Who will be first among the big 4 (or 5)?

I’m glad large corporate sponsors are dropping athletes for doping infringements.

One day the world of sports marketing will get the idea that spending $billions on one person is a bit, silly.

As for her I expected her, and many others, are on this/anything they can get their hands on whilst the testing is both random and arbitrary at best.

Quite interesting…

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/mar/08/meldonium-maria-sharapova-failed-drugs-test

It increases blood flow, which improves exercise capacity in athletes.

Sharapova says she has been taking the drug for 10 years after she was regularly falling ill. She had a magnesium deficiency and family history of diabetes.

Hmmmm.

technically legal

a.k.a “legal”

There’s no ambiguity about how the system works. If a substance, treatment or technique is not on the proscribed list, you can use it. Sharapova was entirely within her rights to take this substance until it was banned. As mentioned above, it’s been added to the banned list because the authorities have decided it is being abused for performance enhancement, rather than being used as a valid medical treatment.

PED’s.

For a black and white issue, it’s the greyest area of all.

If it’s on the list you can’t take it. You’re responsible for what’s in your body, if something banned shows up you have to answer to it.

But what’s on the banned list (and the grey area of therapeutic exemptions) – why for example is meldonium, which apparently increases exercise tolerance on the banned list and beetroot juice, which apparently increases exercise tolerance – not?

theotherjonv – Member
why for example is meldonium, which apparently increases exercise tolerance on the banned list and beetroot juice, which apparently increases exercise tolerance – not?

Because one is a drug and one is a vegetable?

I’m in the camp that says her, or her team, should be checking the revised banned list as soon as it’s out to see what the changes are, if they affect their athlete and therefore what to do.

If her story is legitimate then she will have prescriptions dating back to 2006 and a doctor who can validate her story. I’d also hope that she has provided a list of what she is taking on every test anyway. If all this is the case then she has enough to justify herself in terms of the failed test (outside of just being stupid) and could apply for a TUE for this drug. Note this is all “if” her story is legitimate……we’ll see.

On a slight side note I can’t equate a family history of diabetes with a mass marketing / promotional campaign for her “Sugarpova” range of sweeties, hmm….

This sudden admission smacks of the same style of management as the BBC and a certain well-known disc-jockey:

Boss: “Look, we know you’ve been at it and it’s only a matter of time before the poop hits the fan so you’d better go quietly now and keep your head down. We’ll agree an excuse because you have earned us rather a lot of cash over the years, after all….”

That would be true if paedophilia and sexual assault had been only just become illegal.

I’m glad large corporate sponsors are dropping athletes for doping infringements.

I see that VW owned Porsche has also severed ties with her.
Obviously has no desire to be associated with cheating.

Because one is a drug and one is a vegetable?

It’s a bit of an arbitrary difference, though: cocaine is on the banned list, as is marijuana.

She just needs to grow a pair…

…like Serena.

Are you sure you don’t mean Stosur?
Before:

After:

How often do these revised lists come out? If there’s one every couple of days it’s more understandable to dismiss it than if there’s one every year.

The question of brand naming interested me too- there’s that suggestion that the product she uses has a different name to the one banned. If someone comes down from WADA and bans risedronate sodium, it’s more understandable if I subsequently test positive (after one of the elite wins which I am surely overdue) for it haven taken actonel as prescribed, and not connected the two.

It gets ugly around the fringes because, let’s be honest, a lot of people are thinking “bullshit do you have a medical reason- you took it for performance enhancement”. Which is unsporting and unethical but it’s not illegal, and ultimately it’s the athlete’s job to be the best they can and it’s the governing body’s job to define exactly what is allowed. You can’t depend on a sense of sporting ethics or “fairness” because that’s easily twisted by “other people are using this, it’s fair that I do too”. So my layman’s instinct, that she was always “in the wrong” regardless of whether or not it was banned, is probably just not appropriate really.

I dunno. Given the big picture it seems appropriate to me to treat this as a screwup. It obviously is a screwup tbf, if she was a drug cheat then getting caught like this requires the exact same carelessness/incompetence as accidentally breaking the rules, and that level of carelessness certainly makes more sense if you don’t think you’re doing anything wrong.

😯 at her above

been taking the drug for 10 years after she was regularly falling il

i get this, it’s my body saying, you’re not very good at this fitness stuff, you do nothing, then push yourself and i’m knackered, so now i’m shutting your immune system down..

Same thing happened with Navratilova – main difference being that she didn’t have a women-mountain named Serena to compete against.

Sui – Member

been taking the drug for 10 years after she was regularly falling il
i get this, it’s my body saying, you’re not very good at this fitness stuff, you do nothing, then push yourself and i’m knackered, so now i’m shutting your immune system down.. [/quote]

Same as a huge number of runners are ‘asthmatic’, because you know they often find themselves short of breath. Nothing to do with having run a marathon or two.

I wonder what Djok was taking or if his remarkable consistency just comes form the gluten-free diet he is suppossed to have switched to ?

And Martina Hingis got larger as well :

Sharapova doesn’t seem to have bulked up.

Is it like Alan Baxter? He was stripped of Olympic Bronze medal 🙁

Baxter’s bronze medal was taken off him when he failed a post race drugs test after his slalom success in Utah.

It was established that he failed because he had bought an over-the-counter Vick’s inhaler in America which included the banned substance levomethamphetamine.

British Vicks inhalers do not include levomethamphetamine and Baxter had not realised there would be a difference.

Levomethamphetamine has been shown to have zero performance enhancing qualities.

Levomethamphetamine has been shown to have zero performance enhancing qualities.

But is a known masking agent for performance enhancing drugs.

