steroids, THG, Trevor Graham, USADA, Victor Conte

Posted in Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, Steroids in Baseball, Steroids in NFL, Steroids in Sports, steroid nation | No Comments/Questions