Linky please? I did a quick search and couldn’t find anything. It would be fairly illogical as well – they’re basically testing for methamphetamine, the other version of which does have performance enhancing rather than masking properties.

All you need to do is show that everybody else does it and to ban her would be unfair. Hey, isn’t that what worked for Greg Rusedski and nadrolone?

Operation Puerto reputedly had a ‘well known’ tennis player (who has made some wondrous recoveries from stuff in past).

Looks like she failed the IQ test is all.

Manufacturer says normal course is 4 to 6 weeks not 10 years!

Linky

With more on the way?

More drugs!

Hey, isn’t that what worked for Greg Rusedski and nadrolone?

didn’t neary half the tour show the same ‘footprint’ though – so it all looked a bit dodgy.

With the male game I would have thought that the more effective doping would be somethign physcological rather than physical, as they are all pretty stong anyway and posses somewhat similar levels of talent – it is just the mind that ‘gets in the way’

Rudeski seemed to often have a cold that his coach had prepped something for, probably so it was more likely that he would get zoned.

The Russian sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, said the drug “it just helped a lot of people with their recovery times”

so do Mars Milkshakes so will they get banned as well ?

So what are we trying to do here? ban all performance enhancing activities or just those that are deemed to be bad as and when WADA or whoever decides to add it to the list. The irony of the whole thing is if you suddenly add a substance to the list then you have to assume that all athletes before were using and therefore not clean. Caffine is a known performance enhancing drug, but the only reason why it is not on the banned list is because it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to completely elmiminate it from their diet so it is allowed, so there is precedent for the use and acceptance of a known performance enhancing substance.

Surely the more pragmatic stance should be that for all the ‘premier league’ enhancing drugs like EPO, Testoserone etc. that obviously and clearly change the physiology of an athlete (build muscles etc.) to be completely banned, but for the lesser drugs, like Caffine i.e. a stimulant, to either be allowed or restricted by a certain acceptable level in the system to guard against extreme use.

The Sharapova case is easy. If she claims she has a medical condition then that should be able to be proved/established. If she has then I think we can give her the benefit of the doubt and maybe reduce her ban to 6 months or so as a slap on the wrist for not keeping a close enough eye on the banned list.

Seems a couple of Russian skaters have also been recently discovered to have the same medical condition.

Who cares…

I’m sure she will be upset, if she wants to pop round mine I will sooth her brow for a minute (or two)

It took 68 posts – you lot are losing your touch

Could have been worse. Could have been 69 posts….hur hur hur

It was on the WADA “watch list” last year so anyone using it had advance warning that it was a flagged substance with a good chance of being prohibited.

She is hugely well paid and will have an entire team of professionals around her including doctors, dietician/nutritionists etc and you’d expect someone would be tasked with keeping an eye on WADA lists, so they idea she didn’t read an email herself, or know it had a different name, is laughable.

From what I’ve heard today it’s not a licensed drug in the US where she lives, which is an issue for her claiming it is for a medical condition and prescribed by a (family) doctor.

Personally, iz disappoint, as I’ve always liked her despite her shrieking for the efforts she’s made to come back from surgery and injury, to challenge the Williams who’ve made the game so physical.

Good to hear a big name in tennis has been busted – and dropped by her sponsors so quickly.

Yeah she’s got a semi-plausible excuse. She’d have to be really daft not to have.

This news tells me that everything she has won during the last ten or so years, is forfeit. Also, that there are those, who competed “clean” but had their careers curtailed for never beating the dopers.

Still, it’s barely imaginable that we should believe all these world beating champions, actually having backround health problems. How many asthmatics have there been in the pro peloton?

Pro athletes are having a laugh at the gullibility of the public.

I pity anyone “clean” who faced sharapova while she was playing top level international tennis, with a heart condition????

This news tells me that everything she has won during the last ten or so years, is forfeit.

Disagree….. it was allowed up until the turn of the year. Whatever the position and your philosophy of using allowed performance enhancers whether they are ‘needed’ to treat a medical condition, fact is that they are allowed. Everyone pushes the limits as far as they can, whether that’s with legal PEDs, or equipment design (marginal gains program, anyone) – as long as it’s legal then folks will do it.

Now it’s illegal, she’s daft for continuing to take whether by accident, or ignorance, or deliberately and she should pay the price accordingly. But what went before, is before.

It may have been allowed up until 1st Jan, but the pharmaco has said that the standard treatment period is about 6 weeks, and it would appear that quite a number of Eastern Bloc athletes are all going to fall foul now.
The Graun article said that journos thought she was announcing her retirement, so that’s probably not far off.

I want some brain juice enhancing drugs … 😆

She is rich enough to retire so whatever the outcome she has won. 😛

According to what I read on the BBC website, both names meldonium and mildronate were stated in WADA’s announcement for drugs to be prohibited in 2016.

She claims to have taken it for magnesium deficiency and family history of diabetes? Wouldn’t a doctor in the US prescribe a magnesium supplement and a diabetes medication rather than an unlicensed drug?

Wouldn’t a doctor in the US prescribe a magnesium supplement and a diabetes medication rather than an unlicensed drug?

Quite. Why use a doctor in Russia when you live in the USA? Also, if using something a little out of the ordinary, even more reason to keep your eyes on her list of things that are going to be banned.

Look, I’m not suggesting for a moment that I believe she or virtually anyone else is taking it for its true purpose, or in accordance with the usual guidelines. No, she’s been taking it because it boosts endurance and up until 1/1/16 was not on the banned list.

In a parallel universe not far from this one, you can almost accuse the people who weren’t taking it of a lack of professionalism.

Morals disappeared from sport a long time ago.